RPGaDay Challenge 2016 - Day 22

Ah! Damage Magnets.

Are you all familiar with this phenomenon? Damage Magnets build up in characters run by people who are otherwise very lucky. Have a friend who the dice just seem to love? Rarely fails to hit, or make a difficult skill check? Well, those people are in danger of developing Damage Magnets based on my research.

Let's take my pal Pete H. All of Pete's characters are struck in the left leg. By this I mean, if you roll randomly on a hit location chart, Pete's character will get 'left leg' in nine out of ten rolls. On the tenth roll, he is most likely to get 'right leg'.

Let's say there is no hit location chart per se, and you are just curious, so you roll a D6 and assign it as follows: 1-right arm, 2-left arm, 3-chest, 4-right leg, 5-left leg, 6-head.

It's going to be a 5 on a Pete character more often than not.

My friend Nelson suffers from this phenomenon as well. His is especially lucky, performing incredibly difficult feats with his characters by rolling exactly what he needs even if the difficulty modifiers have been jacked up the wing-wang. It's incredible, but it comes back to bite him in the form of a Damage Magnet in the right shoulder of all his characters.

Let's say there is a group of PCs on the receiving end of some attack that hits with an area of effect condition, or a villain simply fires into the group randomly. Who got hit? You roll to see who the victim is and it's always one of the characters who suffers from Damage Magnets.

Damage Magnets work by compensating for positive probability with equal amounts of negative probability. While the player's PCs may hit their own targets and make their saves all the time, the negative luck builds up to make up the difference, attracting damage points towards their characters.

I have studied this bizarre condition for over thirty years, and seen it in at least a dozen individuals (though some have it worse than others). Find out who they are, and place your PC next to theirs. If a grenade goes off, your PC will likely be fine.Pete's left leg, and Nelson's right shoulder will absorb the damage.


AD
Barking Alien