How do you explain "luckier" in-character?

How do you explain "luckier" in-character?

A Luck Blade makes you luckier.
The Lucky Feat and the Halfling's Lucky trait likewise make a character more lucky, but those are potentially subtle, innate, and perhaps even intangible benefits which may be purely narrative in nature (ie., a character with the Lucky feat isn't aware of it and isn't choosing when to activate it, the player is, and the character is blissfully unaware of any change in destiny or probability). But, the Luck Blade is a magical item which can be identified, and it being tangibly and verifiably "lucky" is known to whoever identified it.

Do the characters understand how it makes them luckier? Are they in control, to the fashion that it is the character who is able to decide when it's probability warping effect occurs? Or are they only aware of the results, the moment when a potentially disastrous failure is averted, and that they can't hope for another such miracle until the next dawn?

Or do they just think themselves vaguely luckier? If enough bad things happen to a character anyway despite the benefit of the Luck Blade, would they potentially assume that the Luck Blade's magical "lucky" property is a sham?

Have you never crossed your fingers while waiting for an outcome? Or held on to a four leaf clover or rabbit's foot to keep luck on your side? Or knocked on wood or something?

It's lucky. People know what that means. The difference is they *know* it's real. Real superstitious people have the knowledge that haha of course it's not real (butwhatifitis). In a magical universe you don't have that first bit.

Shit mechanics from shitty games

>If enough bad things happen to a character anyway despite the benefit of the Luck Blade, would they potentially assume that the Luck Blade's magical "lucky" property is a sham?
People can understand the idea of a misnomer, and depending on their understanding of the Luck Blade, might know for a fact that its effect only applies in certain situations or at certain times, or a certain number of times in a given time period.

>In a magical universe you don't have that first bit.

You can have a wizard cast Identify on a four-leaf clover, and they will tell you that while you might think it is lucky, and it very well might be, it is not verifiably, magically lucky. Essentially, the clover ends up falling into the haha of course it's not real (butwhatifitis) category, but there's still the Luck Blade, and if you cast Identify on it yourself, you're going to understand that the Blade legitimately makes you luckier.

Do you not understand the difference between magic and superstition?

Right.

There still might be curmudgeons claiming it's not true, luck isn't a thing, etc. But if there's a god of luck maybe that would affect things too.

Do you not understand that in a world with real deities you could easily think 'well maybe this clover is bringing me the favour of the gods! everyone knows they do that.'

Do the characters is the question.
Do people not believe in lucky charms when there are magical ways of evaluating luck? Do people distinguish between different types of luck, with magic "luck" and superstitious "luck" just being the same name for two very different things? Is the type of a luck in a Luck Blade the kind that is literally rewriting fate, while a clover is just giving you the little subtle boost?

To be regularly lucky is to, occasionally and unpredictably, find that something works in your favor when you're not sure it would. It's a hindsight assessment that you can only make after the fact and by understanding the circumstances.

I would play someone who is more than regularly lucky, i.e. someone with a lucky enchantment or item, much as I would play a gambling addict or, perhaps, a cleric--
someone who either by faith or by madness, expects and believes that the result of an action will be in their favor. A daredevil, a risk taker, a walk-through-fire kind of guy.

To make it easy, part of the magical effect of luckiness could be to make a character change his behavior to be more like the daredevil. The onus would then be on the player to act it out. In D&D it would be a new trait, for example.

If I was feeling especially insidious I would conceal rolls from the player or manipulate DCs to where they feel like they near-always accomplish what they want-- this of course beginning immediately after they receive the item.

And then I'd rob them of it and make them play like everyone else to really hammer in how good they had it. But that, I'm sure, is a bit controversial.

With my group, that is to say in reality, we mostly just use it to fix fuck-ups and the DM makes it look like everything was about to go horribly wrong and then somehow, it resolves itself to an unexpected success. We never address who has the agency of activating it but the assumption is that the luck inserts itself into the situation rather than by any PC's request. A true deus ex machina.