With Jed MacKay's run writing the Black Cat having come to an end for now, I was thinking back over it. Specifically his use of her luck power. My initial recollection was that the only time it came up was during her break-in of the Sanctum Sanctorum, when it messed with Sargon the Sorcerer's spells, turning the Flames of Faltine into pretty butterflies.
Going back and rereading the comics, though, that's not actually the case. During her escape with the painting in the first issue, it kicks in, causing Sonny Ocampo's moped to hit a rock that just so happened to be in the road, spoiling his pursuit. She has it turned off (apparently it's a subdermal implant these days) during her stunt at Stark Industries, but once Iron Man is occupied, she turns it back on and it causes the Head of Security to sneeze at an inconvenient moment, allowing Felicia to disarm her. And she used it to wreak havoc at Kade Kilgore's casino during her visit to Madripoor.
But all that's in the first volume. In the second, her power never gets used. She makes one reference to hopefully having luck on her side when she gets ready to rescue Dr. Strange from Knull, but there's never any point where it seems like she's actually affecting probabilities.
I was thinking maybe it's a matter of scale. For as powerful as a lot of the people she gets crosswise of in volume 1 are, they're still people. Sargon, Kade, Bethany Cabe, all just mortal at the end of the day. Knull and the Gilded Saint are very different matters. But that wouldn't really work with her team up with White Fox in the Annual, or Lily Hollister (though she hardly needed the help to deal with her) the whole mess with the Infinity Stone people and Nick Fury.
So then I thought, professional versus personal. All the heists in the first volume were working towards this big scheme of the Black Fox'. Which Felicia thought was just to rip off the Gilded Saint's vault of its immense wealth. An audacious scheme, which lets her thumb her nose at Odessa and the Thieves' Guild, and is a nice little feather in her cap. The second volume is mostly personal matters. Setting right what the Fox has used her to accomplish, then curing her mother's cancer. Rescuing Dr. Strange is a little iffier (spellcheck recognizes that?), but it's Felicia trying to help save the world the way she's best suited: Stealing back someone that can help turn the tide.
Now why it would work like that, I don't know. Maybe, when it's something really important, and not just stealing for the thrill or the challenge, she can't rely on luck. She doesn't know how the probability altering is going to manifest. It might help her, but harm the person she's trying to help. She can't chance that Star was going to attack her, but her distracted or clipped by a bullet and hits her mother instead. So she keeps it turned off to avoid that danger.
Although there's another notion that might be kind of interesting, related to Longshot. Ann Nocenti's original mini-series established two key points about Longshot's powers, at least one of which is often ignored. One, that his power, in essence, pulls good fortune away from other people and gives it to him. Two, that his power only works when he acts out of pure motives. And I think that means purely "good" motives only.
What if Felicia's bad luck only works when she's acting selfishly? Even if she's helping her mother because she doesn't want her mother to die, it's still going to benefit her mother most of all since she, you know, doesn't suffer a slow death from cancer. That would be kind of funny, that she can't dose people with misfortune if she's trying to help someone.
Of course, it doesn't make any sense given her powers aren't like Longshot's, since hers are from a mechanical device implanted in her body. But the device is supposed to be messing with probabilities on a quantum level. In physics, observing a particle can affect its motion, where observe means interact. So at that scale, maybe Felicia's intent can affect how the device works.
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