All juicers should really train kendo from the japan source book since at level 10 you get automatic dodge, so you can detox after level 10 and keep that.
I don't know about other ways to get automatic dodge though.
Yeah and juicers are the only way to roll if you dont have magic or robotics, its relatively cheap but effective.
Void Slayer on
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
damn dude it's like they took william gibson physical augmentations and cranked the volume way up
There are some distinct Neuromancer influences scattered throughout Rifts. The setting is basically just everything Siembieda and crew liked in fantasy and sci fi all thrown in a blender.
damn dude it's like they took william gibson physical augmentations and cranked the volume way up
There are some distinct Neuromancer influences scattered throughout Rifts. The setting is basically just everything Siembieda and crew liked in fantasy and sci fi all thrown in a blender.
Then juiced to 11.
This thread makes me want to play Rifts just for ... I don't know why. Because it's Rifts. But that would be the most uphill of uphill battles. I don't even want to think about it.
When I played, which admittedly was when I was about 13, I didn't realize autododge was so good. It's kind of broken now that I think about it though. Completely negates the aspect of saving actions to dodge with, which is probably pretty important.
I don't remember, but it might have been that we basically gave everyone autododge when we played. Classes like Juicers get enough advantage from having tons of attacks already.
If this were a setting with aliens, I'd make an Area 51 joke.
With this entry, we start the extremely short section of the book dealing with non-combat, non-superpowered classes. Twelve total pages, 3 of which are at least 80% art and practically all of the remaining 9 are dominated by character portraits. This is not a data heavy section.
This is due in major part to the fact that these classes are basically lists of skills coupled with a basic set of equipment. No one in this section can will energy blades into existence or leap small buildings in a single bound. These are the skill jockies of the setting; the doctors, engineers, hackers and shiftless layabouts.
Since there's not a lot to talk about for each individually, I'm going to be grouping them (sort of not really) thematically. Starting with the Body Fixer and the Cyber Doc.
These two classes are variations on a theme; they're doctors. The Body Fixer is the more traditional medical professional, kind of like Doctor House if he lived in post-apocalyptica and holstered his scalpel right below his laser pistol. Cyber-Docs, on the other hand, are just as likely to prescribe cybernetics as therapy to cure your carpal tunnel syndrome. Both are knowledgeable, literate and (not unrelatedly) hunted by the Coalition as dissidents.
Cyber Docs are the more notorious of the two, since they are typically the surgeons that perform the bionic conversions, M.O.M. implantations and Juicerendomies. These are the guys that turn people into monsters.
"Looks like a nasty case of missinglegitis."
As you can imagine, the de facto outlaw status attached to medical training tends to push these men and women of healing toward the fringes of society. Most acquire weapon training at some point, and almost all of them will have a direct line to the black market as a means of resupplying their mobile, back alley clinics.
Since the main differentiation here is skills, let's just compare that;
Here is the Body Fixer's O.C.C. skill list;
And here is the Cyber Doc's;
(The Body Fixer's skill block includes the hand to hand combat section seen in the Cyber Doc's, it's just on top of the next column and a pain to scan.)
So, what can we tell from these? Well, the first thing you might notice is that while the Body Fixers were hitting the gym, the Cyber Docs were taking an outreach course on using Microsoft Excel. I'm not sure why the "classic" doctors are prioritizing their beach bodies over their studies, but there it is in black and white.
The second thing is that both start with W.P. Knife (being the scalpel jocks that they are), but the Cyber Doc gets an additional +1 bonus to all his attacks with them. This isn't a huge bonus, but it is notable in that it's the only example of such a class-specific W.P. bonus in the book. It would appear that their proclivity for cutting on their patients has made them preternaturally skillful with knives, even though they lack any hand to hand combat training whatsoever.
Otherwise, the two are very similar. Classes in Rifts (or any Paladium setting) that are defined purely by skills aren't typically very interesting. Some of them can be incredibly useful to have in the party, like either of these and the ones we'll be covering next time, but that unfortunately doesn't make them exciting to play in the face of superhumans, wizards and mind melters. It's hard to compete with the flashier classes when your primary class ability is having a +30% bonus to a specific skill.
"Yes, hay fever can be very troubling this time of year. Have you considered completely replacing your cardiopulmonary system with a combination of synthetic tissues and cybernetic replacements combined with computerized systems to manipulate the gas balance of your bloodstream to fit any situation? That would probably do the trick."
"Well, it's likely that as you grow older your acne will go away. But as your doctor, I reccommend a complete replacement of your dermis with a sentient bio-metallic organism."
Horseshoe on
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TurksonNear the mountains of ColoradoRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
"Let me talk to you about being able to punch dragons to death. Now, the side effects include being awesome for 6 years, and then having your heart explode. Would you like to know more?"
"Side effects might include twitchiness, fear of spiders, fear of dogs, fear of loud noises, fear of the dark, fear of the sun, seizures, multiple personality disorder and the belief that eating a twinky makes you Superman."
"Now with this model you can punch some unfortunate person's head clean off. It's incredibly strong, and a touch expensive, but it's worth it. I'd just--er, uh... I'd recommend you not engage in self-gratification until you've had time to adjust. That or go lefty."
"Now with this model you can punch some unfortunate person's head clean off. It's incredibly strong, and a touch expensive, but it's worth it. I'd just--er, uh... I'd recommend you not engage in self-gratification until you've had time to adjust. That or go lefty."
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
edited March 2011
"Now, it's either sapient cyborg AIDS, which could be really bad if it took a good O.C.C., or lupus. Either way, it's developing psychic powers. I recommend replacing your entire body with guns."
"Now, it's either sapient cyborg AIDS, which could be really bad if it took a good O.C.C., or lupus. Either way, it's developing psychic powers. I recommend replacing your entire body with guns."
Limed so fucking hard.
Matev on
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Sadly all I really know about it was the advertisements and half-read splurbs in my old late-80s and 90s Dragon magazines, the image that always sticks in my mind was the one with the two robots engaged in fisticuffs, with one punching the other's head into an exploded pancake against the shattered ground.
And of course the nearly naked succubus girl who may or may not have been part of another advertisement. Good times.
Operator and Wilderness Scout: The Utility Infielders of Post-Apocalyptia
The nightmare scenario for just about any adventurer is being lost in the wilderness with your power armor on the fritz. Even the bravest Juicer or Borg doesn't want to face several days of hiking through forests infested with nightmarish creatures while bereft of (additional) mechanical support. For most, this would be a death sentence.
For these guys, it's just another day at the office.
Operators: Basically The Fonz for Rifts Earth
They might lack the flash of other classes, but the Operator and Wilderness Scout are incredibly useful members of any adventuring party they happen to find themselves in. Like the Body Fixer and Cyber Doc, their abilities revolve around their skill lists, which are some of the most specialized in the game. Also like the Body Fixer and Cyber Doc, that's pretty much all they get. No super strength, no bionic parts, no hand-me-down power armor of doom. Just one person and their wits.
Operators are the mechanics of Rifts. They can keep just about any piece of technology running, and if they're lucky they can even juice it up a little. Operators are one of a very few classes in the main book with unfettered access to Mechanical and Electrical skills, and the only one with substantial bonuses to each. They are the keepers of Pre-Rifts knowledge about technology, and that makes them very special people. It also puts them in extremely high demand, by those who would seek their aid as well as those who would rather they stopped being informed and at large.
Operators diverge slightly from the pattern of the other "Scholars and Adventurers" in that there is a slight chance they might get some psionic powers as part of their class abilities. They have a 40% chance of being a Minor Psionic, a slight jump from the chances of any other class to be the same. Woo.
In the future, OSHA requires safety belts on every lab table.
Operators are one of three non-combat classes in the book that come with hand to hand training. It's Basic, but it's something. They also have Weapon Proficiency with Blunt weapons, assumedly because of their familiarity with wrenches and spanners. The weakest hand to hand skill in the game combined with the weakest weapon proficiency (there are no Mega Damage blunt weapons). But hey, it's something.
Wilderness Scouts are much less technologically inclined. They are the consumate woodspersons, spending months at a time in the wilds, exploring the countryside and avoiding being eaten by things larger and much, much tougher than themselves. They excel at surviving outside the safety of society, such as it is.
Hey, I can see Splynkryyth's house from here!
Wilderness Scouts also come with Hand to Hand: Basic, and they get 4 weapon proficiencies. This puts them on similar ground to Headhunters in terms of combat capability; not quite as strong (Headhunters get HtH: Expert and 5 Weapon Proficiencies), but much more highly skilled in outdoor survival and probably in slightly better shape thanks to their physical training. +1d4 Physical Endurance isn't much, but when you're looking at a career defined by surviving in a wilderness full of mega damage predators, every little bit helps.
On a personal note, these were two of my favorite classes to actually play. They were both relatively normal people that were just really good at something, which I found to be a compelling idea in a world full of freaks and weirdness.
Unfortunately, neither of them aged well. As is want to happen in a system that is defined by 40 or so supplements, new classes got introduced the value of being a dude who just knows how to do a specific subset of things lowered appreciably.
For specific examples, let's consider the Wilderness Scout and the Simvan Warrior. Simvan are a race of d-bees (dimensional beings) that are nomadic by nature and deeply at home in the new environment of Rifts Earth. Both classes (Wilderness Scout and Simvan) have access to all the Wilderness skills. Both have the skills to survive alone in the wild. But the Simvan has full spectrum night vision and natural psychic powers that let him mind control animals. Who's winning that arms race, huh?
The Operator damn near gets outclassed in his own book. Techno-Wizards, which we'll be covering later, can do the basic maintenance stuff almost as well as the Operators, but they can also make your power armor turn invisible or give you immunity to energy weapons. It's hardly a fair fight, all things considered. Things get even worse once the Psyscape World Book rolls around, as it introduces a class that has virtually identical skillsets to the Operator, but also has the ability to talk to machines with it's mind. Not much coming back from that one.
Anything you can do my brain can do better.
With the release of the Ultimate Edition, both classes got a little sexier. The Operator got the ability to noticably soup-up any vehicle or power armor he could get his hands on and kit bash virtually any machine back into working order. It's not quite the ability to psychically convince a machine to fix itself, but we'll take it.
Wilderness Scouts got a set of exclusive skills dealing with cross-country travel and map making. I have a hard time seeing the upside when compared to mentally dominating dinosaurs into fighting for your amusement, but again, it's something.
Also; Energy Bows
That marks the halfway point of our tour of the Rifts "normals". Next time we'll be taking a look at the two classes in the book least likely to play the way they're written.
Those guys just seem so bland compared to the good shit like Juicers. I blame MDC. At least in other Palladium games, your skill monkey isn't completely made of paper in combat. It seems like you'd really have to rig a certain kind of campaign for these guys to get some good use in. One with a pretty low power ceiling compared to the majority of stuff available in Rifts.
And skill monkey classes are so boring to level up in in Palladium, Rifts or not. A level! I get +3-5% to my skills and +1 to pull punch, maybe a new skill.
To compensate for the boring nature of skill-based classes, I allowed one stat to be increased by one point per level. Not a lot, but not nothing, either.
Xenogear_0001 on
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chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
edited March 2011
Probably true.
But looking at the pictures, I now, assuming dementia overtakes me and I can't help playing rifts, will be unable to play any class that isn't operator.
Look at that dude. Look at him. He is the coolest dude in the world. He could be surrounded by power armor wearing giant mutant spiders, and do you know what he'd do?
He'd tap his pipe (of course he smokes a pipe) on one of their gargantuan legs, and ask them if they needed anything fixed up, or if they were wasting his time.
And then he would give them his hourly rates, and they would pay because any man looking that smug without power armor or mutations in the world of Rifts knows something you don't and you'd best do what he says.
Yeah, mercs won't ever cross an operator and live--seriously, you don't fuck with the guy who fixes your shit. Unless you want that power armor to explode suddenly when you turn on the AC.
Now, the CS, they have no need for anyone that's educated, so he best get on his hovercycle and amscray. Ditto for that thing that just crawled out of a rift with nine tentacles all set to rape.
Operators are very highly respected in adventuring circles.
Which helps to make up for the fact that they can't move at blinding speed, leap small buildings in a single bound or set people on fire with their minds.
I really liked operators for some non-super powered RCCs, you could be different and exotic while just having a bunch of useful skills.
Also in terms of combat ability operators and wilderness scouts got access to MDC combat vehicles or at least heavy body armor and energy weapons. With 1 or 2 skill selection they could be almost as tough as a CS soldier or pilot in addition to all their skills. Juicers and super beings may be a step above everyone else, but with MDC almost anyone who just gets inside one can be a threat.
The idea of extra special powers which they can use though really adds to these classes, I particularly think the wilderness scouts need a Group Prowl ability to allow others they are leading to hide with them .
Void Slayer on
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
The great part about Rifts is that, if you felt like something should be a certain way despite the rules and what the books say, you were actively encouraged to make those changes by the author of the book. That's a significant departure from what I remember of D&D.
Rogue Academia: It's The Nerdy Ones You Have To Watch Out For
Welcome to part three of the most boring section of this thread. Today we'll be covering the outlaw academicians of Rifts earth.
The denizens of earth have a love-hate relationship with knowledge. They love knowing how to use pre-Rifts artifacts or how to predict when and where rifts through space and time will open, but they mostly hate the people that know that stuff. Or at least the Coalition does, and as mildly hyperbolic "everyone"s go, they're mostly everybody.
The Rogue Scholar and Rogue Scientist represent the still smoldering embers of the torch of knowledge from ages past. These brave individuals brave the elements, persecution at the hands of the "authorities" and ancient security systems to unearth lost knowledge and share it with anyone willing to take the risk of listening to them.
Kinda like this, but with less of a Village People vibe.
Unfortunately for these guys, they're Indiana Jones in a world populated by cyborgs, psychics and dragons. A whip ain't going to cut it.
Will my enormous eye be an advantage?
It's an interesting character concept, and I've seen more than a few of these guys at the table. These are two classes, though, that really only hit their stride when pushed to the edges. I'll show you what I mean.
Here are their O.C.C. skill lists;
Rogue Scientist:
Rogue Scholar:
Both are fairly technical, and very descriptive of the characters. They also both throw in literacy for free (though it doesn't specify in what language in either case, or if it's blanket, or anything specific at all really, welcome to Rifts), which is extremely rare in this game. Just knowing how to read is a big deal, what with the final collapse of the public education system in 2035.
It's worth noting that these are two of the three classes in the game (the other being my personal favorite, the Psi-Stalker, to be covered later) that can just take Hand to Hand: Assassin without being evil. I bring this up both because it's an odd inclusion for what are ostensibly intellectual characters (giving nerds the best HtH skill in the game is a little odd), and because it combines interestingly with the things you can do with these guys.
As a bit of background, each class gets a certain number of "O.C.C. related" and "Other" skill selections when they are created, and then again at level increments determined by their class. For most characters, this means they get anywhere from 5 or so to a dozen extra skills beyond their O.C.C. skills. For these guys, things are a little different.
Here's the Rogue Scientist's free range skill list;
First, notice how many of those categories say "Any (+ a number%)". These guys have access to damn near every skill in the game. Second, look at the number; 14 + 6 = 20 free range skills at first level, and skill gain in chunks as the Rogue Scientist levels up. That is a crapload of skills.
Now, let's look at the Rogue Scholar's list;
Story's the same on the "Any"s, but the Scholar has 24 skill choices to make at first level. That is a crapload + 4 of skills.
So, what can one do with 20+ open skill choices and a list of options that basically reads "whatever you want"? Turns out, it's some pretty ridiculous things. Sure, you could play the actual scientist and take a bunch of technical skills like they're probably assuming you will, but where's the fun in that. Let's get nuts.
But I'm kind of in the middle of something.
Let's take every Pilot and Pilot Related skill in the game. Then enough Mechanical and Electrical skills to keep any vehicle you run across in working order. Then, since you probably have room for it, either Hacking or Locksmith so you can get access to any mode of transportation that someone else was unwise enough to leave sitting around.
Or we can go another way. Spend the 4 skills to get HtH: Assassin (because having 6 attacks at level 2 without being a Juicer is huge), and then get proficiency with every weapon in the game. And throw in some Physical skills to get those Physical Strength and Physical Prowess scores up so you can actually throw down some pain.
Or... how would you like to speak every language? While being an expert in every knowledge skill and a concert violinist that is also a gourmet chef? And a cat burglar astrophysicist? Because you can do that with 24 skills.
One of the more inventive uses I saw of the Rogue Scholar was the creation of Rifts Batman. Obviously, there were some minor issues (like his complete inability to backflip, cartwheel or even balance on a flat, stationary surface due to not having access to Gymnastics or Acrobatics) but overall it was a pretty solid conversion, and as anyone familiar with the Caped Crusader can tell you Batman's list of known skills is as long as your arm, but then so is the Rogue Scholar's.
I know the Riddler is around here somewhere.
In later updates, the Rogue Scholar and Rogue Scientists got longer O.C.C. ("fixed") skill lists, while their free range skill lists got massively shortened. Both got a list of specialized skills (as did most of the non-combat, non-magic classes) that made them act more like their names, but the ability to be James Bond slash Iron Man slash Radar O'Reilly has all but disappeared. Alas.
This thread brought back too many memories, so I regged up and hooked up an old backup drive to share some JPGs from an opus campaign I put together to top a crazy RIFTS campaign I ran in the beginning of college.
More on Campaign I:
To put it bluntly, we fixed RIFTS through years of incremental improvement over the crazy rules. It was dream to play and GM. When I GMed my original mega-campaign, we had dropped the leveling rules in favor of custom rules with random chance for improvement of various stats tied to various combination of attributes. We dropped skill percentages in favor of an attribute-derived DC roll on a twenty that you could improve with 'ranks' (assigned at level-up) in whichever specialized skills were appropriate for your character concept. This ranks weren't plus +1's but where more exponential. Next, we tossed the standard attacks-per-melee limit and I cranked the max up to around 15-20 by the endgame, and I allowed defensive actions to be taken off of the back of the melee. We also changed the experience system to just doll out percentages of a level per session, with bonuses to those with good ideas and who demonstrate leadership or skill (2/10ths of a level, for example).
Next I created a special ability system where on even level-ups the characters would get usable abilities to differentiate characters as they grow rather than use the OCC level progression. These abilities became lethal as they approached 15, and a key combat component.
Next I added ultimate weapons for each character that level up their own via weapons XP, including twin Katanas named MASA and MUNE (complete with custom-designed 'magic-stones' that could be collected and slotted into the hilt *cough* materia *cough*, twin DEagles named "The Ravens" (complete with their own Hand-to-Hand proficiency "Gun-Kata" and integrated abilities), and a double-sided spear with an internal hookshot with a range of 50+ feet that can steal blood from an opponent and permanently learn key special abilities from mid-bosses and bosses.
Finally, I set the campaign in the Chi-Town burbs (never going inside or leaving the greater area) and instituted a system of property ownership and prestige so that by the time they were approaching 15, they owned a significant portion of the town, and had allegiance of major factions from within the burbs and without.
The campaign ended with the party chasing the upper cloister of a jungle citadel down a river as it's MUCH BIGGER meter-thick chain hookshoots pulled it along at over 100k. The party was on two hoverskiis, attempting to engage an invisible but shroud-swaddled bone-dragon perched on top of the flying building-chunk. As if by some railroaded design, the players don't catch the big bad until they are all hurtled back in time through a RIFT opened by said bad that takes them to a few seconds after the Great Cataclysm is triggered (pre-RIFTS). Then the players simply have to battle through seven undead-and-supernaturally-enhanced ELITE Coalition SPEC-OPS commandos that were previously alive and staunch NPC allies, steal an airship (Icarus II), and simultaneously defeat an all-powerful necromancer, fallen cyber-knight, and demonic ninja, then regroup and put down the 2 forms of the bone dragon, before reigniting the wave of cataclysmic destruction and narrowly escaping through a hole (created in the earth's crust by unseen 4D beings, and through which the whole ocean pours) with the Icarus II.
To be fair though, I did give the magic-user Luminaire, and all the players had Limit Breaks.
I sat in the lab as the next GM took a turn and tried to build a follow-up. On the first day of my return, where I promised to continue the story, if not the characters, from the campaign, I handed them their old character-sheets leveled from 15th (commonly last level in RIFTS) to 30th. Complete with devastating special abilities, and new equipment, the players were fucking AGAPE.
In the first session I had the new big bad kill the whole group in 1 on 4 combat, using 1 piece of The Ravens (DEagle) and MUNE. Then we traveled back in time and I used the old player group as NPCs to introduce the new characters to some of the harsher realities of their new world. This campaign had a VERY cool story, but it lagged as player left for an international trip and when back from an extended gaming hiatus, we struggled to resume. Finally, we did, but as I transitioned the players from a solar-system romping swashbuckling adventure to a city-building (alpha-centauri-inspired) game of resource-management and community-development (with eventual extra-planetary genocide and player-rage-driven revenge campaign against a foreign host) we lost momentum and decided to switch to new characters to refresh our memories. It didn't hurt that they rolled such a dismal string of 1's in the most high-pressure, life-or-death, hanging below a 18th century pirate balloon-ship over planetary crust and endless underwater ocean that I had no choice but to kill them all. I'm talking like 7 1's in the space of 10 rolls. One even tried to free himself from hanging entanglement by cutting the rope above his foot!
More on Opus Campaign:
After that campaign we took a break, played a few short lived adventures, and I worked in the lab, brewing my OPUS. A cyber-punk tech-opera set in a custom-created CHI-TOWN Arcology complete with 35 well-detailed layers, set 50-75 years after the Coalition War Campaign, after Carl Prosek takes power and executes a plan of demiliteriazation and decentralization WITHIN arcology walls across the empire. Think: Gorbachev with Soviet Glastnost. 1/3 of the way through the campaign, an massive twist would completely change the dynamic of the campaign, and realign the player group with the wide array of NPCs in the setting.
Here are some supporting materials. I know I was 'spergin when I did these up but check it out:
This was one layer that I detailed with a full map, roads allowed access from one layer two the next, and each modeled a distinct environment, simulating the sky, weather, and geography using advanced pre-RIFTS robotics.
To back up the descriptions of each layer, I put together an Architectural slideshow that demonstrated what each layer felt like to live in. (230+ slides with multiple image on some slides.
While the tree never was fully completed, that must have been about half way. The time consuming, awful part was actually connecting the lines in a reasonable, logical way, such that 4-5 players could progress across it distinctly, but still balance against one-another. You can see my rules-making moving away from the core RIFTS system here, and I adopt d&d turn-types with Minor Action and Move and Attack, even though I hadn't been exposed to anything but RIFTS yet. See if you can guess at any of the 15th level abilities that aren't filled in yet. Some of the blank descriptions I think are strongly suggestive. Who knows if this would have worked, but it was sized to print off as an upright poster, and definitely would have looked PIMP in full color.
For my piece-de-resistance, I crated 3 NPCs with names and jobs that all hooked into the central plot of the campaign (from start to finish) PER LAYER and created collectible cards based on the old star wars CCG. Obviously I was really into FF8 at one point, as there are also 10 bonus cards available once you clear the standard 105. If you earn an NPC's card, you have that relationship (or that scalp and the respect that comes with it) in your pocket. These relationships become key as central changes take place in the Arcology, and who you know suddenly becomes very important.
All of the 115 cards were ready to go, though you could play a pretty challenging drinking game out of finding the source image with Google. I'd even done the print test on stiff-back cardboard and procured a laminating machine to give them a glossy finish. These puppies were sick. With only a few minor last touches, the Opus Campaign would have been ready play.
Lord Palingtonhe.him.hisHistory-loving pal!Registered Userregular
edited March 2011
This is just the best thread. Reminds me of all the Rifts characters I rolled up over my middle and high school career, only playing one campaign for about two sessions after I got out of college.
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I don't know about other ways to get automatic dodge though.
Yeah and juicers are the only way to roll if you dont have magic or robotics, its relatively cheap but effective.
Then cranked to 11.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
This thread makes me want to play Rifts just for ... I don't know why. Because it's Rifts. But that would be the most uphill of uphill battles. I don't even want to think about it.
But I still do.
But I hesitate because I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Like a D20 system that uses nuclear warheads instead of dice.
Rifts is more like herpes. Once you have it you're never rid of it, you're just between outbreaks.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
It tastes like snozeberries!
More updates bro! More!
I don't remember, but it might have been that we basically gave everyone autododge when we played. Classes like Juicers get enough advantage from having tons of attacks already.
If this were a setting with aliens, I'd make an Area 51 joke.
With this entry, we start the extremely short section of the book dealing with non-combat, non-superpowered classes. Twelve total pages, 3 of which are at least 80% art and practically all of the remaining 9 are dominated by character portraits. This is not a data heavy section.
This is due in major part to the fact that these classes are basically lists of skills coupled with a basic set of equipment. No one in this section can will energy blades into existence or leap small buildings in a single bound. These are the skill jockies of the setting; the doctors, engineers, hackers and shiftless layabouts.
Since there's not a lot to talk about for each individually, I'm going to be grouping them (sort of not really) thematically. Starting with the Body Fixer and the Cyber Doc.
These two classes are variations on a theme; they're doctors. The Body Fixer is the more traditional medical professional, kind of like Doctor House if he lived in post-apocalyptica and holstered his scalpel right below his laser pistol. Cyber-Docs, on the other hand, are just as likely to prescribe cybernetics as therapy to cure your carpal tunnel syndrome. Both are knowledgeable, literate and (not unrelatedly) hunted by the Coalition as dissidents.
Cyber Docs are the more notorious of the two, since they are typically the surgeons that perform the bionic conversions, M.O.M. implantations and Juicerendomies. These are the guys that turn people into monsters.
"Looks like a nasty case of missinglegitis."
As you can imagine, the de facto outlaw status attached to medical training tends to push these men and women of healing toward the fringes of society. Most acquire weapon training at some point, and almost all of them will have a direct line to the black market as a means of resupplying their mobile, back alley clinics.
Since the main differentiation here is skills, let's just compare that;
Here is the Body Fixer's O.C.C. skill list;
And here is the Cyber Doc's;
(The Body Fixer's skill block includes the hand to hand combat section seen in the Cyber Doc's, it's just on top of the next column and a pain to scan.)
So, what can we tell from these? Well, the first thing you might notice is that while the Body Fixers were hitting the gym, the Cyber Docs were taking an outreach course on using Microsoft Excel. I'm not sure why the "classic" doctors are prioritizing their beach bodies over their studies, but there it is in black and white.
The second thing is that both start with W.P. Knife (being the scalpel jocks that they are), but the Cyber Doc gets an additional +1 bonus to all his attacks with them. This isn't a huge bonus, but it is notable in that it's the only example of such a class-specific W.P. bonus in the book. It would appear that their proclivity for cutting on their patients has made them preternaturally skillful with knives, even though they lack any hand to hand combat training whatsoever.
Otherwise, the two are very similar. Classes in Rifts (or any Paladium setting) that are defined purely by skills aren't typically very interesting. Some of them can be incredibly useful to have in the party, like either of these and the ones we'll be covering next time, but that unfortunately doesn't make them exciting to play in the face of superhumans, wizards and mind melters. It's hard to compete with the flashier classes when your primary class ability is having a +30% bonus to a specific skill.
Next Time:
The wild man and the repairman.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The saline drip would be less expensive, but if you go with the nanobots your blood would glow in the dark.
As your consulting physician, I think it's worth it."
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Why I fear the ocean.
Limed so fucking hard.
Sadly all I really know about it was the advertisements and half-read splurbs in my old late-80s and 90s Dragon magazines, the image that always sticks in my mind was the one with the two robots engaged in fisticuffs, with one punching the other's head into an exploded pancake against the shattered ground.
And of course the nearly naked succubus girl who may or may not have been part of another advertisement. Good times.
The nightmare scenario for just about any adventurer is being lost in the wilderness with your power armor on the fritz. Even the bravest Juicer or Borg doesn't want to face several days of hiking through forests infested with nightmarish creatures while bereft of (additional) mechanical support. For most, this would be a death sentence.
For these guys, it's just another day at the office.
Operators: Basically The Fonz for Rifts Earth
They might lack the flash of other classes, but the Operator and Wilderness Scout are incredibly useful members of any adventuring party they happen to find themselves in. Like the Body Fixer and Cyber Doc, their abilities revolve around their skill lists, which are some of the most specialized in the game. Also like the Body Fixer and Cyber Doc, that's pretty much all they get. No super strength, no bionic parts, no hand-me-down power armor of doom. Just one person and their wits.
Operators are the mechanics of Rifts. They can keep just about any piece of technology running, and if they're lucky they can even juice it up a little. Operators are one of a very few classes in the main book with unfettered access to Mechanical and Electrical skills, and the only one with substantial bonuses to each. They are the keepers of Pre-Rifts knowledge about technology, and that makes them very special people. It also puts them in extremely high demand, by those who would seek their aid as well as those who would rather they stopped being informed and at large.
Operators diverge slightly from the pattern of the other "Scholars and Adventurers" in that there is a slight chance they might get some psionic powers as part of their class abilities. They have a 40% chance of being a Minor Psionic, a slight jump from the chances of any other class to be the same. Woo.
In the future, OSHA requires safety belts on every lab table.
Operators are one of three non-combat classes in the book that come with hand to hand training. It's Basic, but it's something. They also have Weapon Proficiency with Blunt weapons, assumedly because of their familiarity with wrenches and spanners. The weakest hand to hand skill in the game combined with the weakest weapon proficiency (there are no Mega Damage blunt weapons). But hey, it's something.
Wilderness Scouts are much less technologically inclined. They are the consumate woodspersons, spending months at a time in the wilds, exploring the countryside and avoiding being eaten by things larger and much, much tougher than themselves. They excel at surviving outside the safety of society, such as it is.
Hey, I can see Splynkryyth's house from here!
Wilderness Scouts also come with Hand to Hand: Basic, and they get 4 weapon proficiencies. This puts them on similar ground to Headhunters in terms of combat capability; not quite as strong (Headhunters get HtH: Expert and 5 Weapon Proficiencies), but much more highly skilled in outdoor survival and probably in slightly better shape thanks to their physical training. +1d4 Physical Endurance isn't much, but when you're looking at a career defined by surviving in a wilderness full of mega damage predators, every little bit helps.
On a personal note, these were two of my favorite classes to actually play. They were both relatively normal people that were just really good at something, which I found to be a compelling idea in a world full of freaks and weirdness.
Unfortunately, neither of them aged well. As is want to happen in a system that is defined by 40 or so supplements, new classes got introduced the value of being a dude who just knows how to do a specific subset of things lowered appreciably.
For specific examples, let's consider the Wilderness Scout and the Simvan Warrior. Simvan are a race of d-bees (dimensional beings) that are nomadic by nature and deeply at home in the new environment of Rifts Earth. Both classes (Wilderness Scout and Simvan) have access to all the Wilderness skills. Both have the skills to survive alone in the wild. But the Simvan has full spectrum night vision and natural psychic powers that let him mind control animals. Who's winning that arms race, huh?
The Operator damn near gets outclassed in his own book. Techno-Wizards, which we'll be covering later, can do the basic maintenance stuff almost as well as the Operators, but they can also make your power armor turn invisible or give you immunity to energy weapons. It's hardly a fair fight, all things considered. Things get even worse once the Psyscape World Book rolls around, as it introduces a class that has virtually identical skillsets to the Operator, but also has the ability to talk to machines with it's mind. Not much coming back from that one.
Anything you can do my brain can do better.
With the release of the Ultimate Edition, both classes got a little sexier. The Operator got the ability to noticably soup-up any vehicle or power armor he could get his hands on and kit bash virtually any machine back into working order. It's not quite the ability to psychically convince a machine to fix itself, but we'll take it.
Wilderness Scouts got a set of exclusive skills dealing with cross-country travel and map making. I have a hard time seeing the upside when compared to mentally dominating dinosaurs into fighting for your amusement, but again, it's something.
Also; Energy Bows
That marks the halfway point of our tour of the Rifts "normals". Next time we'll be taking a look at the two classes in the book least likely to play the way they're written.
Next Time:
Smarty Pantseses
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
And skill monkey classes are so boring to level up in in Palladium, Rifts or not. A level! I get +3-5% to my skills and +1 to pull punch, maybe a new skill.
But looking at the pictures, I now, assuming dementia overtakes me and I can't help playing rifts, will be unable to play any class that isn't operator.
Look at that dude. Look at him. He is the coolest dude in the world. He could be surrounded by power armor wearing giant mutant spiders, and do you know what he'd do?
He'd tap his pipe (of course he smokes a pipe) on one of their gargantuan legs, and ask them if they needed anything fixed up, or if they were wasting his time.
And then he would give them his hourly rates, and they would pay because any man looking that smug without power armor or mutations in the world of Rifts knows something you don't and you'd best do what he says.
Why I fear the ocean.
Now, the CS, they have no need for anyone that's educated, so he best get on his hovercycle and amscray. Ditto for that thing that just crawled out of a rift with nine tentacles all set to rape.
Which helps to make up for the fact that they can't move at blinding speed, leap small buildings in a single bound or set people on fire with their minds.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Also in terms of combat ability operators and wilderness scouts got access to MDC combat vehicles or at least heavy body armor and energy weapons. With 1 or 2 skill selection they could be almost as tough as a CS soldier or pilot in addition to all their skills. Juicers and super beings may be a step above everyone else, but with MDC almost anyone who just gets inside one can be a threat.
The idea of extra special powers which they can use though really adds to these classes, I particularly think the wilderness scouts need a Group Prowl ability to allow others they are leading to hide with them .
Welcome to part three of the most boring section of this thread. Today we'll be covering the outlaw academicians of Rifts earth.
The denizens of earth have a love-hate relationship with knowledge. They love knowing how to use pre-Rifts artifacts or how to predict when and where rifts through space and time will open, but they mostly hate the people that know that stuff. Or at least the Coalition does, and as mildly hyperbolic "everyone"s go, they're mostly everybody.
The Rogue Scholar and Rogue Scientist represent the still smoldering embers of the torch of knowledge from ages past. These brave individuals brave the elements, persecution at the hands of the "authorities" and ancient security systems to unearth lost knowledge and share it with anyone willing to take the risk of listening to them.
Kinda like this, but with less of a Village People vibe.
Unfortunately for these guys, they're Indiana Jones in a world populated by cyborgs, psychics and dragons. A whip ain't going to cut it.
Will my enormous eye be an advantage?
It's an interesting character concept, and I've seen more than a few of these guys at the table. These are two classes, though, that really only hit their stride when pushed to the edges. I'll show you what I mean.
Here are their O.C.C. skill lists;
Rogue Scientist:
Rogue Scholar:
Both are fairly technical, and very descriptive of the characters. They also both throw in literacy for free (though it doesn't specify in what language in either case, or if it's blanket, or anything specific at all really, welcome to Rifts), which is extremely rare in this game. Just knowing how to read is a big deal, what with the final collapse of the public education system in 2035.
It's worth noting that these are two of the three classes in the game (the other being my personal favorite, the Psi-Stalker, to be covered later) that can just take Hand to Hand: Assassin without being evil. I bring this up both because it's an odd inclusion for what are ostensibly intellectual characters (giving nerds the best HtH skill in the game is a little odd), and because it combines interestingly with the things you can do with these guys.
As a bit of background, each class gets a certain number of "O.C.C. related" and "Other" skill selections when they are created, and then again at level increments determined by their class. For most characters, this means they get anywhere from 5 or so to a dozen extra skills beyond their O.C.C. skills. For these guys, things are a little different.
Here's the Rogue Scientist's free range skill list;
First, notice how many of those categories say "Any (+ a number%)". These guys have access to damn near every skill in the game. Second, look at the number; 14 + 6 = 20 free range skills at first level, and skill gain in chunks as the Rogue Scientist levels up. That is a crapload of skills.
Now, let's look at the Rogue Scholar's list;
Story's the same on the "Any"s, but the Scholar has 24 skill choices to make at first level. That is a crapload + 4 of skills.
So, what can one do with 20+ open skill choices and a list of options that basically reads "whatever you want"? Turns out, it's some pretty ridiculous things. Sure, you could play the actual scientist and take a bunch of technical skills like they're probably assuming you will, but where's the fun in that. Let's get nuts.
But I'm kind of in the middle of something.
Let's take every Pilot and Pilot Related skill in the game. Then enough Mechanical and Electrical skills to keep any vehicle you run across in working order. Then, since you probably have room for it, either Hacking or Locksmith so you can get access to any mode of transportation that someone else was unwise enough to leave sitting around.
Or we can go another way. Spend the 4 skills to get HtH: Assassin (because having 6 attacks at level 2 without being a Juicer is huge), and then get proficiency with every weapon in the game. And throw in some Physical skills to get those Physical Strength and Physical Prowess scores up so you can actually throw down some pain.
Or... how would you like to speak every language? While being an expert in every knowledge skill and a concert violinist that is also a gourmet chef? And a cat burglar astrophysicist? Because you can do that with 24 skills.
One of the more inventive uses I saw of the Rogue Scholar was the creation of Rifts Batman. Obviously, there were some minor issues (like his complete inability to backflip, cartwheel or even balance on a flat, stationary surface due to not having access to Gymnastics or Acrobatics) but overall it was a pretty solid conversion, and as anyone familiar with the Caped Crusader can tell you Batman's list of known skills is as long as your arm, but then so is the Rogue Scholar's.
I know the Riddler is around here somewhere.
In later updates, the Rogue Scholar and Rogue Scientists got longer O.C.C. ("fixed") skill lists, while their free range skill lists got massively shortened. Both got a list of specialized skills (as did most of the non-combat, non-magic classes) that made them act more like their names, but the ability to be James Bond slash Iron Man slash Radar O'Reilly has all but disappeared. Alas.
Next Time:
The Losers
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
it belongs in a museum!
So do you!
Hope you are all dog people.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
More on Campaign I:
To put it bluntly, we fixed RIFTS through years of incremental improvement over the crazy rules. It was dream to play and GM. When I GMed my original mega-campaign, we had dropped the leveling rules in favor of custom rules with random chance for improvement of various stats tied to various combination of attributes. We dropped skill percentages in favor of an attribute-derived DC roll on a twenty that you could improve with 'ranks' (assigned at level-up) in whichever specialized skills were appropriate for your character concept. This ranks weren't plus +1's but where more exponential. Next, we tossed the standard attacks-per-melee limit and I cranked the max up to around 15-20 by the endgame, and I allowed defensive actions to be taken off of the back of the melee. We also changed the experience system to just doll out percentages of a level per session, with bonuses to those with good ideas and who demonstrate leadership or skill (2/10ths of a level, for example).
Next I created a special ability system where on even level-ups the characters would get usable abilities to differentiate characters as they grow rather than use the OCC level progression. These abilities became lethal as they approached 15, and a key combat component.
Next I added ultimate weapons for each character that level up their own via weapons XP, including twin Katanas named MASA and MUNE (complete with custom-designed 'magic-stones' that could be collected and slotted into the hilt *cough* materia *cough*, twin DEagles named "The Ravens" (complete with their own Hand-to-Hand proficiency "Gun-Kata" and integrated abilities), and a double-sided spear with an internal hookshot with a range of 50+ feet that can steal blood from an opponent and permanently learn key special abilities from mid-bosses and bosses.
Finally, I set the campaign in the Chi-Town burbs (never going inside or leaving the greater area) and instituted a system of property ownership and prestige so that by the time they were approaching 15, they owned a significant portion of the town, and had allegiance of major factions from within the burbs and without.
The campaign ended with the party chasing the upper cloister of a jungle citadel down a river as it's MUCH BIGGER meter-thick chain hookshoots pulled it along at over 100k. The party was on two hoverskiis, attempting to engage an invisible but shroud-swaddled bone-dragon perched on top of the flying building-chunk. As if by some railroaded design, the players don't catch the big bad until they are all hurtled back in time through a RIFT opened by said bad that takes them to a few seconds after the Great Cataclysm is triggered (pre-RIFTS). Then the players simply have to battle through seven undead-and-supernaturally-enhanced ELITE Coalition SPEC-OPS commandos that were previously alive and staunch NPC allies, steal an airship (Icarus II), and simultaneously defeat an all-powerful necromancer, fallen cyber-knight, and demonic ninja, then regroup and put down the 2 forms of the bone dragon, before reigniting the wave of cataclysmic destruction and narrowly escaping through a hole (created in the earth's crust by unseen 4D beings, and through which the whole ocean pours) with the Icarus II.
To be fair though, I did give the magic-user Luminaire, and all the players had Limit Breaks.
I sat in the lab as the next GM took a turn and tried to build a follow-up. On the first day of my return, where I promised to continue the story, if not the characters, from the campaign, I handed them their old character-sheets leveled from 15th (commonly last level in RIFTS) to 30th. Complete with devastating special abilities, and new equipment, the players were fucking AGAPE.
In the first session I had the new big bad kill the whole group in 1 on 4 combat, using 1 piece of The Ravens (DEagle) and MUNE. Then we traveled back in time and I used the old player group as NPCs to introduce the new characters to some of the harsher realities of their new world. This campaign had a VERY cool story, but it lagged as player left for an international trip and when back from an extended gaming hiatus, we struggled to resume. Finally, we did, but as I transitioned the players from a solar-system romping swashbuckling adventure to a city-building (alpha-centauri-inspired) game of resource-management and community-development (with eventual extra-planetary genocide and player-rage-driven revenge campaign against a foreign host) we lost momentum and decided to switch to new characters to refresh our memories. It didn't hurt that they rolled such a dismal string of 1's in the most high-pressure, life-or-death, hanging below a 18th century pirate balloon-ship over planetary crust and endless underwater ocean that I had no choice but to kill them all. I'm talking like 7 1's in the space of 10 rolls. One even tried to free himself from hanging entanglement by cutting the rope above his foot!
More on Opus Campaign:
After that campaign we took a break, played a few short lived adventures, and I worked in the lab, brewing my OPUS. A cyber-punk tech-opera set in a custom-created CHI-TOWN Arcology complete with 35 well-detailed layers, set 50-75 years after the Coalition War Campaign, after Carl Prosek takes power and executes a plan of demiliteriazation and decentralization WITHIN arcology walls across the empire. Think: Gorbachev with Soviet Glastnost. 1/3 of the way through the campaign, an massive twist would completely change the dynamic of the campaign, and realign the player group with the wide array of NPCs in the setting.
Here are some supporting materials. I know I was 'spergin when I did these up but check it out:
Layer 25 Ice Fields Map:
Rapidshare of PDF at full RES
This was one layer that I detailed with a full map, roads allowed access from one layer two the next, and each modeled a distinct environment, simulating the sky, weather, and geography using advanced pre-RIFTS robotics.
To back up the descriptions of each layer, I put together an Architectural slideshow that demonstrated what each layer felt like to live in. (230+ slides with multiple image on some slides.
Example image from Architectural Study:
PDF of Architectural Study of 35 Layers
Next I created 100+ perks categorized by level and linked them up by duplicating the alpha-centauri tech-tree color-scheme.
Here's a sample:
PDF of 100 Perk tech-tree
While the tree never was fully completed, that must have been about half way. The time consuming, awful part was actually connecting the lines in a reasonable, logical way, such that 4-5 players could progress across it distinctly, but still balance against one-another. You can see my rules-making moving away from the core RIFTS system here, and I adopt d&d turn-types with Minor Action and Move and Attack, even though I hadn't been exposed to anything but RIFTS yet. See if you can guess at any of the 15th level abilities that aren't filled in yet. Some of the blank descriptions I think are strongly suggestive. Who knows if this would have worked, but it was sized to print off as an upright poster, and definitely would have looked PIMP in full color.
For my piece-de-resistance, I crated 3 NPCs with names and jobs that all hooked into the central plot of the campaign (from start to finish) PER LAYER and created collectible cards based on the old star wars CCG. Obviously I was really into FF8 at one point, as there are also 10 bonus cards available once you clear the standard 105. If you earn an NPC's card, you have that relationship (or that scalp and the respect that comes with it) in your pocket. These relationships become key as central changes take place in the Arcology, and who you know suddenly becomes very important.
Examples:
Card Backs
And of course, one of the RARES:
All of the 115 cards were ready to go, though you could play a pretty challenging drinking game out of finding the source image with Google. I'd even done the print test on stiff-back cardboard and procured a laminating machine to give them a glossy finish. These puppies were sick. With only a few minor last touches, the Opus Campaign would have been ready play.
Then we switched to 4E. :evil: