That's the nice thing about Rifts, even though some areas were pretty isolated or completely out of place, you could just wave your hand and, whoops!, magical portal transports you to wherever your GM is running the campaign. In that actual world, people must be pretty jaded with it all.
"Going to the bathroom? Yea, don't use the third stall from the left, it's actually a gateway to the Dinosaur Swamp."
"no no, from the left. Third stall from the right is where the 4 Horsemen appear from time to time."
"......and whatever you do, don't turn on the 1st sink, that's tapped into the poop mines of dimension 42."
I always liked how the burst fire rules worked out. If you had a laser rifle that did 4D6, and an "aimed, burse, or wild" rate of fire, you could do a "long burst" and fire off half your clip in a single action, and do x5 damage. So a CS Dead Boy in the medium armor had (IIRC) 50MDC - with an average roll of 4D6 of 13, you could kill him in one action (of course, you were just as vulnerable).
And it'd be silly to say a long burst with a short e-clip (around 10-12 shots usually) fired the same number of shots as a canister e-clip (60 shots or so) - so we always based the number of shots fired in a burst on the smallest e-clip supported on the weapon... so you could have 10-12 2D6x10 actions before even reloading!
One of the first things I did when I started GM'ing full time was completely re-write the rules on ranged combat. From what it took to hit (up from 4 to 10 on a d20) to what was possible with bursts and whatnot, it was all much better and less game-breaking. Though, those custom rules were all on a laptop that got stolen, back when backing things up on an external was something that hadn't occurred to me, so... meh.
Maybe they added that in some printings later? I don't remember anything like that in my copy of Rifts, though, and I read it cover to cover several times. Could be my memory is worse off then I thought. Even so, 7 is too low. I figured with ranged attacks, the best thing would be a 50/50 chance to hit. Absent any strike modifiers, of course.
For natural flyers, I remember adding a skill percentage for any situation that would call for it. My reasoning was that, seeing as how piloting a vehicle/power armor required skill rolls for things like barrel rolls, or tricky maneuvers and had a skill associated with it, why shouldn't a gargoyle? Just made it PP x 4, IIRC.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
IIRC (someone needs to break out their book) it's a blanket 4 in order to connect with any attack before any modifiers.
Yeah - vehicle combat had almost no piloting skill built in. I remember playing robotech and the space battles played out almost exactly the same as two guys with rifles in Rifts. I eventually modified those rules to try an simulate a dog fight. You rolled % against your piloting skill, and whoever passed by the widest margin gained advantage... if you were already in firing position and won, you could shoot again, if you lost, then neither could shoot. If you lost again, the other guy could shoot at you.
That system made for long, boring battles... but at least your piloting skill mattered? I guess?
I think I made it so explosives were tricky to hit with, because really, if they aren't guided, they are. Direct hits required a 14 and splash damage was set at 8. I should mention that I had altered explosives to have two damage ratings--the one listed was a direct hit. I'd pretty much cut that in half for splash.
I should mention that I had altered explosives to have two damage ratings--the one listed was a direct hit. I'd pretty much cut that in half for splash.
This is exactly how explosives in Palladium have always worked.
I should mention that I had altered explosives to have two damage ratings--the one listed was a direct hit. I'd pretty much cut that in half for splash.
This is exactly how explosives in Palladium have always worked.
Oh. Really? Like, to hit and everything? Maybe I didn't change as much as I thought I did.
I should mention that I had altered explosives to have two damage ratings--the one listed was a direct hit. I'd pretty much cut that in half for splash.
This is exactly how explosives in Palladium have always worked.
Oh. Really? Like, to hit and everything? Maybe I didn't change as much as I thought I did.
Not the to hits, but the half damage for splash attacks.
The old style rules were 4 to hit for everything (melee, ranged, explosions, etc) and 12 to hit on a called shot.
I believe the new rules are 4 for melee, 7 for ranged, 10 for called shot.
In other words, those of us that think it's 4 for everything are dating ourselves.
Basically. It was like that for every single Palladium game up until the Rifts relaunch I think.
Of course M.D.C. actually served to streamline a lot of that. I remember playing Palladium Fantasy back in the day when an enemy's attack over 4 hit my armor (and damaged it), over 16 hit me (and hurt me) and a successful parry did damage to the shield or weapon that was used for it. Basically every roll applied damage to something, and god help you if your badass runed-up plate armor ran out of S.D.C. in the middle of a fight.
I always thought the splash damage for explosives was a bit odd as well. It does half damage to everything in the blast radius... but things like power armor often had location specific MDC. So I hit that SAMAS with my plasma mini-missile for 60MD... and the splash damage does 30MD to his head, arms, hands, rail gun, legs, etc etc? Nice! (We never actually played that way BTW, it was just how I interpreted the rules)
We actually had the splash damage to different components thing come up in the short-lived Rifts PbP on this very forum.
Just another in a long list of things that really needed a single-sentence clarification. Especially since "Guided Missiles always hit the main body of the target" only muddies things further.
Does anyone else feel this thread needs an injection of crazy? I had a character that was a 12 foot tall godling who knew every spell, had all psychic powers, rode around on a robot mount (someone want to post a pic of a shemmarian warrior woman - one of their mounts), and had a sentient laser pistol with a single big eyeball attached to it.
We usually just applied splash damage to the main body. Otherwise you get really bogged down in minutea.
"So, if almost everything in Rifts seems to have ~1/4 of the main body MDC on its head, then applying this to your average supernatural critter, it should take 25 damage to kill that thing with 100 mdc!" And now combat goes from challenging to Lethal. And less fun, as body armour loses all protective qualities against explosives, since your average 50-100 mdc suit probably had arms and legs each around half that or less.
It did come down to some interesting back and forth when GMs decided that opponents would make called shots too. In particularly nasty engagements it could come down to everyone trying to wipe out everyone else's weapons and/or making head shots. Imagine every encounter you have in a D&D campaign effectively including a pile of Rust Monsters. >.<
It'd have been nice to use cover more, but then you get down to trying to figure out what a 5 to 100 MDC blast does to a hill, tree or wall you're hiding behind, and "obliterating it completely" rapidly makes it less sensible to do anything but try to kill them before they kill you.
Edit: it's funny, but my group saw some fairly heavy power creep over time, either due to characters living long enough to reap the rewards of several campaigns and levelling up, or due to GM's allowing more powerful gear/RCCs to help new characters keep up. Eventually that peaked and we started drifting back down again, partially at my lead, as I'd often run some of the most batshit crazy characters (usually simply by outliving everyone else) and decided I didn't always want to be the heavy hitter on the team anymore. My first and favourite character was a power armour pilot who ended up simply unreasonably powerful (at least by our standards, probably not in the "mix and match PCCs/RCCs/OCCs/Magic/Psionics/Rune Weapons for 5 minutes" sense), whereas my last regularly played one was probably the lightweight of the crew, though his defensive and scouting abilities helped the group out.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
One of my first house rules was changing the S.D.C./M.D.C. divide to 20 instead of 100. That made things like exploding hillsides much less common unless heavy weapons were being used. I also instituted some rules that involved not dying instantly when a tiny laserbeam went clean through your kneecap, but I can't recall the exact nature of those off the top of my head.
Yeah, that was pretty much a necessity. Getting your finger lasered off, no matter how much damage was done to said finger, should not prove lethal under any circumstance. Good call on the SDC/MDC thing, too.
I'm pretty sure I got the idea from Conversion Book 1. There was a bit in there about ways of changing the game to make it more compatible with their other gaming lines and that was one of them.
I remember that bit in there, but I'll be honest--I was always too chickenshit to mess with that rule. Thinking about it now, it seems obvious. No material we could cheaply, and easily produce in mass quantities is going to magically have 100 times the strength of modern steel in all applications(with maybe one exception that I posted about waaaay upthread, but it's not easy to make). Likewise, I doubt a handheld laser device is going to be roughly 100 times more damaging than a bullet coming from a gun.
Something else I thought of--Titan Juicers would be a little more useful with that change. And Juicers in general.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
But juicers in general are ridiculously overpowered, what with their autododge, massive dex, and high number of attacks.
Get one in some power armor and they will rape face.
The only type of player that would put a juicer in power armor is the type that routinely tries to bend rules to make the most OP character he or she can. In other words, the kind that hates legitimate fun.
And anyway, juicers would never use power armor specifically because they're so bad ass. They'd feel weighted down, frankly, as they'd be relying on servos and motors, not their own muscle and sinew.
The thing I meant about juicers is that they get all this extra SDC, hundreds of it, but it's not enough to make a difference when a single laser blast to the chest can still end them just as easily as anyone else. Shift the SDC to MDC ratio down a bit, though, and all of a sudden that extra SDC might mean the difference between a nasty third degree burn and a gaping crater where there was once a sternum.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Wait wait
this is RIFTS we're talking about here
the entire point is to come up with the most overpowered ridiculous game-breaking character you can, because the DM is about to ram half a dozen of them up your ass
If you're looking for the baddest of the bad, then you should always be a Sea Titan turned Cosmo-Knight. I can't really think of too much else that would be more powerful than that.
You can make the game all about being the toughest sumbitch there is, but that's missing the point. There's actually a lot of room for low power-level games as well, but it frequently gets overlooked in favor of overpowered gear and special abilities.
And hell, I can't say I blame anyone for said overlooking. Lord knows I've been guilty. But when playing a lot of Rifts, it can be interesting if you hold back the levels of crazy that normally pervade the setting and go for something different. Like the cyber-punk/noir/dystopian setting that exists inside Chi-Town. It can actually be a lot of fun. I hear Australia is good, too, though it never struck my fancy at first glance.
Granted, they're basically a set of wings strapped to a mega-damage girdle, but they exist.
I forgot about those. But still, it's more like armor with wings and a jet-pack. Less power armor than just... armor. I can't see a juicer getting into a Glitter Boy, or even a SAMAS, is what I'm saying. Less'n they're a Phaeton or something.
Look, in a world with a trillion dripping, drooling alien intelligences that can flay off your skin by snapping their fingers, you need to have a hero that can win the day.
And if that hero has to be a psychic-vampire-mutant-necromancing-cyborg-scientist-jedi-dog-cosmo-robo-ley-line-walking-alien-chemically-enhanced-whale-mental-implanted-conjuring-magical-tattooed-ninja-assassin-dinosaur-mechanic-centaur-knight-hobo to get the job done, then so be it!
My favorite time playing Rifts was when everybody else was all of this superpowered stuff. We had some Hero's characters, a nightbane, an atlantean something-nor-other, a wormwood monster thing with like 700 MDC. It was a large party. I played a vanilla cor book cyberdoc. Almost everyone BUT me and the wormwood thing died when I failed a horror factor save and drove my van off a cliff or something. I just remembered that. playing Rifts was when everybody else was all of this superpowered stuff. We had some Hero's characters, a nightbane, an atlantean something-nor-other, a wormwood monster thing with like 700 MDC. It was a large party. I played a vanilla cor book cyberdoc. Almost everyone BUT me and the wormwood thing died when I failed a horror factor save and drove my van off a cliff or something. I just remembered that.
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited August 2011
That's why you have to do the XCOM thing and have the one guy with the low will save, put him in the back of the plane with no weapons and let him be the target of all the nasties psychic attacks.
Your team's mistake was putting that dude in charge of the plane
Of COURSE a Juicer would put on Power Armor - the Power Armor training gives you something like 2 additional attacks per melee. For some reason.
I think that reason was that in Robotech the mechs were powered by some thing (Proto-something?) that gave some kind of psychic connection? Anyway - when they copy-and-pasted the rules they just left that in there. So a level 1 Juicer would have something like 9 attacks in power armor. And auto-dodge. And 200+ MDC. With missiles.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Well, I mean, obviously your skill with punching people in the face corresponds to your ability to pilot a mecha where you punch people by tapping a button.
Obviously.
That's why you spend extra skills to get points in HtH: Expert, or Martial Arts, or whatever.
Of COURSE a Juicer would put on Power Armor - the Power Armor training gives you something like 2 additional attacks per melee. For some reason.
I think that reason was that in Robotech the mechs were powered by some thing (Proto-something?) that gave some kind of psychic connection? Anyway - when they copy-and-pasted the rules they just left that in there. So a level 1 Juicer would have something like 9 attacks in power armor. And auto-dodge. And 200+ MDC. With missiles.
Robotech mechs were powered by protoculture, and controlled by some kind of direct neural link to the mech itself for most of the movement in guardian/battloid mode. Later generations relied on the neural link more then actual controls. So, giant robots that are controlled by your thoughts would logically (did I use that word in a RIFT thread???) benefit from the imprinted reflexes of extensive martial arts training. Yeah, I'm going to go with that.
Touche, thread. I suppose I wasn't as exploitative of these golden opportunities as I should have been--maybe I was too concerned with the inner-workings of my PC's? It just seemed obvious to me that a Juicer would eschew mechanical trappings in favor of his/her own hyped up reflexes and strength.
Think about it: being trapped in a walking/plodding tank that has to take the time to kneel down every time it wants to fire off a round is the opposite of what most Juicers would want to be doing with their time. They've only got a good four and a half years in them to begin with, after all. I would think moving slowly/not at all seems tantamount to death for someone in that situation.
I'm just being too reasonable, I get it. It's Rifts.
Cosmo knight? Psh, if I'm going to powergame I'm going spirit of light: fire version and using hecate's bio-power armor.
I totally forgot about the elemental spirits/angels. They are pretty bad-ass, but I'm not sure who'd win in a fight between them and a Cosmo-Knight. Tough call.
of course, the major advantage to playing one (instant access to a huge amount of warlock and super psionic abilities) is negated by most of the cosmo knights abilities. the ability to use river of lava at level 1 is incredible, but a cosmo knight won't give a fuck about lava.
Posts
"Going to the bathroom? Yea, don't use the third stall from the left, it's actually a gateway to the Dinosaur Swamp."
"no no, from the left. Third stall from the right is where the 4 Horsemen appear from time to time."
"......and whatever you do, don't turn on the 1st sink, that's tapped into the poop mines of dimension 42."
And it'd be silly to say a long burst with a short e-clip (around 10-12 shots usually) fired the same number of shots as a canister e-clip (60 shots or so) - so we always based the number of shots fired in a burst on the smallest e-clip supported on the weapon... so you could have 10-12 2D6x10 actions before even reloading!
For natural flyers, I remember adding a skill percentage for any situation that would call for it. My reasoning was that, seeing as how piloting a vehicle/power armor required skill rolls for things like barrel rolls, or tricky maneuvers and had a skill associated with it, why shouldn't a gargoyle? Just made it PP x 4, IIRC.
That system made for long, boring battles... but at least your piloting skill mattered? I guess?
I believe the new rules are 4 for melee, 7 for ranged, 10 for called shot.
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.
In other words, those of us that think it's 4 for everything are dating ourselves.
Oh. Really? Like, to hit and everything? Maybe I didn't change as much as I thought I did.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Of course M.D.C. actually served to streamline a lot of that. I remember playing Palladium Fantasy back in the day when an enemy's attack over 4 hit my armor (and damaged it), over 16 hit me (and hurt me) and a successful parry did damage to the shield or weapon that was used for it. Basically every roll applied damage to something, and god help you if your badass runed-up plate armor ran out of S.D.C. in the middle of a fight.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Just another in a long list of things that really needed a single-sentence clarification. Especially since "Guided Missiles always hit the main body of the target" only muddies things further.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
This is no doubt a relatively tame character...
"So, if almost everything in Rifts seems to have ~1/4 of the main body MDC on its head, then applying this to your average supernatural critter, it should take 25 damage to kill that thing with 100 mdc!" And now combat goes from challenging to Lethal. And less fun, as body armour loses all protective qualities against explosives, since your average 50-100 mdc suit probably had arms and legs each around half that or less.
It did come down to some interesting back and forth when GMs decided that opponents would make called shots too. In particularly nasty engagements it could come down to everyone trying to wipe out everyone else's weapons and/or making head shots. Imagine every encounter you have in a D&D campaign effectively including a pile of Rust Monsters. >.<
It'd have been nice to use cover more, but then you get down to trying to figure out what a 5 to 100 MDC blast does to a hill, tree or wall you're hiding behind, and "obliterating it completely" rapidly makes it less sensible to do anything but try to kill them before they kill you.
Edit: it's funny, but my group saw some fairly heavy power creep over time, either due to characters living long enough to reap the rewards of several campaigns and levelling up, or due to GM's allowing more powerful gear/RCCs to help new characters keep up. Eventually that peaked and we started drifting back down again, partially at my lead, as I'd often run some of the most batshit crazy characters (usually simply by outliving everyone else) and decided I didn't always want to be the heavy hitter on the team anymore. My first and favourite character was a power armour pilot who ended up simply unreasonably powerful (at least by our standards, probably not in the "mix and match PCCs/RCCs/OCCs/Magic/Psionics/Rune Weapons for 5 minutes" sense), whereas my last regularly played one was probably the lightweight of the crew, though his defensive and scouting abilities helped the group out.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I'm pretty sure I got the idea from Conversion Book 1. There was a bit in there about ways of changing the game to make it more compatible with their other gaming lines and that was one of them.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Something else I thought of--Titan Juicers would be a little more useful with that change. And Juicers in general.
Get one in some power armor and they will rape face.
And anyway, juicers would never use power armor specifically because they're so bad ass. They'd feel weighted down, frankly, as they'd be relying on servos and motors, not their own muscle and sinew.
The thing I meant about juicers is that they get all this extra SDC, hundreds of it, but it's not enough to make a difference when a single laser blast to the chest can still end them just as easily as anyone else. Shift the SDC to MDC ratio down a bit, though, and all of a sudden that extra SDC might mean the difference between a nasty third degree burn and a gaping crater where there was once a sternum.
this is RIFTS we're talking about here
the entire point is to come up with the most overpowered ridiculous game-breaking character you can, because the DM is about to ram half a dozen of them up your ass
Granted, they're basically a set of wings strapped to a mega-damage girdle, but they exist.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
You can make the game all about being the toughest sumbitch there is, but that's missing the point. There's actually a lot of room for low power-level games as well, but it frequently gets overlooked in favor of overpowered gear and special abilities.
And hell, I can't say I blame anyone for said overlooking. Lord knows I've been guilty. But when playing a lot of Rifts, it can be interesting if you hold back the levels of crazy that normally pervade the setting and go for something different. Like the cyber-punk/noir/dystopian setting that exists inside Chi-Town. It can actually be a lot of fun. I hear Australia is good, too, though it never struck my fancy at first glance.
I forgot about those. But still, it's more like armor with wings and a jet-pack. Less power armor than just... armor. I can't see a juicer getting into a Glitter Boy, or even a SAMAS, is what I'm saying. Less'n they're a Phaeton or something.
And if that hero has to be a psychic-vampire-mutant-necromancing-cyborg-scientist-jedi-dog-cosmo-robo-ley-line-walking-alien-chemically-enhanced-whale-mental-implanted-conjuring-magical-tattooed-ninja-assassin-dinosaur-mechanic-centaur-knight-hobo to get the job done, then so be it!
Your team's mistake was putting that dude in charge of the plane
I think that reason was that in Robotech the mechs were powered by some thing (Proto-something?) that gave some kind of psychic connection? Anyway - when they copy-and-pasted the rules they just left that in there. So a level 1 Juicer would have something like 9 attacks in power armor. And auto-dodge. And 200+ MDC. With missiles.
Obviously.
That's why you spend extra skills to get points in HtH: Expert, or Martial Arts, or whatever.
Robotech mechs were powered by protoculture, and controlled by some kind of direct neural link to the mech itself for most of the movement in guardian/battloid mode. Later generations relied on the neural link more then actual controls. So, giant robots that are controlled by your thoughts would logically (did I use that word in a RIFT thread???) benefit from the imprinted reflexes of extensive martial arts training. Yeah, I'm going to go with that.
Why wouldn't you do that? I mean, it's right there, waiting for you. With its sexy, sexy super-sonic metal lance of death.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Think about it: being trapped in a walking/plodding tank that has to take the time to kneel down every time it wants to fire off a round is the opposite of what most Juicers would want to be doing with their time. They've only got a good four and a half years in them to begin with, after all. I would think moving slowly/not at all seems tantamount to death for someone in that situation.
I'm just being too reasonable, I get it. It's Rifts.
I totally forgot about the elemental spirits/angels. They are pretty bad-ass, but I'm not sure who'd win in a fight between them and a Cosmo-Knight. Tough call.
50.
of course, the major advantage to playing one (instant access to a huge amount of warlock and super psionic abilities) is negated by most of the cosmo knights abilities. the ability to use river of lava at level 1 is incredible, but a cosmo knight won't give a fuck about lava.