My review of Rifts [rant]

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:53 am

Actually I think AD&D/2E/whatever had a special skill list that Thieves had (no-one else, they could fuck right off), and those were all percentages. Given Palladium was just another "My fantasy game will be the one to totally trump 2E!" that happened to survive, it wouldn't be surprising.

Seriously, there are millions of failed attempts to make a game, that all look like "AD&D with some house rules". Except instead of the Pathfinder approach, they simply declared their systems to be unique, original, innovating and revolutionary.

Edit: Also, turns out you don't all share skill bonuses to stats in TMNT if you choose to be a thematic team. However, you each gain a level bonus to each skill equal to the number of other people in the team. So if there are four of you, you get +3 levels to the skill. If there are 15 of you, congratulations you are now at the maximum training for your HtH Skill and probably have 100 attacks per round with +50 to hit, critical on a 15-20 and Deathblow on automatic 18-20. And you know about 50 moves, of which you will use three.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:30 pm

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:Yeah, it was all juicers, or all dark creatures, or all cybernetic based, etc. I could understand the all mutant team because that gave you substantial bonuses, but we got no such bonuses.

He had other problems. I'm sure I mentioned the DM who told me that wizards are incapable of moving quiet and accused me of cheating when I said my wizard was going to move as quietly as he could. Yeah, it was that guy.

I'm... the complete opposite.

The only time I've ever put any restrictions on players was back when I really didn't have a firm grasp of what a Paladin in D&D is. As a result, I just told the only player that wanted to join a long-running game with a new paladin, that he should roll something else. Literally, anything else would have been fine with me.

Also, I'm not the DM that asks if the group has been making "wombat checks" every 5 minutes. Nor asks if the players are watching their six, or any number of stupid time-wasting things.

I'm going to just assume that they are doing so all the time, and when it's story critical (in that, actual fucking wombats are going to show up), that the dice will be rolled for said "wombat check".

I ended up having to confess to the player that kept taking such precautions that I wasn't an asshole DM, that what he was doing wasted time, and that the rest of the 10 players could confirm that I didn't want them to waste time with assumed actions.

Count... your GM must have been really fucking boring. I mean... they couldn't see a bunch of misfits and hangers onto the fringes of society, banding together for adventure and profit? Isn't that sort of the point of most adventure games and movies? To show off cool differences between characters?

Heck, even in a game of "only pirates", every single character will try to be different from other characters. From cutlass clutching captains that cleave corsairs that cross the crew, to dual pistol shooting first mates, or marksman with a long-barrel firearms, or even a gunner that tends to use a light deck cannon.

Of course, we're only talking pirates here, so there isn't a ton of options. However, there are quite a few even within that narrow band of choice. With Rifts, I think that the very point is to play with the kitchen sink. I've always wanted to play a bunch of odd things in Rifts.....geez, now I want to find an online game for Rifts.

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:37 pm

a quick question.

I'm looking at Palladium Fantasy, and am not understanding the parry/ dodge/ entangle mechanic.

In short, my book explains Parry, and I understand it. It doesn't explain bock on entangle.

Would anyone be so kind as to explain that further?

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:16 pm

According to Heroes Limited, Entangle is a defense you can use instead of parry or dodge.

Like dodge, it uses an action and has to beat the attacker's strike roll. If you do, they are trapped and neither party can attack.

Every melee round, they roll a dodge vs. your entangle to slip free.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:45 pm

Grapple-ish, then.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 1:59 am

JE: I'm actually running a game (well, it's in the "Players, get over here!" stage) of Rifts on RPoL. You're welcome to show up if you like. It's called "Operation Ajax".

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Mar 24, 2009 2:06 am

Sir_Neil wrote:According to Heroes Limited, Entangle is a defense you can use instead of parry or dodge.

Like dodge, it uses an action and has to beat the attacker's strike roll. If you do, they are trapped and neither party can attack.

Every melee round, they roll a dodge vs. your entangle to slip free.

Ah, so all three have to beat an attack roll?

Alright, a more detailed question: Why dodge and take up an action when you could either parry and not use an action, or you could entangle?

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 2:38 am

Koumei wrote:Actually I think AD&D/2E/whatever had a special skill list that Thieves had (no-one else, they could fuck right off), and those were all percentages. Given Palladium was just another "My fantasy game will be the one to totally trump 2E!" that happened to survive, it wouldn't be surprising.

That is true. In fact, back in the 1e days when Siembieda was making his first game, those thieving skills advanced by set values per level, IIRC. He may have ripped the idea of some skills' base scores being based on attributes from RuneQuest, though.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:38 am

Count: aside from "Some characters get Automatic Dodge", Dodge often gets a higher bonus than Parry (especially in TMNT, where PP gives you a bonus to Strike, Parry and Dodge, and holy shit, Speed actually DOES something, giving you a bonus to Dodge. Double the bonus, yeah!)

Also, certain things either can't parry/be parried, or give huge penalties. Then again, the penalty to dodge being shot is huge.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:40 am

Koumei wrote:JE: I'm actually running a game (well, it's in the "Players, get over here!" stage) of Rifts on RPoL. You're welcome to show up if you like. It's called "Operation Ajax".

would others be welcome to play as well?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 5:06 am

Sure, go right ahead. It has some loose requirements such as:

Try to be capable at more than one thing.

Consider being reasonably powerful, and having MDC protection.

Don't be a dick. I know everyone loves an IC battle at the start that turns into a TPK, but cut that shit out.

Currently there's a Neo Human with every psychic power, a Dragon Cat, and a Mecha Pilot that doesn't appear to have any anime references. Not even Gekiganger III. There's also someone who has no concrete ideas yet, and another who is leaning towards a Dragon Juicer (that is, a human who is a special MDC juicer that is powered by dragon blood, not a Dragon who is a Juicer). Not that it really matters - pick something fun and go for it.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 5:09 am

Koumei wrote:Sure, go right ahead. It has some loose requirements such as:

Try to be capable at more than one thing.

Consider being reasonably powerful, and having MDC protection.

Don't be a dick. I know everyone loves an IC battle at the start that turns into a TPK, but cut that shit out.

Currently there's a Neo Human with every psychic power, a Dragon Cat, and a Mecha Pilot that doesn't appear to have any anime references. Not even Gekiganger III. There's also someone who has no concrete ideas yet, and another who is leaning towards a Dragon Juicer (that is, a human who is a special MDC juicer that is powered by dragon blood, not a Dragon who is a Juicer). Not that it really matters - pick something fun and go for it.

hmm.... given that I already knew what a dragon juicer is, your clarification just gave me an idea.. can I play a dragon that is a juicer?
and could you post a link to the game?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 6:30 am

No, no you cannot. Dragons can't undergo Juicer augmentation as their magical regeneration forces any augmentations out.

Link: http://rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=35888&date=1237872438

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 7:01 am

yeah, it was (mostly) a joke anyway. I'll see what I come up with.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:27 pm

Ah, Dragon Juicers. Reminds me of the time some of my friends tried to have a Zentraedi come in and undergo the process to become Dragon Juicers.

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 6:49 pm

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote: Ah, so all three have to beat an attack roll?

Alright, a more detailed question: Why dodge and take up an action when you could either parry and not use an action, or you could entangle?

1. Yup.

2. For the reasons Koumei said. Also, not all characters get autoparry. Entangle is bad if you are outnumbered, because neither party can act.

Dog_O_War · Post by **Dog_O_War** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 6:55 pm

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:
Sir_Neil wrote:According to Heroes Limited, Entangle is a defense you can use instead of parry or dodge.

Like dodge, it uses an action and has to beat the attacker's strike roll. If you do, they are trapped and neither party can attack.

Every melee round, they roll a dodge vs. your entangle to slip free.
Ah, so all three have to beat an attack roll?

Alright, a more detailed question: Why dodge and take up an action when you could either parry and not use an action, or you could entangle?

Sometimes your dodge bonus exceeds your parry bonus, and if the attack is "roll a success or die" kinda situation...
Otherwise, you're going to be SOL with an entangle, as it gets the least amount of bonuses, so you're better off rolling anything but.

Also, if you lack a weapon to parry with, and your limb is not suitable (that is, your limb can infact take damage if you parry with it against certain attacks) you're better off dodging.

Note* In the case of auto-dodge though, you may instead opt to perform a regular dodge for the purpose of higher bonuses. Like the above, you may give up your auto-dodge to instead use your (always) higher dodge bonus to avoid an attack that is likely to kill you (assuming it's not gunfire). You can't do both (auto-dodge/parry for free, then dodge if the attempt failed), which is why you'd make the conscious choice to.

After any attempt at defense, you can roll with the attack for half-damage (costs one attack). In the case of area-of-effect attacks, you can actually use multiple dodge attempts to get out of the area (I think it's 10ft per dodge use).

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 5:01 am

Right, so a few days ago I was looking at some of the robot vehicles in rifts, and noticed something...

a very oddly placed gun on a couple models. I checked the stats, it's called a belly-gun. It is positioned in the lower abdomen of humanoid shaped bots, and can rotate 180 degrees to point straight down or even behind the robot.

some rift's robot vehicles have laser cocks. I'm serious.

WTF?

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 5:36 am

Prak_Anima wrote:some rift's robot vehicles have laser cocks. I'm serious.

And in a Rifts game, robots with laser cocks is going to be one of the LEAST strange things you'll see in the game.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 5:39 am

actually, the saddest thing is, I wouldn't even be surprised to see that kinda thing happen in real life.

*general proudly presenting the first foray in bipedal war mechs*
General: And they even have a belly gun that can pivot 180 degrees to fire to the front, directly below, and directly behind the mech.
Crowd: *peals of laughter*
General: Just what are you all laughing at!?
Reporter covering story: Sir, has it not occured to anyone what the "belly gun" looks like?
General: .... god dammit!

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 12:09 pm

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 1:24 pm

Koumei wrote:JE: I'm actually running a game (well, it's in the "Players, get over here!" stage) of Rifts on RPoL. You're welcome to show up if you like. It's called "Operation Ajax".

D:

I stopped reading this thread b/c I didn't see that it was getting posts. Going to check this out now.

Prak, I've never seen those particular lazor cocks, but they're pretty common. I mean, the same guy draws nearly all of the robots in the Rifts artwork.

and for... ideas... I... i really have no idea what is an effective character in Rifts. I've read the books, and own a bunch (got them when my LGS was selling boxes of RPG stuff cheap about... 5-6 years ago) and they're fun to read, but I really dunno what is a 'good' idea.

One idea would be to make a remake of an "amorph" character that I came up with years and years ago.

The character concept has changed as time has passed. I started reading schlock mercenary ever since the "bathtub" incident with the Purple girl walking in on schlock in the bathtub, and the comic has slowly changed my ideas on what my original character idea would be. My idea is that the creature is meant to be a nano-assembler that stores info in more solid items (like crystals with information carved right into them), not an organic data bank). How it looks has changed, but usually it's been a black tar-like looking blob.

The closest race is the "amorph" out of Psyscape. Except.... that what I'm looking to play is not psychic, or able to astral travel, or able to fly magically. While being more about being able do more mechanical things and make weapons out of it's body, and eat sand.

In fact, the character that I'm thinking about would have none of those phlebotium/psionic things (or be able to astral travel either, it doesn't fit).

While they are instead heavily damaged by magic (all magic SD is MD! and just touching magic burns you!lulz! even being in a room with magic makes you queasy and slowly melt)... or something; integrating with machines, building stuff, wearing transluencent glass plates and slamming hardened glass blades (silicone based life form) into fools was the idea here.

That was the original character idea. Basically it was so I could create a character that let me do weird stuff; like make a pentagonal-based symmetry crab-monster, or a water-drinking ram-jet airplane that used hydroden fusion as its jet. The fact that the few characters that this character spent any time around were either magical vampire girls with zombie armies or .... magical fey girls trying to pass as humans was... sort of ironic. Writing a character as an It (instead of a Him or a Her), and genderless was also different.

So... maybe a human* mage**?

Perhaps a human spell caster whose adventurer parents had the foresight to have their son born on motherfucking Wormwood.

Because nothing says loving like a mage that can beat up a vibro-blade packing punk and walk away with nothing but a badly scarred arm.

I'm fine with them packing guns, but armour is always a bitch for a mage (well.. metal is), and the natural MD from being Wormwood born wouldn't hurt neither.

*: Or atlantean, I'm not picky, and they count as human, so Wormwood still beefs them up)

**:Or.... some other spellcasting class? I don't know Rifts spellcasters that well, and there are literally two new types of spellcasters per book; and one in three books just "randomly" seems to throw in a new entire type and mechanic of magical power. I'm looking at you South America sourcebook (... 1 or 2, the one with the Nazca Line magic; and... one of the two also introduced Voodoo Priests, an other type of magic).

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:06 pm

"Arm the belly-mounted plasma cannon! We're going to fire a hot thick load into their unprotected rear!"

That's all I have to say on that matter.

I'll be honest re: amorphs. I lost my taste for them and consider them kind of annoying. You could go with it, I guess, but I'd prefer that you didn't.

Non-evil mage types off the top of my head:

Line Walker (the standard one)
Line Rifter (more teleporty)
Shifter (high-power teleporty and summons daemons)
Mystic (mage/psychic)
Thing I Can't Remember the Name Of (opposed elemental caster/special ability user - so Earth/Air or Fire/Water)
Technowizard (build magic shit)
Warlock (elemental caster)
Mystic Knight of the White Rose (better at being a mystic than a mystic, and also a powerful knight who is immune to energy attacks)
Temporal Wizard (leeeet's do the time warp again!)
Temporal Warrior (less casty, more stabby)
Raindancer (I can't even remember their special shticks)
Line Maker (they make ley lines to power magic)
Spatial Mage (sort of temporal, but with spatial powers too, and can create their own paradise dimension)
Celestial Mage (powers for spess, can also fly through spess or something)
Ocean Mage (I can't believe it's not a Water Warlock)
Russian Living Fire Mage (I can't believe it's not a Fire Warlock)
Ludicrous Mage (a joke type with silly practical joke spells)
This Other Thing (breathes out living spells. Which are loyal "human" followers with some magical power)
Blood Shaman (slice yourself open to unleash magical effects)
Biomancer (magic related to life. Not the evil Bio-Wizardry)
Blue Flame Wizard (blue fire warlock? Dunno)
Cloud Mage (OH FUCKING COME ON NOW)
Conjurer (make stuff appear all of a sudden. Can't have many moving parts, but enough consecutive castings and the blueprints would allow you to build your own tank)
Dolphin Mage (KEVIN, STOP SMOKING CRACK)
Stone Magic (Earth Warlock Mk II, and powers from gemstones for the hippies)
Whale Singer (give me a fucking break)

Also there are certain races - Gargoyle Warlocks, Temporal Raiders and Promethean Phase Adepts are all innate casters, and most dragons can learn spells and Godlings can seriously choose to be two casters at once*.

There are several others, too, like the "It's a Dragonborn" which can either have Line Walker magic abilities or Mind Melter psychic abilities, and the Pythonan (the MDC intelligent snake with psychic telekinesis and levitation etc. that can take a magic class).

And I know I forgot like three trillion of the bastards.

*They get three abilities to choose. One of them is "an entire category of lesser Psionics - Healing, Physical or Sensitive - and 6 Super Psionic Powers", another is "Congratulations, you're a spellcaster like a _____". There are others, too.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 4:29 pm

I understand your stance on amorphs. They're weird, and sometimes more trouble than their worth (ex. having to look up the stats of whatever you change into). I was just thinking of an idea, since I found out that amorphs exist somewhere in Rifts. Although... with a phlebotium that I really don't want, I rather liked the dozens of crab-eyestalks that I kept describing this character as having, while Pyscape ones are all psychic, which seems dumb and dilutes the awesome that is "you can be different stuff".

In addition, my eyes glazed over looking at that list. Even after reading it, I'm not sure what to pick. Is there a 'standard' wizard that just learns a wide range of spells (utility, protection, transport, Rift-making/Plane-hopping(?), healing(?))?

[Alternatively, if I pick a Line Walker, would that be okay? or will we never be ley lines? or will we be hugging them or keeping them in view a lot of the time]

Also, what would be the difference between a Godling and an Atlantean (who "got" MDC by being born on Wormwood)?

Aside from the fact that Godlings probably live a lot longer (whoo-hoo! more chances for PTSD! or cathching STDs! or catching RPGs!) and also get psychinc powahs!

[I'm probably going to sound like a real brat asking constant questions, mostly b/c I don't even know what questions I should be asking, and thanks a lot for the effort you're putting in. Long list is long. I too wonder what Raindancer's shtick is. Probably something arcane and eldritch.

I really should have clarified that I just want the Rift's equivalent of a "D&D" wizard (just, lots of options I guess?), except with ceramic/plastic armour, and a gun(s)/vibroblade(s)(?)]

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 8:46 pm

Judging__Eagle wrote: [Alternatively, if I pick a Line Walker, would that be okay? or will we never be ley lines? or will we be hugging them or keeping them in view a lot of the time]

Well, IIRC, Tolkeen, the city we're supposed to be defending, is built near some ley lines, and I'm sure we'll be near them at least occasionally because it'll keep my character from eating random practitioners of magic.

Also, what would be the difference between a Godling and an Atlantean (who "got" MDC by being born on Wormwood)?

Godling is a O/RCC from Conversion Book 2 Pantheons of the Megaverse, I can send you the pdf if you want.

I really should have clarified that I just want the Rift's equivalent of a "D&D" wizard (just, lots of options I guess?), except with ceramic/plastic armour, and a gun(s)/vibroblade(s)(?)]

I think that's going to be a line walker, just grab a Weapon Proficiency or two.

The Gaming Den

My review of Rifts [rant]

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