My review of Rifts [rant]

[koz]

This was hammered out for the benefit of my gaming group. Hopefully, it will give you as much amusement reading it as it gave me writing it. This is designed as a beginner's guide, as well as a summary, and was written with that in mind.

Rifts for Dummies

The system you’re about to get into makes very little sense and is not very balanced. It will dictate a lot of craziness, and is generally suitable only for having random fun and not telling any serious stories. This guide is designed to help you navigate the somewhat dense (and self-gratuitous) materials which this game comes with.

Note from Sinister: All page numbers are PDF page numbers, not physical page numbers. There’s a dissonance of about 5 pages between the PDF and the actual pages, but this varies by quite a bit across books.

Character Creation

Stats
In Rifts, there are eight stats – three mental, five physical. These are given abbreviations (a common feature in this system), which mean the following things (in terms you can follow):

IQ: This one is surprisingly self-explanatory. Game-wise, this serves a role similar to Intelligence in DnD. Intelligence
ME: Short for Mental Endurance, this is basically your Will save and your ability to deal with mental attacks. Willpower
MA: Short for Mental Affinity, this is the ‘social’ part of Charisma. Appeal
PS: Short for Physical Strength, this is basically your Strength score. If this is particularly high, you can have Augmented Strength (which comes from implants, chemicals etc), Robot Strength (which comes from mechanical augmentation) or Supernatural Strength (which comes from magic, psionics and suchlike). The rules for these can be found on pages 288-9 of the Ultimate Edition. It also determines how much you can carry, which is listed on page 289. Strength
PP: Short for Physical Prowess, this is basically the same as Dexterity in DnD. Dexterity
PE: Short for Physical Endurance, this is basically the same as Constitution in DnD. Constitution
PB: Short for Physical Beauty, this is the ‘physical’ or ‘appearance’ part of Charisma. Beauty
Spd: Short for Speed, this is how fast you move. To determine what this means in actual distances, check the chart on page 284 of the Ultimate Edition, or alternatively, the stat description on the same page. For once, this shit doesn’t need renaming.

Note from Sinister: If this system looks like it has a hard-on for abbreviations to rival the USSR, it does. Really, it seems that Kevin Siembieda though it would be ‘awesome’ to make his rulebook read like some kind of computing document or Soviet government report. What-fucking-ever.
In a bit to rectify this obvious and rather sad cry for help, I propose renaming the stats to those labelled in red after their descriptions, a convention which I will follow throughout this document.

The way these are generated is sequential rolling 3d6 (i.e. first, you roll 3d6 for IQ, then for ME, then MA, and so on). If you happen to roll 16 or more, you roll an extra 1d6 and add it to whatever you had rolled. If this also comes up a 6, you roll another 1d6 and add that as well. This doesn’t continue forever – it can happen twice at most for any given stat.
Additionally, if your final score in any stat is 16 or more, you gain a special bonus above and beyond what it would normally give you. These are given on page 284 of the Ultimate Edition. However, if you ended up with any stat at 8 or less, you also get certain penalties above and beyond the usual, given on page 285-7 of the Ultimate Edition. To make matters even more confusing, if you happen to end up with stats above 30 (rare, but possible), page 287 of the Ultimate Edition tells you how that goes down.
If you aren’t happy with your stats as-written, you can reroll them, but you have to reroll ALL your stats, not just the ones you don’t like. Alternatively, if you ended up with attributes at 6 or below, you can reroll only those if you choose.

Note from Sinister: This is ass-backwards, as it just screws over people who wanna pick stats suitable to a specific class. My suggestion would be ‘roll 3d6 eight times, assign as you like, reroll anything below 8, can reroll whole line if you want’, as it would save on a lot of random stupid. Alternatively, have a point-buy system – all stats start at 8, you get 90 points to chuck around, and if you decide to bolster a stat to 16 or more, you get 3 bonus points to spend. Or something, as it literally took me twenty seconds to come up with something better than this asshattery.

Hit Points, SDC and MDC

Rifts uses a ‘wound/vitality’ system, except it’s given weird names, because according to Kevin Siembieda, d20 is the devil, despite the fact that his system is basically 60% plagiarised from it.
‘Wounds’ (i.e. damage which can actually kill you) in this game is termed ‘hit points’, and you get very few of them. Your starting hit points are equal to your PE (Physical Endurance or ‘Constitution’) score, plus 1d6. At each level, you get 1d6 more. Whenever you take Hit Point damage, you come closer to death. At 0 Hit Points, you drop unconscious, and when you hit a negative value of your PE, you die. This is a fine name, really.
‘Vitality’ (i.e. damage that slows you down, maybe scratches or scuffs you up a bit, but won’t kill you) is divided into 2 categories in Rifts: SDC (Standard Damage Capacity) and MDC (Mega Damage Capacity). Basically, all you need to know at this stage is that any normal damage you take first comes off your SDC, and any mega damage you take comes off whatever MDC you do or don’t have. SDC is usually determined by your class, but any class which doesn’t list it receives 2d6+12 base, plus whatever extra the class feels like giving you. Any damage you take comes off this first and foremost. Renaming this Standard Vitality and Mega Vitality seems like the most logical approach.

Recovery

Without help, every 24 hours, you recover 2 Hit Points and 4 SDC. With professional help, it’s at 2 Hit Points for the first two days, then 4 per day for each following day, and 6 SDC points per day.

Psionics

Because of Kev’s love of random number generation, unless you take a psionic-using class, you have to randomly roll to see if you’re psionic. This chart is found on page 292, and basically, you have a 10% chance of being seriously psionic, a 15% chance of being slightly psionic, and a 75% chance of having nothing at all.
To make matters more interesting, this brings in a pseudo-stat called ISP (Inner Strength Points – basically think of them kinda like power points for DnD psionic characters), which it hands out at random values for each. Naming these ‘psionic points’ or ‘power points’ would make a shitload more sense.

Note from Sinister: Again with the random generation. I would say that if you really wanna be psionic that badly, just take a psionic class and stop giving random asymmetric power creep out like loose change.

Magic

Because Kev Siembieda doesn’t get that mega damage is the way to go, spellcasters are actually WORSE than psionics-users by a longshot. However, if you really insist on knowing how it works, you have something called PPE (Personal Psychic Potential or somesuch – just call them ‘spell points’ and be done with it!). This is basically the same as ISP, except that it always regenerates at the same rate as everyone else’s. Additionally, magic takes random bullshit penalties due to wearing armour or bionics (which psionics doesn’t), and gets random bullshit bonuses near ley lines or nexuses (which psionics only kinda does). In short, a massive waste of time, provided you stick to the core books alone. However, once you throw in the Book of Magic, all of a sudden, mages are less useless, as mega-damage spells don't cost an arm and a leg anymore.

Note from Sinister: The sheer determinism of Rifts to cling to stupid astonishes even me, as bionics cripple BOTH magic and psionics, while armour cripples only the former. So these penalties no longer exist, okey dokey?

Alignment

In Rifts, your alignment is basically just like the DnD system, with neutrality kinda stripped out. The alignments are Principled (LG), Scrupulous (CG), Unprincipled (LN), Anarchist (CN), Abberant (LE), Miscreant (NE) and Diabolic (CE). These are described in more detail, with nice lists of what they do and don’t usually do on pages 293-5.

Experience

This is basically cloned wholesale from 2nd edition DnD, and is thus equally stupid and needs no further consideration here. For those who don’t know, it’s exactly the same as the 3rd edition XP system, except that each class gets its own chart for advancement, which means everyone advances at different levels.
Every time you get a level in Rifts, your skill, Hit Points, as well as certain other things, increase accordingly. The highest level in Rifts is 15, and you are supposed to advance slowly, but then again, for a system this stupid, no-one really cares.

Note from Sinister: This kind of garbage should be thrown out on its ass from the get-go. Just advance levels according to the storyline already!

Rounding Out the Character

There’s a bunch of fluff-generation charts on pages 299-301 for generating fluff, which are highly suitable for games run using this stupid system.

Note from Sinister: I would strongly suggest we use these tables to speed up character creation, as we shouldn’t take this system too seriously, and thus, by extension, any characters made with it.

[koz]

Classes

Continuing the hard-on for abbreviation, in Rifts, there are two kinds of class: the OCC (Occupational Character Class) and the RCC (Racial Character Class). In Rifts, class = job, which is basically the writing large of a 1st edition DnD fallacy, but if this makes Kev hard at night, we have to humour it, apparently.
One of the key things to remember, which deserves bolding so that nobody misses it: these classes are not balanced against each other, or just about anything, other than Kevin Siembieda’s weird ideas. Therefore, it is very important that there is a consensus on what people actually wanna play, so you don’t end up with Rogue Scholars and Dragons on the same team.

The classes are as follows:

Cyborg: You’re an awesome robot dude. Note that this is for ‘total conversion’ cyborgs, which means that the only bits of you that are human are your brain and maybe your face. The rules for these guys are listed on pages 48-51, with some Black Market Bionics listed from 51-56. Additionally, there is a whole book of options for these guys you can check out, titled the Bionics Sourcebook. Of particular interest are pages 43-8, 54-9 and 83-109, although pretty much the whole book has cool stuff for everyone.
As far as how playable these guys are, they’re pretty solid. You won’t be very sneaky with one of these, but they are very hardcore and very customisable. That said, they are a lot of work to create, so bear this in mind. Best of all, you have no stupid alignment reqs and no stupid stat reqs – so why ever not?

Crazy: These guys are a weird cross between ninjas, partial cyborgs (through brain-chipping) and fucking lunatics. The fluff is that you get awesome training and chips in your head which make you stronger, faster and better than normal humans – and also drive you fucking insane. The rules for these guys are on pages 58-9, followed by the rules for their various insanities on pages 60-64. If you want more cool goodies, a book called Mindwerks is a good place to go, especially pages 19-43.
As long as you don’t mind being completely off your rocker, these guys are also quite playable, and even quite effective. That said, though, some unlucky rolls on your insanity table can make for some... interesting results, so treat with care. It also gets some psychic abilities and even has no alignment or stat reqs, which is always nice.

Cyber-Knight: Meet the paladin of the future! These guys are psychic, lightsaber-wielding, bionic paladins, basically. Not much more needs to be said. Their rules are on pages 66-70, although a lot of that is occupied by stuff like your Code and your various knockabouts.
If the whole thing about being a paladin doesn’t bother you, this class is quite playable, especially later-on. Unfortunately, you need to have an ME (Mental Endurance) of at least 11 and a PE (Physical Endurance, or ‘Constitution’) of at least 11, and, while in theory Cyber-Knights can be of any alignment, in practice, having to follow their code makes it impossible to rationalise them as being anything other than Principlied (pseudo-LG) or some weird take on Scrupulous (pseudo-CG).

Glitter Boy: Kevin Siembieda basically out-and-out admits that this was HIS class, which makes it subject to a lot of broken fan-wank. Additionally, it has a stupid name, with a stupid gun, based on Bubblegum Crisis, of all things! This class can be found on pages 73-4, and the rules for the Glitter Boy armour are on pages 74-76.
Despite Kevin Siembieda’s most pathetic excuse for bad mechanics ever (which basically reads akin to 'We don't do this balance shit - it's not FUN! And I'm a ROLEplayer, you munchkin [EDITED], and the sun shines out my ass, and I'm orgasming at how awesome I am', except he took about six times as many words to get to the point), this class is out-and-out broken. You start off with a mecha suit which is quite honestly more powerful than almost everything else in this system as a CLASS FEATURE. With this in mind, you do have weaknesses, but very few things can match you in combat at all. You also need at least 10 PP (Physical Prowess, or ‘Dexterity’), but no alignment req.

Note from Sinister: Even though this game is fucking retarded already, I would recommend that this class be banned for obvious reasons in the strongest language I can muster.

Headhunter: These guys are partial cyborg mercenaries, who have fighting skills and implants working together to make awesome. Quite fun, and can be found on pages 77-80. Like the Cyborg, the Bionics Sourcebook can be very useful for these guys.
Truth be told, these guys are fairly mid-range. While all their bionics can make for some very fun going, Cyborgs do have a lot more going for them, which makes these guys limited to stealth/sniping roles if they wanna compete. Even with that all told, it isn’t a bad class to play, and is a lot less of a headache than the Cyborg. It does, however, have a stat req, needing 12s in PP (Physical Prowess, or ‘Dexterity’) and PE (Physical Endurance, or ‘Constitution’).

Juicer: The chemical counterpart of the Crazy, with a really stupid name, because Kevin Siembieda’s definition of ‘cool’ never developed past the 80s. They end up leading very, very short lives due to chemical burnout, but if you wanna play one, they can be found on pages 82-4. There’s a whole book for these guys called Juicer Uprising, which contains a helluva lot of Juicer stuff, but most of the best stuff is on pages 30-61 and 66-88.
Despite their incredibly short and (true to Kev’s philosophy) random lifespan, these guys are very, very solid choices, with incredibly powerful physical stats and survivability. They have no alignment or stat reqs, which makes them a very easy and fun choice. Also, who doesn’t wanna play a mad drug-addicted and powered warrior?

Mercenary Soldier: The Headhunter without bionics, the Juicer without the drugs, and the Crazy without the chips. Essentially, what happens when Joe Human tried to compete with these kinds of guys. Their rules are on pages 85-86, and because Kev can’t be kept from his random, your specialisation is TOTALLY RANDOM. Goddamn it.
As mentioned above, why anyone would wanna play Joe Human with Tricks in a world with actual magic, actual psionics and melee guys relying on chemicals, brain augmentation or bionics is beyond me. The power level of these guys is highly uninspiring, and hence, not recommended. No stat or alignment reqs, though, so whatever.

Robot Pilot: Like the Glitter Boys, but not broken. Surprisingly for anything written by Kevin Siembieda, you can actually CHOOSE whether you have power armour or a giant robot to pilot around, and you can find the rules for these guys on pages 87-8, although a lot of their stuff needs the equipment section to understand properly. Just about every book has more stuff for these guys to drive/pilot, so listing them all here would take far, far too long.
Essentially, these guys aren’t bad at all. While they aren’t as uber as their augmented friends, and certainly pale in comparison to the Glitter Boy, they aren’t too feeble either. A good choice, but hampered by the nasty stat requirements – PS at 10 or more, and PP and PE at 12 or more (read as ‘Strength’ 10 or more, ‘Dex’ and ‘Con’ 12 or more).

Body Fixer: The healbot of the future, because obviously that waste of space needs to exist in everything at least once. In case anyone cares, their rules are on 90-1.
This class blows. Hard. You will not do anything meaningful in any combat, and about the only thing gunning for it is the ability to heal people. Why not get a real job?

City Rat: The rogue of the future, this is basically a sneakier, weedier Headhunter. While most people hardly care, their rules are on pages 91-2.
If you wanna do this class, just play a Headhunter. Seriously, you’ll do a better job that way.

Cyber-Doc: The slightly-less-irrelevant healbot of the future. The fact you can wire yourself and your friends full of funky bionics is what makes this even remotely playable and useful. It can be found on pages 92-4. It would be almost stupid to add that the Bionics Sourcebook is made of sheer win and awesome for you, but I'll add it in case the SAN damage this system has dealt you is starting to affect cognitive ability. Or that Kev's ego stains have finally reached your eyeballs, whichever.
Because they can do cool stuff to themselves and their friends in the way of bionics, this class is a healbot which actually does something else meaningful, so it can be worth playing, if a little noncombat and underpowered.

Rogue Scholar, Rogue Scientist, Operator and Wilderness Scout: These all suck. Trust me, they suck very hard.

Elemental Fusionist: This guy (or girl) is essentially a user of opposed elements to create awesome effects. Unlike most spellcasters in this stupid game, this one is actually pretty darn effective, being able to throw out mega-damage spells at a mere 8 PPE, instead of the 20 or so everyone else expects you to pay up. His rules are on pages 103-7, though most of it is taken up by his unique spells. Additionally, you can find more for these guys in the Book of Magic, specifically the elemental line of spells, on pages 56-88.
Unlike most spellcasters, who are crippled by stupid spell choices that Kev thinks equal an MD rifle, the elemental fusionist can actually compete VERY effectively within a normalised Rifts environment (if such a thing even exists). Therefore, I place this thing as roughly on-par with the Headhunter or the Cyber-Doc – useful, but not amazing. It doesn’t even have any alignment or stat requirements, so why ever not?

Ley Line Walker: These guys are insanely situational mages. Now, if we had remained in core Rifts, they would suck, and quite rightly so. However, with the advent of the Book of Magic, they can actually be quite effective, given the right choices. Thus, their rules can be found on pages 116-9, and their subset class, the Ley Line Rifter, can be found immediately afterward, on pages 119-21. Additionally, the Invocation list in the Book of Magic is absolutely VITAL for these guys, and can be found on pages 88-160.
I had initially dismissed these guys as nearly useless, but it appears that I was wrong. With the introduction of the Book of Magic, these guys can perform mega-damage attacks for a mere FIVE PPE, which is a bargain compared to the twenty or so most magic practitioners have to fork out. Furthermore, you have a very solid acquisition system, which will allow you to select some very good spells. Overall, thanks to that, I would actually put the Ley Line Walker at a power level similar to the Headhunter or the Cyber-Doc. Although you need 10 IQ and 12 PE (“Constitution”), you have no alignment req, which makes getting this class fairly easy.

Mystic: Now, you’d think that something which can use both psionics AND magic would be worth something. Unfortunately, your name is not Kev Siembieda, and you weren't dropped on your head as a child. As-printed, this doesn’t mean much, but, with the advent of the Book of Magic, this class actually becomes quite worthwhile and very versatile. Their rules can be found on pages 121-3, and, of course, the vital part of the Book of Magic for these guys are pages 88-160.
Because they know a lot of abilities, these guys can be very versatile, and now that mega damage costs five PPE and not some fifteen, a major obstacle to caster power has been eliminated. These guys are about as good as a Headhunter overall, and thus, quite worthwhile. For some reason, you need IQ, MA and ME at 9 or higher, but have no alignment req, which means this class is easy enough to go for, and pretty fun, too.

Shifter: Awesome dimensional mages. These guys get some really fun things going for them, but you pretty much have to make a pact with something in order to make a worthwhile character out of these guys. Their (rather long and painful) rules can be found on pages 123-9.
While mages are generally underpowered, and you still get taxed FIFTEEN PPE for doing mega-damage, these guys are actually fairly awesome, as they can provide immense utility and even fairly decent power to their party. Bear in mind, you need ME (‘Will’) and IQ of at least 12 to play one, though. No alignment req either, but some bullshit about magical power and the rifts turning you evil over time. What-fucking-ever, Kev.

Burster: Well, we come to our first psionic class, and it’s damn good. Four ISP for a mega-damage attack is damn good, after all, and the rest of your powers are pretty much exercises in awesome. You can find this guy on pages 142-5.
In all honesty, if you’re gonna play anything with superpowers, this is likely your best (and easiest) bet. They have an easy and cool concept, good powers which don’t cost the earth, and despite their silly name, are fairly fun all-round. No alignment or stat reqs also make me a happy panda, and should do the same to you.

Dog Boy: Cute, funny, but totally useless in any real situation. They are an NPC class – leave them that way.

Mind Melter: These guys are really, very, very powerful. The only thing which makes Bursters compete with them is the fact that their powers are costed much more reasonably, if the word 'reasonably' can be applied anywhere in this stupid system. Their rules can be found on pages 153-4.
Although the be-all and end-all of this class happens to be the Super Psionics list, this is actually not a bad thing, considering some of the cool things you can do that way. It’s worth playing, even if it is costed worse than the Burster, and doesn’t even have any alignment or stat reqs.

Psi-Stalker: These guys are rather interesting, but given that their powers are mostly defensive, they’re not really worth your attention as much as you’d think.

Dragons: BAN THIS WITH GREAT VENGEANCE. Seriously, words cannot express how banned this should be. It seems dragon wang is another thing Kev Siembieda gets off to at night.

Coalition Classes: If you don’t mind playing Space Marines (because obviously plagiarising d20 wasn’t enough for Kev), these classes are all quite workable.

[koz]

Basic Mechanics

The majority of non-combat mechanics are percentile (such as skills). However, for combat, a d20 roll is needed, and Kevin Siembieda needs to get off the cock and back onto his ADD medication. And I’m starting to use abbreviations, ‘cause his stupidity is obviously contagious.

Mega Damage

Basically, 1 mega damage = 100 standard damage, because Kevin Siembieda obviously doesn’t know that ‘mega’ means ‘million’, but what-freaking ever. About the only thing you need to know about it is that if you can deal over 100 standard damage, you can get through MDC (Mega Damage Capacity), but you always round DOWN (thus, 413 standard damage, 431 standard damage, and 499 standard damage ALL equal 4 mega damage), and that it comes off your MDC, not your SDC (even if it is over 100, because it’s ‘better’ that way, or some nonsense like that).

Note from Sinister: Obviously, Kevin Siembieda loves his randomness and doesn’t understand Third Form maths. Make the standard-to-mega conversion round normally, and baby Jesus will stop crying. Also, if you are cool enough to have SDC over 100, let mega-damage come off that, too – it’s not like we’re gonna break this game or anything, it’s already fucking broken.

Skills

Skills are divided into 3 types – OCC Skills (which are essential to your class), OCC Related Skills (which are useful, but not essential to your class) and Secondary Skills (which are not related to your class). You get OCC Skills automatically, and can pick the rest in various ways described in your class. When you get a skill, you start with a fixed percentage chance of success, plus a certain percentage per level, which increases as you gain more levels.
One of the main things to remember about Rifts is that if you don’t have a skill, you cannot test against it at all. Bear this in mind when picking your skills. For a full list of what all skills do, check pages 307-33, and for a summary list, along with the percentages at which skills start and improve, on pages 305-6.

Note from Sinister: Why Kev decided to keep skills on percentiles, even though they are strictly incremented on 5% tiers, is fucking beyond me. It’s obvious the guy can’t design his way out of a wet paper bag, so we’re not gonna do it that way. Simply divide all values by 5, and use a d20. Nice and simple.

Combat

First of all, you have your Initiative, which is basically a straight dice-off. Unlike in DnD, Rifts initiative must be rerolled every round, which is weird, but kinda decent. Rifts combat rounds also last 15 seconds, not 10, but unlike DnD’s action economy, how much you can achieve in a round is down to your level directly.
When you roll an attack roll, anything under a 5 automatically misses. If your opponent is wearing SDC armour, you also have to beat its AR (Armour Rating) to hit the guy. However, with MDC armour, you just take the hit like a man, as they don’t provide ARs. After this, the guy hit can choose to parry, block or entangle, to try and prevent the damage (which involves beating the roll used to hit you) and/or ‘rolling with the damage’, which reduces how much you take.
For how all this crazy stuff works, see pages 347-50, which describe all the stuff that people can actually do in combat, alphabetically. 350-56 describes how many actions you actually get, depending on which fighting style you’ve been taught. Ranged combat is on pages 363-8, and psychic combat, if it ever comes up, is on pages 369-71. Each of these works similarly to the melee model, just with more modifiers.

[NineInchNall]

Aww! No sourcebook wankery? Come on, man, I needs me some Phase World.

[shau]

A few notes:

Magic struggles to do decent damage but spells can do a lot of crazy crap like give you an extra layer of MDC armor or glue an entire football field's worth of enemies to the ground with no save. Since powerful guns are everywhere the logical thing to do is save your magic points for defense and awesome effects and just shoot people with a gun.

I would say headhunters are pretty below average (read: their class features do not give them mounds of extra MDC body armor or lots of extra attacks) but in one of the sourcebooks there's a version who is based around playing grand theft auto with giant robots. That's pretty cool.

Operators are really powerful actually. Your powers are all houseruled because the game never supplies info on what you are supposed to do as a mechanic. Still, you have a pretty good argument that you should be able to repair stuff when it breaks. Also, there are several in game examples of vehicles that have weapons that fire simultaneously for the damage of each of therm combined. Using this same principle, you can just glue a bunch of guns together to make one unstoppable gun. No sane DM will allow this, but hey you are playing RIFTS you clearly don't have a sane DM. Also they have the any vehicle feature, which will be discussed below.

A lot of classes start with a vehicle of the player's choice. That means any vehicle. It could be a flying motorcycle. It could be an armored van. It could be one of the coalition's spider tanks. It could be glitterboy armor. It could even be the Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, which has been stated out for you in Palladium's Robotech books.

Wasn't there some sort of steampunk class? Techno Wizard?

The combat system has a bunch of craziness. Major points I remember are:

Being a skilled boxer grants an extra attack. Even if you attack by firing a sniper rifle or pressing a button that makes your robot shoot missiles.

People in suits (like glitterboys) get a crap load of extra attacks. So not only do they have more armor and more damaging weapons, but they will be firing those more frequently. This pretty much puts pilots in a class by themselves.

[Sir Neil]

I hate to interrupt a good rant with facts, but:

"Rifts uses a ‘wound/vitality’ system, except it’s given weird names, because according to Kevin Siembieda, d20 is the devil...."

Is kind of backwards. IIRC, the first d20 wound/vitality system was Star Wars OCR in 200X -- K Dawg has been rockin' his system since the 80's.

Originally, Rifts was named Boomers, after the GB Boom Gun.

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah everything I read about Rifts just makes me think how horrible it is.

[Talisman]

I hate to interrupt a good rant with facts, but:

"Rifts uses a ‘wound/vitality’ system, except it’s given weird names, because according to Kevin Siembieda, d20 is the devil...."

Is kind of backwards. IIRC, the first d20 wound/vitality system was Star Wars OCR in 200X -- K Dawg has been rockin' his system since the 80's.

Originally, Rifts was named Boomers, after the GB Boom Gun.

I'm pretty sure K-Dawg (great name, BTW) wasn't ripping off 3.x. He was ripping of AD&D 1st edition.

[Koumei]

I'll add in my 5 credits...

Dragons: not as broken as you think. In Rifts, if you're not an MDC creature, you had better have huge and/or regenerating MDC armour, otherwise one hit kills you. Dragons are regenerating MDC creatures. Also they can deal MD (important) and can fly (not important in Rifts). They have some cute tricks as well, and most of them are shitty psionics (but better than nothing) and casters who basically have to buy all their spells.

Skills: they don't all upgrade at +5 per level. Some have increments of 3 or 4 or 6. And why? Just to be annoying. Also, no mention is made on what to do for contested rolls.

MDC: If you deal MD to an SDC creature it DOES come off SDC. What happens is first you deal (MD*100) damage, then you round their remaining SDC/HP down. Yes, that's right. If someone has 210 SDC and you deal 2 MD, they're left on zero. If their total SDC + HP is 199 or less, they can't actually survive a single point of MD. You hit them, everything pauses, and suddenly <~DESTROYED~> comes up on the screen.

You can't actually have SDC and MDC, with the exception of wearing armour. An SDC creature can wear MDC armour/forcefields, in which case it's basically "Fight as normal (with immunity to the SD attacks that no-one is using) until your armour/field is gone. The next hit destroys you, game over."

One stupid exception to that is the Cyber Knight. They have subdermal MDC armour plating. Basically, you need to roll X or higher to hit them. This means that:

1. You attack them with an SD attack (you won't ever do this, but let's pretend), and either roll low and do nothing, or roll high and hurt them normally.

or 2. You attack them with an MD attack, and either roll low and hurt the armour, or roll high and kill them in one hit.

Dog Boys and Psi Stalkers: as of some random book or another, it's basically agreed that they're just races, and you pick an OCC like everyone else, except you get their racial traits as well (and they have certain restrictions like "Can't be a magic user"). Dogboy Burster "Hellhounds" for the motherfucking win! Psi-stalkers can even be a special type of Juicer, the Psycho-Stalker, that can transform into a MD creature. Which'd be cool, but they also win a free loyalty-bomb, and you could just be a human Mega Juicer instead, and be an MD creature without spending huge wads of ISP.

[Josh_Kablack]

Not to disagree with your analysis, but only to correct your assumptions about the history of the game:

What you need to understand is that Palladium Fantasy was the rip-off of 1st ed AD&D. And you would not be insane to think that it was in many ways better than 1st ed AD&D.

Then Beyond the Supernatural (PPE, ISP), Heroes Unlimited (SDC), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Martial Arts by Level) and the Robotech (MDC) games added more "modern" mechanics to the Palladium Fantasy System.

RIFTS (the second printing on my bookshelf is from September 1990) was the attempt to unify these varied mechanics into a coherent whole with a setting that could support (or at least attempt to explain) them all.

Thus system was crazy-go-nut frankenpatched into existence back when John Tweet and Mark Rein Hagan were still developing Ars Magica (first edition) and Monte Cook was an unknown at Iron Crown Enterprises. Claiming that it ripped off d20 betrays a lack of basic knowledge of the hobby as a whole.

[koz]

Thanks guys, but in my own defence, this isn't really lack of historical knowledge - I was ranting pretty hardcore, and I'm dealing with people who know less about it than me. I was making those claims more for a funny comparison rather than as a factual basis for anything.

But you do have valid points.

[Psychic Robot]

Can we have more rage soon?

[koz]

Unfortunately, PR, my rage isn't easy to motivate. But I'll see what I can do.

[Ganbare Gincun]

I hate to admit it, but when I was younger, I participated in a few Rifts campaigns. And they all turned out pretty badly for the most part. Nothing quite like a game world where the party usually consists of an incoherent mish-mash of giant robots, supernatural creatures, and anime characters. And as soon as a new sourcebook would come out with more powerful races/classes/weapons, sure enough everyone would either upgrade or re-roll new characters altogether...

[Psychic Robot]

Ain't nothing wrong with playing a junky system. Only thing wrong is publishing it.

[koz]

Ain't nothing wrong with playing a junky system. Only thing wrong is publishing it.

Or going fanwanky on it.

[Jinerviet]

Unfortunately, PR, my rage isn't easy to motivate. But I'll see what I can do.

[Koumei]

I have played online campaigns. They rarely last, because something about Rifts draws the worst crowd.

Firstly, there's the same 5-10 people joining all of them (possibly because games are few). In some cases, using the exact same characters in each game.

Next, some of these players just don't get along with each other, and never will. Some of them just don't get along with anyone, and shouldn't be playing cooperative games.

Then, even if there is a dream team of players, people always end up somehow devolving into in-party conflict which ends up killing half the group. Or everyone just loses interest.

One exception is a pretty cool GM who manages to screen people out, remind people not to be dickheads and keep it all together. His games tend to last, though even then there have been a few problem characters/players.

Another note about Rifts:
Ohmygodtherearesomanyclasseswhatisthisidon'teven-

No really. Every book will have its own cyborg variant (which needs its own OCC apparently), wilderness scout/hobo, actual NPC dude, psychic of some kind, random mage of some kind. Some even add their own juicer or crazy variants.

Keeping with the "Every country became a desolate wasteland filled with monsters, except for a couple of built-up cities, and is inexplicably filled with stereotypes and monsters from its folklore", Rifts: Japan is hilarious. Yes, it IS worse than any other "This game... IN JAPAN!" supplement. There are Ninja Juicers, Ninja Crazies, and Ninja Cyborgs. As well as regular Mystic Ninjas.

And generally, if something isn't meant to be a PC (because it's too evil - rarely a limiting factor, and problematic because a lot of the coolest things happen to be in this category - or because it's too powerful even by Rifts standards (lol wut?)) then there might be a single line saying "You shouldn't let players play this" or "Think about it first". Or it might say "NPC and Optional OCC". That's right. At the end of the day, "Standard straight-from-the-books" and "NPC only" are divided only by what you can talk your DM into.

My record, personally, was a Lizard Mage - a few hundred MDC with fast regen, thousands of PPE (yes, normal casters get a few hundred maybe), and something like "level 8 spellcasting as ________ and level 6 spellcasting as ________" where _____ can be any type of mage. And if you choose Techno-Wizard for one of them, you get the secrets of Rune Magic (the big special evil secret thing) and some Greater Rune Weapons. Just because.

It's ridiculous. I wouldn't allow it personally, and I was joking about the request, but when he said "Yeah okay, the power scale has been ramping up so much, it can't do much more harm if you promise you'll play nice and, if necessary, keep the troublemakers in line." well...

[Username17]

Our record was a ninja group of mutant wolverines from the moon who had power armor that was also from the moon. I played a lava warlock mutant anthro-wolverine in power armor. From the moon.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

What exactly was the point of all of the wolverines and moon and power armor and lava and warlocks?

[Username17]

What exactly was the point of all of the wolverines and moon and power armor and lava and warlocks?

That any time any character in the team got bonus die on any of their stats, every character gained an extra die on that stat? We all ended up with PEs in the fifties.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Hahaha, that's awesome. Craziest thing I've seen played would be an Amorph. It's a blob that can change forms, but these forms can have basically any size, but retain the same few kg of weight. So it could turn into a blimp, and float along because it's blimp-sized with big air-catchers and weighs only a few kg. Then it could turn into a needle that weighs the same, and drive itself through enemies at a crazy terminal velocity.

I have yet to convince people to play the TMNT game. I own it and it's awesome in a crazy "Let's have fun and switch our brains off!" kind of way. "Adolescent Altered Aikido Anteaters!"

Also, it's worth pointing out that stats are bullshit: it used to be "1-16 = nothing, 17+ grants bonuses (see chart)". Now, it's what, 9-15 = nothing, 16 is a very small bonus (you can have a 16 on its own by rolling lower then boosting it with skills - some skills improve your stats), less than 9 can give penalties or in one case a penalty-bonus trade-off, and 17+ gives bonuses, look on the chart."

Seriously, there is no difference between 10 and 15. There is, however, a difference between 17 and 18. This encourages people to roll all their dice in one heap, then pick them out in groups that allow for as many 16+ results as possible (and won't you just love 4drop1 with that method!)

A 50 in PE on the other hand is huge amounts of HP in non-Rifts, and for an MDC creature in Rifts it's usually a lot of that. And a lot of PPE for spells/weird natural powers. And "I never fail a save against Poison, Magic or Disease, or my Coma/Death check".

Oh, and Speed won't actually do anything at any rating. It never comes up, as there is no battlemap and everything is basically always in range, and it doesn't affect any combat stat. Now, things that are supposed to be fast get handed extra attacks, dodge bonuses and Initiative bonuses, and they also have a high speed, but the two aren't linked - if you just get a Speed that high, you get none of the bonuses.

Seriously, when playing Rifts, just write numbers, ANY numbers, down on your sheet. List some cool equipment or abilities, along with what they do and what any relevant numbers are, and you're golden.

[Dog_O_War]

A few notes on this game; the Juicer is not a solid choice. The rules of this game make it abundantly apparent. Their ability to dodge anything is negated both by the "-10" rule and by simultaineous strikes. That is, if you so wish you can completely ignore the initiative system and declare a "simultaineous strike" on any opponent that is attacking you.

To further break this down, That Juicer that is attacking you with his vibro-claw has rolled a 20 for initiative and has a bonus of say, +30 (not actually possible without a retardedly high stat, but...) and you are a hobo with an MD grenade and some piece-meal MD armour that rolled a 1 and have no bonus.

You declare "simultaineous strike" and go at the same time as him, pop your grenade and basically make it so that initiative meant nothing, and he now cannot dodge the attack. Yay.

Also, you will survive the attack as even if the attack does more MD than your armour has, you get what has been coined the "G.I.Joe" rule - that is, your armour (no matter how damaged) will completely absorb all the damage of any single attack before it falls off - even if it had 1 MD left on it and you got slammed for a boomgun crit of 360 MD.

Also note that Powered Armour (such as the Glitterboy) offer no prowl penalty at all. I couldn't find it in any of the books anywhere, so you might as well forgo normal armour and just wear PA; if you have the skills, you also get more attacks than that juicer, as well as better bonuses by level 3 (this is done by taking robot combat: elite).

Next is the borkeness (not misspelled - the game is so broken even broken gets borked) of magic. Carpet of Adhesion is the mages' "I win" spell in this game.
Deadly attack-fighter heading in for a strafing run? CoA it's front turbine.
Charging Rhino-Buffalo? CoA its feet.
Wired Gunslinger about to draw and kill you with his crack-shots? CoA his gun to his holster.

No door, wall, or being can withstand the force of the vibro-knife. That is, even a tank can be killed with a knife in this game; alls it takes is time. If you can punch for mega-damage (even 1 point), you can beat to death a Firestorm Mobile Fortress (a super-hover tank with more than 5000 MD). It just takes time.

***

Semi-Final note (this one is quite possibly my biggest aggrivation of the game)
Prepare for the dumbest round-robin attack-scheme of your life. See, a Juicer is perported to be quick as lightning and super-HC. Yet when he rolls initiative (and isn't rendered trivial with simultaineous strikes), he still must suffer the flaw of the round-robin.

Normally a Juicer has about 6-7 attacks per round (assuming he's taken boxing. And honestly, why wouldn't you?), but against even trivial opponents (those without any hand to hand skill. They have one attack), he still must perform 1 attack, then allow any and all opponents 1 attack each before he can perform another.
An example;
This Juicer gets jumped in an alley by 5 vagabonds (Rifts version of the hobo - and playable. Now with "Eyeball a fella" feature); he's likely to go first and punches (and kills) one. Then the remaining 4 get their 1 attack. Then the Juicer gets his remaining 5-6 attacks. This is the very essence of retarded.

The final note; Play a Headhunter. They get both ample MD, and the more important large cache of weapons. The book offers you one weapon per weapon proficiency for this OCC. You can take a bunch of different guns, and basically jury-rig them all together to create a super-weapon (also known as the Ork Supakustom Mastablasta). You're basically duct-taping your weapons together and having them all fire at once. With the proper selection of guns, you can do more damage than a boomgun (at a fraction of the range unfortunately), but it's a lighter, more efficient tool than the railguns available.

Also, if anyone remembers a thread over on the WotC boards titled "3d4 damage" where the OP had a stick-figure picture of a guy with a broomstick with three daggers on it. This is entirely possible and effective in this game.

[RandomCasualty2]

You declare "simultaineous strike" and go at the same time as him, pop your grenade and basically make it so that initiative meant nothing, and he now cannot dodge the attack. Yay.

Also, you will survive the attack as even if the attack does more MD than your armour has, you get what has been coined the "G.I.Joe" rule - that is, your armour (no matter how damaged) will completely absorb all the damage of any single attack before it falls off - even if it had 1 MD left on it and you got slammed for a boomgun crit of 360 MD.

Wow... Rifts sounds so horrible.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hahaha, that's awesome. Craziest thing I've seen played would be an Amorph. It's a blob that can change forms, but these forms can have basically any size, but retain the same few kg of weight. So it could turn into a blimp, and float along because it's blimp-sized with big air-catchers and weighs only a few kg. Then it could turn into a needle that weighs the same, and drive itself through enemies at a crazy terminal velocity.

I ... actually made up an amorph character for a free-form RP board (megatokyo's RP boards. >_>) a long time ago. Well before I had even begun reading Schlockmercenary.

I want to look up a pdf of Psyscape, since that's where amorphs are statted out.

Ok... so... I found something out, except that the person playing the amorph described their character as.... well.... a teal furred/haired anthro ferret-girl in daisy dukes. Who also migh look like a vumpire, and hab dragorns on an armlet, on her arme! Ugh.

At least I got a list of what the RCC abilities of an Amorph are. This is more like a "psionic" critter that can astral travel.

Which doesn't really fit in with what I want. however it gives me a good baseline in terms of "power"; the "silicate" creature that I was playing had a deep and terrible fear of magic (and just touching extremely supernatural creatures would just melt the amorph; by extremely supernatural, I'm talking about say a fey whose skin burns when they touch iron, not a centaur or just a mage).

edit: also, Psyscape is pretty crazy, including things that are... both Psi-Stalker and Juicer; and are a rip-off of the Predator race/idea.

Frank, were the werewolves from the moon "Zenith Moon Warpers"? or something else? The intro description alone for them seems to suggest that they were (they only work with others of the same race), or was it something else?