I've been pondering the badwrongfun of Rifts, and what lessons can be learned from it for d20. Since I do think it has a number of good points in there - things that modern day designers seem to be butting their heads against going "argh!" a lot. Below I've starting doing some insane crossbreeding to arrive at something that's maybe 30% Rifts, 30% D&D 3.x, and 40% something else. Posting what I currently have below.

The six attributes are:
Strength:
Dexterity:
Constitution:
Intelligence:
Wisdom:
Charisma:

A character starts receiving attribute bonuses on skill rolls at a score of 16 (+1), and then a further +1 for each 3 points beyond that.
For example, a character with a 22 attribute has a +3 modifier.
Low ability scores are deliberately not penalized further - the intent being to make these an interesting role-playing experience if they don't handicap a character too badly.

To determine scores either roll them (4d6 drop lowest in order - if you really must, exchange any two rolls), plus 3d6 merit points, or split 80 points across the 6, with a stat point being worth 2 merit points.
If you're going random you may as well go mostly random; the switch hopefully prevents something you really didn't want happening if you can't stand, say, low Charisma characters, but allowing full rearrangement means a "set" has much less individuality, only magnitude.

A GM could also enforce a balanced random result by rolling on the table below - each of these adds to 80, so they're balanced as well as random. For ultra-randomness, roll dice to see which stat each number goes to (roll d6 for the first, d5 for the second, d4 for the third number, and so on - counting down the stat list and skipping stats that are already assigned). This is going to be slower than normal random generation, but at least still gives you a random starting point if you're lost for character ideas.

1)  18,16,10,13,11,8   - 8 merit points
2) 16,13,15,16,10,10   - 0 merit points
3) 15,15,15,12,11,9     - 4 merit points
4) 18,16,16,14,12, 4   - 0 merit points
5) 16,16,13,12,11,10  - 4 merit points
6) 11,13,10,13,14,16  - 6 merit points


Secondary statistics:
Speed: this is treated just like other scores, but starts at a base of 10 for most characters (unusual races may have different Speed scores.).

Hit Points: make a Constitution check (Constitution + d10, 10s explode). This gives your initial hit points. Each level advanced you may re-roll this Constitution check entirely, with your new score replacing the old one - except that you can't increase your hit points by more than +5 per level.


Skills, Attacks and Saves:
The core system is a roll of d20 + skill modifier + stat modifier (if any) + miscellaneous bonuses.

Attributes

Attribute scores largely modify attribute checks. These deliberately use a slightly different system to ensure that every attribute point does something useful.
For these, roll a d10 and adding this to the character's attribute score. E.g. if your Strength is 17, and you roll a 5, your attribute check result is a 22.
At GM option, 10s may explode (roll again and add) while 1s roll again and subtract.

Merits
Merits may modify a character's exact attribute scores - this applies for the purpose of both skills and closely related attribute checks, or for one derived attribute, or to negate a specific penalty.
Merits help to limit the dead spots in the 3.x ability score progression (which I've actually sort of worsened here by trying to slow down the bonus accumulation).
For example, a character is normally at -6 to Dexterity when using their off-hand (so -2 to hit and a serious penalty on raw attribute checks); putting 6 merit points into Dex negates the off-hand penalty.
Likewise a character could add Merit points to CON for the purpose of hit points, or merit points to an attribute for a given skill group - a base score of 14 with 2 merit points becomes a 16 for that task, giving a +1 on those checks.


Skills:
Skills (instead of scaling heavily into infinite DCs, are divided into tiers of complexity with fairly limited range of DCs.
To see why we've done this, compare a standard D20 System character. They might just have a "Mechanics" skill which they would use for anything mechanical: fix a watch at DC 10, fix a car engine at DC 20, design an aeroplane at DC 30 or build a time machine out of old aluminium cans at DC 40. Having the one skill to cover all these things puts them at very different DCs, if you don't want watch repairmen to also be building time machines.
Here, these all become different, specific, mechanical skills.  What this means is that a character can be capable of doing advanced tasks relating to their character concept by taking the advanced skills, without their bonus on simpler tasks going off the scale. This limits problems with check DCs needing to be "level-appropriate" as characters escalate to ever-higher levels of experience - the "always fighting orcs" problem.

Likewise, computer operation is divided into operation, programming and hacking; traps is divided into Normal Traps and Spell Traps.


The problem with very specific skill lists is usually that it takes forever to build a character. Here you get only a few skills (10) initially, but rapidly learn more as your level increases (you gain an additional 3 skills per level). Before learning a level-2 skill, you must have a level-1 skill from that skill group.

Knowing a skill grants a competency bonus of +5; this does not stack with any other items or powers granting compency bonuses. Level advancement lets a character add bonus skill points: when you're satisfied that you're now the greatest climber/lock picker/mechanical engineer in the world, you can stop increasing that skill and move on to something else. Levels in the game exist mostly to track combat ability and a character's general abilities, without it being assumed that a character can do anything at balanced effectiveness - and many parts of the game don't involve the skills subsystem in any case.


Skills List (under construction)

There are no social skills which directly control an NPCs behaviour. In general either roleplay this, or, if uncertain of the outcome use a Charisma ability roll (Charisma + d10). Skills such as "Etiquette" (letting a character know appropriate social graces for, say, meeting the king) can exist and be useful, but should act as an adjunct to roleplaying rather than replacing it.

L1 - Computer Operation; L2 - Computer Programming; L3 - Computer Hacking      ---Int
L1- Basic Mechanics; L2-Mechanical Engineer; L2-Auto Mechanics; L3-   ??   ---Int
L1-Basic Traps; L2-Spell Traps                                    ---Wis
L1-Lockpicking                                    ---Dex

I cannot resist a good "let's fix Palladium!" thread.

The Pundit's fix is a good starting point for me. Can't say I'm a fan of the Palladium skill categories as written, though. Communications includes Radio skills, and Dancing. Technical includes Computer Programming, and Faerie Lore.

Also, I like the idea of porting over the d20 + modifiers vs. DC mechanic for Rifts skills. Much as I love percentile-based systems, in Palladium's case it's a pain in the ass to keep track of every different starting percentage and progression.

I don't like the idea of Merits, though.

Here's a rough outline for a Rifts skill list:

Athletics (all Physical skills, except hand-to-hand combat and prowl)

Communications (all tech-based Communications skills)

Computer (all computer skills)

Culture (anthropology, archeology, etc.)

Demolitions

Electronics (all Electrical skills)

Lore (all lore skills)

Mechanics (all Mechanical skills)

Medic (all Medical skills)

Performance (dancing, singing, play instrument, etc.)

Riding (all Horsemanship skills)

Science (all hard Science skills)

Stealth (prowl)

Survival (all Wilderness skills)

Thievery (all Rogue skills, except Computer Hacking)

Tradecraft (all Espionage skills)

Give each OCC/RCC a set number of skill points and divide to taste.

Not sure how to handle attribute modifiers, though. Switching to a d20 bonus scheme is tempting, though.

Arrrgh, dammit, if someone went through the trouble of re-editing the damn books I wouldn't be bothering with this on the first place. Why can't we have us some nice level-by-level tables? :mad:

Quote from: The Butcher;514788I cannot resist a good "let's fix Palladium!" thread.

Hurrah!

On merits, maybe the idea is too fiddly/annoying.  D20's method of only getting bonuses every other point or so annoys me, but maybe attribute checks as I did them above plugs that anyway.
I'll kill the idea for the moment.

Yeah the %s get annoying...as I noticed again playing some Rifts online recently...I think d20 fixes that. There's something to be said for consistency in mechanics too, so you can do stuff like roll Drive vs. Dodge when trying to run people over

I saw Pundits thread, but I actually like having tons and tons of discrete skills.  Admitted six different Radio skills is going a bit far, but as I was trying to explain (probably badly) above, I think having lots of different skills helps the problem D&D has (particularly 4E, or B.T.s skill system down below) where you put up all your skills up only to have the GM just put up the DCs to keep them "level appropriate".

Oh, and I believe there was a thread over on the Palladium site a month or two back where they were getting people's inputs into fixing mechanics? I don't know how that panned out, but maybe there will be a revised Palladium someday...

The problem with fiddling with the skill system is that you'll have to adapt whatever changes you implement to every. Single. Class. (30 in the main book alone, for those who are wondering)

Kevin Siembieda, are you reading this? Put some nice tables on your next revision of Rifts and I'll buy it. Character level x skill rating.

Also give starting percentages for each skill in the class descriptions. Instead of, say, Computer Operation (+15%), try Computer Operation 55% (or whatever it adds up to).

Anything to reduce the back-and-forth flipping through the book that painfully hinders chargen.

Shift to d20 additive system would mean wouldn't have to do individual skills - just give them all the same bonus and let the GM set the DC as appropriate ? Perhaps a +1 bonus per level of skill.

I don't think I can resist fiddling with OCCs as well, anyway. I loved Palladium Fantasy's system where you could pick up several OCCs (my character in one long-running game of that that ended up with about four, including one we made up ourselves).
Wondering if that would work for Rifts, even make it a bit more excessive so that it looks like WHFR careers. So the guy who's a Military Specialist might have levels in say, Grunt and/or Officer as well, then have multiclassed into that. There are a couple of OCCs that already sort of do that (e.g. T-man or Borg) but it might be fun to kick it up a notch.