Quote from: Spinachcat;835347My campaign takes place in the Valhalla Nebula, a collection of cold planets with Norse gods getting whacked by Mechanoids and their giant bug allies.

Oh, I want to play in that game, like NOW!

I'd say they got Pantheons of the Megaverse right. I don't play Rifts, but I bought the book on the strength of this review, and I agree with it 100%. Even if you don't play the RPG, this book is an excellent presentation of deities as dynamic, active characters in a game world.

Quote from: The Butcher;837197It's been a while, but IIRC, MDC supposedly does not use AR. If you have a 30 MDC bionic limb amd get shot by a laser pistol while naked, damage is applied to the limb before you get vaporized. Cyber-armor is a very specific exception, having an AR of 16, meaning a metal arm protects you better than subdermal metal plates implanted all over your body specifically to protect you; classic Rifts.

Actually, it is always, as far as I recall, been to "apply to armor first," as written in the books. So, MD wouldn't automatically apply to the bionic arm, since it isn't armor. That would only occur with a successful parry attempt and GM handwaving.

The Ultimate Edition of Rifts though, made ALL MD, no matter how much, apply to armor only from a single attack. Meaning, as written, hitting someone in Plastic Man body armor with a shot from a Boom Gun doing full damage, only damages the armor, leaving the now-prone and armorless person unscathed. Which is dumb.

Is only the Palladium FRPG 1ed revised on Drivethru? I can't seem to find the 2ed

Quote from: Scutter;837340Is only the Palladium FRPG 1ed revised on Drivethru? I can't seem to find the 2ed

I dunno but they seem to be a dime a dozen on the used book shelves.

Quote from: Scutter;837340Is only the Palladium FRPG 1ed revised on Drivethru? I can't seem to find the 2ed

I don't think they do.  I believe it's only first edition books of their game lines- 1st ed Palladium Rpg, 1st ed Rifts, ect.

Quote from: RunningLaser;837671I don't think they do.  I believe it's only first edition books of their game lines- 1st ed Palladium Rpg, 1st ed Rifts, ect.

i.e. only the books the company no longer sells (palladium keeps a huge backlot of it's own titles).

Quote from: Matt;837669I dunno but they seem to be a dime a dozen on the used book shelves.

Currently its mainly out of print titles but they have recently announced they are working on making a much larger collection of their books available on DriveThruRPG.

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=784:palladium-booksr-weekly-update-may-28-2015&catid=52:weekly-updates&Itemid=183

QuoteMeanwhile, Alex Marciniszyn has been put in charge of scanning the entire Palladium library of books for future release in PDF form. To insure high quality, Alex is scanning book pages from the original "paste-up" pages/keylines and digitally cleaning them. It's a time consuming process, but the pages are flawless. This means a much wider range of PDFs will be made available in the months ahead from Palladium Books and DriveThruRPG.com. Will Palladium offer PDFs of new releases when they release print titles? We haven't decided yet, but we're considering it. And have a few ideas on the matter.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;837160The thing that I'm confused about with the massive SDC/ MDC thing is what happens to AR in this case since MDC objects don't have an AR. I mean, theoretically, I've never seen it come up but if your missile does say 250 SDC, if this is 'equivalent' to MDC does it ignore AR the way a real MDC attack does? Or should you pull out the Conversion Book and give the MD target an AR? And if not, should it also then ignore AR on SDC targets ?

You ignore AR.  MDC objects don't have AR; the MDC quality supplants that, as any result of less than 100sdc does no damage at all.

No one seems to quite get my complaint.

I'll try explaining better.

Quote from: original Rifts, page 11Typically, only a mega-damage weapon can harm a MDC structure. SDC missiles and explosives that inflict over 100 SDC points of damage do inflict the equivalent of mega-damage. In these rare cases, approximately every 100 SDC points of damage equals one mega-damage point. Always round down SC damage. For example: a missile that inflicts 450 SDC equals 4 MD.

So it says equivalent to, it doesn't say that its exactly equal to mega-damage. The question being AR.

Say we take two of the 450 damage missiles above and shoot them at different targets - an SDC target with a natural AR and a MD target.
Say a martial artist with Wrist Hardening (4 MDC according to the Conversion Book) and a Ninja Turtle with AR 14 and 120 SDC (something like that - I don't have the book).
For the sake of the example, assume strike rolls of 11 for both attacks and no one dodges.

There's three ways to run it that I can see; I don't think the book really says.
-have the MDC guy vapourize while the SDC target is unaffected (attack didn't get past AR).
-rule that if 100 SDC equals 1 MD, the AR is also automatically bypassed. So both of them vapourize.
-give the MDC target an AR in this case, maybe using the Conversion Book.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;838045There's three ways to run it that I can see; I don't think the book really says.
-have the MDC guy vapourize while the SDC target is unaffected (attack didn't get past AR).
-rule that if 100 SDC equals 1 MD, the AR is also automatically bypassed. So both of them vapourize.
-give the MDC target an AR in this case, maybe using the Conversion Book.

None of the above.

Mdc guy takes 4 md, and 50 sd (the 4 md comes from the wrist hardening, the 50 sd comes from hit points and sdc).  You could rule that the 4 mdc armor absorbs the 50 extra damage when it ablates, but that is not btb.

Ninja Turtle's armor takes 450 sd points (because the attack did not exceed the AR, and was above a roll of 4, it damages the armor), anything over and above the armor's sd capacity(assuming said armor is below 450 sdc) damages the turtle, probably killing it.

MDC armor does not have an AR, except in specific (I think the cyber knight) situations.  If it does have AR, it works the same (AR would determine whether the armor or the victim takes the damage).

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;838045So it says equivalent to, it doesn't say that its exactly equal to mega-damage.

Also, this is a Palladium book, not a text book.  You can't pick apart words in the Palladium universe to try and rules lawyer or nit pick things.  If it says equivalent it means the same, at least in this context.  You are thinking too hard about this.  Simplify.

Quote from: Bloodwolf;838046None of the above.

Mdc guy takes 4 md, and 50 sd (the 4 md comes from the wrist hardening, the 50 sd comes from hit points and sdc).  You could rule that the 4 mdc armor absorbs the 50 extra damage when it ablates, but that is not btb.

Ninja Turtle's armor takes 450 sd points (because the attack did not exceed the AR, and was above a roll of 4, it damages the armor), anything over and above the armor's sd capacity(assuming said armor is below 450 sdc) damages the turtle, probably killing it.

MDC armor does not have an AR, except in specific (I think the cyber knight) situations.  If it does have AR, it works the same (AR would determine whether the armor or the victim takes the damage).

Well no, natural AR (as opposed to body armour) negates damage unless the roll equals or exceeds the AR.

I hadn't considered keeping the other guy's 'natural' SDC and hit points as extra points. Maybe, though the MDC rules generally say that MDC creatures do not also have SDC.  The hit points potentially are kept separate (its clear that T-men do that, for instance, since they're MDC but take damage 'direct to hit points' when animal or monster tattoos are destroyed) but 50 points is going to wipe most people's raw HPs.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;838045Say we take two of the 450 damage missiles above and shoot them at different targets - an SDC target with a natural AR and a MD target.
Say a martial artist with Wrist Hardening (4 MDC according to the Conversion Book) and a Ninja Turtle with AR 14 and 120 SDC (something like that - I don't have the book).

Palladium made this conversation and many easily weirder conversations seem commonplace.

That alone is worth the price of the books to me.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;838045No one seems to quite get my complaint.

I'll try explaining better.



So it says equivalent to, it doesn't say that its exactly equal to mega-damage. The question being AR.

Say we take two of the 450 damage missiles above and shoot them at different targets - an SDC target with a natural AR and a MD target.
Say a martial artist with Wrist Hardening (4 MDC according to the Conversion Book) and a Ninja Turtle with AR 14 and 120 SDC (something like that - I don't have the book).
For the sake of the example, assume strike rolls of 11 for both attacks and no one dodges.

There's three ways to run it that I can see; I don't think the book really says.
-have the MDC guy vapourize while the SDC target is unaffected (attack didn't get past AR).
-rule that if 100 SDC equals 1 MD, the AR is also automatically bypassed. So both of them vapourize.
-give the MDC target an AR in this case, maybe using the Conversion Book.

The way the rules work is this.

Two 450 SDC missiles strike an MDC target.  SDC is always rounded down when converting to MDC, so each missile does 4 MD.  The 4 MDC target is struck by 8 MDC and is blasted through.

Rifts Ultimate Edition, page 288.  It is also clarified in Rifts Conversion Book 1e, page 26.


The two 450 SDC missiles strike a SDC target with natural AR.  The roll is not over the AR.  The rules for natural armor say the missiles do no damage.  The fact that 900 SDC damage is done is irrelevant because the damage is natively SDC and Natural AR is present.

Rifts does not have the rules for Natural AR in the corebook that I could find, but Heroes Unlimited second edition clearly states on page 18 that an attack roll under the Natural AR does no damage.  Beyond that, the only important thing here is that the damage for the missiles is specified as SDC.  Since they are not natively MD inflicting, they do not ignore AR.


If the damage for the missiles was specified as MD, then things would be different.  Let's say the two missiles do 1d8 MD each, and the SDC target had an natural AR of 18 and 899 SDC.  Each of the two missiles does 4 MD for a total of 8.  This would completely vaporize the target because damage capacity of an SDC target is always rounded down when resisting MD.

Rifts Ultimate Edition omits the mention of how MD weapons interact with AR targets, but the original Rifts corebook states clearly on page 39 that MD weapons ignore AR completely.  This is also stated in an example on the previous page.

Rounding down SDC structures when hit by MD weapons is another thing not specified in Rifts Ultimate Edition that I can find, but it is specified in the original Rifts corebook on page 12.