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I notice its one of the biggest areas of complaint about Palladium, but I find it brilliant.

Does anyone else agree?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;351840I notice its one of the biggest areas of complaint about Palladium, but I find it brilliant.

Does anyone else agree?

RPGPundit

I always thought it was pretty simple and straightforward (note: I only ever tinkered with the Robotech RPG) - 1000 SDC might equal 1 MDC, but no matter how many SDC you do to a tank (with a baseball bat) you're never going to damage it in any significant way.

Other games seem to have a severe balancing problem with that; for example, in Mechwarrior, you have a not-unbelievable chance of destroying a Battlemech with a single shot from a heavy pistol (damage on a 2-12, assume center torso possible critical, 3 crits, engine-engine-engine).

Quote from: thedungeondelver;351843I always thought it was pretty simple and straightforward (note: I only ever tinkered with the Robotech RPG) - 1000 SDC might equal 1 MDC, but no matter how many SDC you do to a tank (with a baseball bat) you're never going to damage it in any significant way.

This is a great example of how it is supposed to work in play

Quote from: thedungeondelver;351843Other games seem to have a severe balancing problem with that; for example, in Mechwarrior, you have a not-unbelievable chance of destroying a Battlemech with a single shot from a heavy pistol (damage on a 2-12, assume center torso possible critical, 3 crits, engine-engine-engine).

The rule should defiantly be tweaked when necessary, all settings are not created equally.

I think it's 100 SDC to 1 MDC.

In practice I had no problem with MDC, but I think a better solution is to use something closer to D&D3.5 style Damage Resistance:

Damage Resistance: 20 (or 50)/MDC Weaponry

(The real rule would be closer to DR 100/MDC weaponry.)

MDC weaponry could be multiplied x10 damage against SDC targets which would be pretty lethal but not automatically game-ending, and it would allow for a Rifts that didn't have everyone sleeping in their armor.

I think that is more rules than needed. MDC reflects super advanced technology and magic that we don't have in the real world. Even a modern AMRAAM deals SDC damage.

MDC weapons are like Kirk's pistol -- when you fire it down a hallway, three people turn blue and then vanish without leaving a smudge.

I think people run into problems conceptualizing MDC because they are trying to equate it with armor piercing, which it isn't.

The problem with using Damage Reduction is that it allows small arms to damage heavy armor sometimes, which they can't. Damage reduction is appropriate within a very narrow scope: like a boxer would have DR 5 / empty hand attacks.

Quote from: RPGPundit;351840I notice its one of the biggest areas of complaint about Palladium, but I find it brilliant.

Does anyone else agree?

RPGPundit

I find plenty of things to dislike in the Palladium "system" but this is not one of them.

Not a big fan. It's a bit less elegant than I'd like.

It is simple enough though and that's one of its merits.

I think the hiccups for me comes more with the abuse of MDC in a given setting/game. More and more weapons piled into Rifts that make the Boom Gun seem positively derringer like? I thought it was supposed to be bad-ass?

The issue could be improved if MDC were more commonly used for vehicles, and not so much for personal arms and armor, even Dragons could be greatly impressive with say a 1000 SDC but still let the lucky hero with the sword kill him because of a critical hit (directly to hit points.) Since in the setting most PC ones are still child-dragons.

The conclusion people have reached elsewhere (in my conversations offline and watching a few recent threads elsewhere) is that mega-damage works if it's applied properly, but Rifts uses it in a very unrestrained way, and that may cause some problems for GMs who aren't careful.

The only time I had a problem with MDC was when scale wasn't consistent.  I had no problem with the MDC increase from a human being to a Veritech fighter in the Macross setting, and I didn't have a problem with the MDC increase from a human to a suit of Cyclone body armor in the Invid Invasion setting.  Each leap to MDC was consistent within the separate settings.  As I recall, it only caused a problem when you'd compare the MDC ratings for a man-sized Cyclone against a Veritech-sized Alpha or Beta fighter.

Otherwise, I rather quite liked the notion that certain types of defensive technology simply weren't practically assailable by other types of weapons.

!i!

I have nothing against the MDC mechanic. Of course, something like the "heavy armor" rule from Savage Worlds does the same thing, in a considerably simpler manner, but I don't find MDC particularly clunky and of itself.

The real problem with MDC is that it's overused. Nearly everything that crawls out of a rift is MDC. The fauna of Rifts Earth is teeming with effectively indestructible transdimensional animals, which should raise several interesting questions about ecology.

Of course, the height of siliness was reached in Wormwood, with MDC humans.

MDC in and of itself is not a bad concept, it's just way overused. It should have been saved for dragons, greater demons, alien intelligences and other really big supernatural heavy-hitters.

Quote from: The Butcher;351869MDC in and of itself is not a bad concept, it's just way overused. It should have been saved for dragons, greater demons, alien intelligences and other really big supernatural heavy-hitters.

Or, as I tried to imply in my post above, perhaps a series of scaled steps in increasing damage levels.

!i!

Yeah, MDC gets kinda kludgy when overused, as in the Rifts RPG.  I mean, I like it as a mechanic, but using it everywhere leads to all sorts of logical breakdown in a setting.

It also, in practice, seems to require far more attention to scaling than Siembieda has ever payed it, in any of Palladium's published material.

As for conceptual problems that others like Cranewings mentioned, those may stem directly from Siembieda's own thought experiments used to explain this mechanic's existence and function.  I remember him using the tank/baseball bat in Rifts, but I can't remember any more if he used it in other MDC settings...

Really, there needs to be a x100 and an x10000 scale to keep the numbers down and prevent a guy with a laser pistol from hurting the battleship Yamoto.

But the basic mechanism is quite sound.  I just hate that they create mega damage and then hand out pistols that do mega damage.  However, if there was a second, higher scale for really big stuff I wouldn't mind so much.

I love everything about the Palldiums armor system mechanics in general. There are the occasional glitches and 'WTF?' moments based on it's implementation but as a mechanic it's sound, easy to use, makes sense and is (most importantly) fun.
 
The only thing I do differently is allow SDC weapons (within reason) to inlict a single point of MD on MDC vehicles/armors on critical hits.

I always thought MDC was brilliant and the "Hit Points for Armor" is still the best way I see to have Power Armor function.

I really only had two problems with MDC.  The first houserule I made was so that someone who got hit in the arm for 2 MD wouldn't vaporize, but have his arm blown off.  The second was the "laser pistol vs. Main Hull of the SDF-1" problem, which seems to call for a third scale of damage or possibly an absorption value. (I never ran into that problem in play, so never decided how to houserule that one.)

There are many mechanics in many games that I think of as "a bit of a shortcut, but in the end, it works."

I do not put MDC in this category. I find it a bit TOO unsatisfying, and if I were to occasion to play RIFTS again soon, I'd be sorely tempted to whip out my house rule scalpel.

Mekton Zeta and The World of Synnibarr achieve the same results in a far more consistent and manageable manner.  The Mega-Damage concept does not work very well in practice due to Siembieda's lax workmanship.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;351895Mekton Zeta and The World of Synnibarr achieve the same results in a far more consistent and manageable manner.  The Mega-Damage concept does not work very well in practice due to Siembieda's lax workmanship.

Why?

I've never played RIFTS so maybe I'm missing some history and possible abuses and mangling of the MDC/SDC system, but it seems entirely reasonable to me: little tiny stuff, no matter how lethal to a squishy human (think .22 bullets, baseball bat blows, knife stabs) are utterly ineffective against massively armored targets.  You can chip away at an Abrams' front glacis all day long with a Weatherby .22 squirrel gun.  There is no critical, no cumulative damage (not in your lifetime), nothing that you can do with that rifle that's going to make the Abrams crew (or Veritech pilot, or M.A.C.-II crew, etc. etc.) so much as flinch.  Period.  Hit it once, hit it a thousand times, it will not give.

One RPG-14, however?  Yeah, that's gonna need some bondo and paint to fix.

Battletech either fails miserably (by allowing a puny rifle to knock down an Atlas on a good roll) or succeeds wildly by representing cinematic flair, in doing what Robotech does admirably.

Even the Silhouette combat system doesn't do so well (enough massed rifle fire will bring down any target, which is just silly).

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;351895Mekton Zeta and The World of Synnibarr achieve the same results in a far more consistent and manageable manner.  The Mega-Damage concept does not work very well in practice due to Siembieda's lax workmanship.

Yeah, I think that's the key point...it could work, but it doesn't because the implementation is sloppy or untested (or both).

Quote from: thedungeondelver;351900Why?

Siembieda fails at physics.  The original use was in the original Macross book for Robotech.  Only mecha had, including tanks and aircraft, had (and could do) Mega-Damage.  Starting with Southern Cross, infantry had the same capabilities as tanks; this is when it broke, and it only got worse with Invid Invasion/Sentinels.  RIFTS continued the trend to this day; shit does not work as intended, because physics doesn't work that way.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;351903Siembieda fails at physics.  The original use was in the original Macross book for Robotech.  Only mecha had, including tanks and aircraft, had (and could do) Mega-Damage.  Starting with Southern Cross, infantry had the same capabilities as tanks; this is when it broke, and it only got worse with Invid Invasion/Sentinels.  RIFTS continued the trend to this day; shit does not work as intended, because physics doesn't work that way.

In Siembieda's defense with regard to the Robotech series, it may not have been physics he was trying to simulate.  As portrayed in the shows, Cyclones were virtually as tough as full-sized mecha.  While it seemed a little hinky at times (I would've liked to see Cyclones on a middle-step of MDC), it was largely in keeping with the action one saw in the shows, which didn't appear to be particularly devoted to simulating real world physics.

!i!

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;351903Siembieda fails at physics.  The original use was in the original Macross book for Robotech.  Only mecha had, including tanks and aircraft, had (and could do) Mega-Damage.  Starting with Southern Cross, infantry had the same capabilities as tanks; this is when it broke, and it only got worse with Invid Invasion/Sentinels.  RIFTS continued the trend to this day; shit does not work as intended, because physics doesn't work that way.

I wish we had a 'go play Gurps' animated emoticon.

Needless complexity.

There's a lot I like about Rifts. What I don't like about Rifts is that scenes like the one appearing below, which shows everything that's wonderfully batshit insane about the Rifts setting, can't happen according to Rifts mechanics.

(http://www.ramonperez.com/v1/wp-content/uploads/lonestar_cover.jpg)

Good image. I will note that today we ran RIFTS, there were three big battles (two against Gargoyles, the third against Haydonites) and it was great.

RPGPundit

I despise the MDC mechanic. It leads to the issue of having a Glitterboy and a researcher type of PC in the same party and trying (and failing) to reconcile that difference in power levels. When a 'hold-out' pistol can blow out the entire wall of your average saloon, I see that as a problem.

I prefer how Savage Worlds and earlier editions of Gamma World handled the issues. They just flat out say, "Weapons below a certain power level, can't harm armored vehicles." Straight forward and simple.

If I were to ever run Rifts (which is about as likely as me flapping my arms and flying) I would drop the MDC mechanic and add a class of 'heavy weapons' to the game. Hold-out pistols would not be in that category.

Quote from: The Butcher;351869Of course, the height of siliness was reached in Wormwood, with MDC humans.

I wish Wormwood had been an SDC setting.

As for the OP, I have no problem with MDC really. I use a few optional rules for armor damage pass through to make things more interesting though. However, having every damn creature MDC is annoying. Oh well.

Quote from: Tetsubo;351941I despise the MDC mechanic. It leads to the issue of having a Glitterboy and a researcher type of PC in the same party and trying (and failing) to reconcile that difference in power levels. When a 'hold-out' pistol can blow out the entire wall of your average saloon, I see that as a problem.

I prefer how Savage Worlds and earlier editions of Gamma World handled the issues. They just flat out say, "Weapons below a certain power level, can't harm armored vehicles." Straight forward and simple.

If I were to ever run Rifts (which is about as likely as me flapping my arms and flying) I would drop the MDC mechanic and add a class of 'heavy weapons' to the game. Hold-out pistols would not be in that category.

One of the few characters I played as a RIFTS PLAYER rather than GM was a Rogue Scholar. An AWESOME class, very poor at anything to do with firepower. He was a non-combat character, and he ended up being immensely useful for the team.

The problem with your line of argument is that you set up this patently absurd supposition that every character MUST be equally good at fighting.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;352013One of the few characters I played as a RIFTS PLAYER rather than GM was a Rogue Scholar. An AWESOME class, very poor at anything to do with firepower. He was a non-combat character, and he ended up being immensely useful for the team.

The problem with your line of argument is that you set up this patently absurd supposition that every character MUST be equally good at fighting.

RPGPundit

It it's absurd to expect one player to have the survivability of an ant while another has the survivability of an elephant. The MDC mechanic is absurd in and of itself. I have no need to add any absurdity.

Quote from: RPGPundit;351840I notice its one of the biggest areas of complaint about Palladium, but I find it brilliant.

Does anyone else agree?

RPGPundit

MDC is fine. It's MDC ponchos with no A.R. that are the problem.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;351900Why?

I've never played RIFTS so maybe I'm missing some history and possible abuses and mangling of the MDC/SDC system, but it seems entirely reasonable to me: little tiny stuff, no matter how lethal to a squishy human (think .22 bullets, baseball bat blows, knife stabs) are utterly ineffective against massively armored targets.  You can chip away at an Abrams' front glacis all day long with a Weatherby .22 squirrel gun.  There is no critical, no cumulative damage (not in your lifetime), nothing that you can do with that rifle that's going to make the Abrams crew (or Veritech pilot, or M.A.C.-II crew, etc. etc.) so much as flinch.  Period.  Hit it once, hit it a thousand times, it will not give.

There are two problems that pop out in my mind right away. First, you can't cut off someone's arm with a vibroblade, however carefully. Even a single point of MDC turns someone into mist. Second, light combat armor can have MDC, which means a guy in a freakin' padded suit with a non-sealed helmet can get hit in the chest with a cruise missile and walk away from it.

The leaf ponchos are just a bad implementation, rather than an example of bad rules.

Quote from: Tetsubo;352024It it's absurd to expect one player to have the survivability of an ant while another has the survivability of an elephant. The MDC mechanic is absurd in and of itself. I have no need to add any absurdity.

The thing is, no one in RIFTS will have the "survivability of an ant"; everyone has access to MDC armour. You can fairly easily end up with 100-130MDC from decent armour, which any character can and will have. Even if all you have is 30MDC "plastic man" armour, the only "absurd" part is to expect that the game will be set up in such a way that the rogue scholar will have nothing more to do than try to fight the baddies head on the way a Glitter Boy would. In fact, playing a low-MDC character with other skills (any of the Scholar classes, basically) affords shitloads MORE playability options than the fighter classes, who are basically there just to fight. They're more interesting.

RPGPundit

MDC is a mechanic of scaling. It functions pretty well at that.

Quote from: pawsplay;352073First, you can't cut off someone's arm with a vibroblade, however carefully. Even a single point of MDC turns someone into mist.

Although that is implied by the rules it is just silly. A super sharp weapon that cuts on a molecular level is not going to transfer any form of energy to the rest of the body. It will simply cut through like a hot knife in butter.

Quote from: pawsplay;352073Second, light combat armor can have MDC, which means a guy in a freakin' padded suit with a non-sealed helmet can get hit in the chest with a cruise missile and walk away from it.

A modern cruise missile would be an MDC weapon. Not on the power level of cruise missiles in Rifts, but still MDC. The conversion of modern weapons to MDC is way off.

Quote from: pawsplay;352073The leaf ponchos are just a bad implementation, rather than an example of bad rules.

Yes, those were a horrible implementation of MDC.

Quote from: RPGPundit;352087In fact, playing a low-MDC character with other skills (any of the Scholar classes, basically) affords shitloads MORE playability options than the fighter classes, who are basically there just to fight. They're more interesting.

RPGPundit

I fully agree.

Quote from: Settembrini;352124MDC is a mechanic of scaling. It functions pretty well at that.

I prefer the use of GM common sense.

I don't need a bunch of rules to tell me that a plain old 9mm pistol isn't going to do much to a tank. If the engine's running, the tankers won't even hear the shots hitting the thing.

Quote from: Malvor;352125Although that is implied by the rules it is just silly.

No, that's actually a rule. The explicit kind. Maybe it has unintended consequences wrt vibroblades, but there it is.

QuoteA modern cruise missile would be an MDC weapon. Not on the power level of cruise missiles in Rifts, but still MDC. The conversion of modern weapons to MDC is way off.

I didn't say it wouldn't damage his armor. Just that it wouldn't deplete it, and despite being the center of a massive explosion with exposed lungs, neck, etc. and logically being knocked back ten feet or more, not taking any actual injury inside the suit.

Quote from: Tetsubo;351941I despise the MDC mechanic. It leads to the issue of having a Glitterboy and a researcher type of PC in the same party and trying (and failing) to reconcile that difference in power levels. When a 'hold-out' pistol can blow out the entire wall of your average saloon, I see that as a problem.

I prefer how Savage Worlds and earlier editions of Gamma World handled the issues. They just flat out say, "Weapons below a certain power level, can't harm armored vehicles." Straight forward and simple.

If I were to ever run Rifts (which is about as likely as me flapping my arms and flying) I would drop the MDC mechanic and add a class of 'heavy weapons' to the game. Hold-out pistols would not be in that category.

I don't think there is anything wrong with mdc pistols blowing the wall off a saloon. You run into it in star trek. An energy pistol can one shot a guy in super armor and if you hold down the trigger you can melt a tank. MDC isn't armor piercing or heavy weapon in rifts. It isn't supposed to differentiate small arms from antivehicle. In seperates old from super. An mdc laser pistol should shred an m1a1 into scrap. There isn't anything wrong with that.

Quote from: pawsplay;352073There are two problems that pop out in my mind right away. First, you can't cut off someone's arm with a vibroblade, however carefully. Even a single point of MDC turns someone into mist. Second, light combat armor can have MDC, which means a guy in a freakin' padded suit with a non-sealed helmet can get hit in the chest with a cruise missile and walk away from it.

The leaf ponchos are just a bad implementation, rather than an example of bad rules.

Vibro-blades can cut the arm offa borg though. You don't take a vibro weapon to a fight to be gentle. I like to imagine tissue damage from small mdc weapons being huge tears, like when lightening strikes a tree.

As far as the blast radius weapon, someone in a suit with their head exposed would be decapitated, though the armor would remain functional once you cleaned it out.

Its a question of house-ruling, mostly. I don't see why you couldn't use a vibro-blade, which is a pretty fine weapon, to just take off someone's sdc limb.

In fact, its not even a house rule; if you look at the Ultimate Edition RIFTS book, it has clear guidelines on the type of damage weapons do. Page 359 of the UE book details odds of survival from suffering MDC damage. It makes the following points:

1. If the MDC blast was directed at a limb, ALL of the MDC damage was directed at that limb, completely destroying the limb. The character then goes into immediate shock, losing all hit points and SDC and falling comatose.
2. However, he has a chance of salvation if within the next few minutes (2-8) a character with professional medical skills manages to make a roll to stabilize the victim.

There are even some random tables which provide what significant parts of your body were vaporized by the MDC blast, after which a SECOND medical check must be made in a facility with sufficient medical supplies within a span of 40-240 minutes after the first check. If the character survives, he stands a high chance of permanent injuries, will most likely require cybernetic reconstruction, and will be likely to suffer psychological trauma, but you CAN survive an MDC blast.

RPGPundit

Ultimate Rifts is a country I have not travelled.

Damnit all this post is doing is giving me a wicked urge to pick up Ultimate Rifts and give it a spin.

I'm not too fond of the heavy-handed approach Kev takes to his books; his authorial voice intrudes when I don't want it there....but I still have fond nostalgic memories of my years playing Palladium Fantasy, and I know I would like to play/run Rifts, if I could just muster up the effort to wade through the rules-confusion it will inevitably cause....does any Palladium book ever adequately describe not only how to dodge but how to parry, anywhere? Last time I looked at one of their books (Dead Reign) I was unfortunately not surprised to see that it still seemed to overlook describing even certain basic mechanics, such as how you actually parry, how to order multiple actions from combatants, and so forth...my memory is  a bit foggy though, and I don't own the books anymore, but those bits seem to surface up when I think about it.

I haven't played a Palladium game in years, but I seem to remember it was fairly straightforward in TMNT, which was my go-to for a long time.

Threads like this make me yearn for the wahoo of Rifts, too, so you're not alone.  But I'm pretty sure I could do the wahoo in a way that would be more satisfying to me now.

Its still plenty satisfying to me.

RPGPundit

Well, that's plain to see.

I just think - rules issues aside - if I were going to run something that were a 'mashup' setting, I'd want to mash it up myself.  And we've just recently run an apocalypse/post-apocalyptic game, so I'd probably go for wahoo space opera (plus mecha).

Quote from: camazotz;353597Damnit all this post is doing is giving me a wicked urge to pick up Ultimate Rifts and give it a spin.

I'm not too fond of the heavy-handed approach Kev takes to his books; his authorial voice intrudes when I don't want it there....but I still have fond nostalgic memories of my years playing Palladium Fantasy, and I know I would like to play/run Rifts, if I could just muster up the effort to wade through the rules-confusion it will inevitably cause....does any Palladium book ever adequately describe not only how to dodge but how to parry, anywhere? Last time I looked at one of their books (Dead Reign) I was unfortunately not surprised to see that it still seemed to overlook describing even certain basic mechanics, such as how you actually parry, how to order multiple actions from combatants, and so forth...my memory is  a bit foggy though, and I don't own the books anymore, but those bits seem to surface up when I think about it.

Sorry for the Necro-bump but this caught my eye.

I actually don't understand your question about parrying in Palladium.  I've always thought parrying was pretty well described from the original Robotech RPG onward.  But to put it simply, parrying in Palladium is to use an object to block an attack.  To do this, the defender must roll higher than the attacker on a 20 sided die.  Dodge works exactly the same way, however they have clarified that one can only use Dodge once in a round, and that Dodge counts against all incoming attacks.  The idea being; You see a group of bad guys with guns and dive behind a robot's leg for cover.  All of those attackers have to roll to attack against that single dodge roll.

simple and to the point.  I've never understood why people say the rules are broken.  It's usually either people who have never played the game (I don't even know how many times I've seen some jackass insist that some insane bullshit was an actual rule and it wasn't), or people who played a game with an extremely bad/lazy/stupid GM.

Quote from: The Butcher;351869I have nothing against the MDC mechanic. Of course, something like the "heavy armor" rule from Savage Worlds does the same thing, in a considerably simpler manner, but I don't find MDC particularly clunky and of itself.

The real problem with MDC is that it's overused. Nearly everything that crawls out of a rift is MDC. The fauna of Rifts Earth is teeming with effectively indestructible transdimensional animals, which should raise several interesting questions about ecology.

Of course, the height of siliness was reached in Wormwood, with MDC humans.

MDC in and of itself is not a bad concept, it's just way overused. It should have been saved for dragons, greater demons, alien intelligences and other really big supernatural heavy-hitters.

Exactly.  The last time I picked up a Rifts book was many ages of man prior, but I recall seeing a vibro-knife that did MDC damage.  I am likely recalling incorrectly, and I didn't get into the game enough to really see how it played out.

But a switchblade that could cut a tank in half?  Definitely overused.
(Caveat:  I am/was unaware of the different 'scales' of MDC, so that may have been part of my disconnect)

Overall, however, I do think it is a fairly elegant mechanic.  While a bit on the blunt side, it addressed the problem of Batman vs Superman without resorting to algorithmic scales or conceptually difficult numbers to work with.  As Ian notes:

Quote from: Ian Absentia;351866The only time I had a problem with MDC was  when scale wasn't consistent.

A persistent problem, then, but with a fairly simple solution had it been implemented.  Let us praise Mr Siembieda for never succumbing to the hobgoblins of foolish consistency.  :)

The Rifts Conversion Book could give humans MDC way before Wormwood - you could convert a martial artist from Mystic China and the "Wrist Hardening" technique was worth 4 MDC...:cool: Not much compared to some of the Heroes Unlimited super powers or even being a mutant dinosaur, but hey at least your super-tough wrists help regular machinegun rounds bounce off.

On the necrotangent: I never thought Parry was overly hard to understand. I was caught by the Pundit not knowing that using "Roll with Punch/Fall" cost an attack, though...(in the thread Skofflox started that crashed and burned after a double derail, with much profanity and Starblazers).

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;407682The Rifts Conversion Book could give humans MDC way before Wormwood - you could convert a martial artist from Mystic China and the "Wrist Hardening" technique was worth 4 MDC...:cool: Not much compared to some of the Heroes Unlimited super powers or even being a mutant dinosaur, but hey at least your super-tough wrists help regular machinegun rounds bounce off.

On the necrotangent: I never thought Parry was overly hard to understand. I was caught by the Pundit not knowing that using "Roll with Punch/Fall" cost an attack, though...(in the thread Skofflox started that crashed and burned after a double derail, with much profanity and Starblazers).

The Rift's conversion book was probably written in one sitting and went to print without being edited.

Interestingly, Zenjorki powers from N&S has their Chi cost quadrupled, even though they don't cost anything to use.

Quote from: Cranewings;407696The Rift's conversion book was probably written in one sitting and went to print without being edited.

Interestingly, Zenjorki powers from N&S has their Chi cost quadrupled, even though they don't cost anything to use.

Are you suggesting that there might be a... quality control issue at Palladium games?

Quote from: Tetsubo;407697Are you suggesting that there might be a... quality control issue at Palladium games?

No, I would never, ever, dare slander, badmouth, or look cross eyed at Palladium. Fuck, they have sued 5 year olds. They would kill me.

Quote from: Cranewings;407698No, I would never, ever, dare slander, badmouth, or look cross eyed at Palladium. Fuck, they have sued 5 year olds. They would kill me.

Thankfully, the Palladium 'hit team' is also manned by 5 year olds. Clumsy, 5 year olds...

Quote from: Ian Absentia;351908In Siembieda's defense with regard to the Robotech series, it may not have been physics he was trying to simulate.  As portrayed in the shows, Cyclones were virtually as tough as full-sized mecha.  While it seemed a little hinky at times (I would've liked to see Cyclones on a middle-step of MDC), it was largely in keeping with the action one saw in the shows, which didn't appear to be particularly devoted to simulating real world physics.

!i!

Yeah, they all blew up in one hit!
(unless you had a valiant NPC death, or were a PC; then you 'crash-landed')

Quote from: pawsplay;352073First, you can't cut off someone's arm with a vibroblade, however carefully. Even a single point of MDC turns someone into mist.

Well...
1) You can always turn the vibro-field off, and use it as a regular knife.
2) I'm not sure I can blame the designer for figuring if someone's using a vibro-weapon, they might not be using it in such a way intended to damage but NOT kill their SDC opponent. I mean you could Disarm the poor bastard, without dis-'arm'ing them...

QuoteSecond, light combat armor can have MDC, which means a guy in a freakin' padded suit with a non-sealed helmet can get hit in the chest with a cruise missile and walk away from it.

A cruise missile may not be the best example (since I think the lightest does 4d6x10 MD), but an Incendiary Grenade works (4d6 MD, IIRC).

And I've had GM's that rules that such weapons work against target directly, that don't have environmental armor (making it a favorite of Coalition troopers).

Quote from: StormBringer;407669But a switchblade that could cut a tank in half?  Definitely overused.

Remember, in RIFTS, vibro-weapons are analogous to lightsabers, i.e. given time, they'll cut through anything.

Quote from: Tetsubo;407697Are you suggesting that there might be a... quality control issue at Palladium games?

I'm more interested if you're implying they HAVE quality control at Palladium. ;p

Quote from: Cranewings;407696The Rift's conversion book was probably written in one sitting and went to print without being edited.

Interestingly, Zenjorki powers from N&S has their Chi cost quadrupled, even though they don't cost anything to use.

Awesome.
That'd be alot of coffee to do in one sitting, but I could believe the 'no editing'. Partly to blame here could be that the Conversion Book was Siembieda while the oriental books were Erick Wujcik's (I said Mystic China last post, but I actually meant Ninjas & SUperspies; oops).

Also on the conversion book: does anyone else look at the Cyber Horseman of Ixion and go "WTF?".

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;407741Also on the conversion book: does anyone else look at the Cyber Horseman of Ixion and go "WTF?".

You mean "WTF" as in "WTF CYBORG CENTAUR WITH BIONIC SCHLONG"?

If so, yes. :eek:

Quote from: Novastar;407723Remember, in RIFTS, vibro-weapons are analogous to lightsabers, i.e. given time, they'll cut through anything.

That would make more sense, but I've always understood 'vibro-blade' (in general terms) to be something along the lines of an electric bread knife made out of adamantium, or ceramic alloys, or whatever the hardest material is in the game.

Quote from: The Butcher;407742You mean "WTF" as in "WTF CYBORG CENTAUR WITH BIONIC SCHLONG"?

If so, yes. :eek:

That's the one!
I tried convincing myself he's just wearing form-fitting Black Russian style armour over it, but I'm really suspicious its a laser.

Quote from: The Butcher;407742You mean "WTF" as in "WTF CYBORG CENTAUR WITH BIONIC SCHLONG"?

If so, yes. :eek:

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;407751That's the one!
I tried convincing myself he's just wearing form-fitting Black Russian style armour over it, but I'm really suspicious its a laser.

I heard that the Punisher had a similar weapon (http://www.cracked.com/article_18494_15-unintentionally-perverted-toys-children.html) at one time.

Quote from: StormBringer;407753I heard that the Punisher had a similar weapon (http://www.cracked.com/article_18494_15-unintentionally-perverted-toys-children.html) at one time.

I think this should be the new standard image for when someone goes "show me on the doll where the bad GM touched you..."

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;407775I think this should be the new standard image for when someone goes "show me on the doll where the bad GM touched you..."

:rotfl:
A winner is you.

:cool:

I sort of wish I hadn't derailed this thread so badly, so on the original topic:

I haven't played Rifts in a very long time, but in the last campaign we moved to a 10:1 MDC/SDC conversion rate and that seemed to work OK. Part of this was due to a messy PC vapourization- a Blind Warrior woman I was playing became a fine mist, though I forget the exact details now - and part due to us using the Rifts rules in a multi-genre game - including a visit to the Forgotten Realms where no one else had MDC gear.

This wasn't an overly serious game, but if I were running Rifts again I might try that as a rule. It just seems like a good compromise between "Palladium SDC" default where characters can have hundreds of SDC and be very difficult to kill, and "Palladium MDC" where characters vapourize pretty easily. (again going back a long way, but in the first game of Rifts I ever played, another guy's Ley Line Walker got blown away in the first shot of the first combat - d4x10 MD [40] vs. 35 MDC body armour).

Guns tht kill you with one shot, clearly a broken system.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;407751That's the one!
I tried convincing myself he's just wearing form-fitting Black Russian style armour over it, but I'm really suspicious its a laser.

Thanks for making me look that up. That's just one of the problems in that picture, too.

Also notable is the image of zombie wyverns being commanded by the Spectre in a v-kini banana hammock.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;351846I think it's 100 SDC to 1 MDC.

In practice I had no problem with MDC, but I think a better solution is to use something closer to D&D3.5 style Damage Resistance:

Damage Resistance: 20 (or 50)/MDC Weaponry

(The real rule would be closer to DR 100/MDC weaponry.)

MDC weaponry could be multiplied x10 damage against SDC targets which would be pretty lethal but not automatically game-ending, and it would allow for a Rifts that didn't have everyone sleeping in their armor.

I agree that there are more flexible mechanics than the MDC rules.

If the rules are set up correctly, the use of defenses, which subtract from damage, will have the same results. As long as the defenses make it so that even the max damage from lower power weapons will never do any damage, they will confer immunity.

The cool thing about defenses is that you can extend that base concept.

You can damage a normal person with a baseball bat or a pistol, but these weapons have no effect on a tank.

You can damage a tank with a bazooka, but that sort of weapon would have no effect on a kryptonian.

You can damage a kryptonian with a nuke (actually that depends on which version of Superman you subscribe to, but for the sake of argument, I'm assuming that you could damage Superman with a nuke), but nukes have no effect on Galactus.

Running things using defenses lets you have all sorts of different levels of invulnerability (not just baseball bats and tanks).

Quote from: Cranewings;351849The problem with using Damage Reduction is that it allows small arms to damage heavy armor sometimes, which they can't.

That shouldn't happen if the rules are set up correctly. If your pistol can never ever do more than 20 points of damage, a character with 21 points of defense is effectively immune.

Quote from: Settembrini;407831Guns tht kill you with one shot, clearly a broken system.

If it were real-world guns, which are made for killing, that might be OK.
But how can you argue that a system where you can be killed by one shot from a futuristic death ray isn't brok...wait.

MDC pretty much makes the game unplayable, to me.  It makes characters want to eat, sleep and shit inside their glitter boy or body armor.

It is singularly one of the most terrible ideas Siembieda has ever had.  It's a terrible fix for a problem that did not exist, at at best is a half assed patch that's ran the system for 20 years (into the ground).

My group will not use the MDC system to the point of expelling Palladium altogether (and when I was 15, Rifts was one of my favorites).  

However, now I'm older and the nostalgia bug is creeping, so we're restoring the SDC games to rotational order, probably starting with TMNT.

For me and my players, MDC just gets in the way, and is entirely overkill where it's not needed or wanted.

Palladium's SDC system is simple (very simple) but elegant in it's way.  It's certainly not WFRP 2e or Dark Heresy, but we might find time for a SDC megaversal game in the near future.

The one thing the MDC system is guilty of is taking a large chunk of 'gaminess' out of it.  Your players don't want a rendition of Gone with the Wind or War and Peace or Vanity Fair every time...they want to play a game.  If Rifts were more balanced as a whole, the MDC system could have merit.

Currently it's a laughing stock and the butt of frequent design slurs.

A nuclear Ray gun or rail rifle should automatically kill you with a near miss. Would it be better if people had 20 hps, guns do 2d6 x 100 and armor had a thousand? It is the same thing.

It is also an easy way of pointing out that some weapons are too low tech to hurt new armor.

There are other ways of handling that.  Does every character have a nuclear ray?  Maybe they shouldn't.

Anyways, if you want a bitch to die just invoke the 'instant death' clause that every early video game had when you fell on a spike.  That is, some weapons cause instant death, no matter what, and you shouldn't be on the receiving end if you want to live.

Personally, I think those sorts of things should be relegated to pivotal moments, such as the plasma discharge from a leaking power plant while fighting in the containment area.  SPLOOSH = death.

Like I said, it takes the gaminess out of it.

Also, please stop talking about 'realistic' and 'real life'.  It's unbecoming for game nerds to try to make rules that mimic real life, or try to argue about how in real life something would happen while in the game it's dumb it doesn't happen.  

That's like me going outside and digging a ditch or baling some hay, then complain to whatver gods are listening about how it's not like my game.    :banghead:

Quote from: Cranewings;407932A nuclear Ray gun or rail rifle should automatically kill you with a near miss.

I agree. And I don't have that big a problem with weapons that can automatically kill you. As long as you take that into account with the game, it can work.

   
You can have everybody either being an MDC creature, or living in their armor (which is what I've seen in most Rifts games I've played in). Of course this leads to a kind of MDC inflation where MDC is nothing special, because everything is MDC.

You can have combat be a last resort, where people avoid such horrible weapons.

Or you can have a very deadly game.

And there are probably still other options, if you are creative enough.

Quote from: Cranewings;407932Would it be better if people had 20 hps, guns do 2d6 x 100 and armor had a thousand? It is the same thing.

On this one, I'd prefer an exponential system, like the Richter Scale, or the scale from Mayfair's DC Heroes game.

If we were going go with an "every point doubles" scheme, we could have
Power Level 6 = .44 magnum bullet
Power Level 9 = 50 cal HMG Bullet (8X as powerful as a .44 mag)
Power Level 13 = Light Tank Gun (128 X as powerful as a .44 mag)
Power Level 18 = Heavy Tank Gun (4096 X as powerful as a .44 mag)

On this scale, based on the idea that 1 MDC = 100 SDC, we could probably assume that Mega-Damage starts at about Power Level: 11, or Power Level: 12.

You could make the impact of weapons vs armor fairly non random (assume that 1 bullet from the same type of gun is pretty much the same as another when in comes to armor, and the randomness is saved for the damage that gets through defenses).

Then, for example, 8 point armor would totally protect you against the normal bullet, mostly protect you against the Heavy Machine Gun, and not have that much effect against the Tank Gun (a lot of damage would get though).

On that scale, 20 point armor would make you immune to most conventional weapons, but you could still be hurt at Ground-Zero of a nuke.

That is awesome.

Depends on how it was handled. I liked the Robotech varient of it way more than the RIFTS version. RIFTS never made any sense with the super tin-foil armor, and city busting handguns. At least in Robotech, the big guns were relegated to mecha only and the Cyclone Power armor made for a nice middle ground.

1) I am a Palladium fan.
2) I do not like everything about MDC.

Both MDC and SDC need an overhaul.

SDC has the issue of making armor useless at higher levels...which you can houserule by making the "to hit" roll based on the D20 + Modifier, but the AR roll based on the D20 only.   Personally, I've been happy with that modification.

MDC has the issue of everyone packing death rays...which kinda sorta gets houseruled if you do the 1 MDC = 10 SDC.

However, I do like the 1 MDC = 100 SDC because it drives home the "OMG death ray" concept.   In my games, you also suffer 1 SDC for every 1 MDC that your armor suffers.   That's reduced to 1/2 in PA and 1/10 in Vehicles / Mecha.

I don't invoke the -10 Dodge rule ever.  I want people to be dodging blasts and leaping for cover.   That's why you have 4-5 actions at 1st level.

However, to make the weapon damages more sensible I also do a ranking system:

Personal vs. Squad Support vs. Vehicle/Mecha vs. Spaceship

Personal = pistol and rifles that a human can carry.
Squad Support = stuff you need a cyborg or big beasties to carry
Vehicle / Mecha = anything mounted
Spaceship = anything mounted on a huge vessel

Each weapon does x2 damage to the rank below.   Thus, if I fire a Mecha weapon of just 4D6 at a puny human, he takes 4D6x4 damage.   So railguns rock since you get x2 damage against anything less than cyborg/large monster.

I don't divide damage upwards.  

Personally, I usually add a Fate Point system into Rifts.  I rank the OCC / RCC combos on a 1 to 5 scale.  1 being best (Cosmo Knight or Glitter Boy) and 5 being worst (Vagabond) and you begin with a number of Fate points equal to your ranking.   I keep the Fate points secret and that's the number of miracle saves from death they get.

If Rifts had a faster chargen, I wouldn't worry about it.  But 1 hour chargen means I want less PC death.

Pundit,
  Regarding your OP. I am of two minds:
1) I LOVE MDC in the Robotech RPG. It makes perfect sense in a game where people fight inside and outside of mechs.
2) Regarding most other uses of MDC, I do not approve. In heroes unlimited it created a sort of physical invulnerability, but didn't have any balance to it. In Rifts, it just created a have vs. have-not economy where if you didn't have an MDC duster and a weapon that did MDC, you just had to run and hide a lot.

  MDC sort of made an appearance in the Recon games, it made sense there too. I mean no amount of M16 fire is going to bust open a Sherman, right?

Quote from: StormBringer;407747That would make more sense, but I've always understood 'vibro-blade' (in general terms) to be something along the lines of an electric bread knife made out of adamantium, or ceramic alloys, or whatever the hardest material is in the game.

While Vibro-weapons tend to be made out of MDC materials (what isn't?), it's supposed to be the vibrofield that allows it to cut nearly anything.

I think the techno-babble* is it allows the weapon to cut down to the molecular level (between atoms, or what not), and that's why it can cut through anything, given time.

*Techno-babble is related to Handwavium, last I checked.

Quote from: everloss;407644Sorry for the Necro-bump but this caught my eye.

I actually don't understand your question about parrying in Palladium.  I've always thought parrying was pretty well described from the original Robotech RPG onward.  But to put it simply, parrying in Palladium is to use an object to block an attack.  To do this, the defender must roll higher than the attacker on a 20 sided die.  Dodge works exactly the same way, however they have clarified that one can only use Dodge once in a round, and that Dodge counts against all incoming attacks.  The idea being; You see a group of bad guys with guns and dive behind a robot's leg for cover.  All of those attackers have to roll to attack against that single dodge roll.

Huh? Where was this clarified?
I've certainly never used the dodge rules in that way; I've always read it and played it as dodging had to be rolled against each individual attack and cost one of your actions each time.

RPGpundit

Something I've always hated about Palladium is how you have to play dumb with the dodge system. The only correct way to fight in Palladium by the book is to build a character with the maximum actions per round, hopefully get 2 more than whoever you are fighting, and then fire a long burst at the end of the round when they are out of actions and have to take the damage.

Quote from: Cranewings;408221Something I've always hated about Palladium is how you have to play dumb with the dodge system. The only correct way to fight in Palladium by the book is to build a character with the maximum actions per round, hopefully get 2 more than whoever you are fighting, and then fire a long burst at the end of the round when they are out of actions and have to take the damage.

Here's how you avoid this:

1) On your Init, you get to spend your Attack Actions.   Outside of your Init, you can only spend remaining Actions on Moves or Defense.  

OR

2) Your Init is divided by your total Actions, and you go on various Phases.  AKA, if I roll 13 for my Init and I have 5 actions, I go on phases 13 / 10 / 7 / 4 / 1.   So if I fire a long burst at 13 that costs 2 actions, my shot actually goes off on 10.  

I use Option 1 because I don't care for Phase bookeeping unless I used Fixed Init and even then its a bit rigid for me.    Instead, I like how Option 1 forces players to decide how aggressive they can get and how they have to balance the offense vs. defense.  So the guy dropping long bursts had better get lucky and blow his foe away or he's gonna be a sitting duck himself.

It makes Juicers scary.   That auto-dodge ability lets them spend all their actions on attacks, never caring about economizing.

That is a pretty solid system. I dig option 1.

Quote from: RPGPundit;408220I've certainly never used the dodge rules in that way; I've always read it and played it as dodging had to be rolled against each individual attack and cost one of your actions each time.

Same here.

Quote from: Spinachcat;408226Here's how you avoid this:

1) On your Init, you get to spend your Attack Actions.   Outside of your Init, you can only spend remaining Actions on Moves or Defense.  

Loved this! Looks like a good way to make Palladium combat more tactical.

Bah, pointless. First of all, the current combat system is a feature, not a bug. It supposes that if a person has been shooting, winding their way past bullets, dodging, etc, then at some point, they just can't move anymore and will be stuck for getting hit.

Second, with the proposed solution, if I read it right, there'd be nothing that would actually solve this problem. Player A on his init has 7 attacks, NPC villain B has 5 attacks; so player A can just fire 7 shots all at once, forcing villain B to try to dodge or parry or do simultaneous attacks (assuming that was still allowed with this change) until he's out of attacks, at which point player A still had two free hits on the guy. It changes nothing.

Except that, yes, then they're both out of attacks. But so what? My players, I know, would choose that every time. They'd use ALL of their actions to make attacks, based on the logic that the very best shot they have is to try to do max damage they can on the other guy and hope for the best.

So all this would probably end up doing is that, when the above tactic goes bad and players have left no actions for dodging, you're going to have a lot more dead RIFTS PCs.

RPGpundit

Good point Pundit, but it still leaves it the way my group has always played it, playing dumb with the system. No one tries to screw someone by going out of the way to target them when they are out of actions.

My players try to target opponents out of actions all the time, and my NPCs would do the same if a PC was out of actions; this is like I said something that seems perfectly emulative to me.  A guy has gotten so distracted by trying to hit or avoid being hit that he just can't avoid your shot by that point in the action.

RPGPundit

On the proposed actions fix: not sure it really solves the problem. The only real "fix" I think would be to say everyone has 4 actions, period - No bonuses for level ups, boxing or whatever.
Still I wouldn't actually do that since its just some characters schtick that they have lots of attacks (from memory mostly the robot combat training guys since they add their robot training attacks to their base HtH).

On the "Dodge applies vs. everyone" thing: haven't seen this either that I can recall. Checked the Palladium Books FAQ and nothing with that interpretation. One weird thing I did find that I thought was interesting is that officially "Autododge" (e.g. for Juicers) doesn't get the characters full Dodge bonuses, just PP bonus and any specific autododge bonuses.

In Ninja's and Superspies, there is Automatic Dodge, which has a lower bonus but doesn't cost an action, and Multiple Dodge, lower bonus but works against all incoming attacks.

Personally, I wouldn't mind people running out of actions and getting shot if there was a chance that a bullet would miss without a dodge roll, but it is pretty fucking easy to hit a 5 with an aimed shot.

Quote from: RPGPundit;408220Huh? Where was this clarified?
I've certainly never used the dodge rules in that way; I've always read it and played it as dodging had to be rolled against each individual attack and cost one of your actions each time.

RPGpundit

Then pre-RUE you were doing it wrong.

Originally, Palladium combat worked like this:

Player 1 has rolled high on initiative.  Player 2 is next.  Player 3 is last.

Player 1 attacks.  His target is Player 3.  Player 3 decides to dodge.  He uses his next action (his first one), and dodges.

Player 2 attacks Player 3.  Player 3's dodge roll is still in effect as his "action phase" hasn't come up.  In order to hit, Player 2 must roll higher than Player 3's existing dodge roll.

Player 3's action phase comes up.  He has already used his action to dodge.  Therefore, his dodge ends and his phase passes.

Player 1 attacks....

and so on.

In this way, each "action phase" (my own term, Palladium has no name for it) corresponds to the action everyone is on.  Action phase 8 is everyone's 8th action.  You have as many action phases as the combatant with the highest number of actions.

Basically, all trained dodges in Palladium are what Ninjas and Superspies calls Multiple Dodges.  The example in the original Rifts rulebook supported this flow of combat and it was more or less what was explained as the way to do it in Ninjas & Superspies (the book which is supposed to be the definitive combat book for the Palladium system).


Since Rifts Ultimate Edition, combat works like this:

Player 1 has rolled high on initiative.  Player 2 is next.  Player 3 is last.

Player 1 attacks Player 3.  Player 3 dodges.  He spends one of his actions.

Player 2 attacks Player 3.  Player 3 dodges.  He spends another one of his actions.

Player 3 gets to attack.  He uses his third action to attack.

and so on, untill all players run out of actions.  Player 3 will run out long before the other two.

Another difference is that this new method allows borrowing actions from the next round.  In this way, a character can spend all their actions for the current round as well as the next for dodging.

RUE radically changes what the number of attacks per round mean while simultaneously ignoring all previous examples and explanations of how combat works.

Im sorry, but where are you getting this?! I've got a ton of different palladium books, and I have NEVER seen the rules written in that way. Just right on-hand here, I have the original RIFTS book (deluxe edition, but not the UE), I have The Sentinels, I have the Robotech RPG, and I have Systems Failure, and NONE of them describe dodging the way you do.

In fact, in Systems failure it explictly says, "With only a few exceptions, each dodge uses up one of the character's attacks per melee round. So constantly dodging means the
character has no opportunity to attack."
In other words, you use an attack EVERY time you do a dodge.

Where did you get this idea of a one-roll per full-round dodge?

RPGPundit

Quote from: Cranewings;408618Personally, I wouldn't mind people running out of actions and getting shot if there was a chance that a bullet would miss without a dodge roll, but it is pretty fucking easy to hit a 5 with an aimed shot.

Again, though, it reflects the fact that the characters in RIFTS all start as pretty badass guys at level 1. Its a different power-level than in D&D.  Its expected that if the other guy isn't able to get out of the way, you will pretty well hit.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;408952Im sorry, but where are you getting this?! I've got a ton of different palladium books, and I have NEVER seen the rules written in that way. Just right on-hand here, I have the original RIFTS book (deluxe edition, but not the UE), I have The Sentinels, I have the Robotech RPG, and I have Systems Failure, and NONE of them describe dodging the way you do.

In fact, in Systems failure it explictly says, "With only a few exceptions, each dodge uses up one of the character's attacks per melee round. So constantly dodging means the
character has no opportunity to attack."
In other words, you use an attack EVERY time you do a dodge.

Where did you get this idea of a one-roll per full-round dodge?

RPGPundit

I'm not saying one roll per full round dodge.  I'm saying one roll per action phase.

First off, there's Rifts p. 34-35 where the sequence of combat is outlined.  Each participant in the combat does each of their actions in initiative order.  Everyone does their first action.  When everyone has done their first action, second actions are resolved, and so on.  Someone who dodges gives up their next attack.  Meaning they cannot act when their next phase comes up.

The combat example on p. 42-44 illustrates this.  In particular, pay attention to the bandit who dodges and therefore doesn't get to act when his action phase comes up.

This same sequence of combat exists in Ninjas & Superspies, which makes sense because N&SS is supposed to be the definitive and authoritative combat book for the Palladium system.  Dodge is explained on page 129.  "A Dodge roll is good against MULTIPLE attacks."  Also look at the Dodge Illustration at the bottom right of the page.

Also, I didn't say a dodge lasted for the entire round.  My example showed it only lasted until the character's next action came up, or for one "action phase."  Both the Rifts example of play and N&SS Dodge Illustration support and confirm this.

Here's the example again:

Phase 1; All characters on Action 1

Player 1 attacks Player 3.  Player 3 dodges and rolls a 15.

Player 2 attacks Player 3.  Player 3's dodge is still in effect, so Player 2 must roll higher than a 15 to strike.

Player 3's action comes up, but this is their action used for the previous dodge.  The dodge now expires.

Phase 2: All characters on Action 2

Player 1 attacks Player 3.  Player 3 dogers and rolls a 16.

Player 2 attacks Player 3.  Player 3's second dodge is in effect, so Player 2 must roll higher than a 16 to strike.

Player 3's action comes up.  This action was used for the second dodge.  The dodge now expires.

Phase 3: All characters on Action 3

etc.

Dodging means you give up an action as well as an attack phase.  If you keep dodging, then you run out of actions and never get to attack.

Hmm
An "action phase" would be what they'd call "First attack"  then "second attack", etc ?
I wouldn't call "Ninjas & Superspies" the definitive combat handbook - it isn't necessarily going to be the same as other Palladium books exactly (its Erick whereas Rifts is Siembieda) and there seem to be other minor changes to rules between the two -i.e. how Death Blow works, or in number of attacks characters get maybe (2+HtH elective, vs. just the number listed for your martial arts Form).

I don't think anyone's disputing that a Dodge uses up your next attack (i.e. skip your next turn) just whether it lets you roll or use the same roll against multiple foes shooting at you during that attack. If Rifts 34-35 lets you do that, that'd be correct then (I can't verify as my book is currently packed somewhere).

There's no such thing as an "action phase" in palladium, you just made it up.

And this is important because combat doesn't work in that way, in those kinds of "phases" like you are thinking about. In your earlier posts you were very clearly suggesting that one dodge roll affects everything for the round, now its for the "aciton phase" you just invented.

If dodge worked the way you suggested, the concept of "multiple dodge" from N&S would be meaningless.

You have yet to show anywhere in RIFTS or in any other system (aside from N&S, where clearly the guy was using a Multiple Dodge, which is a SPECIAL KIND OF DODGE FROM N&S, not the standard dodge you use in all palladium games) where a single dodge roll is shown to apply to more than one attack.

Its a nice little house-rule system you have there, but don't pretend that this is how the rules are actually meant to be played.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;409047And this is important because combat doesn't work in that way, in those kinds of "phases" like you are thinking about. In your earlier posts you were very clearly suggesting that one dodge roll affects everything for the round, now its for the "aciton phase" you just invented.

No. I didn't.  Go and reread my first post, because you clearly didn't the first time.

Quote from: RPGPundit;409047If dodge worked the way you suggested, the concept of "multiple dodge" from N&S would be meaningless.

You have yet to show anywhere in RIFTS or in any other system (aside from N&S, where clearly the guy was using a Multiple Dodge, which is a SPECIAL KIND OF DODGE FROM N&S, not the standard dodge you use in all palladium games) where a single dodge roll is shown to apply to more than one attack.

The heading in N&SS clearly states that it is defining standard DODGE.  Multiple dodge is defined separately as a subset of dodge which also includes attacks from behind.  This is pretty clear if you had read the section in question.  Also very cute of you to say that N&SS is irrelevant when the Rifts book says on page 34 that it's using N&SS's combat system, and  also when all the games use the same combat system and direct the readers to N&SS for the full rules.

Read the combat examples in the original Rifts as well as the original Conversion Book.  They fully match the phase idea I outlined in my first and second post.

And I wash the hands of the matter.

Quote from: Gabriel2;409057No. I didn't.  Go and reread my first post, because you clearly didn't the first time.

Looking back, I realize that was "Everloss" who said it. You jumped in somewhere later continuing Everloss' argument, so I had to assume you were proposing that his erroneous description of combat was right.

QuoteThe heading in N&SS clearly states that it is defining standard DODGE.  Multiple dodge is defined separately as a subset of dodge which also includes attacks from behind.  This is pretty clear if you had read the section in question.  Also very cute of you to say that N&SS is irrelevant when the Rifts book says on page 34 that it's using N&SS's combat system, and  also when all the games use the same combat system and direct the readers to N&SS for the full rules.

So if dodging worked the way you described, exactly what would be the point or advantage of having "multiple dodge"?

I didn't say N&S is irrelevant, I said that "Multiple Dodge" is a special mechanic/maneuver which is different from the regular Dodge.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;409170So if dodging worked the way you described, exactly what would be the point or advantage of having "multiple dodge"?

RPGPundit

From N&SS:

"Unlike the Parry, a Dodge roll is good against multiple attacks."

-snip-

"Multiple Dodge is the ability to Dodge all incoming attacks, no matter where they're coming from. In other words, it's effective even against rear attacks."


Some of the implications of the Ninjas dodge are apparent in the 1990 Rifts book, but it doesn't explain it very clearly one way or the other.  I have seen plenty of questions about combat at the Palladium forum answered with "see Ninjas & Superspies".  It looks to me like Gabriel2 is right, and suddenly Rifts makes a lot more sense. Even with a quick glance at R:UE, I didn't see anything that specifies that a dodge is only good versus one attack, but only that it "always takes up one attack/action per melee round"

A full "round" (as per D&D), where the characters get a full set of attacks/actions is known as "a melee" in Kevin's universe, IIRC, and a "melee round" in this case would be a single attack/action initiative countdown.

Except that I just noticed that "melee" and "melee round" have the same definition in the 1990 Rifts. Well, shit... This is why terms like "action phase" get introduced into these conversations.  The rules read as if the concept is present, and make more sense if the concept is used, but the idea is camouflaged with various other preexisting terms in the RAW, like "action", "attack", and "round"

So, for a full "count" of actions (everybody's second actions, for example, taken in initiative order), a dodging character will use his entire attack/action opportunity for that action count of the "melee" dodging all attacks.  If he's already taken his action on an earlier initiative count, the dodges will use up his next opportunity, but only at a rate of one action per "count".  So, he can only run out of actions one "count" early by the time the "melee" is over.  It's like declaring full defense posture, and setting a static defense rating with a d20 roll, then skipping your "attack/action" next time your initiative gets called.

Regardless, in more than two decades of running Palladium games, playing in palladium games, and watching others doing the same, I have NEVER seen combat run that way.
I have always seen it run as "you use one attack for every dodge you roll".

If it is a house rule, it is quite possibly the most successful house rule in the history of RPGs, because I've only ever seen anyone run it that way.

RPGPundit

Nothing to add to the original topic, or the latest derail, but...

Quote from: Cranewings;407696The Rift's conversion book was probably written in one sitting and went to print without being edited.

Interestingly, Zenjorki powers from N&S has their Chi cost quadrupled, even though they don't cost anything to use.

Wondering if Siembieda might have been referencing 1st edition Ninjas & Superspies, rather than the Revised edition?

The 1st ed. apparently had very different rules. (I haven't seen it, but the original is the one where Dedicated martial artist had 3 forms and Worldly had 2...this become 2 and 1 in Revised, apart from a couple of typos here and there e.g. the villain generator in the back).

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;409363Nothing to add to the original topic, or the latest derail, but...



Wondering if Siembieda might have been referencing 1st edition Ninjas & Superspies, rather than the Revised edition?

The 1st ed. apparently had very different rules. (I haven't seen it, but the original is the one where Dedicated martial artist had 3 forms and Worldly had 2...this become 2 and 1 in Revised, apart from a couple of typos here and there e.g. the villain generator in the back).

I guess that's possible. I vaguely remember my first gaming group talking about the old Dedicated Martial Artist, and how awesome it was to play an Ancient Master from Heroes Unlimited crossed with it. N&S Revised was already out when I started gaming.

Superspies is a funny game. If you do it right, you can make a martial artist out of that book that can easily fight Nightbane and Super Heroes. A friend of mine played a Dedicated Martial Artist in a Nightbane game I ran with Tae Kwon Do and the Korean Judo Style art. His chi was through the roof, hard chi and soft chi, 6 or 7 attacks per round for massive damage. It was sick.

What is worse is that it wasn't even the best thing we have written in it.