I've never found it that tough.  Homebrew-wise, I flip skills to roll over (open-ended) vs. a target #, rather than roll-under.  There are a lot of optional rules here and there, but I've always just streamlined away anything that's out of sorts or not easily applicable.  Things run just fine for me with the basic rules as found in Ultimate Edition or PFRPG. You want to add all the frosting, that's up to you.  But personally, if it makes a rules lawyer's brain melt, I'd say its worth it.

Yeah, Palladium's games can be messy, both with the hundreds of optional races, classes, weapons, and every and any other mad imaging that's ever been thrown into place, but it still inspires me.  For me, the rules aren't the satanic bible a lot of folks like to make them out to be.  Other folks have issues with balance, which can wreak havoc on an unwary GM with certain types of players.

A note on magic:  it does usually use PPE (spell points, basically), but there are also different optional magic systems in PFRPG (adaptable to Rifts) for creating your own magic by customizing wards.  That part truly kicks some ass.

Quote from: KillingMachineI'll chime in to agree that it isn't that difficult in its most basic form. Like others have said though, it can start to get bogged down with contradictions and special case rules. Eventually it can feel like a big duct taped mess if you aren't careful.

My Palladium days were back in the 80's, and while we found it usable for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles type stuff, the system felt tacked on to Robotech and the game play didn't match the series action - so we switched to Mekton 2. So I think a lot depends on the genre in which the system is used.

Quote from: grubmanTangent:  Someone refresh my memory.  Palladium fantasy spell system, spell points or spells per day like D&D?  I seem to be thinking it was spells per day but I can't remember for sure (too many systems, too many years).

In first edition you had spells per day which could be of any level.  Level was mainly there to tell you what it would cost to learn a spell from an Alchemist.

The Palladium System is a fast-play roll and shout system, with a very clever action point mechanism:

number of hand to Hand attacks. Especially in Firefights they are awesome. Why?
Because you can drop FUTURE HtH actions to keep dodging.
Most elegant suppression fire mechanism I ever saw.

I just finished a TMNT&OS game (With some Ninjas and Superspies stuff used for bad guys). It played very easily...and combat was SUPER fun!

I still don't like Rifts, but this thread is here to apologize for anything else bad I've ever said about them.

I've never found ANYTHING difficult about Palladium's system. There's a difference between "difficult" and "well-designed"; you can certainly argue that some of Palladium's rules aren't well designed, but they're quite comprehensible.   On the other hand, with D20 I find there are certain rules that are absurdly complex, like the Attack of Opportunity rules, or Grappling/tripping.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI've never found ANYTHING difficult about Palladium's system. There's a difference between "difficult" and "well-designed"; you can certainly argue that some of Palladium's rules aren't well designed, but they're quite comprehensible.   On the other hand, with D20 I find there are certain rules that are absurdly complex, like the Attack of Opportunity rules, or Grappling/tripping.

RPGPundit

Well, I know you've designed at least one game...you must know what it's like to find a rule that you need to cover, and try to come up with a way to do it that is simple...but you keep thinking of variables and situations, and by the time you are done you have a mess.  Functional, "realistic", but a mess.

I know that in some of my attempted designs I see rules that I've done that I wouldn't use myself.  But you can't just handwave them away or people will scream and bitch that they aren't there or aren't satisfactory.

Quote from: grubmanTangent:  Someone refresh my memory.  Palladium fantasy spell system, spell points or spells per day like D&D?  I seem to be thinking it was spells per day but I can't remember for sure (too many systems, too many years).

P.P.E. (Potiental Psychic Energy) is used to fuel Spells to cast magic.
I.S.P. (Inner Strength Points) is used to fuel Psychic powers.

CHI ( pronounced KEY ) is both PPE and ISP in the Mystic China book(s). It is used to fuel various Spells/Psychic powers...

I'd rather Palladium just use CHI myself. Just ignore the "outer energy" and "inner energy" aspects of PPE/ISP altogether. I much prefer the combined aspect of CHI. Where it is both Eternal and Internal and that the indivual knows enough to use this energies to best effect.

Quote from: grubmanWell, I know you've designed at least one game...you must know what it's like to find a rule that you need to cover, and try to come up with a way to do it that is simple...but you keep thinking of variables and situations, and by the time you are done you have a mess.  Functional, "realistic", but a mess.

I know that in some of my attempted designs I see rules that I've done that I wouldn't use myself.  But you can't just handwave them away or people will scream and bitch that they aren't there or aren't satisfactory.

So... about a month, maybe two, I read an older bit from a guy who had designed some cheapass games... maybe even Cheapass Games (tm)!.

In it he was talking about rule agglomeration (is that even a word? eh.) where you eventually wind up, in attempting to fix something percieved to be broken, making such a huge mess of things, when all you need to do is step back a look at the original thing that was 'broken' and get rid of it... or something like that. It was fucken' brilliant, man. Sure, I think he was talking about card/board game type of shit, but yeah.. if you are constantly adding new things to yoru rule set to keep ahead of the bugs, maybe you need to go back a few steps and rethink something instead... ditch the cludge.








Though: I find this to be a mixed bag. Too simple and elegant a rule set is frankly, boring an uninteresting to me, while obviously a massive, clunky, cludgy ruleset is also laughable.  the line between them is wide and fuzzy and hard to see sometimes.

(note: While I like SR4, I find it's ruleset moved too far towards simple and 'elegant' for my tastes... oddly enough given that it isn't exactly 'rules light' by any stretch... The point is, you need subsystems and exceptions tossed in for flavor. run with the cooking metaphor, by the way, I think it works for miles here...)