Being utterly bored by the current round of 4e threads I thought I'd liven things up with a thread on another game altogether.

I was flipping through my Rifts books once again, with the vague notions of making myself yet another copy of the same character 'type'...

Being bored and generally uninterested in that, I decided to go 'shopping' for gadgets, always a fun thing in Rifts, or any palladium product. One thing I've always liked about Rifts is that every weapon is illustrated, as are most, if not all, the vehicles. No vague guesses as to what something looks like and treating it like a stat block, no, now you can accessorize your character based on what looks cool!

But, and here is the Gripe:

I noticed, not for the first time, that the 'power level' of weapons is wonky. Now, for a while there, every book released more and more powerful guns, then they started releasing majorly underpowered guns (New West anyone?), eventually this leveled off more or less.

But what they never really did was address something that has been 'true' since the very first printing of the game: Large Weapons are fundamentally underpowered.

Take for example the 'Rail Guns'. These are massive weapons, machine guns suitable for weapon emplacements, vehicle mounts and full 'borg monstrosities. Yet their damage is merely comparable to the smaller, manportable weapons like the plasma ejector or a burst firing laser assault rifle (a 'core' weapon if you like... everyone should have access to that.)

In some books the 'Rail Guns' are even less powerful than the freakin' PISTOLS!  (New West and Australia, I'm looking at you....)

This isn't just a case of weak rail guns, mind you.  In my New Quebec Book, I was eyeballing the 'Mule' assault 'cannon'. This thing has a limited ammo capacity, can only be used by power armor/full borgs etc for it's full potential and fires massivly oversized rounds from a vehicle grade weapon (10 foot tall power armor suit gun...).

Yet it's damage is identical to the 'every grunt gets one' laser assault rifle.

Now, this isn't just a matter of wanting to twink out on bigger, cooler, guns.

No. First of all we have a 'logic gap' here. I expect that Mr. Muscles should punch me harder than 'Mr. Noodles'. Likewise, I expect a massive hand cannon should hit harder than some weeny plinker.  

Then there is the idea of 'threat'. Is a full borg or a set of power armor much of a threat to a party of Rifts adventurers (presuming they are restricted to 'non-PA/Full borg' power levels?)? Not really. Aside from having more hit points (maybe) they undoubtedly are dealing less damage.

In this game its better to 'scare' the players by telling them their opponent is carrying a itty bitty pistol than a massive railgun.  

And lets not even get into the actual Vehicle Mounted guns...

I just had a mental image of powersuited PCs fleeing in terror from bad guys armed with "Noisy Cricket" pistols.

Yes, the weapons values are insane in RIFTS, especially if you get into the sourcebooks where some writers clearly wanted much more uberpowerful guns than others.

RPGPundit

Where's Bill Coffin when you need him?  He's got anecdotes that explains a lot of this wackadoo bullshit.

As for what to do about it?  Recalibrate the entire game around a benchmark ratio of damage-to-armor of some sort, and rebalance the technologies around the variance from that benchmark; once you decided upon the standard, you can do that rebalancing act as you go- the benchmark actually makes such a task very easy to execute.

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerWhere's Bill Coffin when you need him?  He's got anecdotes that explains a lot of this wackadoo bullshit.

As for what to do about it?  Recalibrate the entire game around a benchmark ratio of damage-to-armor of some sort, and rebalance the technologies around the variance from that benchmark; once you decided upon the standard, you can do that rebalancing act as you go- the benchmark actually makes such a task very easy to execute.

do you know anyone who's done such a thing?  

maybe, just to keep things OTT (as rifts is wont to be) i'd just triple the damage of the truly big guns.  

we never gave it any serious consideration back when we played palladium megaverse.  it was the biggest beer & pretzels kind of game.  makes me want to run it again, now. . . .

Well, I think we all know that Rifts just isn't balanced, period.  And the power creep can be a nasty shock, especially in and after World Book 6:  South America.

But you do have to remember a few things that do, or at least can, limit some of the pistols and weapons that do larger damage:

Range:  Often not a factor, the way some folks play Rifts, but many of the powerful pistols have a very short range, compared to the other weapons.

Payload:  A Triax rifle might get 20 shots out of an FSE-Clip.  Northern Gun's latest pistol monster might get 8-12.  Yeah, this can really start to matter, depending on how long your fights are, and how far away you are from any type of civilization.

Weapon/Ammo Availability:  Some of the specialized weapons in Mercs, New West, and others take special shells or ammo not readily available, or that are somewhat expensive.  Aside from this, it stands to reason there is going to be a much bigger supply and demand for the NG-45 Laser Pistol (5d6 MDC) vs. the Wilks 320 (1d6).  Sure, both would vaporize a modern-day car, and the Wilks is a good, affordable pistol, but pros and badmen love the NG-45.  Sends a message, you know.  Can't get 'em around here--Northern Gun can't make enough to keep with supply.  And that's driven the cost wayyyy up.  Wilks?  Turns out they're having a clearance sale.


Of course, all of this is going to depend on what sort of game is run.  In some games, only the damage will really signify.  In others, those other factors will run into it.  Besides, I don't mind the unbalanced weapons--it complements the rest of the game nicely.  As a long-time Rifts GM, I'm used to creating my own game balance, such as it is, or using the imbalance to amusing effect.  The Vagabond who left home with nothing but his bit of candy and the pride of his rural community, his dad's old Coalition C-18, is going to find there are meaner people out there with meaner guns.  So he outwits, outthinks, or outlucks those guys till he can upgrade or take theirs.

Bottom line:  It's Rifts.  Don't try to think too much about it, relax and blow some shit up.  I recommend a fusion block.

There´s a benchmark in a way. I ran a short survey on weapons and armour sometime ago.

The major thing to understand is tha Rifts weapons have several important characteristics:

Damage
Cost
Ammunition
Special Abilities:
   Secondary Weapon?
   To Hit Bonus?
   Special Damage Type?
   Blast Area?

From those you can actually compare the expected mean damage and the pricing to give you an idea about how the special abilities or hindrances are adressed in the cost.



Look at the last column, that´s the effieciency of how many credits you have to pay for one point of expected damage. That´s just the start but you get the idea.

Interestingly enough I find there´s not that much variance regarding the base models. It´s not DMG style standardized power/GP, but it´s working out okay for the baseline stuff.

Grenades are awesome for the bang/buck ration, though.

See, Rifts is that girl in the bar. You think you want her, but once you get her in the light and alone, you realize you've made a mistake. If you're not careful, you'll see her in the bar again, rationalize being with her, get her alone and in the light again, and realize that you've made the same mistake twice.

Seanchai

Dear Griping Rifts people.
Have you ever seen Waste World? Alien planet with city states, post apocalyptic setting, robots, giant mutants, genetically engineered society, samurai's with laser swords, ninjas, robot PC's, alien monster PC's, psychomagi, flying power armor suits and MORE!

Plus a system that is consistent, solid, and mechanically useable--based around a d20 adding stuff, beating target numbers (similar in fact to Talislanta's rule system) but with point build PC creation.

It is a solid, wonderful (but now dead) game.
Can often be found cheap.

I once had Waste World, once long ago. Sadly, while I can occasionally find splat books for it I have never since seen the main book.  While it is, in some ways, Rifts-ish, it has an entirely different tone to it.

Quote from: SeanchaiSee, Rifts is that girl in the bar. You think you want her, but once you get her in the light and alone, you realize you've made a mistake. If you're not careful, you'll see her in the bar again, rationalize being with her, get her alone and in the light again, and realize that you've made the same mistake twice.

Seanchai

But "she" never wants for company.

As the author of the most famous Rifts actual play thread on the Internet, I approve this message.  

And it's not just the technology damages that are fucked up.  Even greater demons, etc, generally only do 5d6 or 6d6 damage - barely on par with a standard human rifle.

What's worse - as time goes on, armor levels kept increasing even while damage values stay relatively flat (damn near everything does 3d6-6d6 damage now, but almost nothing does more than 2d6x10).

This becomes a real problem trying to plan encounters.  How can you challenge the PCs by making the enemies capable of doing enough damage to threaten them, but without having the enemies take forever to kill off.  

Nobody likes really, really long combats where the PCs slowly whittle down 800 MDC demons who can't really hurt them much.  And I don't care how much fluff you add to the description of combat, after a couple of rounds it just become a die rolling exercise.

Here's what I'd like to see as a standard - weapons/attacks average at 30% of the expected armor value of the target.

So, if the standard infantry armor is 100 MDC, then the standard infantry rifle should do around 7d6 damage.  Tanks with 500 MDC should do around 5d6 x 10 damage.  A glitter boy with 770 MDC could do 6d6 x 10 damage, and a major demon with 800+ MDC should do at least 7d6 x 10 damage.

That way, a hit is a serious problem when going up against a like enemy, smaller enemies can be wiped out easily in one shot, and bigger enemies are still possible to take down without spending hours on combat.

Quote from: jgantsAs the author of the most famous Rifts actual play thread on the Internet, I approve this message.  

(snip awesomeness)

i'll have to write this down for the next time (please?  feeling hopeful, there) that i run rifts.  just start with a few books and do the damage / armor rewrites as we go.

Some years ago, before New West came out and this Gripe was truely valid (though... Phase World, for all its neat stuff, seems to have realatively low actual damages for some of the bigger guns now that I think of it... with a few exceptional standouts....)

I had a different gripe in that I hate armor as extra HP, almost as much as I hate armor as 'I'm harder to hit'... SO I had this lovely one page conversion ruleset that made use of the fluff and made armore only partially ablative, and weapons had penetration. The core of the rule was pretty simple it was the examples and details that took up the rest of the page.

Never ran it though. Then again: I've mostly one played rifts...

Quote from: WerekoalaI just had a mental image of powersuited PCs fleeing in terror from bad guys armed with "Noisy Cricket" pistols.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again now.

When we played Robotech, our characters piloting mecha would flee in terror from small groups of guys carrying rifles.  The guys in basic body armor with the rifles could crank out more damage in a round than we could, short of expending our entire missile load at once.

We took to attacking the terrain around body armored infantry in order to immobilze them.  They had too much MDC to kill.