Quality In Rifts: House Rules

By Pete Overton

Rationale

Uh... *you* play Rifts by canon rules, and see how sane you are.

Abstract

Seriously, Palladium's mechanics are an industry-wide joke, but even before all of this, I came up with a bunch in the oldern days when I was running live games lots. We had a lovely system where we plugged in Palladium numbers and the spreadsheet spit out mechanics in our own little homebrew system. It ran great, but unfortunately all of it was lost during one of my epic computer crashes of the mid-1990s. Lots of things I tried to resurrect in my other House Rules file that I post on this page from time to time, but frankly, a new collection was needed, especially since everyone was always asking me for mine, and I never really computerized them so they exist merely in my head an on some notes I wrote down, trapped in binders in the bottom of my closet somewhere.

These come from a variety of sources, either through brainstorming with people or culled from my random posts on the QiR list or PML. Less so from the PML, but they cry if I don't mention them. I have lots of throwaway ideas that I always forget about ten seconds after I say them, so this is partly a pool for me, too. Some of them are very playtested, others less so, so if you end up using any of them, let me know how they work. I'm currently in a Rifts PBeM, which is why I am all into it again briefly, but I will try to keep this updated periodically, since I brainstorm with other people lots these days, it seems. Feel free to drop ideas or bitching, I am always entertained by feedback. ;)

My goal in creating these was to achieve the same sort of spreadsheet-style compatability with stock Rifts. That is, you can take regular Rifts numbers and plug them in for a more efficient and streamlined system. That way, you can use these seamlessly against current Rifts material you possess and still manage to have an easier time with it.

NOTE: As a rule, I ignored pretty much most of the mechanics in RUE. I suggest you do too.

House Rules, v2.0

Attributes

Scale

Palladium's attribute system remains one of its most broken aspects. In by-the-book Rifts, statistically speaking, every single attribute below 17 is equally worthless, and there is no mechanical penalty for having an IQ of 3. I have a whole page devoted to the weirdness of Palladium's attribute system, but rest assured, it most needed it.

First of all, a new attribute scale is needed. 100 is now the Megaversal maximum that anything in it can achieve. However, after 50, the attributes advance geometrically, not linearly, meaning that PS 50 is ten times as good as PS 40, but that PS 51 is twice as good as PS 50. This is done so that the majority of the game's beings have some space beyond human maximum but that truly high end cosmic powers can retain their ultimate horror. Note that 100 is the ULTIMATE MAXIMUM, and that God Himself can't have 101.

A side effect of this is that all different types of Physical Strength are eliminated. Thus, there is no differentiation between Supernatural, Robot or Augmented strength, because they all exist on a single scale now. Simply take the carry capacity, as defined by Palladium's awesome tables, and fit them in on this uniscale. Thus, a demon with Supernatural PS 30 is now probably somewhere around 45 or higher (this is a rough guess, not a calculation).

The full human range is now 1-20, with 20 being the maximum unaugmented humans can expect. 10 or 11 is human average (which tracks with the 3d6 method of characte creation), and again, there is no natural way for a human to get beyond 20 in any score. Attributes represent natural talent rather than trained skills, so it stands to reason that natural talent will only go so far. Unaugmented 20 is slightly more than it was before, though, due to the new attribute table. Augmentation merely means that you can keep adding on the bonuses past 20, instead of stopping there dead as an unaugmented character. Practically speaking, you won't get much past 26 or so, but it brings the theme of human augmentation back to the forefront, and now has consequences.

Note that different races have different maximums. You'll have to use their character creation statistics from Rifts books as a guide. For instance, a dwarf's PS cap will probably be slightly higher than a human's, as some exceptional dwarves might reach 23 or 24. The important thing about this is that the 1-20 scale for humans is now the baseline, meaning you can quickly and easily figure out how much better another race is at something compared to the poor old homo sapien, and then scale it accordingly.

Likewise, you'll soon see that a lot of things have similar statistics under this system. This is an intentional side effect of the design for this, because unlike canon Palladium, it caps natural ability by race and makes skills more important (ultimately) than raw talent. In a skill-based game like Rifts (and indeed, all of Palladium's games), this is a very important step towards evening out some of the mess.

The New Attribute Table

One of the problems with the canon Palladium attribute system is that, statistically speaking, any attribute below 17 is equally worthless. By pinning the human average (ie. zero modifier) at 10-11, we can thus radiate penalties downwards and bonuses upwards from that. In effect, it gives every non-average attribute bonus or penalty, which means they all become important for mechanics (we already know they are important for roleplaying). So with that in mind, here is the 1-20 table to use as a base. Note that I used our old low attribute table, not RUE's lame edition.

You'll note that the non-physical skills drop off fairly sharply. Remember this is the bottom of a very long scale. A human with an IQ of 1 can't even truly speak, and (hopefully) got that way as a result of brain damage rather than a player rolling a 1 on 3d6. :P The lowest extremes are included for creatures other than humans and monsters and such.

Also bear in mind that I essentially slid the modifiers down by four points, meaning that the bonuses for current PS 20 were old PS 24. So adjust this for any characters transferring to this system first before figuring out where the rest of his stuff is.

Incidentally, I realize that having a 10 or 11 gives no bonuses and are essentially "dead" zones on the chart. I felt that there are a lot more people out in the world who are average than people who aren't (either more or less endowed). The bell curve basically drops the 10-11 in the middle, and so I radiated out from there. As a result, it fit the chart well and so I decided to stick with it. Statistically speaking, yes, they are inert attributes, but while they don't give you a bonus, they don't penalize you either, so it works out well enough.

Attribute Rolling

With this new revision, rolling 3d6 is again fairly viable, since most of the attributes have consequences now. As is well known, I tend to run very human-centered games, and so this worked well for me. Should you desire to run a more typical Rifts heroic/cinematic game, you could simply use any one of the millions of rolling methods known for it now, the most popular of which seems to be 4d6 and drop the lowest die. If you are out to run this style of game, you may want to up the human maximum to 25 or so, since you will be getting pretty heroic characters.

Rolling the extra die on a 16, 17 or 18 is obviously NO LONGER DONE under my house rules. In fact, you'll note that on your standard 3d6, you can't even hit a 19 or 20 on this scale. This is intentional, since those tend to require lots of training, expressed by way of the Physical skills. You could similarly add a handful of Social and Mental skills as well, ones which "train" your IQ, ME, MA, and PB (not all at once obviously). If you roll a 17 for IQ and then take "Chess Club" Mental training skill, you might get +2 for a total of 19. Be reasonable, but don't let it get out of hand any more than you would Physical skills. I'd bet that Physical skills are much easier to train up than the Social or Mental ones, so be judicious with it.

I completely dropped Speed as an attribute, because I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time I used it for anything. It's a tragically horrible attribute that causes far more problems than it solves. The whole Speed table is atrocious as well and is alone rife with issues. So I'd replace Speed with some sort of derivative of PS/PE/PP - an average which would produce a number between 1 and 20. I'd like to find a way to turn that into some sort of "xx amount of feet or meters per melee" or something, but I haven't really thought about it until now, so leave it with me for the moment while I give it some thought.

I've always felt that one of the core themes of Rifts was human augmentation - how far do you go with it and what does it cost you? Now, with no real spots to dump crappy rolls into, you'll have to start wondering about it. Augmented humans can witness their totals roll on past the racial maximum of 20. Cyborgs and Juicers especially will easily surpass these, although remember that with the new scale in place and no "augmented" PS category anymore, you just plain go with the scale, not randomly start higher.

Bear in mind that the new scale is *different* than the old one. By that, I mean you can't just parse it over point for point. You have to evaluate the relative abilities of things and then place them on the new scale. If, say, a Juicer has the strength of 8 men, then it stands to reason that he have a new PS of 28, since 20 is the human maximum. This is a very freehand process and requires a lot of judgement, but if you run these new characters against an old Rifts foe without adjustment, they will get eaten. This scale applies to everyone and everything in the Megaverse (to me), so placing things on it consistently is a good thing.

Game Style Issues

To expand on the above, my house rules make for a more "average joe", realistic game. If you wish to alter this, it's as easy as raising the scale cap on humans. If I wanted to run a heroic game, I'd up my cap to 25 or so, and then I'd get charactes who were quite better than average. The key is in keeping the scaling consistent - that is, don't change the 1-20 core, but rather build upwards off it. You may have truly cinematic characters who run around with attributes of high 20s and low 30s (you crazy person you) but that's fine, if that is how you want to play, as long as the scale remains consistent and constant.

This is, in fact, precisely why I make it geometric after 50 or so, because really, once you are past an attribute that is 50, things get very cosmic quickly, and by causing it to be geometric, I can keep it compressed down to a mere 1-100 scale. Plus, by giving this scale, players can get a simple sense of things because it's all consistent now.

If you wanted a more cinematic style game, you could also declare that Physical attribute bonuses count as "augmentation" for purposes of the human maximum. Thus, if if I had a PS 19 and took some weight training and boxing, you might rule that my new PS is now 23. I don't tend to do this personally, but the option is there for you folken who want to run a more standard sort of Rifts game. This would easily put a lot of characters into the 25-30 range if coupled with the 4d6-drop the lowest method of rolling.

You will notice that your vehicles (considered for the rest of this whole document to include actual vehicles, power armor, and robots et al.) and your supernaturals (critters and demons and such) will have some very high looking statistics. This is more or less accurate, because this revision hopes to inflict teamwork on the PCs to work together to take down a threat, or even worse, maybe talk before shooting up everything in sight. Everything has its place on the new scale, but Rifts Earth is no more safe than before. That said, remember to adjust *all* races and monsters for the new scale, not just the PCs.

Summary

* Megaversal Maximum is 100, linear progression from 1-50, geometric from 51-100
* The various different types of PS are eliminated, and instead they are all merely placed higher on the scale
* Human Maximum (unaugmented) is 20
* The attribute Speed has been eliminated
* There is no extra die for rolling a 16, 17 or 18 anymore
* New attribute table incorporates bonuses for nearly every attribute now, making all attributes worth something now

Skills

Task Difficulty

Rifts is, as you might note, a skill-based game, no matter what His Self says about it being a level-based one, pfffff. In Rifts, someone with training in their job (60% skill or so) has about a 2 in 5 chance of screwing up. That's a little excessive. Not to mention that the canon Rifts rules don't take into account how easy or hard a task is, you just roll your skill no matter what and hope for the best. It doesn't take a genius to see why this is a broken system.

I've been using a lovely old Twilight 2000 (first edition) mechanic for some time now with Rifts. It essentially divides tasks into three basic categories - Easy, Average, and Difficult. Simply put, an Easy task rolls twice the skill amount, an Average task rolls the skill amount, and the Difficult task rolls at half the skill amount. So If I was an auto mechanic 60%, I'd do an oil change (an Easy task) at 120%, an alignment (Average) at 60% and an engine rebuilding (a Difficult task) at 30%.

You've probably noticed that any skill over 50% that is Easy pretty much automatically succeeds, and that's sort of the point - that when you get good at something, doing the little things is just second nature. However, there *are* other complications. Something that is an Easy task for one skill might be Average for another, or Difficult. If I had to fix up an engine, it might be an ESY Autmotive Mechanic or an Average Basic Mechanics. Multiple skills at different levels can be used to solve the same basic task in this system, at the GM's judgement.

Also, there are more generalized complications that you can introduce. Ever try and fix a car with no real tools? That AVG mechanic roll just bumped up to DIF. Tracking across the hard, dry ground just became a DIF Tracking task. Environmental complications and lots of other things can also crop in. Doing your Paramedic work in a nice CS base is a little easier than doing it out in the pouring rain in the middle of a firefight. There's a lot of things that can drag a perfectly simple ESY roll to epic proportions!

Sometimes, you will find a task that is equally suited to two different skills - players can use whichever one they like. In many cases, the players can pick whoever is the highest in the skill, but many times the PCs might be separated or one might be unconscious, and another's skill must be used. Bear in mind that there are some tasks that are simply impossible. Trying to build a new engine out of orange peels and love won't work no matter how awesome you are. You have to use a little common sense.

Additionally, if the task roll succeeds by less than 10% of the target number (that is, if an AVG task of Mechanic 60, a 6 or less), then an outstanding success has occurred. It's the GM's discretion on what happens, but generally some sort of unintended beneficial effect occurs. Perhaps the engine is not only repaired, but gets better mileage now. Likewise, if the character fails the task by a roll of 90 or higher, a second task roll is made. If the second one fails also, a catastrophic failure has occurred. In the above example, perhaps not only does the engine remain damaged, but the head is cracked and won't run ever again. However, the catastrophic failure shouldn't be used every single time, but in dramatic situations. Its real purpose is to dissuade characters from trying tasks far above their skill levels, and have consequences if they do decide to try. Pride, the fall, etc. :)

Thanks to GDW for their awesome Twilight 2000 games, for letting me use this one (they didn't actually give me permission, but they are a dead company now, sadly).

Skill Improvement

I think if you are reading this file, you probably agree that the long-standing fallacy that Rifts (or indeed, any Palladium game) is a level-based game is a joke. Mages are the only class who *need* levels, and let's face it, we could simply replace that with a "Magic" attribute or skill for them. Likewise, the idea that all your skills raise equally each level is mind-boggling, as if you are standing around after killing your 18th Xiticix and suddenly you go, "Ohhh, so THAT'S how I wire that electronic circuit!" Very odd. Palladium's canon system basically doesn't acknowledge things like learning from individual skill use, because it's too complicated for them. So, I again dipped into the Twilight 2000 well, and came up happy.

Essentially, the GM hands out skill experience points, rather than the generic brand. Each time a skill is used successfully, he gains a skill experience point in that skill. GM's may decide to give an xp point to a character who tries a Difficult task and just barely fails. A character gains two skill points if an outstanding success was achieved. However, a character gains NO xp for using a skill level over 50 for an Easy task, outstanding success or not. The reward should fit the task, and the task should genuinely need doing, not just frivilously using a skill. Generally, only one xp can be gained per encounter or day (although in Rifts, each encounter may work better).

If a character - with the consent of the other character - observes someone performing a skill, they can gain an experience point. This assumes that the character performing the skill is taking time to explain what is going on and such, and generally extends the normal length of time the task takes by anywhere from 50% to 100% longer. This obviously cannot be done if under some sort of time pressure or if the character performing the task refuses to explain it.

At some point, the GM decides it is time to reconcile the skill experience. This is done by subtracting the skill level from 100, and then dividing it by 100. The result is the experience multiplier, which is then used to multiply by the skill experience points to result in the final gain. So if I accumulated 6 points in mechanic, and my mechanic skill is 43, then I'd subtract 43 from 100 to get 57, and then divide 57 by 100 for 0.57. 0.57 is my skill multiplier, so I multiply that by the 6 skill experience points to get a (rounded) total of 3. Thus, my new mechanic skill is 46.

The genius of this system is that, while it seems like it would be slow (because it was originally made for Twilight 2000, not Rifts), you can VERY easily control its rate of growth by how many skill experience points you give out. You could theoretically pace a standard Rifts character if you gave out enough. Whether you WANT to or not is up in the air, but you can have full control over the advancement pace as GM. Rifts characters tend to start out with some pretty decent skill numbers, anyway. Plus, you can alter the rate of giving out the xp in different ways - if you want characters to initially skill up quicker, give out more xp to start with and then slow the pace as they pass the 60s. The pacing is entirely up to you.

Obviously, this method is fairly detail-oriented, and is not for your usual cinematic Rifts game. However, I found it effective. If you want to keep pace with your standard Rifts levels, simply figure out how much the skill usually gains per level (+5% let's say) and simply figure out how many xp points it would need. If my Mechanic skill is 60 and I'd gain +5% per level in Rifts canon, then 5 (is my goal) would divide into the skill multiplier (in this case, 100-60=40/100=0.4). Thus, we take 5/0.4 which equals 12 (rounded down), meaning that to pace a normal Rifts character would take 12 mechanic experience points. Then plan accordingly.

You could alternatively continue to use the basic Palladium system, but refuse to level up any unused skills. This is a decent compromise and one lots of Rifts players have used over the years. The Skill Experience rule suits my game playing style more, but nothing is to say that you can't stick to at least some sort of logic by only levelling skills that you use. I've heard far worse. But I prefer the above.

I pulled this from Twilight 2000 as well. I salute you, boys!

Attribute Modifiers

One of the other strange things about the Palladium system is that, excluding IQ, no skill is affected by any attribute. This results in the strange case that two characters with Sewing 50% each, one with PP 15 and one with PP 9, are both statistically equal in Palladium basic rules. This is, as you can guess, problematic, as well as absurd. If you are going so far as to hardcore the attribute scale system and the revised skill difficulty system, you may as well link the two for maximum effect.

In canon Palladium, IQ provides bonuses to all your skills. In this revision, we change that so that each attribute is linked to relevant skills. For instance, Sewing could be linked to PP, meaning that the above two characters would be +5% and -3% respectively. Unless sorely pressed, I won't provide charts of which skill matches with which attribute, because they are generally fairly straightforward. The precise modifier numbers are listed below.

Please note that these aren't necessarily final numbers. They haven't been heavily playtested, so I reserve the right to change them later. Or else you can just report on how they work to me. I'm always willing to play around with the scaling, because I'm a little weird on it.

The theory here is that the lower your attribute, the harder it is for you to perform. The low end penalties may seem a little harsh, but you have to remember that this specifc scale is geared towards the Human normal. Plus, it is the very bottom of a large scale (1 to 100), so naturally the bottom end will be a little harsher. The bonuses provided by high attributes are geared towards providing an edge, not an overwhelming tsunami of support. As you get past human maximums, you start to get into the really high end of things, so I have to scale that accordingly.

Skill Specialties

A recent thing I have been considering is adding specialties in. With the shift to a skill-based system rather than a level-based one, having skill specialties is a FURTHER way for characters to distinguish themselves. I tend to run Coalition military games, where - in canon Palladium - they are all essentially very similar. With skill specializations, it allows some divergence from each other while maintain the basics.

In essence, skill specialties are declared for most any skill. Some, such as attribute-enhancing Physical skills, can't have a specialty. But most of the rest can. Basically, a skill specialty adds a +10% when the task you are doing is relevant to the skill. Generally speaking, the specialties are more specific than broad, since there are a large number of skills in the game. For instance, you could take Cooking (Burgers) as a specialty, or WP Laser Rifle (C-14 Firebreather). GMs ultimate have to judge what is acceptable and what isn't, but err on the side of specific, not broad.

You receive an initial number of specialties equal to your Bonus Skills modifier from IQ in the revised attribute table. For instance, someone with an IQ of 15 would receive 2 free specialties to start. Specialties can be purchased with skill xp, and some GMs may allow certain OCCs to begin with other specialties. However, this is entirely optional.

Skill Changes

Obviously, this section will be forever unfinished, as I tweak them all a lot, but I figured I'd throw out what I bothered with and we'll see what develops, or not. Which is a long winded way of saying, there's not much here because a lot of the changes to skills I made were on the fly during a game.

Boxing: Boxing no longer gives an extra melee attack per round. I mean, if as many people in real life knew boxing as in Rifts, we'd all be tripping over each other's gloves. The only way to gain additional attacks is through Hand to Hand experience or by OCC ability.

Demolitions: My e-mail brainstorm buddy Reese came up with the obvious idea to merge Demolitions, Demolitions Disposal and Underwater Demolitions into a single skill. Under the Task Difficulty system, doing anything underwater would just make a task a little harder, and the setting/disposal of them, while quite different, can be represented with a simple xx/yy set, the former for setting and the latter for retrieving or disabling.

Marksman: Rifts has a skill called Sniper, which gives a flat +2 to strike. This is another atrocious mislabelling and glazing over of an entire MOS. The new skill, Marksman, now takes the place of the old skill "Sniper", so that characters who take Marksman get a flat +2 bonus to strike. Sniping proper is the special ability of the Sniper OCC now, and it's slightly more complex than merely "+2 to strike". :P

Game Style Issues

The main thing you will notice with these revisions is that it eliminates the traditional "level" system of Palladium. Palladium levels are very strange - you are, essentially, what your character is at first level. Which is to say, each level increase doesn't really add enough to get excited over. Your character at level 6 isn't too different from your character at level one, statistically speaking. While a level system works well for heavy experience-based games like D&D, Palladium's excessive reliance on skills and their bizarre method of raising (a spontaneous infusion of knowledge to all your skills simultaneously at levelup) makes it surreal at best and broken at worst.

By removing the levels and focusing on the skills themselves, you get a more logical and consistent game. Skills - when they are low - will tend to raise quickly, but a little past the midpoint the skill xp needed to raise the skill starts to increase (representing the fact that you already know a lot). As professionals (60%+), characters will have more realistic chances of failure or success, avoiding the whole problem that Palladium doesn't recognize any difficulty levels for skill rolls. You should find that players are more eager to use their skills and will - hopefully - turn to their skill sheet before their equipment list. GMs should be willing to drop in all sorts of skill tests depending on what you want the pace of your game to be.

Adding task difficulties and linking skills to attributes is just such common sense that it barely needs commenting on. While GMs could use canon Palladium mechanics and simply impose modifiers on the skill rolls, I find that having different levels of difficulty makes it evidently clear to the player how hard or easy something is for his character. This also allows skills to rise above 98% in canon Palladium because Difficult tasks with heavy situational modifiers can be tried better by characters with 100%+ in their skills. Getting any skill to 100%, much less beyond, is quite a task, but it's quite possible, and superior NPCs/monsters can certainly already be there in some things.

The net effect of task difficulties and linking skills to attributes is for character definition. You'll find that with an understanding of their attributes, their skills, and what affects what, players will be able to bring a depth of character that was previously barely available. Skill Specialties add another tool for players to use to flesh out their characters, and represent different styles or training.

Summary

* Performing tasks now uses a difficulty system - Easy tasks use double the skill rating, Average tasks use the skill rating, and Difficult tasks use half the skill rating. Other modifiers may apply.
* Any success greater than 10% of the target number is an outstanding succes; any failure rolling 90 or higher and who fails a second roll suffers a catastrophic failure
* Individual skills now gain xp - 1 for each successful use, 2 for each outstanding success, unless the skill was over 50 and an Easy task.
* Skill rise by taking the current rating, subtracting it from 100, and dividing that result by 100 to get a skill multiplier. That is then multiplied against current xp for the skill to result in the net gain for the skill.
* Skills are now modified by attribute ratings; high attributes provide bonuses and low attributes penalize.
* Skill specialties add +10% for specific narrow skill use. Initial specialties are determined by your IQ bonus skills number.

Combat

I can't possible imagine I need to get into why the combat system needs altering. Just play it once.

MDC Notes

As was pioneered here back in ye oldern days, the ratio I use is 20:1. That is, 20 SDC per 1 MDC point. This is a much more sensical and marginally more realistic formula. Additionally, MDC is not automatically immune to SDC weapons. With the addition of Damage Resistance, this archaic old piece of Palladium drivel is no longer needed. If an SDC attack achieves enough damage and doesn't get resisted, it could theoretically cause damage. However, rare will be the times when an SDC attack gets by the MDC's damage resistance.

Also, any nonsupernatural race is assumed to be SDC, regardless of the levels of magic energy on Rifts Earth. Deal.

My Combat Method (codename: Mercury)

Those of you who remember my old House Rules 1.0, you'll recognize a lot of this, because this is merely a refinement of those old ideas. I've been using this ruleset for over a decade now in some form or another, and I quite like it. What it basically does is compile all of the bonuses on your character into a single modifier, and all of the bonuses on the enemy into a single modifier, sets base ranges, applies any miscellaneous modifiers and then rolls. If you have your modifiers all tallied up and converted, and the GM has the same for the enemy, combat will go about ten times as fast, and be more realistic and probably a little more dangerous, too. Working in groups quickly becomes a much better idea than running around like the bitter antisocial guy you are. Yeah, you.

The best thing is that you can take all of your regular Palladium numbers and swap them over at will for this system, so you can make any characters you want in standard Palladium and quickly convert them for Mercury. It's relatively painless once you get the basics.

1) Initiative is generated by averaging your IQ and PP (the theory being that mental quickness is as important as physical). If your character has other Initiative modifiers (like from your class or HTH skills), those are added into your Initiative score. Then, simply roll a d20 and add your Initiative score. Highest guy goes first.

2) Range! One thing that forever mystified me was Palladium's lack of range categories. Early on, I made up my own, and it's integral to my little homebrew system here, because the range is what sets the base "to hit" value. However, I quickly learned that a static, unchanging set of ranges was useless, so I made them dynamic by the gun. Each range category has a percentage, which is applied to the weapon's MAXIMUM range. You then compare how far away the target is (you have a pocket laser distancer, right?) and that sets the base hit number.

So, for instance, take your handy dandy C-14 Firebreather. Its range is 2000 feet, which makes Extreme range pretty easy to figure out. Dropping back to Long, we see that it's 50% of 2000, or 1000 feet. Dropping back again to Medium, we see it's 25% of 2000, or 500 feet. Looking at the Short category, it's 10% of 2000, or 200 feet. Finally, anything within 10 feet or so is considered Point Blank. By this way, we dynamically calculate weapon ranges and their base hit numbers. In this case, if an enemy was 800 feet away, it would be Medium range.

What is stopping you from having combat a thousand feet away? Line of sight, mostly. With Rifts Earth's wilderness reset button having been hit, places of good range are a lot more rare than you would think.

3) Deriving Statistics: Looking at your character sheet, you will find that you have piles of combat modifiers - bonuses to strike, to parry, to dodge, etc. Well, your enemy has those too, presumably, and so rather than fumble around with all of that mess, I decided to simply it. They should be in the form of "+4 to strike" or "+7 to dodge" or what have you. Well, guess what, now each +1 converts to a +5%. Thus, if you had a "+4 to strike", you now have a "+20% to strike", and if you had a "+7 to dodge" then you now have a "+35% to dodge". This applies to any form of bonuses (or penalties under the new atribute system), be it technological (a +1 to strike from a scope adds +5%) or an attribute bonus (PP) or other. Easy, right?

You are basically distilling all of those bonuses into two basic numbers - your Strike Modifier and your Defense Modifier. Your Strike Modifier is the percentage total of the sum of your bonuses, converted at a +5% per +1 bonus. Your Defense Modifier is your old Dodge bonus plus 20% of your PP rating (typically an additional +1 to +4 = +5% to +20%). These two statistics are the keystones of this kitbash system.

Note that other converted values are still useful. Parrying remains a separate declaritive action, and any parry bonus is converted at +5% per +1 also. Ditto for Rolling with Punches, although that only works for projectile ranged weapons or Hand to Hand combat, naturally.

4) Hitting the Enemy: Your enemy has a Defense Modifier as well, either one set arbitrarily by the lazy GM or one whichis derived from the enemy's statistics. Combat is thus very simple - you take your Base Hit Number (from the range categories), modify that by your Attack Modifier, modify it (typicall negatively) by your enemy's Defense Modifier, throw in any environmental or situational modifiers, and roll under the net Target Number. There is NO active Dodge anymore, because it's all tallied under the Defense Modifier.

For example, Heroic CS Trooper Mike meets Samson, a deranged Tolkeen survivor while on patrol. Naturally, Mike wishes to open fire on the guy. Mike's a trained CS Grunt, so he has an Attack Modifier of +25% and a Defense Modifier of 40%. Samson has an Attack Modifier of +10% and a Defense Modifier of 35% (good PP). They are 100 feet apart, so they are in Short range for Mike's C-14, giving him a base hit chance of 60%. We'll assume it is snowing lightly, for an environmental penalty of -10%. Mike lines up the shot. His base hit number, 60%, is added to his Attack Modifer for 85% base, and Samson's Defense modifier is subtracted from it, leaving a hit chance of 50%. Roll well, buddy!

Be aware that there are a limitless number of situational modifiers that can be applied. The primary one of use is the Cover modifier, where the GM considers how much is showing of the character, and applies it to the Defense Modifier of the character. So if you are behind three-quarters cover, you gain a +75% bonus. Generally, Cover bonuses should go in chains of 20-40-60-80-100, the latter being when the character is completely under cover. Firing while running, shooting blindly, and all sorts of other situational modifiers can be applied, also. Ultimately, it is the GM's call - you may just declare a single modifier representing the difficulty of the entire situation (ie. "everyone takes a flat 35% penalty for environmental condiitons"). It requires a little more judgement and thought, but works out well I think.

If the player declares an attempted parry or roll with the punch (or other fancy-pants maneuver), simply replace the Dodge bonus in the Defense Modifier with the Parry or Roll modifier and run the attack like normal, with the appropriate results.

5) Damage: Assuming you hit, you roll your damage per usual. The new twist here is Damage Resistance on armor. I realize I have a whole page on it, but briefly, Damage Resistance is usually 10% of the MDC of the armor capacity. New Dead Boy armor with a main body of 120 thus resists 12 MDC automatically. The rest of the damage applies to the armor as normal. As it is depleted, it resists less - if the Dead Boy armor above was down to 105 when it was damaged again, its DR would only be 10 (rounded down). Obviously, SDC armor cannot resist MDC damage, but SDC resists SDC attacks the same way.

Of any damage done to the armor (not resisted), 10% of that spills through as SDC, expressed as bruising or soreness or such. SDC Armor spills though 20% of all damage that is not resisted, as SDC attacks tend to be more kinetic.

Attacks per Round

All of the clearly identifiable Men of Arms OOCs gain +1 attack per round as a class ability, as a result of their training. This is to compensate for losing everyone's favourite loophole, Boxing. Mages and Psychics, I love you a lot, but warriors train for combat, you train for magic and psi respectively.

Game Style Issues

The most noticeable change in this revised system is that infantry combat is relatively unchanged, but infantry vs. vehicle is much, much harder now, thanks to armor penetration rules. No longer will PCs shrug and start plugging away at the SAMAS buzzing around their heads annoyingly. Now they will need to bring the right tools for the right job, or else call in support. It forces combat to be more tactical than before. Whether or not you want your combat more tactical will determine whether or not you like these rules. Hopefully, this causes your players to think before they start shooting everything, and takes out the "grinding down" of vehicles by infantry. Vehicles vs. vehicles is now strongly preferred. But armor piercing weapons help the cause, so don't fear that your PCs will get destroyed by all vehicles always.

By streamlining all of the assorted Palladium combat bonuses and such into an opposed Attack roll, it not only speeds up the combat bookkeeping, but also brings a dynamic sense to Palladium combat. Palladium core mechanics are fine for melee; it's when you bring in ranged that it gets rather insane. By representing the defender with one number that the attacker can roll against, it seriously speeds combat. Armor penetration means that any hit can potentially be damaging, if the initial shot can get by the armor. This should go a long way to having characters think of other things than merely attacking, and when they are forced into combat, they hopefully think a lot better about tactics. Standing 40 feet away slugging away toe-to-toe is no longer a viable option. Which, I think, makes for a better game.

Miscellaneous

Encounter Reaction Table

This is something I borrowed from AD&D Second Edition. It's merely a simple and quick way of determining reaction to the PCs, based on their general behaviour. For plot specific NPCs, you probably already know how they will react, but for random encounters or on-the-fly GMing, the table can come in handy. I actually posted it over at Nexus Nine Forums in response to someone who asked how the Trust/Intimidate rules worked. Simply convert the Palladium percentage to a straight number (eg. +40% to +4) and roll with the modifier. The GM determines how the PCs are acting and rolls on the appropriate table. Please note that Friendly/Indifferent uses Trust and Indifferent/Hostile uses Intimidate.

This is really optional, and I only post it here for those curious how I handle it, since Palladium has been notoriously strange on the simple question of how Trust/Intimidate rolls work.

Update History

04.17.2006 - First writeup. Lots of rambling text.

08.27.2006 - Added in linking attributes to skills. Added in the optional Encounter Reaction table. Added in Game Style Issues for the revised Skill system. Skill specialties added. Game Style Issues for Combat section addressed.