I won't wax loquacious on this tonight (for the battery grows dim and the hour late), but I thought I'd point out something that has puzzled me low these twenty years.
Railguns.
In Rifts.
The end all, be all, of man portable weapons, so cool they required either a full borg or power armor for the common man to even employ them.
Yet verily, they suck mightily.
Seriously. In Quebec the railgun listed does 4d6 MD from a twenty round burst, or 1d4 MD from a single round.
Two pages earlier a simple Ion Pistol does 4d6 MD damage from a single shot, and can be fired by a small child. Without flipping pages obsessively, I believe it has a similar (damage for damage) ammo capacity and even, to a lesser extent, range.
We will not mention the railguns on the various mega-vehicles that fire shots the size of cars that about the same damage as high end man portable weapons... no... that we will pretend does not exist.
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I feel your pain.
Coalition War Campaign had Skelebots slinging around a 4d6 MD railgun, but it was smaller and closer to man-portable.
In my book, a gun that requires a borg, power armor or bot to carry (not to mention a nuclear power pack) should better (1) pack a damn mighty punch (6d6 MD or 1d4x10 MD at least), and (2) have pretty decent range (at very least 2000').
6d6 or 1d4x10 MD would put them in the same damage category as a particle beam rifle (everybody's favorite weapon) or plasma ejector, but with range upwards of 2000' (and maybe as long as 4000'), and if you make railgun ammo an order of magnitude cheaper than E-clips, you can justify even having railguns around.
What do you think?
What? RIFTs is unbalanced? Since when?;)
When I run the Rifts, I change the damage everything does. The number in the book is the damage of the original factory model.
I use a tier system
Starship
Vehicle / Giant Robot
Powered Armor / Cyborg
Personal
Each weapon tier does x2 damage to the tier below it. Thus, if I fire a Robot tier weapon at just some dude in armor, they suffer x4 damage. I do not diminish the damage if you attack higher tier, AKA a Cyborg's railgun does 1D4x10 vs. a Vehicle or another Cyborg just fine, but does 1D4x20 versus just some normal mook.
All cool ideas. Even the posts without ideas...
I have no idea if/when I will either play or run RIFTs. Right now I'm talking to my players about a home-made revamp of 3E... which is looking more like a near total rewrite of the game. I may even lulu it so people have actual books to use at the table, and the next game as a player will be Shadowrun.
So solving this headscratcher isn't really what I was doing... commentary, sharing my love of the imperfect.
I'd love to revisit Rifts (see avatar) but chargen makes me cringe. Jotting down the skill percentages, and the bonuses from all those skills and special abilities ("+2 to save vs. possession"? FUCK YOU, Rifts), etc.
Mind you, I don't find the Palladium system as horrible as most people seem to think (it's not perfect either), but its implementation in Rifts is... lacking.
I've considered revisiting Rifts using FATE 3.0, as presented in Starblazer Adventures and especially Legends of Anglerre. It's apparently one of the few systems that will allow the Dragon Hatchling and the Vagabond to once more live together at peace (rather than making the Vagabond Batman-like in his competencies, or the Hatchling an overgrown talking gecko, as point-buy systems are wont to do).
I would have though Fate would be a bad chouice for Rifts. Rifts is the ultimate boys toys game. Half of the Rifts books are lists of gear.
Also, imagine Fatae style social conflict in Rifts? Take 1d6 damage of Mega-Damage sarcasm you fiend!
Quote from: The Butcher;406189I'd love to revisit Rifts (see avatar) but chargen makes me cringe. Jotting down the skill percentages, and the bonuses from all those skills and special abilities ("+2 to save vs. possession"? FUCK YOU, Rifts), etc.
Hey Pundit!I need to see it again anyway, because I might be running Palladium again soon. Could you post your Palladium house rules for skill %s?
Quote from: Soylent Green;406195I would have though Fate would be a bad chouice for Rifts. Rifts is the ultimate boys toys game. Half of the Rifts books are lists of gear.
That's the one thing that's been keeping me from doing it. Like any conversion, something would be lost in translation.
Quote from: Soylent Green;406199Also, imagine Fatae style social conflict in Rifts? Take 1d6 damage of Mega-Damage sarcasm you fiend!
Oh, I'd just ignore that. Or better yet, reskin it as psionic combat. Instead of Deceit or Intimidation or whatever, the relevant attack skill becomes Telepathy or something. Composure is just your defense against Mind Melters burninating your cortex.
Quote from: Cranewings;406213Hey Pundit!
I need to see it again anyway, because I might be running Palladium again soon. Could you post your Palladium house rules for skill %s?
Pundit's fix (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=10809) is okay, I guess. A good start, but not nearly enough.
Before you convert Rifts, find out what your players enjoy. Then pick whatever system that will give them the most of that.
If you like minis combat, then Savage Worlds converts awesome for Rifts and you can go all minis crazy. Its lots of fun. I'm not thrilled with the SW vehicle rules, but if you can make them work for you, then you're rocking.
Any point buy would be fine - especially something like GURPS where you already have soo much hardware defined across the splats.
However, for me, I find running Rifts via house rules easier than full conversion...unless I have players who want the minis action and all the terrain toys...and then SW is the focus.
I think house ruling would be fine. As to character creation it is a lot of shit to write down. I think the best way to go is to throw away any character sheet, and bust out the lined white paper. Seriously characters sheets are so limiting in space and the options that your character my have. As a general rule back in the day, my groups general layout for sheets was the first page contained attributes, SDC, HP, and combat modifiers. The second (and possibly third) page was all skills. The last page being the equipment list. Just some random thoughts for you.
I see that my house rules have been linked to, so that´s taken care of.
As for railguns, while there are some that are really not worth the trouble (and I kind of like that, because it reflects the fact that in RIFTS there is a vast disparity of tech levels operating in the setting; in some places a 4d6 railgun might indeed be the most powerful weapon one could find!), there are also railguns that absolutely kick ass. Those are the kind my players are always trying to get their hands on.
RPGPundit
Ah, but in the case of the railgun in question, its a Free Quebecois railgun doing 4d6 MD on a full burst failing to live up to the potential of a Free Quebecois Ion Pistol doing 4d6+4 MD.
Disparity of tech levels is not the issue here, though I was mistaken about the range... having looked again, I realized that that particular weapon actually seems to have the best range in the book, making it a sort of odd choice for the Rifts Sniper on the Go. At least in Canadia.
Of course, one thing that has been desperately missing from Rifts for a long time (despite a few pictures here and there...) a good old fashioned sawed of double barrel MD spewing Shotgun (this despite several weapons that seemed to provide the perfect ammo). New West provided a magic fireball spewing one, certainly (thought that lacks the certain je ne s'quoi ) of popping the breech and sliding in new shells (as depicted in the same book under Gunslinger OCC), and there are various pump action and 'automatic' shotguns scattered hither and yon, of various ranges from 'awesome' to 'pathetic' (Like most guns in New West, the 'actual' shotgun therin is 'Pathetic'..., though it does get intimidation and knockdown, which is a plus).
Finally, some inspired genious decided that the Naruni, of all people would get the love of Rifts Earth Humans for all guns with big fooken barrels, breech loading and capable of being sawed off... and so the slim, forgettable, Naruni Invasion book actually includes the entry. 2 inch diameter barrels (seriously: Has Kevin ever taken out a ruler or bought a bit of pipe? That is some hellacious boresize for anything meant to be carried by mortal man... The Uteni and True Naruni both are not big enough to consider that a practical size by any shot...DRAGONS may consider it slightly excessive...but I digress) may actually be a plus for fans of the street artillery...
I can't really give a fuck about Gunwankery. I never so much as look at those stats in the book. I only care about damage, payload, range; in that order.
RPGPundit
Fine:
Damage: Advantage Pistol, clearly
Payload: Advantage Railgun, marginally
Range: Advantage Railgun, by a clear mile
So if you are willing to ignore such minor technical details as a weight difference that can be written in scientific notation without sarcasm, and a little bit of, say, rules, dictating which characters can qualify to USE one gun over another.. then there is no real difference. But that would be gunwankery.
The idea of sniping with a railgun on full auto is deliciously funny to me.
Though admittingly, pinging someone (SDC) with a single shot would be entirely valid.