The SPINOSAURUS has been a cool dinosaur - big fin, huge legs, crocodile jaws...but now it can swim and eat sharks!

[video=youtube;fDhofM81RQE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDhofM81RQE[/youtube]

I've always love amphibious monsters because they are versatile. Something that can invade the PCs' world and then retreat to where the PC's have a much harder time following is quite frightening. Plus, dinos are easy to pimp out with some magic or mutations. Or just leave as is.

The original RIFTS book suggested dinosaurs as a common threat. Or maybe I just thought their inclusion in the core book meant they were common. I loved how they were the Giant Rats or Wolves of RIFTS Earth and a great food source. They took megadamage (but not much) and dealth megadamage (okay amount) so they were great monsters to throw at starting PCs, and provided a source of treasure. Villages and small towns would need protection from dinos and love their carcasses.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1128438The SPINOSAURUS has been a cool dinosaur - big fin, huge legs, crocodile jaws...but now it can swim and eat sharks!

[video=youtube;fDhofM81RQE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDhofM81RQE[/youtube]

I've always love amphibious monsters because they are versatile. Something that can invade the PCs' world and then retreat to where the PC's have a much harder time following is quite frightening. Plus, dinos are easy to pimp out with some magic or mutations. Or just leave as is.

The original RIFTS book suggested dinosaurs as a common threat. Or maybe I just thought their inclusion in the core book meant they were common. I loved how they were the Giant Rats or Wolves of RIFTS Earth and a great food source. They took megadamage (but not much) and dealth megadamage (okay amount) so they were great monsters to throw at starting PCs, and provided a source of treasure. Villages and small towns would need protection from dinos and love their carcasses.

You should check out the Spinosaurus entry in the Tome of Beasts, for D&D 5E.  They are called River Dragons, by one monstrous humanoid race.

As an aside, can anybody explain megadamage to me? It's been years, but I thought it was mostly a thing with vehicles and magical creatures like dragons and such. Why would dinosaurs get MDC?

Quote from: Cave Bear;1128464As an aside, can anybody explain megadamage to me? It's been years, but I thought it was mostly a thing with vehicles and magical creatures like dragons and such. Why would dinosaurs get MDC?

To encourage mecha vs kaiju action!

[EDIT]  

I have no serious answer aside from "cause Rifts".

Quote from: Cave Bear;1128464As an aside, can anybody explain megadamage to me? It's been years, but I thought it was mostly a thing with vehicles and magical creatures like dragons and such. Why would dinosaurs get MDC?

Technically they did NOT have or deal Mega-damage... they just had so much normal damage and damage capacity they were effectively MDC critters.

1 MDC = 100 hp/SDC (structural damage capacity). SDC attacks on MDC structures though always round down, so if you hit an MDC structure with 99 points of SDC, the MDC structure takes no damage.

Also, for comparison, a typical person has about 30 hp/SDC. A compact car might have 300 SDC. A modern M1A3 Main Battle Tank falls right around 50 MDC and its main gun deals between 2D6 and 3D6 MD depending on shell type.

Also for comparison, a Rifts-era infantryman with MD weapons and armor probably deals 2-4D6 MD with their rifle and their armor has 35-85 MDC and the setting explicitly calls out that a warrior with MDC personal gear is literally as powerful as a 21st century Main Battle Tank.

A larger predatory dinosaur in Rifts might have 4D6x100 hp/SDC and deal 1D6x100 SDC with its bite. While you could whittle them down with SDC weapons (an AR-15 deals about 5D6 SDC), against opponents equipped with MD weapons and armor like PCs its usually easier to just turn those into 4D6 MDC and dealing 1d6 MD per bite while interacting with PCs (who will almost always be wearing and wielding MD weapons.

By contrast, creatures of magic like dragons and demons might have hundreds or even thousands of MDC and deal multiple d6's of MDC per strike (sometimes even multiples times ten, i.e. 2D6x10 MD per strike).

So yeah, if your party is a bunch of low-level adventurers in MD body armor with personal MD energy weapons, using larger dinosaurs is a great way to show off the disparity in power between you and the common folks who might only have conventional weapons and maybe some Kevlar by letting them take down a T-Rex easily that's been on a killing spree with nothing the hapless villagers can do putting an appreciable dent in it.

It's also a great object lesson in why you sometimes NEED SDC weapons. Its hard to hunt game animals to feed yourself in the wilds when one shot from your hold-out energy pistol will vaporize a deer with one shot. My Rifts characters invariably carry a .22LR Henry Survival Rifle (the kind that disassembles and packs into the butt stock) for hunting small game animals in case rations run out for precisely this reason.

I also imagine a rabbit cooked over a campfire tastes better than plasma charred T-Rex any day.

Quote from: Chris24601;1128496Technically they did NOT have or deal Mega-damage... they just had so much normal damage and damage capacity they were effectively MDC critters.

1 MDC = 100 hp/SDC (structural damage capacity). SDC attacks on MDC structures though always round down, so if you hit an MDC structure with 99 points of SDC, the MDC structure takes no damage.

Also, for comparison, a typical person has about 30 hp/SDC. A compact car might have 300 SDC. A modern M1A3 Main Battle Tank falls right around 50 MDC and its main gun deals between 2D6 and 3D6 MD depending on shell type.

Also for comparison, a Rifts-era infantryman with MD weapons and armor probably deals 2-4D6 MD with their rifle and their armor has 35-85 MDC and the setting explicitly calls out that a warrior with MDC personal gear is literally as powerful as a 21st century Main Battle Tank.

A larger predatory dinosaur in Rifts might have 4D6x100 hp/SDC and deal 1D6x100 SDC with its bite. While you could whittle them down with SDC weapons (an AR-15 deals about 5D6 SDC), against opponents equipped with MD weapons and armor like PCs its usually easier to just turn those into 4D6 MDC and dealing 1d6 MD per bite while interacting with PCs (who will almost always be wearing and wielding MD weapons.

By contrast, creatures of magic like dragons and demons might have hundreds or even thousands of MDC and deal multiple d6's of MDC per strike (sometimes even multiples times ten, i.e. 2D6x10 MD per strike).

So yeah, if your party is a bunch of low-level adventurers in MD body armor with personal MD energy weapons, using larger dinosaurs is a great way to show off the disparity in power between you and the common folks who might only have conventional weapons and maybe some Kevlar by letting them take down a T-Rex easily that's been on a killing spree with nothing the hapless villagers can do putting an appreciable dent in it.

It's also a great object lesson in why you sometimes NEED SDC weapons. Its hard to hunt game animals to feed yourself in the wilds when one shot from your hold-out energy pistol will vaporize a deer with one shot. My Rifts characters invariably carry a .22LR Henry Survival Rifle (the kind that disassembles and packs into the butt stock) for hunting small game animals in case rations run out for precisely this reason.

I also imagine a rabbit cooked over a campfire tastes better than plasma charred T-Rex any day.

Thanks! That makes sense.

Yeah, the spinosaurus is fun. I have used them before.

Greetings!

I love dinosaurs. I think the Spinosaurus is awesome fun!:D Yes, Player A. Go ahead down to the river bank to fish. Rivers are harmless.

Eyes! Eyes in the water...yes, there are a pair of large eyes watching you closely from the murky waters....

Spinosaurus's are beautiful. Imagine Spiosaurus mutants, with crazy powers and unusual abilities.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Chris24601;1128496Technically they did NOT have or deal Mega-damage... they just had so much normal damage and damage capacity they were effectively MDC critters.

1 MDC = 100 hp/SDC (structural damage capacity). SDC attacks on MDC structures though always round down, so if you hit an MDC structure with 99 points of SDC, the MDC structure takes no damage.

...and this is where I think Savage Rifts really screwed the pooch by translating MDC to "Heavy Armor" and MDC damage to "Heavy Weapons", then using the standard Savage Worlds HA/HW rules for it.

What that does more-or-less right, and I assume is what gave them the idea to do it that way, is that Heavy Armor can only be damaged by a Heavy Weapon.  Any attack without the HW tag just pings off, even if you're hitting 1 point of HA with a million points of non-HW damage.

What it does completely wrong is that HA/HW doesn't change the damage scale.  Against someone without HA, there's no difference between a 2d6 HW attack and a 2d6 non-HW attack.  So, if you don't have MDC armor, getting punched by a glitterboy (Str+d6 Mega Damage) is no worse than getting stabbed with a shortword (Str+d6).

Quote from: nDervish;1128900...and this is where I think Savage Rifts really screwed the pooch by translating MDC to "Heavy Armor" and MDC damage to "Heavy Weapons", then using the standard Savage Worlds HA/HW rules for it.

What that does more-or-less right, and I assume is what gave them the idea to do it that way, is that Heavy Armor can only be damaged by a Heavy Weapon.  Any attack without the HW tag just pings off, even if you're hitting 1 point of HA with a million points of non-HW damage.

What it does completely wrong is that HA/HW doesn't change the damage scale.  Against someone without HA, there's no difference between a 2d6 HW attack and a 2d6 non-HW attack.  So, if you don't have MDC armor, getting punched by a glitterboy (Str+d6 Mega Damage) is no worse than getting stabbed with a shortword (Str+d6).

Yeah, that's total garbage.