Dice Mechanics, Combat, Skills, Magic, etc.

Which edition of DnD? Each version is its own game.  Palladium Fantasy is near and dear to my heart.  Dice mechanics work in the following way, for combat a roll on a d20  of 1-4 is a whiff.  To properly protect your self is based on a active defense roll of either parry or dodge.  If your character has a combat skill (these are more like a profficiency than a skill) that gives you automatic parries (parry every melee attack).  Armor provides additional HP, if the hit roll is less than AR (armor rating). Skills are mostly percentiles based, except combat skills), roll under.  Character creation is simple but wonky at first.  First you choose your race as that establishes your stats. Then pick alignment then class, then pick the rest of the stuff.  Attributes dont matter unless they are  16 or better. That said, the classes are really evocative and juicy as far as feel.  For the most part characters are front loaded, ad the next 15 levels are incremental improvements.  Late game play isnt really different, the chatacters are just better at it. Palladium is made with enthusiasm and love, it feels like ypur playing with action figures, and front loading abilities helps maintain that feel as showing up to the first scene tgat shows off your characters abilities is like tearing open the plastic of a new toy and choking down a giant bowel of sugary cereal on a saturday and binge some cartoons

I know Palladium goes way back.

Quote from: Razor 007;1099055I know Palladium goes way back.

Indeed it does. Personally, I like 1e Palladium Fantasy over 2e. 2e added too many elements to make it compatible with Rifts, including bloating the skill list to the point of ridiculousness, making it near impossible to avoid being hit by arrows, making armor nearly worthless because of inflated attack/parry bonuses yet also slowing things down by slapping on personal SDC which effectively doubled to tripled everyone's hit points without a corresponding increase in damage dealt. Oh, and swapped out the previous magic systems that made them distinct from each other for PPE.

Short version, find copies of the 1e material and skip the 2e version of Palladium Fantasy.

Palladium Fantasy = AD&D + RuneQuest + Kevin's Awesomesauce - Kevin's Rule Wonkiness

Quote from: Chris24601;1099060Short version, find copies of the 1e material and skip the 2e version of Palladium Fantasy.

Absolutely!!!

PF1e is awesome. PF2e is okay and I'd play it with a good group, but I'd jump to play some PF1e.

Palladium 1e is also closer to D&D.

Character Creation
3d6 on 8 stats, Intelligence, Mental Endurance, Mental Affinity, Physical Strength, Physical Endurance, Physical Prowess, Physical Beauty, Speed
if you roll 17 or 18 add 1d6 (no, you can't have a 17 it's against the rules)
Different races roll different amounts of d6 for stats, Trolls have 5d6 on Physical Strength
Attributes are mostly used to qualify for Occupational Character Classes, you need at least a 16 to get a bonus.
OCCs provide a couple career skills with a bonus to the base list percentage, a list of elective skills and a number of secondary skills, and a hand to hand combat skill with specific modifiers at each level.

Skills have a level by level percentage chance on a series of tables.  Weapon skills give a bonus to strike, parry and throw which is used to differentiate their use in combat.  A sword is +2 to strike at first level, a dagger +2 to throw, and a large shield +2 to parry.  The bonuses top out at +6 at 15th level.  I really like this set up.  Also, bounded accuracy two decades before D&D 5th edition.

Magic comes in three flavours.  Wizards know a number of spells and can cast a number of spells per day.  Diabolists know a certain number of wards and circles and can activate a certain number per day.  Summoners know a number of circles and can activate a certain number per day.  Warlocks, clerics, and witches are granted a number of spells per day.

If I remember right Palladium had wizard levels providing a magic attack value that reduced saving throws from pretty much Mechanoid Invasion Book II forward.

Combat
d20 initiative, if you tie, you have to decide if you'll attack or parry you can't do both.
Multiple attacks are iterated at the end of the initiative sequence.  So if you have 2 attacks you don't make the second until after everyone has made their first.
Attack Rolls are 1d20 + bonus to strike over Armor Rating.  No armor is AR 5.  If you roll between 5 and the target's AR the armour takes SDC damage.  Creatures with natural AR only take HP damage if you roll over their AR and take no armour damage if they don't
You can parry or dodge attacks.  Roll 1d20 + mods, if you roll over you avoid the hit.  Normally parrying and dodging cost an attack but men at arms get an automatic parry.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1099062Palladium Fantasy = AD&D + RuneQuest + Kevin's Awesomesauce - Kevin's Rule Wonkiness.

Which is, of course, why 1e is, as you say, awesome. Palladium 1e is the best because most of Kevin's Rule Wonkiness came from later systems.

He started by adding personal SDC, increased attacks per round and physical skills buffing your attributes to fit the superhero genre for Heroes Unlimited and TMNT, added PPE to create more unity between magic and psychic powers in Beyond The Supernatural, added MDC to handle mecha in Robotech... then threw it all together to create Rifts; which included giving all sorts of monsters enough MDC to compete with mecha.

Which brings us to Palladium Fantasy 2e... which was an effort to retrofit the system to be completely compatible with the flagship title Rifts had become, but in the process diluted the initial Undiluted Kevin's Awesomesause with all those wonky rules, including things like demons and dragons bringing back so much SDC from their conversion from the high MDC Rifts versions that they became essentially unkillable (we're talking multiple thousands of SDC for many of the dragons).

So yeah, Palladium 1e is epic. I'm not an OSR fan. I could live the rest of my life never playing O/1/2/B D&D. But Palladium 1e is like my crack. It's basically my second choice fantasy system after my own personal ruleset which is, not coincidentally, also able to handle things like dwarven cyborgs and PC giants, dragons, sprites and talking animals.

Quote from: Razor 007;1099033Dice Mechanics, Combat, Skills, Magic, etc.

Mistwell, on another thread, linked to Jester David's review. It is very informative.

Edit: That's Pathfinder 2E, not Palladium 2E.

Quote from: Aglondir;1099067Mistwell, on another thread, linked to Jester David's review. It is very informative.

Thats not a review of Palladium.

Quote from: Chris24601;1099066So yeah, Palladium 1e is epic. I'm not an OSR fan.

Every Palladium fan is as Old School as they get!

Most especially for us PF1e fans!

BTW, hope you've checked out Palladium's original Mechanoids RPG. It's got proto-PF1e rules, but for gritty sci-fi with psionics. I'm a huge fan as its got that Undiluted Kevin Awesomesauce.

PF1e really is crack. I can't verbalize exactly why, but among all my RPG experiences, so many games of PF1e stand out with great powerful moments. It's a crazy combination of the rules + setting + the wild imbalance of things.

Quote from: Shasarak;1099072Thats not a review of Palladium.

True, I misread it as Pathfinder. Corrected the post.

Quote from: Aglondir;1099067Mistwell, on another thread, linked to Jester David's review. It is very informative.

Edit: That's Pathfinder 2E, not Palladium 2E.

Totally different system.  I've already passed on PF2E.  It's all about Feats, Feats, Feats.  It's not evocative of the simple awesomeness I desire.  I did like the UTEML concept from the 2E Playtest.  Those small -2 +0 +1 +2 +3 modifiers are totally usable, in systems that don't require a 47 to hit a big bad.

You can get Palladium Fantasy 1e for $20 on eBay.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1099074Every Palladium fan is as Old School as they get!

Most especially for us PF1e fans!

BTW, hope you've checked out Palladium's original Mechanoids RPG. It's got proto-PF1e rules, but for gritty sci-fi with psionics. I'm a huge fan as its got that Undiluted Kevin Awesomesauce.

PF1e really is crack. I can't verbalize exactly why, but among all my RPG experiences, so many games of PF1e stand out with great powerful moments. It's a crazy combination of the rules + setting + the wild imbalance of things.

Not only do I have the Mechanoids, I have other early crack like "Justice Machine."

I kinda love the high-techy-ness of the body armor AR in Mechanoids acting like natural/robotic AR did in later works. No, you can't bypass it with a high enough roll, you can't even damage it without a high enough roll... unless you're using a particle beam; which is lost in later rulesets like Heroes Unlimited which switched to the armor AR being the value to bypass, but left the P-beam rules unchanged.

That resulted in P-beams seeming wonky and underpowered there while in the Mechanoids their wonky needs an 11+ to hit but does full damage if it does was really about "this bypasses the usual AR 14-18 entirely" which made them terrifyingly effective; particularly if you had to go up against one of the stronger Mechanoids and lasers and such were needing a 16+ on the die to even damage them.

My understanding is that primitive armour is damaged by rolls that hit and are under AR and advanced armour is damaged by hits that exceed AR but the concept was somewhat fluid between Mechanoid Invasion book 1 and 3 and The Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game first edition.