Quote from: Rhedyn;1065689Wouldn't a rules lighter Palladium Rifts be competing with Savage Rifts? Or is the suspicion that it's something lighter than Savage Rifts?

Would be crazy if they just started releasing a bunch of licensed Savage World's products.

Savage Worlds doesn't run Rifts the way it was created to be run.

Quote from: tenbones;1065688I would LOVE to take a machete to Palladium's rules and help establish a core mechanic, then go hog-wild building all kinds of crazy unbalanced shit all around it and start this party all over again like it's 1983.

KS doesn't have the balls to do it. I hope he proves me wrong.

Have you ever asked him?

Quote from: Lurtch;1065694Savage Worlds doesn't run Rifts the way it was created to be run.

I can't contradict that, but I am interested in what you mean.

Quote from: Chris24601;1065690Where I could definitely see some clean-up would be in taking an MD chainsaw to the skill list and bring it down to something more manageable and maybe do more to build the physical skills providing ability score bonuses into the classes so they don't become "must haves" for just about anyone likely to see combat (acrobatics and gymnastics for the net +2 to PP being one of the biggies, boxing and bodybuilding for the guys with supernatural strength).

We took boxing for the +1 attack. They could have called it Barglewargle, and we still would have took it.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1065698We took boxing for the +1 attack. They could have called it Barglewargle, and we still would have took it.

Boxing became slightly less "must take" for some characters with the clarification that the extra attack only applies to hand-to-hand (and melee weapon) combat. If you're a spellcaster or gunslinger it doesn't add nearly as much (if you wanted to pistol whip a guy you could use the extra attack for that, but not to get an extra spell or shot off). Throw in the dodge bonus not working against firearms and there are plenty of concepts that could forego it.

As a result I recall my Ley-Line Walker (who earned a living as a guide and transporter since he had the ley-line portal spell so had a reason to be a bit athletic) had general athletics, gymnastics, running, swimming and hand-to-hand basic.

Actually, getting some physical score bumps reminds me; another thing I liked about Palladium is that the key stat (to the extent they were a thing) that mattered to spellcasters wasn't IQ like a D&D wizard, but Physical Endurance since a big part of being able to cast spells was training your body to handle the energy you stored and channeled through it. It also made it far more intuitive why cybernetic implants and such fouled up magic... no matter how beneficial, those things mess with the natural flow of energy through your body.

That really helped set Palladium spellcasters apart from the traditional D&D ones to me.

Here's a patch I did to make Rifts combat move faster.

When MDC armor is damaged, the wearer takes an equal amount of SDC.
Why? Because something incredibly powerful just hit the PC. Enough to blow apart non-MDC buildings. The least it should do is put some bruises on the meat sack inside.

The effect of this rule is you can kill people (or at least knock them out) and they still have armor left. It also sharpens the line between true MDC beings and SDC beings wearing protection.

Also don't forget Morale. In Rifts, most foes are living beings who don't want to die. Fleeing is an option instead of slogging.

And if all else fails, just hack the MDC in half for NPCs and monsters. I do that in Splicers.

I couldn't care less what Kevin does with Palladium, you don't go around throwing C&D letters around and expect to keep a fanbase...

Quote from: NYTFLYR;1065743I couldn't care less what Kevin does with Palladium, you don't go around throwing C&D letters around and expect to keep a fanbase...

Can you share me one of these letters all of these fans have received? I've never seen one.

As much as I didn't like the phased initiative of Hero, I'm starting to warm up to the house rule for Palladium of dividing initiative by number of HTH attacks to determine when characters take their actions.

There's a number of things I like about Palladium, at least in principle. But the actual system always prevented me from playing it.
We're going to see what next year brings to the table, I guess;)!

Quote from: Lurtch;1065752Can you share me one of these letters all of these fans have received? I've never seen one.

I don't have mine anymore, I got rid of it with all my Palladium online presence when he sent it to me. He never did let me know what the offending material was.

The only thing they really need to simplify are the Skills.

The combat system is cool and holds up.

I would like the new edition to reflect how I play the game 95% of the time, as opposed to the 5% where we are searching for an obscure rule or where combat takes just a little too long.

I would do away with skills entirely. The classes are already super-specific. Maybe introduce Demon Lord-esque Professions or something akin to 1E Non-Weapon Proficiencies. Something that adds colour, but isn't that mechanically integral.

The could streamline the skills imo. Their is no reason to have computer operations and programming as two separate skills. The first is the main skill the second should be a specialization. The skills system has two many skills like that. Give another reason for taking Physical skills beyond just combat bonuses.

Too many redundant OCCS. They can definitely be streamlined.

Avoid the "would it be cool to add this into the game" approach which plagues too many of their products. Sometimes certain occs/rccs are too powerful to be included in the rules and it shows. Some are too powerful and some are just too underpowered.

Organization of the books needs to be much better. Kevin seems to have copied and taken notes from 1E D*&D which also suffers from being poorly organized. And no it's not up to the person who bought the book to figure it out. THat is a sure way to lose sals and fans.

Make it truly generic and not claim the system is. Gurps and Hero System are truly generic where one builds everything from scratch. The Palladium system is anything but imo. It can be done yet it requires work on the DMs part. At most the system is like a personal; computer that runs windows. You can plug and play it with many existing parts.

Quote from: Lurtch;1065696Have you ever asked him?

Nope. Mainly because I know Palladium is his little baby, and I've read enough controversial stories about working with KS, that frankly, even if only 1% of those stories have any validity, or let's just say *NONE* of them do, for argument's sake - then my perception of KS is that he is very protective of his IP and he likes doing things on his own time in his own way.

Marry that with the finanical issues he's had to deal with due to various controversies I'm willing to allow were not all his doing, and treachery from the inside etc. etc.

A certain pattern emerges about KS, that in my charitable moments I feel that he's a guy that's got a lot on his plate and doesn't have the time/energy/finances to re-tool a process that I'm not entirely sure he feels is broken. Couple that with the fact he's very touchy about the IP... which until the Savage Worlds edition (which shocked the hell out of me) - I assumed the IP was in an Ice Age, locked away.

Maybe there is some sunlight in the Megaverse now. Maybe. That's for KS to decide. I hope he does.