What it says on the tin. This might take awhile and you might get dirty so don't wear any nice clothes. Shut the garage door and let the wife and kids know you are not to be disturbed for the day. Beer might help.

The hard part: Keep it as backwards-compatible as possible so characters and books from previous editions don't become compost.

Make weapons do direct HP damage (yes, including clubs and staves, but allow for non-lethal to do just S.D.C. damage)

Change the HP per level to S.D.C. per level.

As for Megadamage, I dunno what to tell you, that shit gets complex.  It needs a scaling system.

Eh. I got the Palladium RPG because I liked the weapon & armor & castles books.

I didn't like the setting with all its crazy pile of everything and so many unbelievable creatures and piles of magic and monsters and faeries and wolfen and who know what.

So I tried to salvage what I could to use for my TFT games, and ended up deciding I didn't want to use any of it. I appreciated a few select parts. I liked the variety of magic systems, and some nice details like the art for different currency, but I ended up using nothing. The sample scenario at the end was interesting in that it was slightly simulationist, and then insanely high-powered and deadly if you got far enough.

The way I'd fix it would be to use a system I like instead, but I don't like the setting. I have been tempted to run the sample scenario as a one-off or something, but just because it's so insane at the end and so would be surprising and memorable. But I'd just use GURPS & my houserules, like I almost always do for everything anyway.

To make it right for me (in theory, completely untested):

Hit points don't increase with levels, but SDC does. When SDC is worn down damage goes to hit points, but criticals do (normal) damage to hit points direct and ignore SDC. When hit points are gone you're dying/dead. Criticals are scary.

(It's been ages since I've played a Palladium game, and I don't remember how often criticals come up, so this might make combat way too deadly. But it's an idea.)

Simplified skill lists. I saw somewhere, maybe even here, a suggestion that instead of the long lists of skills now, you just use the heading for that skill list category. Or at least bring it down to a few more widely applicable skills in each category. We don't need (Rifts Ultimate Edition) Horsemanship: General AND Horsemanship: Cowboy AND Horsemanship: Cossack as separate skills, right? So many Pilot skills?

Appropriate attributes provide a bonus of their score to skill checks, so that the score means something. Picking Pockets? Just add your Physical Prowess. Trying to pick pockets by distracting the target with cleavage? Add your Physical Beauty this time.

System-wise, that's about it for me offhand. You'd still have to deal with the setting elements in, say, Rifts, where MDC weapons and armour are a Big Deal, but almost everyone lugging around vehicle-scale weapons and armour would be a Big Deal in any system if you're the poor soul who doesn't happen to have them.

What exactly needs to be fixed? All I ever hear is good things about it.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;881989The hard part: Keep it as backwards-compatible as possible so characters and books from previous editions don't become compost.

Honestly, I wouldn't try that hard. Go for emulating concepts over specific mechanics. Use either a "loose emulation" system like Fate or a toolbox game like Hero to recreate as needed.

I could see retooling RIFTS as a class based system that works, but that sounds like a bit too much effort.

Edit: Honestly, my #1 beef with Palladium is the odious skill system. If I was going for a simple quick fix, I'd rip out the percentile system and just plunk in Pathfinder's system for resolution, just using level in place of ranks.

Runequest-style skills. Instead of being based on level, if a character uses a skill, it has a chance to go up.

Attacks per round. Instead of rolling tons of dice, all attacks can should be made with one roll. A higher roll means on the attack means you get off more hits that rounds.

Attributes should mean something beyond high results.

Wasn't there a Rifts Savage Worlds in the works? Seems like that should go a long way to fixing things.

Palladiu Fantasy 1e doesn't need to be fixed.

Easy. Roll things back to pre Rifts. Use Beyond the Supernatural, TMNT or Palladium Fantasy.

I'm posting to sub because if Savage Worlds Rifts doesn't cut it for me, for whatever reason, I'm rolling up sleeves myself.

My chief gripe is the skill system. It's clunky as hell during character creation, and the granularity adds very little, but at the same time it plays a limited role, balancing (yeah, I know) combat ability with Hand To Hand and Robot Combat skill taxes. Of course, on the gripping hand, skill taxes are kinda dumb.

Pundit's hack is a step in the right direction but I really feel we should go further, and ideally find a non-finicky, non-chargen-dragging method that still allows for skill-monkey characters like Rogue Scholars and Wilderness Scouts.

Quote from: Frey;882109Palladiu Fantasy 1e doesn't need to be fixed.

This mainly!

No SDC for people.  That's the biggest one.  No PPE for spells or at least fix the cost to the level so it's uniform.  Everyone rolls for psionics so even the Mercenary Fighter might have some interesting minor abilities.  No physical skills.  Well, okay not so much no physical skills but they work just like all the other skills.  But all skills improve an attribute by one point.

Quote from: Frey;882109Palladiu Fantasy 1e doesn't need to be fixed.

As long as you realize that somethings are broken, like the AD&D style magic, then yes.  It's fine.  It IS a better game than Mechanoids (The first Palladium game) but it needs a lot of work.  Especially the hand to hand training as some of it was redundant.

Quote from: Omega;882110Easy. Roll things back to pre Rifts. Use Beyond the Supernatural, TMNT or Palladium Fantasy.

No, SDC was still out of control.  I remember a 5d6 SDC Magnum (which was the most powerful weapon in the game) couldn't take out a normal NPC in a single shot.  Now, assuming we're talking a supernatural creature, you didn't have enough silver rounds to even make a scratch.

The system needs balancing.

We just removed SDC from people and animals in BTS and applied it only when something was actually wearing armour, or naturally armoured.

Combats get really deadly really fast.

A possible -simplicistic- solution to MDC/SDC :

Drop the 1MDC=100SDC conversion

Normally attacks reduce SDC first , then HP
SDC raise with level but not HP
Critical damage lowers HP and not SDC (Maybe lower starting SDC for everyone too)
MDC weapons ignore personal armor and automatically damage HP
Personal weapons damage MDC-class stuff only on a critical hit (or require a roll of 15+ to damage?)