No, for a Block (usually by a shield) you rolled your % to block his hit. This doubled the rolls in every combat, at least.
In any case, I played RQ for a decade or more. Knew the designers. Great game world, fairly realistic combat system.
But so?
Even if Amor as DR is somehow “better” that armor as preventing hits, it’s just two different systems. Why CAN’T D&D be a little different?
one feat to halve the cost of a bunch of items, no matter how many it effects, is not enough to double your wealth unless it effects every possible item in the game.
but item costs multiply based on a squaring formula, making doubled wealth not as big a deal as one would perceive.
Well, I've been in and out of Palladium, and I have to say that their game system has NO internal consistency, and doesn't even do what it was written expressly for achieving. In other words, it is an utterly incompetent excuse for game mechanics and terrible writing.
I can go into chapter and verse about it, and indeed have in the past. Nobody was able to refute the points I had, like skills being black and white instead of degrees of success or failure, like experience point system being an utter failure in the long run, since you end up static for most of your time playing, game material written so badly that you basically have to reinvent the wheel just to make a viable game, etc.
It's nice, for example, to get a salary based on xp level. But what can you spend it on aside from guns, armor, and fancy vehicles? In a game based on romance, what if I want to spend dough on my GF's clothing? What do NPC's think of each other, so that when my PC's upset the applecart, I will know what they will do?
I could type for hours on the flaws inherent in all their material, sad to say. And I, lowly amateur twit using a defunct game system, wrote better, more integrated, and closer to the anime than KS ever did with Robotech. That's sad. I should be completely inept in comparison.
I used to worship KS and company. I had such high hopes for the new RT material, but all he did was copy n paste from the old stuff, right down to the artwork. Some aspects actually got WORSE, like the anime shows it was "the quick and the dead" in a mech fight, yet their game is essentially "Rock em sock em robots" which a single enemy mech fight lasts hours.
So I gave up Palladium. Burned me far too many times.
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Well, I've been in and out of Palladium, and I have to say that their game system has NO internal consistency, and doesn't even do what it was written expressly for achieving. In other words, it is an utterly incompetent excuse for game mechanics and terrible writing.
I have been a player and a GM in various Palladium games since the late eighties. While it isn't the best system out there, it is far from the worst.
When I'm going to start a new campaign and ask my players what game they want to play, they almost always answer Heroes Unlimited.
My old player's always wanted to play RIFTS, specifically Triax and the NGR.
That's nice, but anything by Palladium required serious GM imagination to come up with game mechanics and setting material on the fly. Seriously, it got so bad I started wondering what the point of buying a game book was when I had to redo or patch so much of it when my players wanted to go off the beaten track a little.
For example, most Palladium stuff has almost NOTHING for maps, and what there is tends to be lack needed details. Dammit.
Or what about if you had a PC from one era of tech (in a setting like Robotech where the tech is evolving at a freakish pace) who was trained on a mech, now only to find that mech is obsolete so you have to learn how to pilot a new one, but multiclassing in Palladium ANYTHING is damn near impossible.
Sigh. Or what about getting a fancy new gun, only to learn that nobody is listed as having the ammo for sale or requisition, and even if you found one, you had no idea what it cost nor how much moolah you had from your job? Inevitably, everybody and their uncle wants to customize or upgrade their mech, so they create characters that could conceivably do that. Got any game rules for that, even if it IS a silly idea?
Every single culture in Rifts has its fancy doomsday tech badassery, but has anyone ever tried to figure out what that stuff was made to fight? Just random schmoes? And if it was made to fight a certain type of enemy or certain situation, wouldn't it be relatively poor at fighting OTHER enemies or situations? Inevitably, war tech is caught up in politics because it is made to accomplish certain goals against certain enemies, but Palladium tends to avoid describing political situations like the Plague. A perfect lack of logic, kiddies.
Dammit.
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That's nice, but anything by Palladium required serious GM imagination to come up with game mechanics and setting material on the fly. Seriously, it got so bad I started wondering what the point of buying a game book was when I had to redo or patch so much of it when my players wanted to go off the beaten track a little.
For example, most Palladium stuff has almost NOTHING for maps, and what there is tends to be lack needed details. Dammit.
Or what about if you had a PC from one era of tech (in a setting like Robotech where the tech is evolving at a freakish pace) who was trained on a mech, now only to find that mech is obsolete so you have to learn how to pilot a new one, but multiclassing in Palladium ANYTHING is damn near impossible.
Sigh. Or what about getting a fancy new gun, only to learn that nobody is listed as having the ammo for sale or requisition, and even if you found one, you had no idea what it cost nor how much moolah you had from your job? Inevitably, everybody and their uncle wants to customize or upgrade their mech, so they create characters that could conceivably do that. Got any game rules for that, even if it IS a silly idea?
Every single culture in Rifts has its fancy doomsday tech badassery, but has anyone ever tried to figure out what that stuff was made to fight? Just random schmoes? And if it was made to fight a certain type of enemy or certain situation, wouldn't it be relatively poor at fighting OTHER enemies or situations? Inevitably, war tech is caught up in politics because it is made to accomplish certain goals against certain enemies, but Palladium tends to avoid describing political situations like the Plague. A perfect lack of logic, kiddies.
Dammit.
Now I will say what you describe about Palladium, RIFTS in my case, is that you may find that badass rail gun but no ammo for it, is actually cool in my opinion because it adds a bit more realism. You might be walking around three more game sessions before you find any.
You could look at other mechs for a comparrison. Let's say you have a Glitterboy Pilot that wants to customise his Glitterboy suit, well you can look at other powerarmor for reference and go from there.
Admittingly enough, RIFTS is not for a novice GM to run.
I am very sick right now. I don't have energy to type much.
Suffice it to say that I don't like having to come up with at least half of the setting when I BUY a setting. And I don't like game mechanics that do not allow my players to do what they want to, no matter what they try. I don't like having to beg an otaku for information so arcane that nobody else had the info, and so vague that I had to make up much of what I used. Tried to stay true to the source material, ended up having to use a video game, and novelizations, and old anime mags to even come close. And I DO NOT like having to ask military men peculiar questions!
its hard to main tain a monk charater because it need dex wis and str and you cant maintain all at the beginning
When you are feeling better, perhaps you could provide some examples to explain what you mean.I am very sick right now. I don't have energy to type much.
Suffice it to say that I don't like having to come up with at least half of the setting when I BUY a setting. And I don't like game mechanics that do not allow my players to do what they want to, no matter what they try. I don't like having to beg an otaku for information so arcane that nobody else had the info, and so vague that I had to make up much of what I used. Tried to stay true to the source material, ended up having to use a video game, and novelizations, and old anime mags to even come close. And I DO NOT like having to ask military men peculiar questions!
I would like to, but things have gotten worse health wise. Gonna call tomorrow at 8am and beg to be seen at my clinic.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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This is a discussion of the current flaws of the system such as.
1: The Magic Item Creation system.
2: Traits (Some are just too good).
3: Spells such as Simulacrum, Charm Person, and Planar Binding just to name a few.
4: The wording of some things are just not clear.
5: WBL and how it works with some gaming styles and not others, including the default.
Now the thread doesn't have to focus on just those, there are others out there so post them here.
Odaude: To continue our earlier discussion. I see what your saying about Skill Focus and you are right but I still think getting a class skill and a bonus to it is a bit much for a trait.
My two C-bills:
1) I think the way to 'fix' this (Fix here being defined as 'the way Sean indicated it was intended, to boost the feat taker's wealth, not the party's') would be to link the number of items the feat allows to their casting stat (stat of choice for non-casters). Then the crafter has to choose "Headband of X for myself, or bracers +x for the fighter?")2) You're always going to have 'too good' feats/traits/whathave you. Too good is situational. Rich Parents is 'too good' at 1st level, but at 10th, it's pocket change, for example. Is it too good?
3) These are always going to be the realm of GM Fiat. About the only way to 'fix' them is to have a 'talk to your GM before you try to break this' rule.
4) A language clean up (Stealth!) is always useful.
5) Non-sequetor. A game can't *always* be all things to all players.
And the lesson I got from the thread? Don't argue from Authority unless you're willing to back it up.
When you are feeling better, perhaps you could provide some examples to explain what you mean.I am very sick right now. I don't have energy to type much.
Suffice it to say that I don't like having to come up with at least half of the setting when I BUY a setting. And I don't like game mechanics that do not allow my players to do what they want to, no matter what they try. I don't like having to beg an otaku for information so arcane that nobody else had the info, and so vague that I had to make up much of what I used. Tried to stay true to the source material, ended up having to use a video game, and novelizations, and old anime mags to even come close. And I DO NOT like having to ask military men peculiar questions!
Where would you like me to start? I am slowly recovering, (stomach flu, with lots of close association with the toilet) so my energy level is rising.
Found an entire thread here on this very subject: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?113836-Why-do-we-all-hate-Rifts-Palladi um-so-much/page2
What about players who don't frequent the forum? Does an email go out? What about forum goers who happen to not be on the off-topic subforum? I'm on these forums daily, and I had no idea there was an answer for the Stealth problem(albeit a bad one. "houserule it" is pretty lame when your company supposedly took on the task of fixing an entire edition).
The reason the word "houserule" comes up is because in the old days before the Internet, practically EVERY game on the planet was houseruled, there wasn't a DM worth his salt who didn't have a rule that was left on the chopping block, or added a few of his own.
You know the rule of full hit points at first level? That started as a House Rule in some unknown basement somewhere. No one really put a really high priority on consistency or uniformity. You either liked the way your DM ran his game, (and it was very much a He-man club in those days) or you looked for another. Not that it really mattered because in most cases you as a player only had one book to reference, the player's guide, so in quite a few cases you wouldn't even know, aside from the junking of the weapon speed and weapon vs adjustment rules that every DM I gamed with in the NY-NJ area kicked to the curb, that or how the DM was changing the ruleset.
There were even mini-conventions like the one at Princeton that had their own very homebrew mix of AD+D. Everyone tinkered and hammered the system to suit their tastes, and for the most part, all were content with the variations. Some of them like David Hargrave, even published their wacky homebrews in books that were laidout by typewriter and rubber cement. (His most famous chronic misinterpretation of the monster stat block gave rise to the Percent Liar chance.)
Even in PFS there's variation from judge to judge, table to table, and you're going to have that unless you create an RPG that's either as homogenized as 4th edition, or as rigid as Chess. And I really doubt that either of those are the...
So, in a nutshell you're saying "communication wasn't as good in the old days." Got it.
Well, communication is even better now, so what's your point again?
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So, in a nutshell you're saying "communication wasn't as good in the old days." Got it.
Well, communication is even better now, so what's your point again?
What I took from LazarX's quote is that our improved communication is actually creating a false sense of dilemma. A lot of us (I'll include myself in this) are perhaps casting too wide of a net in our quest for consistency in rules. If we need 4000 people to agree with us on rules that are effectively used to adjudicate 6 players, then perhaps our desire for consensus is missing the point. It seems many people want to be proven right here so they can bring this news back to their table, when that matter is better settled at the table.
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Right. Look, a lot of folks like armor as DR, but at least as many like armor as AC. Nothing wrong with either preference. But there are scads of FRPGs with armor as DR, why does PF have to be another one? Plenty of us like armor as AC. It’s like saying you prefer Strawberry Ice cream to Chocolate thus no store can sell anything BUT strawberry. Or that you are a Chess fan, so Checkers and Go have to go.
Nothing at all wrong with preferring Chess to Checkers, but coming over to the checkers players and suggesting that their game “would be a LOT better if two of those pieces could move like a knight” just isn’t helpful.
And this doesn’t just go for armor as DR, it goes for all deliberate play style decisions.
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Exactly. In the old days people went to conventions, played the standard RPGA mandated way and then went back home and played their own way. GM's did not have a crying need for validation by having their houserules be approved by every other GM on a bulletin board. Or the game rewritten to match the style they wanted it to be.
I'd just like to also point out that it's not just GMs who suddenly think that all rules for the game everywhere have to be standardized. That's mainly a player thing. Obviously if their GM is deviating even slightly from the norm, he HAS to be a power-mad dictator who can only be forcefully shoving them towards a TPK while rubbing his greasy hands together and cackling with glee. Because only @$$#0|€ GMs have "house rules".
I play in games where GM's house rule on the fly, or at least make no reference to house rules before games. It doesn't faze me at all, nor do I think he's a tyrant.
The other day he reduced my armor class from friendly fire by over ten points. Is that part of the RAW? Of course not, but to maintain his personal sense of reality within his game universe, he thought I should be more vulnerable at that time.
I still don't think he's a tyrant.
Found an entire thread here on this very subject: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?113836-Why-do-we-all-hate-Rifts-Palladi um-so-much/page2I read a number of the pages, and there are just as many people supporting Palladium as those who are criticizing it.
Also, at least some of the criticisms contradict the ones you have made. For example, there are several posts I read stating that despite their other complaints, Palladium makes great settings.
If you had continued further into the thread, you would have learned something I endured: Only the first handful of books were okay for Rifts, the rest.... Well, best left unsaid and unread.
And ALL agree just how bad the game mechanics are. Moreover, Robotech is abominable. If you are familiar with their setting, I can easily send you my d20 treatment of it. Almost nobody actually uses Palladium anything as is, they translate over the ideas to different systems. It started out as a straight port of their version of Robotech, but it grew into a different beast when I realized just how many areas were neglected.
Plus, all of that was written a decade ago, and not one whit has changed since in the game. KS refuses to update the game system in any way out of sheer laziness. The man copy n pastes as a way of life. I could write better, hell, I HAVE written better already!
That's an incredibly depressing thing to write, BTW, as I am just some twit with a keyboard who didn't have much to do over 2 years while typing it out.
I prefer my robotech Macross style where bards are they only class that matters and performance combat makes sense.
Ah, Lancer's Rockers, eh? I recall thinking that was a pretty silly module, but there was some sort of relative logic to it. Just really roundabout logic.
Much of what I did while writing the d20 version of Robotech was come up for backstory as to why things were that way in the series, therefore allowing for future player characters to encounter environments similar to those that were in the series. That was especially true in Masters and New Generation eras.
Hokey doke.
First, the quick start villain table was anything BUT. So I had to write one that actually worked.
Second, their rank structure was not fully developed for either side, Zentraedi or human.
Third, there was little if any information as to how the Zentraedi ran about in formations, what mechs would appear. I had to invent units.
Fourth, the skill system is abombinable. It's either working or not, on or off, there are no degrees of success or failure.
Fifth, the xp system is a piece of crap. The xp chart awards are poorly defined at best, and the amounts are so low that one tops out at 4-5th level. Even worse, some 1st level twit with a big gun can wipe the floor with a 5th level guy with a normal weapon, and will do so each and every time. That means leveling up is meaningless.
Sixth, the attributes suck rocks. Especially anything to do with social interaction. Not every player (indeed, most players suck at this) is great with social interaction. Worse, one needs deliriously high attributes to gain any sort of bonus, and those bonuses do all of diddly to one's skills.
Want me to go on? I haven't even begun combat flaws. I could type for hours on this piece of drek, in fact, I have ranted back and forth with a few fellow gamers/anime fans until the sun came up more than once on this topic.
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Because only @$$#0|€ GMs have "house rules".Hey, I have house rules!
...wait, that's not a refutation...
Hell, at this point I have nothing BUT house rules!
Don't look at me, I am simply responding to the question.