Savage Rifts and the Tomorrow Legion

Game Master Shadow Bloodmoon

An interesting conversation and here are my thoughts. The Glitter Boy in Rifts is tough. At 770MDC and laser resistant armor, it can only really be challenged by heavier robot vehicles, even though it is technically power armor. The NG-V7, which is what hit Barbara in this game, does an average of 70 MDC on a double burst. It would take around 9-11 shots to completely deplete the main body of the Glitter Boy, presuming that's where all shots hit and that they all actually hit the target.

Savage Rifts takes the Fast Furious Fun part of Savage Worlds and makes it super deadly and basically nerfs what the Glitter Boy was in Original Rifts. What I find odd, and I was frantically looking this up while going through the rolls, was why Power Armor is not considered similar to a Robot Vehicle. I would think that it would also have its own wounds and what not. No such luck.

I thought I read about the design philosophy of why they did that in one of the books (like Savaging Rifts), but I could not find it.

The relevant rolls are as follows:

As you can see, if it wasn't for that Ace, Barbara never would have been hit. The damage was average however, with a small boost from the Raise. The AP does negate a lot of the GG's armor bonus. Unfortunately, according to the TLPG, Body Armor, like the Mk II that Barbara is wearing, does not stack with other Worn Armor, which, unless I missed something, the GG counts as. This is in direct contrast to the 'standard' SWADE rules that worn armor stacks for 1/2 the lesser armor's bonus. However, I noticed that Barbara mentioned that her GG is only +18/+6. I think that is from the old SWEX version. The current version is as Burgurk said, +25/+10. Thus, Barbara should have a 42 (25) Toughness rating in the GG. It does stack with your innate Toughness, essentially making you an MDC creature while in it. Frankly though, I feel like the MK II should stack with the GG. It's a whole second layer of armor. That would give Barbara an effective 44(27).

I do like the idea of making Power Armor a vehicle with its own set of Wounds. I'm not sure that I would make it a 42 Toughness vehicle though, that would bring it higher than most Robot Vehicles and Tanks. On the other hand, it would make it similar to the GG in the book. Hmm.. I'll have to ponder that some more. I have to get going and get my 'we're not paying you to work at home after work, but you still have to work at home' stuff done. The joys of being a teacher. I will try to post another update tomorrow.

Uuuugh my PDF is the out-of-date version? Well that just makes everything worse! I did built my character using the Savaged.US site, which says my Toughness should be 45 (27), so it should be using the latest rules, but something may be slightly off.

Anyway yeah I think where my head is going is that it seems more interesting to me if combat is a slugfest where the Glitter armor takes hits and then you have systems failing and you have the pressure of trying to decide when to flee or whether to stand and fight. Obviously it is not fun if it's (1) invincible or (2) effectively unarmored.

BUT

I don't want to generate reams of house rules just for me. Sooo I'm futzing around with various alternatives and trying to figure out the best way moving forward without bogging down the whole game for everyone else.

ALSO

My sample size of fights so far is 2, so it's possible that I'm just getting skewed by bad luck. I hate to see what would happen if the Glitter armor winds up against something that is actually dangerous to it in original Rifts, though. If it's been nerfed this hard, it would just get folded and spindled.

Well, my suggestions were just "shift 16 points of Armor into Toughness" and "give the GG its own 5 Wound absorption count", so it's not a lot of complicated house rules/changes...

Also, that last shot you took is a perfect demonstration of why these changes *need* to be made - a totally average shot from a rail gun inflicted 2 Wounds. That's not bad luck, that's bad system design.

I did some more reading and noticed that the 4d12+4 heavy rail guns are basically the heaviest non-missile-array vehicle weapons you can get, which seems a bit wild for a starting adventure, but I guess you have to have something to threaten those really powerful characters, eh?

DMSBM - I don't think adding Barbara's personal armor to the GG would help much by itself :

So, the Mark II has +5 Armor and +1 Toughness. Add that to what she's got now and you get 48(30). I'm not following RAW which only adds half the armor's values, to maximize the idea.

But since the rail gun's AP is 18, it's still the smaller number so Barbara's effective Toughness is now 30, which against the rail gun's average damage of 32 only Shakens her. But even the last damage roll you made only did 34, which still inflicts a Wound.

But, when combined with shifting some of the GG's Armor into Toughness and giving the GG its own Wound absorption count, it would give an added boost to the GG's overall survivability.

seems a bit wild for a starting adventure...

If you want to peek behind the screen, as it were, open the spoiler.

@Burgurk- That seems an interesting change and I would be curious to see how it affects other power armors as well. I'm going to do a Reddit deep dive at some point in the near future and see how other GMs have dealt with it. I'm not keen on changing the rules mid-fight, but the Ace not withstanding, it does seem odd that the GG goes down quickly after one shot. If two of those shots had hit, she'd be down again and her main character capabilities woulds be taken out of the fight.

All in all, not really capturing the feel of wearing power armor. Then again, the NG7 is a robot vehicle and thus bigger and stronger, technically. Though the original source material says different. It also says that the GG is considered the border between robot vehicle and power armor. It begs the question why it was turned into power armor in Savage Rifts. I digress.

I did notice one thing that I failed to take into account with the hit though. The GG is Size 3 (Normal). The NG is Size 8 (Huge), a -4 to hit on top of the other penalties. While it still hits, it does NOT hit with a Raise. The damage should only have been 30. One Wound, not Two. I will rectify that when I go over to the Gameplay section.

Haven't checked the forums a ton in years, save for a PbP that updates like once a month; was surprised (though pleased) to see this game is still going when I looked in on my AoW game a few minutes ago.

I hope the GM doesn't mind my posting this here, but I'm recruiting for a Cleric or Paladin to join the SW for Pathfinder game I'm running. We're running the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path. Click HERE if you're interested.

I hope the GM doesn't mind my posting this here, but I'm recruiting for a Cleric or Paladin to join the SW for Pathfinder game I'm running. We're running the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path. Click HERE if you're interested.

Well. I'm all for it. That group needs the help. :)

No worries, Burgurk. We have had plenty of cross-game things work out well. I'd love to join, but I have barely enough time to play your Necessary Evil game and run this one!