GURPS Rifts?

[oma]

Yeah, after reading tech levels it seems that 9 is about right and then the higher ones will cost more.

As far as the laser defeating power armor. In Rifts, it DOES. It just doesn't do all that much damage to the power armor that has 150MDC. The laser does 3d6 or something meaning it will punch through. I just don't want to get combats where lasers CANNOT effect super armor and I also want to avoid the danger of, "my mech and I go into battle and take some small arms fire and one hit from another mech and I have to go back to the garage to get fixed." In Rifts, the mechs can take quite a bit of damage before being useless or broken.
Unless you're using a BIG robot or the UT 11-12 weapons that the aliens have.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by oma

Yeah, after reading tech levels it seems that 9 is about right and then the higher ones will cost more.

As far as the laser defeating power armor. In Rifts, it DOES. It just doesn't do all that much damage to the power armor that has 150MDC. The laser does 3d6 or something meaning it will punch through. I just don't want to get combats where lasers CANNOT effect super armor and I also want to avoid the danger of, "my mech and I go into battle and take some small arms fire and one hit from another mech and I have to go back to the garage to get fixed." In Rifts, the mechs can take quite a bit of damage before being useless or broken.
Unless you're using a BIG robot or the UT 11-12 weapons that the aliens have.

It actually doesn't penetrate the armor in Rifts. It ablates it. GURPS Ultra Tech armor doesn't generally ablate. One fix, then, is to make all armor semi-ablative or something, and declare that this is the result of wear and tear on the armor and it needs an Armory roll to repair.

This would make Armory more valuable and perhaps emphasize how precious and fragile ultra-tech really is in a post-apocalyptic setting.

[starslayer]

the way that I handled MDC when I did a gurps rifts game was to say that any MDC equipment had DR 25, and anything that did 'MDC damage' had +25 damage.

I then disallowed having more then 25 points of non-ablative DR, and designed all technology around low overall damage values with the possible exception of rockets, and MDC weapons had +25 damage but then did only 1-6d damage.

I capped innate attacks at 6d damage.

These factors together created a lot of the RIFTS 'whittle there armor down' feel along with the 'MDC is so much better then SDC' while still allowing individual PCs to be either supernatural creatures or regular humans without too much of a point disparity, however it did require me to basically redesign all weapons/armor, and ignore any of the existing high/ultra-tech gear's behavior.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by oma

As far as the laser defeating power armor. In Rifts, it DOES.

This is very much one of the aspects of the Rifts system that I wouldn't want to carry over. I think using the damage to armor rules, or even making armor semi-ablative, is reasonable, but turning armor into a pile of extra HP as opposed to something that stops damage doesn't seem like a good idea. I mean, think about it: I shoot you in the arm for 5 points of damage, so when I shoot you in the leg next turn the armor will only stop 45 instead of 50? Bleah. "How armor works" is not something that should be carried over, IMO. If I was trying to convert D&D to GURPS, I wouldn't try to make the armors all make you harder to hit and do away with damage resistance in an attempt to mimic AC, after all.

[Highland_Piper]

I agree with Crakkerjakk. I love the setting of Rifts. I own most of the books. I can not tolerate the rules anymore. A mate of mine wants to play Rifts in GURPS and he is doing the same thing, trying to bring the Rifts rules into GURPS.

The best advice I can give when doing other systems in GURPS is bring over the setting and story line. That is the important part of any game. You should be using GURPS rules if your playing GURPS. In GURPS a .22 pistol is lethal (as it should be) were in Rifts a Hero could shrug off the damage. There is no need to make the Ultra-Tech weapons more powerful. If you want to show the difference between MDC super natural creatures then give them a Damage Resistant or Damage Reduction Advantage.

[The Benj]

Yeah, I'd strongly recommend against trying to carry over the silly things RIFTS does.
If you want people to eventually be able to cut into a giant robot with a laser pistol, remember the possible effects of Critical Hits and Targetting Chinks in Armour when figuring the relative damage, Armour Divisors and DR.
If a robot's big enough, the -8 or 10 to attack its weak points will be much less of a problem and that 4d(2) has just become 4d(4), which will reliably put through damage.

[sir_pudding]

Remember that the Palladium system uses M.D.C to explain modern weapons and armor. It isn't some special property of technology in RIFTS, it is a very unrealistic abstraction of anti-vehicular weaponry. In particular note the example given in several books of the tank, which cannot be defeated with rubber bouncy balls or 9mm pistols but can be killed with an Anti-Tank Weapon. In Palladium a tank is invulnerable to small arms because small arms do "S.D.C" and it is vulnerable to anti-vehicle weapons because these do "M.D.C". In Palladium an AT-4 kills a T72 by ablating all the armor off and then killing the crew. In GURPS the AT-4 puts a tiny hole in the armor and damages interior components (including personnel depending on where it hits). Which is pretty much what happens in real life

Palladium thus leads to all manner of unbelievable things. The armor ablates evenly over all surfaces regardless of the origin of the attack, so that if I shoot somebody in the front I can ablate is armor enough for you to shoot him in the back. Furthermore it doesn't matter where the armor is, all attacks will hit. There is an illustration of M.D.C body armor in a RIFTS book that shows a number of examples. Most of which are not full coverage sealed armors (at least one "Huntsman" IIRC, consists of a corslet, skirt, and corinthian style helmet), but all attacks still automagically ablate the armor. I always wondered why people couldn't just carry a small disk of M.D.C material instead of wearing body armor.

I was always especially irritated by the Robotech games in which it was impossible to actually replicate the source material. For example, the death of Roy Fokker, who was shot through the canopy of his fighter, and bled to death after completing a combat mission and RTB; in the Robotech RPG his fighter's armor would have to be completely disintegrated and then he would have exploded as he took M.D.C. to his S.D.C body.

There is hardly any good reason to retain anything of the mechanics of the Palladium system at all, IMO.

I apologize for willfully flaunting the forum rules concerning rules bashing, but it's very difficult to discuss the flaws in Palladium otherwise.

[nondescript handle]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

As several posts here have already shown, the concept behind Rifts is a farily simple one:
*snip*
It's not like Rifts has the patent on sweet power-armor, demon-summoning warlocks, psychotic bad***es, or righteous, light-sword wielding knights.

Best of all, you could talk about it here :)

For me personally the advantage the Rifts setting has over a similar-concept-but-better-executed homebrew isn't that it is terribly original or well thought through (it is neither), but that after +70 books it is a very detailed setting.

Pretty much every point of this planet has been described, hundreds of NPCs, dozens of nations, cooperations, cabals, mercenary companies, and traveling shows.

"I fled Chi-Town and learned magic in Lazlo." gives you a pretty detailed idea of the back story of that character. A wealth of (often cliché and occasionally conflicting, routinely suspension-of-belief shattering) knowledge shared between player and GM.

It creates a sense of immersion which my self written 16 or even 60 page setting, even if its more coherent and makes more sense, IMHO simply can't.

[Phantasm]

I'm looking to start a GURPS Rifts campaign on IRC in the next few weeks. Looking at either Tuesday or Wednesday nights around 9pm Eastern time, 250 point characters.

I've got a web page set up for the campaign's starting point and what I'm working with. The IRC channel I'm discussing this in is #gurps over on irc.sandwich.net; local handle "Phantasm".

So far, I've got confirmation from someone wanting to play a CS Mutt, and someone wanting to play a frog-like D-Bee. I'm looking for some folks who'd like to play humans or near-humans (but please, none of the fantasy races).

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

I've got a web page set up for the campaign's starting point and what I'm working with. The IRC channel I'm discussing this in is #gurps over on irc.sandwich.net; local handle "Phantasm".

Is this kosher according to Palladium's IP policy? I'd have thought that it wasn't.