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Brookshw
2022-08-05, 09:10 AM
Recently I had a hankering for some heavy metal infused science fantasy and decided to look into Rifts, I had played it a handful of times in the early 90s, but it never really became a staple. When I went to try and figure out what had changed after all that time, and where to begin, I quickly learned that (1) nothing really changed, no major new editions, and (2) there's now a hybrid Savage Worlds Rifts game.

I know nothing about Savage Worlds. Seen it mentioned here and there, but never played or read any of it, and don't know anyone who has (that I'm aware of).

For anyone familiar with Rifts and Savage World Rifts, (1) how well did the Rifts translate over, (2) what are the benefits of SWR over the original, and (3) what are your general thoughts on Savage Worlds?

Thanks in advance.

Anonymouswizard
2022-08-05, 09:45 AM
1) can't say, never played the original.

2) In Savage Rifts characters will at the very least be roughly balanced. There's no massive disparity between character types, although everybody begins well over the SW baseline. It's also not an AD&D hack, and IIRC Mega Damage doesn't instantly kill every PC without the ability to resist it.

3) Savage Worlds is a combat engine with some extra bits glued on. If everybody makes a combat character that's great. If somebody doesn't the system doesn't have a lot to work with. Otherwise it's mostly simplified Deadlands, and still passably runs when the players have the full party and a dozen mooks.

LibraryOgre
2022-08-05, 10:23 AM
Palladium's Megaversal System is someone's 1e house rules with a couple bits grafted on. It is a mess, and, having played with Kevin Siembieda, he doesn't even use a lot of it.

Savage Worlds is, IMO, a far better system, and it handles Rifts pretty well. I disagree that it's a combat system with some other bits tacked on, except insofar as you can say that for a lot RPGs; it's got decent rules for dramatic tasks, social interactions, and story-driven play.

Anonymouswizard
2022-08-05, 11:06 AM
Savage Worlds is, IMO, a far better system, and it handles Rifts pretty well. I disagree that it's a combat system with some other bits tacked on, except insofar as you can say that for a lot RPGs;

I say it about a lot of RPGs. The fact that you can say it about the majority is a great disappointment.

I really need to get back to writing my holiday relationship simulator game.


it's got decent rules for dramatic tasks, social interactions, and story-driven play.

The first two take up less than a page each, and I haven't seen the third. Maybe it's buried in the 30-page combat chapter.


It being a combat system with bits glued on isn't bad, and honestly seems perfect for Rifts. But I still think it's important when considered the system.

Black Jester
2022-08-05, 11:18 AM
I genuinely do not like Savage Worlds. I think my opinion got hut by the game being just okay, after having it forced upon me by other players in a colud of a lot of hype; but I also think there are some things about the game that are genuinely not very good, and not just annoying, as the constant self-praise of the older edition I played.

So... in most cases, I wouldn't play Savage Worlds. I would opt out of most Savage Worlds games, if asked to play. I would never run it as a game, for any campaign I throroughly enjoy enough to run at all. Savage Worlds is just not a game I enjoy.


I would strongly recommend it over RIFTS any day, anyway.

LibraryOgre
2022-08-05, 11:58 AM
I say it about a lot of RPGs. The fact that you can say it about the majority is a great disappointment.

I really need to get back to writing my holiday relationship simulator game.


I've got a Savage Worlds game that's sorta being worked on that's a association football RPG. "Red Card" is about playing football, running a football club and, generally, being football players (and shenanigans, because RPG). I've stalled out on inspiration. Probably should play some more Blood Bowl, since I was planning a fantasy hack for it.

Rynjin
2022-08-05, 04:18 PM
The first two take up less than a page each, and I haven't seen the third. Maybe it's buried in the 30-page combat chapter.


It being a combat system with bits glued on isn't bad, and honestly seems perfect for Rifts. But I still think it's important when considered the system.

The rules aren't long, but they're flexible. That's kind of Savage Worlds' whole thing in a nutshell.


IIRC Mega Damage doesn't instantly kill every PC without the ability to resist it.

Savage RIFTS Mega Damage is equivalent to base Savage Worlds Heavy Weaponry by design. So basically "vehicle class weaponry", with MDC being "vehicle class armor".

Regular armor protects against heavy weapons, because the game would be pretty lame if the entire party got gibbed, no save, the instant somebody fired a grenade launcher at them. However, people with MDC are ENTRELY IMMUNE to standard weaponry; non-heavy weapons cannot pierce MDC no matter how high your damage roll.

LibraryOgre
2022-08-05, 04:44 PM
Regular armor protects against heavy weapons, because the game would be pretty lame if the entire party got gibbed, no save, the instant somebody fired a grenade launcher at them.

*stares in Megaversal system*

Yeah, that would be bad.

:smallbiggrin:

vasilidor
2022-08-05, 06:01 PM
Having both Savage Worlds and Rifts, Savage Worlds is easier to play and make characters. Far less difficult in every conceivable way.
I love the Rifts world lore and would love to play in it. Until Savage worlds came out with a mod for it I thought it was an absolute pipe dream due to the difficulty of playing it and the groups I played with.
Now it is just mostly a pipe dream.

Azuresun
2022-08-11, 06:15 AM
For anyone familiar with Rifts and Savage World Rifts, (1) how well did the Rifts translate over, (2) what are the benefits of SWR over the original, and (3) what are your general thoughts on Savage Worlds?

Thanks in advance.


I think SWR captures the feel of Rifts (big gonzo OTT action movie) better than the original. oRifts had a big problem with numbers inflation, and SW mechanics like extras and the vehicle rules allow for cinematic and heroic moments much more easily, while creatures like dragons feel legitimately scary. The archetypes feel distinct (especially Juicers, with the limited lifespan being much more front and centre, giving a palpable ticking clock before the character goes out in a blaze of glory), and one thing I really like are the "Mercenaries, Adventurers, Rogues and Scholars" option, where you can play a "Batman in the JLA" kind of character, and start with more experience and resources.

I started my last game off with the characters fighting a squad of Coalition soldiers and Skelebots to stress-test the combat engine, and it worked really well. The extras rules meant there was no excess book-keeping for the unnamed enemies, and the character felt like legitimate badasses as they were one-shotting enemies or sending multiple targets fleeing with their spells. Then it segued into a chase scene with the characters in a techno-wizard monster truck fleeing from a pair of Coalition sky cycles. Because Rifts.

The system just feels a lot more coherent than Palladium in general (not hard)--characters can start off competent at skills they should be good in, there's a lot more options in combat (including ways for non-combat characters to contribute), there's a lot of solid support for dramatic situations other than combat, and it's rarer to run into situations that the rules don't match up to.

I strongly disagree with whoever said SW is just a combat engine. It's a fair part of the rules, but it has solid support for chases, non-combat dramatic tasks and quick encounters, as well as some nice RP-encouraging mechanics. SW is just an all-round good system for me, and I'm currently working off-and-on on a 40K conversion without meeting any stumbling blocks so far.

However, I have experienced one stumbling block with Rifts specifically, which is that the SW system tends to break down once you run into Toughness + Armour numbers over the mid-twenties and the biggest of vehicle weapons, especially heavy railguns. The dice system relies on open-ended damage rolls to develop high numbers, but once you PASS that number, it's only another 12 to instagib most things. So combat between giant robots and the like can be a lot of ineffectual flailing, then someone randomly explodes. A gentleman's agreement not to use the high-end stuff and avoid excess numbers inflation is recommended.

Anonymouswizard
2022-08-11, 07:01 AM
I strongly disagree with whoever said SW is just a combat engine. It's a fair part of the rules, but it has solid support for chases, non-combat dramatic tasks and quick encounters, as well as some nice RP-encouraging mechanics. SW is just an all-round good system for me, and I'm currently working off-and-on on a 40K conversion without meeting any stumbling blocks so far.

Sometimes I feel like the only person on these boards who played 1e Savage Worlds. Yes Deluxe glued even more pieces on (notably Dramatic Tasks, Social Conflict, and powers that weren't combat focused, Chases were always there), but if you're a combat character you get a whole host of edges, thieves get like three if you include Acrobat and Their.

Don't get me wrong, Savage Worlds is great, but I'm never going to run a game that isn't combat heavy. Arguing it isn't primarily a combat engine is like arguing that D&D4e isn't primarily a combat engine because it includes Skill Challenge rules.

Azuresun
2022-08-11, 08:49 AM
Sometimes I feel like the only person on these boards who played 1e Savage Worlds. Yes Deluxe glued even more pieces on (notably Dramatic Tasks, Social Conflict, and powers that weren't combat focused, Chases were always there), but if you're a combat character you get a whole host of edges, thieves get like three if you include Acrobat and Their.

Don't get me wrong, Savage Worlds is great, but I'm never going to run a game that isn't combat heavy. Arguing it isn't primarily a combat engine is like arguing that D&D4e isn't primarily a combat engine because it includes Skill Challenge rules.

I don't think the OP is going to run first edition.

As for the rest of it, okay, opinion noted, logged and processed. For me, the rules never struck me as being more combat-focused than most other RPG's, and the system support for non-combat activities is far more robust than D&D and many other RPG's.

LibraryOgre
2022-08-11, 09:51 AM
However, I have experienced one stumbling block with Rifts specifically, which is that the SW system tends to break down once you run into Toughness + Armour numbers over the mid-twenties and the biggest of vehicle weapons, especially heavy railguns. The dice system relies on open-ended damage rolls to develop high numbers, but once you PASS that number, it's only another 12 to instagib most things. So combat between giant robots and the like can be a lot of ineffectual flailing, then someone randomly explodes. A gentleman's agreement not to use the high-end stuff and avoid excess numbers inflation is recommended.

OTOH, Rifts had this exact same problem, due to the numbers inflation you mentioned above. Pretty much the only way to efficiently deal with a lot of targets... including things like human-sized Undead Slayers... was a volley of guided missiles. Everything else had too much MDC, and it was sometimes trivially easy to replenish that MDC for magic-based characters. Weapon damages didn't remotely keep up, so fights became cutting down trees with razor blades.

Quertus
2022-08-11, 11:30 AM
So combat between giant robots and the like can be a lot of ineffectual flailing, then someone randomly explodes.

That… sounds like terrible game play. :smallfrown:

Like, I’d take “padded sumo” or “rocket tag” over … uh, “… eventually, rockets”.

EDIT: and I’ll take “big robots” over “not big robots”, too, thanks! :smallbiggrin: I mean, what’s the point of Rifts if you don’t have both “Wizards” and “big robots”?


OTOH, Rifts had this exact same problem, due to the numbers inflation you mentioned above. Pretty much the only way to efficiently deal with a lot of targets... including things like human-sized Undead Slayers... was a volley of guided missiles. Everything else had too much MDC, and it was sometimes trivially easy to replenish that MDC for magic-based characters. Weapon damages didn't remotely keep up, so fights became cutting down trees with razor blades.

Huh? I’ll admit, I haven’t played Rifts much, but my experience says 1) “combat healing” seemed more viable in D&D than in Rifts; 2) Magic seemed really limited by mana as a resource.

What am I missing, to make your claim make sense?

Anonymouswizard
2022-08-11, 11:50 AM
Honestly MDC is like most versions of scale rules: it works fine as long as all the main characters are working at the same scale most of the time. Unfortunately I believe that Rifts included MDC archetypes from the very first book under the assumption that they'll mix with archetypes in the SDC scale.

But yeah, Savage Worlds breaks after a certain point of number inflation. It assumes that Toughness isn't going to be going into the high teens even with armour, with vehicles and anti-vehicle weapons reaching the twenties. It doesn't help that the weapons at this scale tend to be like 5d10 damage, which makes acing very easy.

Brookshw
2022-08-11, 01:05 PM
I don't think the OP is going to run first edition.


I don't know enough about it to say, but my assumption would be whatever the most recent edition is, is what I'd run. Far as I could tell look like you need whatever is the SW core book and the savage rifts 3 books to run, is that correct?

LibraryOgre
2022-08-11, 01:08 PM
Huh? I’ll admit, I haven’t played Rifts much, but my experience says 1) “combat healing” seemed more viable in D&D than in Rifts; 2) Magic seemed really limited by mana as a resource.

What am I missing, to make your claim make sense?

My experience is the complete opposite.

Combat healing in Rifts is usually really slow; bio-regeneration is in minutes, while combat is in actions... fractions of rounds, which are fractions of minutes. Most healing spells are in SDC, which are 1/100th of an MDC. If you're spamming the basic heal wounds spell, you're healing 3D6 SDC and 1D6 HP per action... it does not scale with level, and has a range of 3 feet. Psychic healing is even worse, being the same level of healing, and requiring some meditation time to enact. And if your armor or vehicle is mechanical, repair is done in days, not rounds.

As for magic, the high level stuff is pretty inaccessible, but the lower-level stuff is not. A beginning ley line walker (the standard wizard) will have about 130 PPE (3d6*10+20+PE), which will handle a fair number of lower-level spells (13 of the Heal Wounds spell), and they can absorb PPE from dying enemies to recharge in the fight, as well as recharge between fights. Again, psychics are even worse, since they can't regenerate ISP nearly as easily... stamina is a real problem for them.

As for MDC, you can get some pretty crazy numbers, especially as you rise in level. For 40 PPE, a T-Man can get 75 MD/level as an action... that's fairly heavy body armor, at 1st level, and by 3rd level, you're talking the equivalent of a cyborg. OTOH, damage tends to hang out around 4D6 MD for anything but explosives (including, for some reason, giant canons)... meaning it takes about 5 shots to get through a level 1 T-Man's Invulnerability tattoo... which he can refresh with one.

So, you wind up with a slog of low damage against high armor. TBH, your experience is so divergent from mine, I want to know what y'all were doing.

Azuresun
2022-08-11, 03:30 PM
OTOH, Rifts had this exact same problem, due to the numbers inflation you mentioned above. Pretty much the only way to efficiently deal with a lot of targets... including things like human-sized Undead Slayers... was a volley of guided missiles. Everything else had too much MDC, and it was sometimes trivially easy to replenish that MDC for magic-based characters. Weapon damages didn't remotely keep up, so fights became cutting down trees with razor blades.

Pretty much. Huge damage buffers everywhere. The SW edition hits a better balance for most things, and combat very seldom feels boring.



That… sounds like terrible game play. :smallfrown:

Like, I’d take “padded sumo” or “rocket tag” over … uh, “… eventually, rockets”.

EDIT: and I’ll take “big robots” over “not big robots”, too, thanks! :smallbiggrin: I mean, what’s the point of Rifts if you don’t have both “Wizards” and “big robots”?

It still works, it's just the ones with Toughness + Armour 30+ where things get wonky with maths. A quick and dirty houserule that largely fixes the issue is that big scary things simply don't take more than one wound from any given attack.

That said, one thing I like about the SW version is that it does make it so that magic or psionics aimed at the crew are really good against vehicles, which is a nice equaliser.



I don't know enough about it to say, but my assumption would be whatever the most recent edition is, is what I'd run. Far as I could tell look like you need whatever is the SW core book and the savage rifts 3 books to run, is that correct?

Adventure Edition is the latest one. The core rulebook has everything you need, the GM book is a lot of optional stuff.

Rynjin
2022-08-11, 07:01 PM
SWADE Rifts already tones down a bunch of the numbers inflation, but in a bit of a haphazard way IMO. Bursters weren't particularly strong compared to other Iconic Frameworks but they got one of the biggest proportional nerfs to their damage output for some reason.

Running Rifts does require the GM to be a bit proactive in tuning down the numbers I've found. You want to keep things within the realm of stuff that it is conceivably possible to hurt.

Simultaneously, mixed parties can be a headache. Cooking up a threat that can challenge a Glitterboy without instantly atomizing your MARS player requires careful balancing or contrivance. I was up front with my Glitterboy player that after an initial taste of power, I was going to be frequently either splitting him off into his own combat as the one man army he is, or contriving ways to get him out of his suit.

Being up front let him plan accordingly, so his character is not useless out of the suit (having taken leadership Edges to play a support role when he's not the invincible super tank).

Quertus
2022-08-12, 11:34 AM
My experience is the complete opposite.

Combat healing in Rifts is usually really slow; bio-regeneration is in minutes, while combat is in actions... fractions of rounds, which are fractions of minutes. Most healing spells are in SDC, which are 1/100th of an MDC. If you're spamming the basic heal wounds spell, you're healing 3D6 SDC and 1D6 HP per action... it does not scale with level, and has a range of 3 feet. Psychic healing is even worse, being the same level of healing, and requiring some meditation time to enact. And if your armor or vehicle is mechanical, repair is done in days, not rounds.

As for magic, the high level stuff is pretty inaccessible, but the lower-level stuff is not. A beginning ley line walker (the standard wizard) will have about 130 PPE (3d6*10+20+PE), which will handle a fair number of lower-level spells (13 of the Heal Wounds spell), and they can absorb PPE from dying enemies to recharge in the fight, as well as recharge between fights. Again, psychics are even worse, since they can't regenerate ISP nearly as easily... stamina is a real problem for them.

As for MDC, you can get some pretty crazy numbers, especially as you rise in level. For 40 PPE, a T-Man can get 75 MD/level as an action... that's fairly heavy body armor, at 1st level, and by 3rd level, you're talking the equivalent of a cyborg. OTOH, damage tends to hang out around 4D6 MD for anything but explosives (including, for some reason, giant canons)... meaning it takes about 5 shots to get through a level 1 T-Man's Invulnerability tattoo... which he can refresh with one.

So, you wind up with a slog of low damage against high armor. TBH, your experience is so divergent from mine, I want to know what y'all were doing.

That… doesn’t sound like healing in Rifts (3D6 SDC and 1D6 HP per action, 10 times for your full mana bar, vs 4d6 MD per attack, or vs 75 MDC Invulnerability per action) was very good at your tables, either.

Also, giant robots. :smallcool:

Thus, combat healing seemed much more viable to me in D&D than in Rifts.


It still works, it's just the ones with Toughness + Armour 30+ where things get wonky with maths. A quick and dirty houserule that largely fixes the issue is that big scary things simply don't take more than one wound from any given attack.

That said, one thing I like about the SW version is that it does make it so that magic or psionics aimed at the crew are really good against vehicles, which is a nice equaliser.

“If you have to ‘exploding die’ to deal damage, you deal at most a single point of damage”? That way, “giant robot” doesn’t just explode when a butterfly lands on just the wrong strut? Sounds like a good rule to me.

Also, “target the crew” was the preferred tactic of my “psionic vampire” (think “Illithid Savant”, a decade before such were published) in the homebrew Paradox (think Rifts, but good). I wholeheartedly approve. :smallbiggrin:

LibraryOgre
2022-08-12, 11:56 AM
Thus, combat healing seemed much more viable to me in D&D than in Rifts.


Mea culpa. I switched D&D and Rifts like... five times... in reading what you wrote.

Rynjin
2022-08-12, 04:54 PM
Healing in Savage Worlds is definitely an out of combat thing, but Rifts is actually more forgiving to players going down in combat. One of the setting rules for Rifts is the Death and Defeat table which overrides the normal rules for death in SW. It makes it very difficult to actually die when you "die"; only rolling a 1-4 on the d20 kills you, the rest are various levels of injury (including an option of "You are miraculously fine lol").

Brookshw
2022-08-12, 05:02 PM
. So combat between giant robots and the like can be a lot of ineffectual flailing, then someone randomly explodes.

For some reason this line keeps reminding me of Paranoia...

Urbanmech
2022-08-13, 06:39 PM
I picked up Rifts in the 90Â’s but we made way more characters than actually got used in play. I just finished running a 12 session long campaign of Savage Rifts. It was my and the groups first time playing Savage Worlds. It ran fairly smoothly and everyone had fun. I think my only complaint is that making encounters is very much a learned art, eyeballing enemy toughness and armor can work but I still think itÂ’s something I need to work on.

I would say the Savage Rifts version is more playable. The system is more coherent and the characters are more in-line in power with each other. There are some outliers like Glitter Boys, Robot Pilots, and Dragon Hatchlings with really high toughness and/or damage. So having a conversation before game start is important. Magic/Psionics feels very impactful with powers able to incapacitate or debuff foes beyond what I remember from original Rifts. With the four current expansion books most of North America and Atlantis are covered. You can always fill in additional lore with the Paladium books if you want.

Curbludgeon
2022-08-16, 09:49 PM
With the release of the new free pdf of how to adapt material to Savage Rifts, including Iconic Frameworks so as to include things from the Super Powers Companion, I sort of want to put together a list of things which haven't yet been converted.

I largely see Palladium's Megaversal System as a piece of outsider art, for which only some of the people interested are in on it. Huge swathes of it weren't ever really intended for use as evidenced by the creator forgoing them in the public games held in his own warehouse, and can be dismissed via any of the endless number of paeans to GM authority found in the text. It's the same sort of deflection company head K.S. applies to other situations; no game rule is binding save top-down authority in much the same way that despite pathological micromanaging, accountability for a publisher's foulups don't reflect on those in charge, so long as there's someone to throw under the bus. It's like a fractal of avoidance.

Rynjin
2022-08-17, 12:49 AM
With the release of the new free pdf of how to adapt material to Savage Rifts, including Iconic Frameworks so as to include things from the Super Powers Companion, I sort of want to put together a list of things which haven't yet been converted.

Whoa hey can you link me that? I was letting a player use the Super Powers Companion anyway but was kind of winging it, he might be more comfortable with an actual Framework to work from.

Curbludgeon
2022-08-17, 02:22 AM
Savaging Your Favorite Rifts® Ideas (PDF) (https://peginc.com/store/savaging-rifts/)

Rynjin
2022-08-17, 04:25 AM
Thanks a bundle.

LibraryOgre
2022-08-18, 11:13 AM
I largely see Palladium's Megaversal System as a piece of outsider art, for which only some of the people interested are in on it. Huge swathes of it weren't ever really intended for use as evidenced by the creator forgoing them in the public games held in his own warehouse, and can be dismissed via any of the endless number of paeans to GM authority found in the text. It's the same sort of deflection company head K.S. applies to other situations; no game rule is binding save top-down authority in much the same way that despite pathological micromanaging, accountability for a publisher's foulups don't reflect on those in charge, so long as there's someone to throw under the bus. It's like a fractal of avoidance.

Yeouch. Not inaccurate, but YEOUCH. I am totally sharing this with another former freelancer of my acquaintance.

Curbludgeon
2022-08-18, 12:09 PM
FWIW, I've liked everything I've seen of yours, Mr. Hall, both in and outside of PB stuff(You even got me to take a peek at Hackmaster!). It's really a company that, if they realized what a resource they had in freelancers, would be unrecognizable from what it is. I think there was a time where, for instance, Splicers had a lot of fan work being produced, including an artist or two whom were passionate about the setting. Books could have been published as quickly as the art assets could have been made, and would have been sought out by fans.

I'm not trying to be overly snarky. I suppose I'm just more disappointed at a series of business decisions backing up a fraught design process which was inflicted on some real fun settings.

LibraryOgre
2022-08-18, 12:51 PM
FWIW, I've liked everything I've seen of yours, Mr. Hall, both in and outside of PB stuff(You even got me to take a peek at Hackmaster!). It's really a company that, if they realized what a resource they had in freelancers, would be unrecognizable from what it is. I think there was a time where, for instance, Splicers had a lot of fan work being produced, including an artist or two whom were passionate about the setting. Books could have been published as quickly as the art assets could have been made, and would have been sought out by fans.

I'm not trying to be overly snarky. I suppose I'm just more disappointed at a series of business decisions backing up a fraught design process which was inflicted on some real fun settings.

The early 2000s saw a lot of fans turning into freelancers, and even employees (Bill Coffin comes to mind). But, as you said, it's not a well-run business, and my patience for that sort of ran out. "We're not professionals at this!" Sir, you have been in this business for 40 years. If you are not a professional at this, no one is.

sktarq
2022-08-22, 11:57 AM
Recently I had a hankering for some heavy metal infused science fantasy ....amiliar with Rifts and Savage World Rifts, (1) how well did the Rifts translate over, (2) what are the benefits of SWR over the original, and (3) what are your general thoughts on Savage Worlds?

Thanks in advance.

SW Rifts tends to be more stable. And I would say less flexible...which isn't always a bad thing. Rifts was the game I always said you can carve a wonderful game out of...again and again and they will be nearly unrecognizable down to many of their rules. It was a halfdozen or more games all poured into one world-mostly decent or better games but they interacted poorly/explosively.
SWR is pretty good but I also think it is combat heavy, personally.
And far easier to learn.

pkitty
2022-11-25, 04:59 PM
Unless you absolutely dislike Savage Worlds as a system, I think Savage Rifts is a better way to play Rifts than its own (Palladium) system. It's much easier and simpler, combats take literally 1/10 as long, and even when the characters are radically different in "power level" they still feel balanced by other means. (Unlike the feeling I get in Palladium, where for example if I played a Vagabond I'm literally just less useful in every way than someone playing a better OCC.)

For example, I played a Rogue Scholar in a party with a Glitter Boy and Dragon Hatchling. Obviously I couldn't compare to them regarding Toughness or damage output! Yet because of the way Savage Worlds (and Savage Rifts) works, I was never useless in a fight. I could be mopping up mooks and minions while my huge friends fought the Big Bad, or I could be using my social skills to Test the dangerous foes, or I could hope into my vehicle and use the railgun. More important, because the game isn't just "combat combat combat", I was consistently such a useful character who helped us get through all of the noncombat parts of each adventure.

In Palladium Rifts, "Mega-Damage" (MD) is just normal damage x100. So if you don't have MDC armor, even 1-2 points of MD will splatter you. In Savage Rifts, MD just uses the "Heavy Armor/Weapon" rules, which means someone in MDC armor can ignore small arms fire (don't even roll), while someone in standard armor takes Gritty Damage (potential temp injury) from an MD attack, but otherwise treats it like normal damage. The net result is that MD weapons and MDC armor still feel very powerful, but without auto-killing anyone.

And so on. I know some Palladium fans don't like how Savage Rifts "balances" everything so much (e.g., they feel that some OCCs should just be better in every way than others because that's how it is), but for me it's the main draw, because every character still feels very different. It's nice to see every PC having different opportunities to step into the spotlight.

LibraryOgre
2022-11-26, 03:40 PM
The Mod Ogre: As this is a Rifts Thread, necromancy for some reason involved attaching a corpse's arm to your leg. It's still against the rules, just like half-elves and neutral alignments.