What do you do to make Rifts Earth feel dangerous again?

[flatline]

When RMB came out, the prose made Rifts Earth seem really dangerous. However, as new books came out, it quickly lost that feel.

Have any of you made changes to the canon setting or rules to make things feel dangerous again?

--flatline

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Rules wise, i haven't seen the need.

Even ignoring a lot of the post-RMB nonsense (-10 to dodge, for instance), the game is plenty fatal. If you're playing RAW-ish (and actually rolling your attributes) you're likely to have 10-20 characters in a row that dont have a single bonus from stats until/unless you add in physical skills (and maybe not even then).

Unless you're playing "vehicle scale" games (non-magic users are in high-end PA or robots, tanks, etc, Magic Users have ready access to 9th+ level spells, party members may be super-powered beings/demigods/godlings with hundreds of MDC and potent attacks) the game is very dangerous. An average PC (150-200MDC) can go down in a single round if he's not careful or gets a run of mediocre rolls, even to relatively underpowered firearms.

Against opponents armed with cutting edge tech, he can go down in 3-4 attacks.

As for the setting...

I haven't played Rifts regularly (or run a game) since i really sat down and debunked the setting. I'd probably change a whole raft of things to make the setting actually make sense.

[eliakon]

I wouldn't know...
...For some odd reason my players always seem terrified.
Possibly because Rifts is one of those settings where its pretty obvious that Summon Bigger Fish isn't just a GM butt pull, but is a built in setting mechanic.

My players may get comfortable, they may even fee moderatlyl confidant... but they also know that at any second literally anything could show up. Its one of the few settings where announcing that the party scouts see Cthulhu in power armor is not a "rocks fall" moment but just a "okay, so that's what the 00 on that random table was lovely"

As such it has always (in our group at least) seemed to always be dangerous. In some ways even more now... as before at least you had the excuse of it being a Mad Max world to wander around armed to the teeth in full battle gear every second of the day.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Some example setting things i'd change to make it work more like Kev initially wanted and/or make some actual sense:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

Well be using a MacGuffin or three to make the setting make some sense.

1 - Setting MacGuffin - Magic is strange and power and does weird things.

This is the explanation for why long-range communications tend not to work well, why you cant just pick up and fly across the continent in two hours, why its a near-miracle that Triax can navigate across the ocean, and why going places in the setting takes a long time (like Kev wanted it to).

Navigation simply doesn't work. The higher you get into the atmosphere, the worse it gets. Without a beacon to orient on, you lose your way almost immediately. You might end up flying around in circles and never know it. Inertial navigation, et all - nothing. This is part of what makes civilized areas civilized, though - most large towns and larger will keep a radio/signal/navigation beacon in town and powered up. In the CS states, CS forces (and others who can see the beacons) can navigate pretty well - there are bases and beacons all over the place.

Once you get past the border, though, good luck. (This also explains why the CS doesn't just lob LRM's into the Colorado Baronies, Arzno, or Kingsdale and wipe them off the map from their couch seats - the missiles just cant navigate that far without beacons).

This similarly affects ground travel, though ground travel can be a little more reliable since you can use landmarks (as long as you're not in a place with lots of D-shifting going on at least). But much like air travel, the faster you go, and less attention you pay to navigation aids that work (terrain, landmarks, the stars/position of the sun) the faster you go off course and lose your way, driving around in circles. And once you're out in the wilderness where there arent even worn dirt tracks? Best go slow. Dont want to end up getting lost.

Same for communication. Radio just fails after a few miles unless its from a REALLY powerful transmitter. And even the most powerful (installation-mounted) can only make it a few hundred miles. Again, in civilized lands, like the CS, there are radio relays all over the place (every town, every garrison, outpost, etc). So within the CS radio communication is pretty reliable. Get 30 miles past the border and not so much. Vastly reduce the range on radio transmitters that are smaller than a robot (and i dont mean robot mounted, i mean the size of a damn robot). Laser communication, same thing. Magic in the air warps the laser after a certain distance.

Magic is WEIRD, man.

2 - There are no nuclear power plants on anything smaller than a large tank/apc/giant robot. Smaller vehicles have nuclear batteries, which have a long lifespan but have a finite amount of on-demand power, and are generally paired/part of a system that integrated a large, super-dense battery/capacitor system that stores several hours to a day's worth of full-power usage.

In the short term, it doesn't make a huge amount of diference to the game. Power Armor can still be nuclear powered, and the power will generally last infinitely as long as you're not suited up and fighting 24/7. The battery part of the power plant might have enough juice for 12-24 hours of constant operation, and if you're using it 3-4 hours a day, easily recharges itself when you're not using it. But.. this can provide more danger in that, if you've been using your armor/skycycle/et al a lot, you might run low on juice.

This is more a "so it makes some kind of sense" thing. I cant STAND the "nuclear reactor the size of a briefcase" thing.

Going to get a snack and mull over this more.

[boring7]

Seems plenty dangerous to me. TOO dangerous really. So many monsters that you literally cannot hurt that can kill you if they sneeze in your general vicinity. 'Course anyone who gets an OCC (okay, a 'good' OCC) is dangerous too, but in general Rifts feels too dangerous to actually exist. The horde of monsters from beyond should basically have destroyed anything SDC a long time ago and then died out because most (if not all) of them have a food chain that REQUIRES some SDC links (usually the human variety).

[flatline]

RMB makes it clear that air travel is dangerous, but never really states why it's dangerous. Have you added anything to your setting to make air travel dangerous or do you strictly rely on the presence of antagonists to make air travel dangerous?

--flatline

[IGNG]

I don't get why GMs seem to have this problem. Anything your players can do is fair game for you too.

[glitterboy2098]

a few things:

1) smart/canny enemies : enemies, even just bandits, use intelligent tactics. bandits try to bring what they think is overwhelming force against their prey (and avoid targets that appear too powerful), they use cover, they flank, they retreat if things go badly, etc.
monsters too. most will avoid a fight unless cornered (like real animals), but a hunting predator will use ambushes, scare tactics to isolate the weakest, etc.
even weak opponents can feel dangerous if they they are run smartly.

2) enforce power disparity: outside the lands of the major powers, higher end gear should be less common and harder to get. for the average villagers in somewhere like the New West, an L-20 pulse rifle or a wilks laser pistol ought to be the sort of thing that attracts notice. i'm nice and make Ramjets and MD shotgun shells widely available so people have at least some options, and make things like light hide armor fairly common, but once you get outside the "domain of man" the stuff most players take for granted is in short supply, and just owning a full set of MD rifle and armor will make you a heroic figure to the local's eyes. the average player character, with their heavier armor, multiple weapons, and things like power armor, vehicles, etc? like demigods stepping out of legend.

this means that magic and Psionics are far more important outside the 'domain of man'. when the best you can hope to scrap together for defense if hide armor, some ramjet loaded assault rifles or light MG, and some explosive round loaded shotguns.. Psi-stalkers, mindmelters, major Psi's, Ley Line Walkers, Mystics, etc all become much more important. IMO places like Arzno and the Colorado Baronies, where magic is the main thing, grew up where they did because magic is just so much more valued out there, and places where mages gathered became major places the regular people flocked to, because even just living near mages and Psi means protection from what might be out there.

RMB makes it clear that air travel is dangerous, but never really states why it's dangerous. Have you added anything to your setting to make air travel dangerous or do you strictly rely on the presence of antagonists to make air travel dangerous?

--flatline

i don't have it be dangerous in itself.. much like early air travel before the construction of so many airfields, or bush flying in the more remote parts of the world, the danger is more what happens if you get lost or have to land somewhere other than your intended destination. aircraft fly to fast to be threatened by most monsters, but once on the ground you have the usual issues of "is the ground flat and firm enough to land safely", "can you contact anyone on the radio for help", "if not, are you well enough equipped to survive a trip to the nearest civilization", etc. with the added issue of "did your crash spook/attract something dangerous?"
outside the Domain of Man, air travel is mainly dangerous because the answer to the first ones are often "no" while the last one is frequently enough "yes". civilization is too widely spaced (and where it it exists, if often tenuous) making the results of getting lost, running out of fuel/power, being hit by a freak storm, etc rather harder to overcome.
in my games air travel is the main way the major companies like northern gun move their more portable items in bulk, as well as the more major cities conduct trade. there are even bush pilots you can hire for trips into the wilderness. it just is not something the casual person does, and in many ways it is more like fast travel in video games.. your going from one point to another, but still have to travel overland to most destinations, your just cutting off travel time between regions.. if you can afford it.

[boring7]

RMB makes it clear that air travel is dangerous, but never really states why it's dangerous. Have you added anything to your setting to make air travel dangerous or do you strictly rely on the presence of antagonists to make air travel dangerous?

--flatline

I'm not sure what you mean (or don't mean) by "antagonists".

I mean a LOT of airspace is just going to have various factions with AA and/or air patrols that will shoot you down. Even the wilderness presumably has giant scary monsters that are either unreasonably fast (there's bugs that break the sound barrier with WINGS) or has ranged attacks. (I admit, I haven't thumbed through the book of beasts recently). Are those antagonists?

It also depends on what you're flying, since a real-world aircraft is incredibly flimsy (in order to be light enough to fly) but Rifts has giant blocks of solid metal that hover on nuclear-fired rockets. I mean I don't care if your TW Spitfire is magically-hardened, a windstorm (especially a ley-line powered super-storm) CAN still knock it out of the air. Even if your bird only takes minimal damage from plowing straight into the ground, YOU will get hurt if you don't have some brand of inertial dampener or magical protection.

And you'll get lost. Rifts repeatedly makes clear that communication is *hard* because magic and dimensional weirdness and interference. That can just as easily throw your compass or nav systems for a loop. ANd if you fly TOO high the killsats will remind you that the whole planet is under Icarus Protocol until further notice.

[Blue_Lion]

Again? I never had a problem making it feel dangerous.

[Axelmania]

Air travel problems I figure is a mix of...

1) hippy air warlocks summoning minor air elementals to take down any aircraft in site so as to stop polluting the environment or so the warlock can anarchistly raid the downed craft for sellable things

2) tectonic entities get summoned via the level 12 spell but many mages don't send them back to the Entity World so as to later control them EnMasse via the cheaper 10th level spell. Once control is lost, mage remains safe behind sanctums or protection circles while the entities run loose attacking things.

Stuff in the air is visible from further off and the elementals or entities prefer to look up than down as the clouds may better resemble their home realms.

They also hang out up there more, for solitude, so even very high flying aircraft not visible from ground level aren't safe.

Ground craft are fins though since the elemental-entity conglomerate don't care about forests and meadows and lakes.

Of course, anarchist water warlocks probably do similar mischief against watercraft.

[flatline]

In my game I've made two major changes that greatly reduce the amount of air travel that takes place.

1. I don't allow nuclear reactors to be smaller than a cubic meter which means that power armor do not have access to effectively unlimited energy. Instead, they use power bricks which are consumed and recharged just like e-clips (except that 1 brick has 10 times the capacity of the standard e-clip). There are still PA that can fly, but flying consumes energy very quickly and so flight range is limited and is only used sparingly or when the PA know they can recharge at their destination.

2. Clouds are PPE reservoirs, but not the types of reservoirs that mages can tap into.

2a. Non-storm clouds are docile if left alone, but flying through one (or otherwise agitating one) can trigger ley line bolts that automatically hit whatever object is passing through the cloud. On cloudy days, aircraft typically fly low to avoid passing through the cloud layer to avoid taking damage. Living things save vs magic and take damage when they fail, so creatures with good saves (or sufficient regeneration) may still fly though clouds with relative impunity.

2b. Storm clouds are dangerous and spontaneously toss ley line bolts about. These ley line bolts are dangerous to anything in the air and even objects on the ground that stand above the surrounding terrain. It's best to stay inside during a storm or even just a moderate to heavy rain. An aircraft flying through a storm cloud should expect to be destroyed or at least heavily damaged. Even flying near a storm cloud is likely to result in damage. Spontaneous transient rifts are quite common within thunder storms in the air and less commonly near or on the ground. This give folks good reasons to be afraid of bad weather. Magic that creates clouds or storms can be very dangerous.

3. The PPE activity in clouds greatly diminishes the range of radio communications. The mere presence of clouds reduces radio ranges by half and radios (and anything that depends on radio control) are useless in a storm. Laser communications are not effected by this interference, but since anything higher than the tree line is likely to be hit by ley line bolts, long range communication is difficult to maintain with laser communications.

I found that making air travel more dangerous and long range communications more difficult greatly enhanced the fog of war since it's difficult to be aware of things happening 50 or 100 miles away. It also helps explain why the CS is a loose collection of city-states in my setting rather than a unified empire under a single leader.

--flatline

[IGNG]

One thing to remember is that the tallest nail gets hammered down. The radar range of fixed installations is thousands of miles. This means that if you are moving through someone's territory they will see you and because you are flying around you are interesting enough to investigate or just shoot down if one is feeling sufficiently paranoid.

[Axelmania]

One nice dance would be utter saturation of poltergeists causing deadly accidents inside homes when everyone takes their armor off.

Also whatever we can find in the way of penalties to incentivize taking off armor for PCs.

Balancing naturally MDC beings is a lot harder. Play up SDC insecurity and hatred. Fusion blocks aren't the most expensive things in the world. Grenades are cheaper. Naruni bullet mines are super cheap and probably the safest thing to buy Naruni these days since it inherently disposes of the evidence.

If MDC supermen began hanging around, buying 10 naruni plasma cartridges for 400 creds and hooking them up.under a barstool for a 1D4x100 explosion could be seen as acting in the better interests of the town, since it would be too hard to manage them directly through vibro blades, silks laser wands or whatdvr other MD weaponry could be afforded in the poor community.

[eliakon]

To be honest the nuclear reactors are the least of the plausibility issues me or my group have.
When your in a game with super weapons, alien races, genetic engineering (to order), magic, psionics, parallel earths, secret cabals, gods, and lusting tentacle monsters... handwavium power supplies for the cool suits of power armor just doesn't even register on the disbelief-o-meter.

Air travel was always risk in my games just because its obviously dangerous.
To paraphrase Scholck mercenary
Q. "What do you call a flying soldier?"
A. "Skeet"
Everyone and their dog boy can see fliers from hundreds of miles away. If your anywhere even remotely close to a national border and your not squawking their IFF, expect to get some missiles tossed your way.

[Axelmania]

Missiles are expensive, it might be cheaper to send a power armor or chopper up if you have access. I would only use them against someone confirmed to have their own long range weapons.

[eliakon]

Missiles are expensive, it might be cheaper to send a power armor or chopper up if you have access. I would only use them against someone confirmed to have their own long range weapons.

Missiles are pretty cheap really
A SRM costs 2,500-5000 credits which is chump change for defending a border. Especially considering the cost of repairs to damaged vehicles.

<edit>
those prices btw are the retail prices outside of towns and showrooms!
Wholesale and not off the black market is going to be a LOT cheaper still.

[guardiandashi]

Missiles are expensive, it might be cheaper to send a power armor or chopper up if you have access. I would only use them against someone confirmed to have their own long range weapons.

As far as missiles being expensive that is a kinda sorta for the common person who has to PAY for the missile heck yes they are expensive. for the officer who has to sign off on them being expended maybe they are expensive. for an army who can manufacture them almost like bullets, they are actually pretty cheap.

[IGNG]

Yea MRMs are cheap compared to risking a 20 million dollar plane. Replacing M.D.C. is almost always more expensive than damaging it in the first place.

[Axelmania]

Repairs are only an issue if you take damage. If some mystic is out flying a broomstick throwing firebolts, a flying titan can engage them with lasers from 4000ft and fly fast enough to maintain optimal range. If they threw up Impervious to Energy then the Flying Titan can fire an armor piercing mini or short.

Even if you were unlucky and the mystic had a JA9 and could fire back at 4000ft, let's all remember that Titan Robotics offers free repairs now!

Missiles may seem like they have no cost when you are digging into the seeming bottomless purse of the Coalition (perhaps this attitude is partly responsible for their current resource shortage) but it can build up.

Missiles certainly make sense whnmen they avoid takingnMDC but when you can control that through tactics, better to rely on effectiveky unlimited energy weapons in nuclear PA or cheap rail gun ammo.

[Killer Cyborg]

Air travel was always risk in my games just because its obviously dangerous.
To paraphrase Scholck mercenary
Q. "What do you call a flying soldier?"
A. "Skeet"
Everyone and their dog boy can see fliers from hundreds of miles away. If your anywhere even remotely close to a national border and your not squawking their IFF, expect to get some missiles tossed your way.

Yes.
And with countless city-states and small nations out there, with various large mercenary or bandit groups roaming about, and with towns and territories shifting about unpredictably at times, it would be difficult to always know whose airspace you were in, and whose airspace to avoid.

[Killer Cyborg]

Rules wise, i haven't seen the need.
Even ignoring a lot of the post-RMB nonsense (-10 to dodge, for instance), the game is plenty fatal.

I wouldn't know...
...For some odd reason my players always seem terrified.
Possibly because Rifts is one of those settings where its pretty obvious that Summon Bigger Fish isn't just a GM butt pull, but is a built in setting mechanic.

Again? I never had a problem making it feel dangerous.

^^^I'm with these guys.

[Blue_Lion]

I once had one of these https://kleinerzorn.files.wordpress.com ... lhu-02.jpg on the table when I was running rifts. Never saw such well behaved players before. ( I was so sad when it went missing it was like loosing subtle reminder to behave because this is rifts, not that I ever needed him to make players go all brown pants.)

[RockJock]

I fall into the never had a problem making in dangerous camp. Even if you have a high power playing group you can have high power bad guys. It is super easy in Rifts to take the power level of the opposition up or down a notch directly. That Deadboy squad of infantry on patrol becomes a CS SF squad with borgs, juicers, and extra PA. That group of mainly human Pecos Bandits riding hover cycles, and armed with L-20s becomes Grackletooths with heavy weapons.

You can also go the repercussion route. You never know who you are dealing with. The idiot who almost got in a bar fight with your group is the son of the town mayor or whatever. The crazy necromancer you fought is part of a cult. That sort of thing.

[Eagle]

Yeah, we've never had a problem with Rifts not being deadly enough. All it takes is somebody botching an initiative roll and things can go south quickly. I've seen too many "invincible" characters go down when they have a crappy roll at the wrong time.

Say the characters are in a bar, and they're talking over their next move. Meanwhile, one of the guys goes over to get a drink, and decides to pick a fight while he's at it (this actual scenario has happened more times than I can count). Of course, he picks the wrong guy and a fight starts. The other guy and his buddies all start grabbing their guns. The PCs see that their friend is in trouble, they rush over to help. GM says "everybody roll initiative". One of the players rolls a '1' and his Line Walker is standing there completely unprepared. Of course he didn't say that he cast any armor spells before he went over there, so he's just in his normal 30 MDC tunic or whatever. Bad guy shoots at him with 3D6 MD pistol. Rolls a 20. Line Walker declares a dodge. Rolls a 6. Bad guy rolls damage, gets a total of 17, doubled to 34 because of the crit. Roll up a new character, Bill, because your mage just bought the farm.

The GI Joe rule helps this a little bit, but most of the GMs I know don't use it. They like Rifts as a super-lethal game.

[Axelmania]

Being a ley line walker and not having that FoM spell that converts MD to SDC for a couple minutes after your armor is blown up, why even cast?

[Greepnak]

I took the ley line storms in the clouds idea a step further and put an ionic layer at altitude over the whole planet which minorly inconveniences things like deaths head transports and the like but can giblet high PPE things, like the Maelstrom in dimension sourcebook burns your PPE off as lightning to you and everything nearby. Had my dragon hatchling take 1800 MD for flying too high ( Fiatted it so he was dropped to just one and had to be saved by the godling and two cosmos)

I did that as a side effect of "desperate" use of relics and experimental magic in the tolkeen war. I also filled the entire west half of NA with screamers/haunters from the Wasteland from Arzno book. I woke up Apsu of the Abyss and scattered his essence fragments all over the world.
So everywhere people go they see ghosts re enacting their lives/deaths during the cataclysm and there's a rapidly expanding business for psychics and such to escort people outside of cities. If you disturb the Haunters, the Screamers come.

I canonized that The Maelstrom has an unpredictable 4 dimensional "orbit" between universes and is currently squarely wrapped around Rifts Earth's dimension, so prettymuch all dimensional travel is shut down, except for Demons and Devils (due to Modeus utilizing the Skull of Osiris somehow to achieve this) and that is part of the Minion War's wider effects.

[Eagle]

Being a ley line walker and not having that FoM spell that converts MD to SDC for a couple minutes after your armor is blown up, why even cast?

Well, not everybody has that spell, but my example was really just meant to illustrate the kinds of situations that can kill PCs. We've never had a Juicer get anywhere near his 5 year limit, because their lives always seem to end on a failed auto-dodge. Even back when we let them get their full dodge bonus to it, you'd always get some guy who gets hit for 50 Mega Damage and then rolls a 1 to dodge.

Remember, the players have only their PCs to use. The GM has all the monsters in the world.

[boring7]

Being a ley line walker and not having that FoM spell that converts MD to SDC for a couple minutes after your armor is blown up, why even cast?

Well, not everybody has that spell, but my example was really just meant to illustrate the kinds of situations that can kill PCs. We've never had a Juicer get anywhere near his 5 year limit, because their lives always seem to end on a failed auto-dodge. Even back when we let them get their full dodge bonus to it, you'd always get some guy who gets hit for 50 Mega Damage and then rolls a 1 to dodge.

Remember, the players have only their PCs to use. The GM has all the monsters in the world.

I think the general rule is also that your MDC armor breaking blows you across the room, deals SDC damage, but leaves you alive until the SECOND shot (which has to do a factions of a point of MD) kills you, but the point remains the same. Really easy to kill a PC, even by accident.

[Eagle]

Being a ley line walker and not having that FoM spell that converts MD to SDC for a couple minutes after your armor is blown up, why even cast?

Well, not everybody has that spell, but my example was really just meant to illustrate the kinds of situations that can kill PCs. We've never had a Juicer get anywhere near his 5 year limit, because their lives always seem to end on a failed auto-dodge. Even back when we let them get their full dodge bonus to it, you'd always get some guy who gets hit for 50 Mega Damage and then rolls a 1 to dodge.

Remember, the players have only their PCs to use. The GM has all the monsters in the world.

I think the general rule is also that your MDC armor breaking blows you across the room, deals SDC damage, but leaves you alive until the SECOND shot (which has to do a factions of a point of MD) kills you, but the point remains the same. Really easy to kill a PC, even by accident.

In RUE, that's the rule. In the RMB, even 1 MD left over will kill you. And that's the way most Rifts players that I know continue to play.

[Axelmania]

Did RMB specify it? GI Joe might be based on the idea that we didn't have any blowthrough rules explicitly written out until the back of DB3 when it was made clear that after you depleted MDC of a force field the damage carried through in full to a starship hull, except form issiles which had it reduced since the field triggered the explosion distant from the hull.

[Greepnak]

Being a ley line walker and not having that FoM spell that converts MD to SDC for a couple minutes after your armor is blown up, why even cast?

Well, not everybody has that spell, but my example was really just meant to illustrate the kinds of situations that can kill PCs. We've never had a Juicer get anywhere near his 5 year limit, because their lives always seem to end on a failed auto-dodge. Even back when we let them get their full dodge bonus to it, you'd always get some guy who gets hit for 50 Mega Damage and then rolls a 1 to dodge.

Remember, the players have only their PCs to use. The GM has all the monsters in the world.

I think the general rule is also that your MDC armor breaking blows you across the room, deals SDC damage, but leaves you alive until the SECOND shot (which has to do a factions of a point of MD) kills you, but the point remains the same. Really easy to kill a PC, even by accident.

In RUE, that's the rule. In the RMB, even 1 MD left over will kill you. And that's the way most Rifts players that I know continue to play.

I took the GI joe rule away, it was abusable and I let mdc do sdc damage just by blunt force trauma/bleedthrough for squishies in armor so sometimes a deadboy might be dead inside his eba like poor guys in an AMRAP in afghanistan. It made a big differrence.

[IGNG]

Being a ley line walker and not having that FoM spell that converts MD to SDC for a couple minutes after your armor is blown up, why even cast?

Well, not everybody has that spell, but my example was really just meant to illustrate the kinds of situations that can kill PCs. We've never had a Juicer get anywhere near his 5 year limit, because their lives always seem to end on a failed auto-dodge. Even back when we let them get their full dodge bonus to it, you'd always get some guy who gets hit for 50 Mega Damage and then rolls a 1 to dodge.

Remember, the players have only their PCs to use. The GM has all the monsters in the world.

I think the general rule is also that your MDC armor breaking blows you across the room, deals SDC damage, but leaves you alive until the SECOND shot (which has to do a factions of a point of MD) kills you, but the point remains the same. Really easy to kill a PC, even by accident.

In RUE, that's the rule. In the RMB, even 1 MD left over will kill you. And that's the way most Rifts players that I know continue to play.

I haven't bothered to look but I'm pretty sure you are just "dyeing and there is a ~5min window in which a good medic can save you.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I dont really find the G.I. Joe rule that abusable, FWIW.

It's incidental blow-through protection on an unlucky roll.

If i see a player try to have their character stand in the way of a blast that will clearly blow them away (a guy in heavily damaged armor standing in front of a Boom Gun, for instance) because somehow their character knows OOG information ("itll stop the whole shot" - which is a game mechanic and does NOT exist in-game as a concept) - then ill happily rule that the metagamer's character dies in a gory mess. Because that's what that is - metagaming.

If a character gets caught by a bad crit after a failed dodge attempt - the GI Joe rule does what it was intended to just fine. And if i really want them to die, another shot and theyre finished (provided they aren't MDC creatures under that armor or something).

Long story short - dont be a metagaming fool.

[Axelmania]

If the GI Joe rule is a reality then people would eventually come to observe the phenomena and it wouldn't be metagaming to incorporate it into strategy. Some type of skill roll should be needed to know it though.

[Greepnak]

If the GI Joe rule is a reality then people would eventually come to observe the phenomena and it wouldn't be metagaming to incorporate it into strategy. Some type of skill roll should be needed to know it though.

That's how I look at it too. It's really just a handwavium thing, like gm fudging a roll to not kill a player because it wouldnt serve the cause of fun.

If it's just like, a laser pistol blast through the stomach vs an sdc human as long as they make their coma save and get immediate medical attention I just use the "surviving mega damage" optional table with inapplicable ones excluded. My party's mind melter needed a cybernetic stomach because the organ was entirely vaporized and he gets cocky.

[HWalsh]

There is no "GI Joe" rule.

There is just the rule on how MDC armor functions in the RUE. It's not abusable, it just prevents death from radom bad rolls. Even the sturdiest heavy MDC armor can be shot through by a lucky crit.

"Oops, I know you spent a week building your character but, well I rolled a natural 20 on this NG P-8 rifle and rolled a 6 on the d6, so that's 120 MD damage. Oh your armor has 110 MDC? Sucks to be you! Guess you should only play natural MDC beings in my games!"

I don't know about you, but my players find Rifts plenty dangerous. Sunday's session saw a PA pilot in a Samson walk too close to the water to investigate a dead Lizard-like thing only to have a giant crocodile burst forth from the waters and do it's lunge and bite.

With a crit no less!

What came next were HF checks and people screaming as the LLW CoA'ed it. The rest of the party unloaded attack after attack, staying back, while the monster thrashed it's head back and forth with the PA Pilot in it's jaws. Doing MDC and SDC.

When they finally killed it (1 cbat round) the recently repaired Samson was at 17 MDC and the players were elated. The PA pilot's player repeatedly said, "I thought I was dead! So dead!"

So... Rifts is still plenty dangerous.

[dreicunan]

When they finally killed it (1 cbat round) the recently repaired Samson was at 17 MDC and the players were elated. The PA pilot's player repeatedly said, "I thought I was dead! So dead!"

So... Rifts is still plenty dangerous.

Dangerous and expensive: 223 mdc to repair on that power armor (268 if it is a Mark II, 303 if it is a Mark III) is going to cost an awful lot to fix, somewhere between 178,400 to 363,000 credits by the book (depending on if you go with RUE or sourcebook 1 revised). Hopefully there's an operator in the group or who owes the pilot a favor!

[HWalsh]

When they finally killed it (1 cbat round) the recently repaired Samson was at 17 MDC and the players were elated. The PA pilot's player repeatedly said, "I thought I was dead! So dead!"

So... Rifts is still plenty dangerous.

Dangerous and expensive: 223 mdc to repair on that power armor (268 if it is a Mark II, 303 if it is a Mark III) is going to cost an awful lot to fix, somewhere between 178,400 to 363,000 credits by the book (depending on if you go with RUE or sourcebook 1 revised). Hopefully there's an operator in the group or who owes the pilot a favor!

It just so happens that there is an operator they are heading to see next session who could use the party's help. Mwahahahaha.

The claim still stands. Even using standard MDC Damage rules, what some call the GI Joe rule, Rifts is pretty bleeping dangerous.

[Axelmania]

Given the 4 rows of 50, I would not be averse to splitting the boom gun into 3D6x2.5 rolled 4 consecutive times as a house rule.

The downside to that of course, is I would round down the fractions when it came to damaging MD, so it's a slight loss when odd numbers are rolled, but good when penetrating successive barriers.

[Blue_Lion]

There is no "GI Joe" rule.

There is just the rule on how MDC armor functions in the RUE. It's not abusable, it just prevents death from radom bad rolls. Even the sturdiest heavy MDC armor can be shot through by a lucky crit.

"Oops, I know you spent a week building your character but, well I rolled a natural 20 on this NG P-8 rifle and rolled a 6 on the d6, so that's 120 MD damage. Oh your armor has 110 MDC? Sucks to be you! Guess you should only play natural MDC beings in my games!"

I don't know about you, but my players find Rifts plenty dangerous. Sunday's session saw a PA pilot in a Samson walk too close to the water to investigate a dead Lizard-like thing only to have a giant crocodile burst forth from the waters and do it's lunge and bite.

With a crit no less!

What came next were HF checks and people screaming as the LLW CoA'ed it. The rest of the party unloaded attack after attack, staying back, while the monster thrashed it's head back and forth with the PA Pilot in it's jaws. Doing MDC and SDC.

When they finally killed it (1 cbat round) the recently repaired Samson was at 17 MDC and the players were elated. The PA pilot's player repeatedly said, "I thought I was dead! So dead!"

So... Rifts is still plenty dangerous.

Umm what is refereed to as the "GI joe rule" is a real rule found in MDC. the last bit of protection. Basically the rule has a nick name based on its ability to let a charter escape certain death like every pilot in GI joe ejecting when shot down. So it is a real rule they just use a nick name for it.
Some people find its concept in a HP game absurd weather or not you agree with there opinion does not mean it is not seen as such.

[Greepnak]

I find the more time you spend making players crunch math the less time is spent telling good stories and having fun, but have always found the MDC repair costs absurd in a world where such stuff is prolific. I usually just quickly figure out the cost per MDC of the armor ( lets say plastic man, 35mdc for 12k) then add some percentage for the labor involved which the player could haggle down.

Nice thing about playing Coalition characters (or anyone part of an organized military) is the free no-houserule-needed repairs though, I think.

[HWalsh]

I find the more time you spend making players crunch math the less time is spent telling good stories and having fun, but have always found the MDC repair costs absurd in a world where such stuff is prolific. I usually just quickly figure out the cost per MDC of the armor ( lets say plastic man, 35mdc for 12k) then add some percentage for the labor involved which the player could haggle down.

Nice thing about playing Coalition characters (or anyone part of an organized military) is the free no-houserule-needed repairs though, I think.

I have house rules for MDC armor. I use the base from SB1r, but then I roll a percentile. +25% that is how much the armor repair costs.

So if the base was 1,000 credits (it's not) and I rolled 50 then added 25 to it. Then 75% of base. So 750 per MD. If I rolled 80 then 105% so 1,050 per MD.

Waterpath, a small town created for my game that the PCs operate out of, has a 47% after adjustment. So armor repair costs there are fairly inexpensive.

Alternatively PCs can buy the materials to make repairs for 50% less than the repair cost.

The biggest mitigation is salvage. Salvage can be used to make repairs, or sold at 50% the cost of materials.

So, using the fictional 1,000 credit base, they can buy 1 MD of professional repair for 470 credits, or they can buy materials for 235. They can sell 1 MD worth of scrap for 118 credits. I find this method works pretty well.

Fortunately, for my players, one of their adventure spoils were 2 Skelebots. 1 they destroyed the main body, but left the head untouched. 1 they reduced the head to exactly 0 with no damage anywhere else. They placed the Skelebot and head in the now gutted Samson and bluffed the CS Patrol they ran into into thinking they were carrying the dead body of a friend. Based on the damage the CS grunt didn't want to see what was inside.

They plan to reprogram the thing, then take the good body, attach the good head, and sell it on the black market for around 1.5-2 million credits.

So they can afford the repairs.

[Axelmania]

I .. have always found the MDC repair costs absurd in a world where such stuff is prolific.

Aside from the CS having 2.5 million SAMAS, does anyone know what kind of stats exist on the quantity of MDC armor that exists in certain areas? I'm not sure it's as prolific as we'd like...

Even if it was though, it could be stockpiled by the wealthy who could afford repairs, while the poor may simply not have access to it, or not bother getting it repaired (maybe just building new armor from monster corpses, or stealing damaged armor from the dead) due to the cost.

I have house rules for MDC armor. I use the base from SB1r, but then I roll a percentile. +25% that is how much the armor repair costs.

That sounds pretty cool, so it can range from 26% to 125% of the price. Since this leaves a ~75% average, if we wanted the average to be 100, could also do 50+percentile or 80+2d20 or 95+1d20+1d10 or 90+1d20 or 95+1d10 for smaller variation.

[guardiandashi]

my biggest issue with the list prices for repair is if you look at the RUE pg 267 for the Gladiator body armor it costs 38k for a NEW undamaged suit. if it was reduced to 10MDC remaining on the main body it would cost 39,000 credits to repair! this is 1000 credits more than the whole suit. now don't get me wrong but I think having something's parts/repairs cost "significantly" more than the product as a whole seems kind of messed up.

[Mack]

my biggest issue with the list prices for repair is if you look at the RUE pg 267 for the Gladiator body armor it costs 38k for a NEW undamaged suit. if it was reduced to 10MDC remaining on the main body it would cost 39,000 credits to repair! this is 1000 credits more than the whole suit. now don't get me wrong but I think having something's parts/repairs cost "significantly" more than the product as a whole seems kind of messed up.

Ask your insurance company about the cost to repair a totaled car versus the cost of replacing it.

[HWalsh]

I .. have always found the MDC repair costs absurd in a world where such stuff is prolific.

Aside from the CS having 2.5 million SAMAS, does anyone know what kind of stats exist on the quantity of MDC armor that exists in certain areas? I'm not sure it's as prolific as we'd like...

Also the tens of millions of regular MDC body armor the CS has. The millions of Skelebots. Etc.

I have house rules for MDC armor. I use the base from SB1r, but then I roll a percentile. +25% that is how much the armor repair costs.

That sounds pretty cool, so it can range from 26% to 125% of the price. Since this leaves a ~75% average, if we wanted the average to be 100, could also do 50+percentile or 80+2d20 or 95+1d20+1d10 or 90+1d20 or 95+1d10 for smaller variation.

Not quite. The average of a d10 is 5.5 not actually 5. Meaning it is a 5 or a 6 on average. Evening out to be either 56 or 65 so if you want it to average 100 you need to a slightly lower. I'd go with 45.

[jaymz]

My players seem to think my games are PLENTY fatal...........

[Eagle]

The cost structure in Rifts is all messed up. A lot of the costs are probably just what KS thought sounded good after 10 seconds of thought when he was GMing his game. "Yeah sure, that'll work." Now it's 25 years later and it's still the same.

I just write off a lot of that as price gouging. There's no way you should ever have to pay 5000 credits to recharge an e-clip, unless you're out in the wilderness and there's only one guy who has a power generator. There's a large amount of "screw over the guy from out of town" built into the pricing structure.

Either the prices on everything need to be adjusted down, or mercenary contracts should pay way better than they do.

[HWalsh]

The cost structure in Rifts is all messed up. A lot of the costs are probably just what KS thought sounded good after 10 seconds of thought when he was GMing his game. "Yeah sure, that'll work." Now it's 25 years later and it's still the same.

I just write off a lot of that as price gouging. There's no way you should ever have to pay 5000 credits to recharge an e-clip, unless you're out in the wilderness and there's only one guy who has a power generator. There's a large amount of "screw over the guy from out of town" built into the pricing structure.

Either the prices on everything need to be adjusted down, or mercenary contracts should pay way better than they do.

I think it is because of salvage value.

You jump (or get jumped, otherwise kill) a group of 5 CS Deadboys, each has a C-20 Pistol (16,000 credits, or 80,000 for all 5) and a CV-212 Rifle (50,000 credits, or 250,000 for all 5) and 2 spare e-clips (5,000 credits, or 50,000 for all 10) then you are talkng about over a quarter million (380,000) credits worth of salvage. Even if you can only sell it for half that value (190,000) you're still making a massive profit. Split between a group of 4 PCs and that is at least 47,500 credits each... For one encounter.