interesting synergies in RUE

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guardiandashi
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interesting synergies in RUE

Unread post by guardiandashi »

so I was playing with a friend the other day, and as a gm he has a love of these random "mutation" tables to the point that he created a world with these bugs and flowers that can cause "magical" mutations /transformations.

so my char gets an effect that transformed them into a female, and gave my character a class that was essentially a spy type.

roll 5D6 reroll 1's, and if you got a 26 or higher (all 5's plus 1 6 or the equivalent) you get 1 bonus d6. The 3 attributes that were crazy good that were relevant in this case were: IQ 25, MA 30, PP 36, and PB 29

so as I am picking the skills using RUE I discovered something I hadn't noticed before certain skills and attributes when applied to each other synergize really well.

so with the MA at 30+ you get: +5% find contraband, gambling, intelligence (gathering) seduction and undercover operations,
+10% interrogation, performance, public speaking, sing
ok pretty great, but not crazy yet...

if you take disguise, you get a +5% to undercover ops, and impersonation
if you take impersonation you get a +10% to undercover ops
if you take seduction you get a +5% to cardsharp, sing, and dance
if you take wardrobe and Grooming, you get a +1 to PB, a +2% to disguise Impersonation Performance Undercover Ops and Seduction

which with the attributes, and the "occ and secondary skill" bonuses on the character got me this skill set:
at first level
occ skills
intelligence 77%
interrogation 80%
undercover ops 92%
Disguise 67%

occ related skills
seduction 74%
impersonation 67/53%
sing 80%
wardrobe and grooming 80%
Dance 65%

I also took field armorer and munitions expert, and acrobatics

with this char class I was allowed to take gymnastics as a secondary skill,
but the secondary's were:
first aid
gymnastics
wp knife
wp handguns
wp energy pistols
and wilderness survival.

and yes I admit I took acrobatics and gymnastics to boost the PP even higher but the skills they provide are useful anyway, its just a matter of if there are other priorities.

so has anyone else noticed the skill synergies?
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Hotrod
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Re: interesting synergies in RUE

Unread post by Hotrod »

That's an interesting perspective on them. Personally, I find it mildly irksome that so many skills have little modifiers to other skills hidden in them, some of which are very situational. For example, Hunting provides a +10% to cooking, but only for cooking hunted animals. Once I make my skill selections and apply the OCC modifiers, I then have to go through and find skill modifiers to other skills. Then there are the skills with multiple percentage values, such as horsemanship, breeding dogs, and acrobatics/gymnastics. Remembering which % is for what is a bother.

Then there are the combat skills. Holy cow, the combat skills. Attributes, hand-to-hand, and weapon skills all need to be accounted for, which is pretty straightforward, until you start throwing in some of the other situational stuff. For example, anyone with Sixth Sense gets bonuses to the first round of unexpected combat. People on horseback get combat bonuses, as do people in robots and power armor. Plus you have to consider the encumbrance of body armor on a number of skills, including prowl, climbing, swimming, and gymnastics/acrobatics. Then there are the special combat moves. How do you handle bonuses to disarm? I haven't seen a good canon answer on that yet. On the modern weapon side of things, you have different bonuses to shoot normally, take aimed shots, take aimed called shots, take quick called shots, fire an aimed pulse, fire an aimed called pulse, and fire a quick called pulse.

In effect, if you have a dude with Sixth Sense who likes riding horses, you have to create four sets of parry/dodge bonuses: Mounted in the first round of unexpected combat, dismounted in the first round of unexpected combat, mounted without sixth sense bonuses, and dismounted without sixth sense bonuses. If you're a cyber-knight, that adds a whole new layer of complexity, as your bonuses will vary quite a bit depending on your opponent (tech-based or no?), plus you'll often be riding a horse, plus many of them have sixth sense. Plus many Cyber-knight themselves use modern weapons.

These synergies and situational bonuses are fun to read, but they're a pain to keep track of as a player, and they can be a nightmare for GMs. The book NPC's don't even try to keep track of these situational differences, even though they can make a big difference. This is one of the reasons I started making my NPC generators.
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guardiandashi
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Re: interesting synergies in RUE

Unread post by guardiandashi »

I agree that conditional synergies are irksome, although some of the dual percentage skills make sense, like the impersonation skill, as its impersonating a type of person, or a specific individual.
so in the example char with a 67/53% that means 67% chance of impersonating a generic office worker (for instance) and 53% chance to impersonate "sally" well enough that no one really notices.

with that said I think all but the wardrobe and grooming skill I took were flat always active synergies, with the physical beauty bonus being situational IE id you dress to maximize what you've got you get a +1 to pb, if not no effect or you could likely dress in such a way as to try to conceal some of the chars PB.

I mean for the "job" of being an infiltrator /spy there are times when being very attractive can be an advantage, but there are other times when it would actively hurt.
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Hotrod
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Re: interesting synergies in RUE

Unread post by Hotrod »

guardiandashi wrote:I agree that conditional synergies are irksome, although some of the dual percentage skills make sense, like the impersonation skill, as its impersonating a type of person, or a specific individual.
so in the example char with a 67/53% that means 67% chance of impersonating a generic office worker (for instance) and 53% chance to impersonate "sally" well enough that no one really notices.

with that said I think all but the wardrobe and grooming skill I took were flat always active synergies, with the physical beauty bonus being situational IE id you dress to maximize what you've got you get a +1 to pb, if not no effect or you could likely dress in such a way as to try to conceal some of the chars PB.

I mean for the "job" of being an infiltrator /spy there are times when being very attractive can be an advantage, but there are other times when it would actively hurt.


True, I don't have an issue with the synergy of taking certain skills together. I just don't care for the way they get hidden in the individual skill descriptions. The book-keeping aspects and nuances of character generation and skill-tracking can get burdensome, especially for GMs who often have to come up with multiple NPCs for each new adventure.
Hotrod
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eliakon
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Re: interesting synergies in RUE

Unread post by eliakon »

I find the easiest way to track the synergies is that at the bottom of my skill list there is a block section where I list every 'specialized' bonus.
This is really convenient for say... my sniper who has about a dozen different modifiers to different skills.

Thus a skill that provided some bonuses against people wearing blue might show as
Smurf Slayer: +1 to strike with additional +2 to aimed or called shots against anyone wearing blue.

With my other skills all calculated above for the "general values" I just take the strike value for the weapon in question and add +1 if the person is wearing blue.
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dreicunan
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Re: interesting synergies in RUE

Unread post by dreicunan »

eliakon wrote:I find the easiest way to track the synergies is that at the bottom of my skill list there is a block section where I list every 'specialized' bonus.
This is really convenient for say... my sniper who has about a dozen different modifiers to different skills.

Thus a skill that provided some bonuses against people wearing blue might show as
Smurf Slayer: +1 to strike with additional +2 to aimed or called shots against anyone wearing blue.

With my other skills all calculated above for the "general values" I just take the strike value for the weapon in question and add +1 if the person is wearing blue.

See, skills like that should accompany the insanities for crazies. Downside: you think that you are Gargamel, and everyone in blue is a smurf. Upside: those bonuses.
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