New to System - Encounter Question

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zerozombie
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New to System - Encounter Question

Unread post by zerozombie »

Hey all, thanks for any time you spend to help me out.
I just picked up the ROBOTECH/Rifts books (Long time fan) but kind of a ****,

Question, can someone point me to rules, guidelines or try to explain to me how to build combat encounters for 1 to 4 PCs?
For example, which I'm sure most of you know, DnD monsters have a CRs and like 1 monster equals 4 PCs at an equal level. How can I do this for ROBOTECH/RIFTS?

Thanks again for looking at my question.
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silvermoon383
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Re: New to System - Encounter Question

Unread post by silvermoon383 »

If you have the Shadow Chronicles book you can find some typical Invid formations on page 203 (Deluxe Hardcover Edition, it'll be just before the characters section in the back). While obviously they're not going to work for any era of RT game, they're a good starting point.

When I need groups of enemies that aren't Invid I tend to do a 1:1 player-enemy ratio if they're human or Masters, while Zentradi use a smaller swarm tactic than the Invid.
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glitterboy2098
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Re: New to System - Encounter Question

Unread post by glitterboy2098 »

palladium does not have any hard rules on such things. you just have to wing it.
since palladium's OCC system allows for a huge variation in character abilities even within a single OCC, and it's system is such that it rewards out of the box thinking and clever solutions, it would be hard to create any hard rules like a challenge rating system.
with mecha it is much the same.. one human mecha in robotech is usually able to take on several alien mecha, the ratio depending on which generation and things like which missiles your carrying. also how well the GM runs the enemy.
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Re: New to System - Encounter Question

Unread post by The Artist Formerly »

That's the thing, Palladium games desperately need to add these kinds of rules and guidelines. Things that make being a GM more straight forward.
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ShadowLogan
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Re: New to System - Encounter Question

Unread post by ShadowLogan »

zerozombie wrote:Hey all, thanks for any time you spend to help me out.
I just picked up the ROBOTECH/Rifts books (Long time fan) but kind of a ****,

Question, can someone point me to rules, guidelines or try to explain to me how to build combat encounters for 1 to 4 PCs?
For example, which I'm sure most of you know, DnD monsters have a CRs and like 1 monster equals 4 PCs at an equal level. How can I do this for ROBOTECH/RIFTS?

Thanks again for looking at my question.

As others have said, there really are not guidelines to that. That requires the GM to work it out on their own.

The FIRST Edition RT books had numerous random encounter tables and a few campaign modules and some standard formation/teams. It wouldn't take much to adapt them to 2E I would think. 2E might even have a few standard formation/teams. So for RT it isn't out of the question to find some pre defined examples use them a few times to get a feel for balancing custom encounters or re-balancing the existing ones.

Rifts in my experience hasn't really done the random encounter table, and has few campaign modules (Juicer Uprising, SoT, SB1 & 2), and usually does just Hook Line Sinkers and such. Trying to work out an encounter will be tough given the huge diversity (compared to RT) to consider.

It will also depend on how fast you want the encounter to go, and how well you can manage multiple NPCs. Balancing it takes some experience to work out what works best for you and the players.
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