Forums of the Megaverse®

That seems to have been an early Palladium way of explaining the "attack rolls have to beat 4 to hit."
You can see it in the spell Energy Field too, sometimes, which has an AR of 4.



IIRC, there was a rule that one couldn't parry a weapon (or perhaps just blades) unless one had a weapon or some other object to parry with.
No idea where that rule would be printed, though.

[quote="PrysusI believe we are intended to perform the mathematical operations we are instructed to perform.[/quote]

We are instructed to perform rounding.

You are choosing to ignore those instructions.

Stop claiming that you are following the instructions.



That demonstration is not specifically about "all decimals in all situations"; it's specifically about rounding damage with Roll With Impact.



Do you think that "always round up for fractions" is a spelling/math error or a typo?



What would be the foundation for that acknowledgment?



But there's nothing to indicate that it IS world-specific.

The rules for Rolling with Impact are the same in N&S as in any other rulebook.
Wujcik's parenthetical is simply an explanation of how those rules work.

One point of agreement we might find is: that there are several missed opportunities to give examples of rounding (if intended) which either coincidentally or intentionally seem to be avoided: and how this is an irksome frustration.

For example pg 142 of HU2 about "Driving Suits or Armor" when we're told that leathers absorb half the damage:

if Mike crashed with 8 points of daamge, he'd take 4 points off his SDC (1/2 damage) and 4 off his Hit Points (the other 1/2)

If Mike had simply crashed with an odd number of damage (say perhaps nine), this would have been a PERFECT opportunity to say whether Mike or his armor got 4 or 5 points, rather than 4.5, which is how you would do this RAW.

The choice of an even number like 8 could just be a coincidence, or it might actually be done for mathematical expediency because they don't want to work with decimals, or perhaps because they don't know (or can't remember) if there were any rules for rounding damage, and so preferred to avoid the issue.

The particular example of HU2p142 is also a confusing one, of course, since that should be 4 points off his (ARMOR'S) SDC and the other 4 off his SDC+HP.

I'll keep digging around in weird sections for other opportunities.

MIKE WHY


It is true that we are instructed to perform rounding twice...

1987, Wujcik, N&S p 126 "always round up for fractions"
1990, Siembieda, Rifts p 11 "Always round down S.D.C. damage"

My point is that there is clearly no universal rule to always round up or always round down.

There are localized rules for particular situations. Outside of those particular situations the rules were written for, we don't have rounding rules.


So we at least agree it doesn't apply to other situations of halved damaged, like fire resistance?

I think we also agree that it definitely applies to using RWB in N&S.

The issue of disagreement appears whether it applies to RWB in other games.

Your argument for this seems to be that some of the writing for RWB is identical.

My argument against this is that in other places, the writing for RWB is different.

My thinking here is that... (Same+Different) != (Same+Same)


No, I only argue that it exists alongside an example of rolling against damage to halve it, so it seems collectively unreliable.


I mean that so far as we know, no other core books have instructions to round RWB-halved damages in either direction (unless I overlooked a combat example somewhere).


You could argue that about healing SDC on an hourly rate too, since while other books gives daily rates, they never say not to also use N&S hourly rates too.


My main point of disagreement there is book-specific rules pertaining to RWB we don't see cross over:

1) N&S only allows RWB against one for per turn (to use more than once requires Automatic Roll)
2) other games charge 1 action/attack for the use of RWB (N&S doesn't say to do this)

If we know at least these 2 differences exist, then I don't think we should call them the same, even if they are the same in other respects, such as I guess halving the damage rather than quartering it?

There are respects in which other techniques are the same between games (like for example, needing to match a natural number to make a death blow if instructed) but other aspects of difference (like the effects of a death blow) so collectively (considering all parts) death blows aren't the same between games either, even though some parts are.

If I'm only looking at parts which are the same, then apples and oranges are identical, since they are both fruits, and I refuse to acknowledge other differences which exist between them.

Agreed.
As you've said, context is important.
When Rolling With Impact, always round up for fractions.
When dealing with SDC attacks capable of damaging MDC structures/creatures, always round down.

Notice that the commonality there is "always ROUND..."
Which doesn't necessarily 100% demonstrably mean that Palladium wanted/expected us always round off damage fractions, but it DOES certainly indicate it.



Close, but no cigar.
We know that it applies when Rolling With Impact.
When dealing with other situations like fire resistance, we do not know for certain that we should always round up. That rule may or may not apply.
But it's safe to say that we ARE supposed to round off the damage, rather than deal with fractions.



No.
My argument is that THE RULES FOR ROLL WITH IMPACT ARE THE SAME across all game settings.
The only significant thing that's different is in the case of N&S is that we are given a demonstration of those rules in action.



On what basis would it be unreliable?



That doesn't mean that the writers didn't remember.
It could simply mean that the writers expected US to remember how things work, or (even MORE likely) that Palladium didn't bother to explain because they consider it to be "common sense."
Or any number of other possible scenarios.





One could not logically argue that, no.
It is a truism that when the rules are different, the rules are different.



That's not book-specific; that's timeframe specific.
In Palladium's early books Roll With Impact was automatic. Later on, Palladium changed it to require the use of an attack.

Collected MOPS 115
Question 3: "Does a roll with punch/fall use up one attack per melee?"
Answer: Nope! Well, not usually anyway. the roll with the punch is usually automatic and means that the character didn't resist the force of the blow and moved or "rolled" (ever so slightly) with it. This is something learned by experts in hand to hand combat like boxers and martial artists. However, if the character is knocked down by a punch or impact, he can still roll and take half damage, but will lose an attack that melee round because he was knocked off his feet and must recover (get back on his feet) before he can resume his attack.

The context of this question and answer is:
Nony Garcha of Fort McMurry, Alberta, Canada, has a whole list of questions about Palladium Combat and other things.

The questions are answered "by Erick Wujcik & Kevin Siembieda."

What this shows us is that rolling with impact NOT taking an attack was a rule for "Palladium Combat," not just "N&S combat" or any one setting; it was the standard for the megaversal system.
It was later changed, the same way that their magic system changed from "spells per day" to PPE/ISP over time.
This was the rule for all Palladium combat, whether or not any specific game listed it as a rule, unless a specific games started listing a contradictory rule that it does indeed take up one attack to Roll With Impact. In that case, the game-specific rule would win out over the general Palladium Megaversal System rule.

KC, if there's some kind of "once a rule is introduced then it's always there until redacted" approach, like what you appear to be taking with RWB in N&S...

Then shouldn't that mean Juicers need to spend 1 attack at the start of each melee to turn on their auto-dodge, given that N&S mandates this?


I think if this were essential to the other games we would see that instruction re-presented rather than abandoned.


Always brush your hair with a hairbrush.
Always brush your teeth with a toothbrush.
=
Always brush everything?


Not really safe to say at all, no.

You could say that a precedent has been set that we will be told when it is that we should round numbers, since knowing which direction to round in is so essential.


N&S says you can only RWB with one attack per turn, other games don't.
Other games say RWB costs an attack, N&S doesn't.
Some games say RWB v Death Blow halves either SDC or HP, others say RWB v Death Blow halves BOTH.
3 cases where they aren't the same which seem to be ignored.


There is a confusion about numbers and how to apply rules exhibited in mixing up whether you roll vs the strike or the damage, so there could be confusion about whether to round 0.5dmg to 0 or 1.




Assuming that all people playing their future games happened to own a copy of N&S would make me a lot more worried about the writer than merely forgetting to copy over a rule they liked.


That would also be worrying.


Like "I'm not reprinting that example blurb from Wujcik because I don't support rounding"?


The approach I'm getting from how you're looking at RWB is that even though the rules are different between N&S and other games (action cost and times usable per turn) that somehow we can just float over the unmentioned things between them:

1) RWB costs an attack in N&S because other games say so, supplemental!
2) RWB can only be used once per turn in other games because N&S says so, supplemental!

So if differences between texts are supplemental, then the SDC recovery rates are NOT either-or. They are supplemental too, and stack together.

If the LACK of hourly SDC recovery rates means they do not exist in other games, then that would also mean the LACK of "costs an action" in N&S means that cost doesn't exist in N&S.

That would also mean the LACK of rounding outside of N&S also means it doesn't exist.

Presence/Absence between games shouldn't be selectively either/or or supplemental when not known, there should be one consistent approach taken.


Sounds like you're right about this, I don't see a cost listed in Robotech 1 Macross the previous year... nor BTS in 1988... do you suppose it was Rifts that introduced that?

It's not in HU Revised either (April 87, six months before N&S) not even in the 1993 reprint three years after Rifts... or in the year 2000 reprint of TMNT

Nonetheless, I don't know that new games introducing new rules necessarily means that the old games have a mandate to follow them.

Far as I know, Nightbane still has slower spellcasting times and single-turn aimed shots, for example.


https://www.nobleknight.com/P/-39962144 ... ected-MOPs uses a lowercase S, had me confused a moment there.


I'm in agreement with you on that, moreso because there's a lack of instruction for this mechanic prior to Rifts, so far as I can see. Not even any stealth updates in reprints, only bothered to amend it in 2nd eds for PF/HU/RT or new games like NB/Splicers.


Using spells per day is still legal if you want to do it, particularly with games like TMNT where we don't have any assigned costs to work with. Plus I think there's still some monsters or rune weapons who work that way.


So you're looking for something along the lines of a "don't round up" instruction in all subsequent games' RWB because N&S snuck it into an example outside of its main instructions/glossary?

The distinction in these examples is that you correctly point out RWB didn't cost an attack in the old games (HU1/PF1/BTS1/RT1/TMNT/N&S) there was a consistent omission of any declaration of that cost throughout there.

All games except N&S appear to have a consistent omission of any declaration to round halved damage upward.

It would, except for the "sometimes Palladium changes the rules and doesn't tell anybody" rule.



There is no logical basis for that assumption.



That is not a meaningful response.



It's entirely safe.
It's SO absolutely safe that I will honest-to -GOD bet you $100 right here and now that if we got Kevin to give a straight answer the question, he'd tell us that no, he never intended damage to be dealt in less than 1 point increments.

Are YOU feeling so safe in your assumptions that you're willing to take me up on this bet?



The issue of which direction the rounding is done is less essential than the rounding itself.



Do other games say you CAN roll with more than one impact per turn?



As I've pointed out, that's not game specific.



It is a truism that when different games state different rules, those different games have different rules.
This does not affect whether or not rules stated in one game of the Megaversal system carry over from one setting to another.



Incorrect.
1 case where the rules may or may not be carried over.
1 case of a rule change in the Megaversal rules that was never game-dependent.
1 case where different settings are stated to have different rules.



There doesn't seem to BE any confusion about how to apply rules.
There seems to be a typo.
That's all.



It's not omission that's important; it's a change in the rules.
We are told at some points in some games that Roll With Impact takes an attack, therefore it does, because the rule has changed.
We are never told that the rule for rounding has changed, therefore there is no reason to believe that there is a change.

Sure it is, I'm showing how absurd it is to assume that 2 instructions to do something should apply to all situations, and how useless it is to know that without knowing the specifics (type of brush, direction of rounding)


I don't necessarily trust Kev'19 to give accurate reflections on 80s/90s Kev. As I've pointed out in the vampires+goblins thread on the PF forum, he didn't even accurately when he introduced the variant vampires (it was BTS, not Rifts) when writing about it in Western Empire.

Besides: you're asking a question that serves your purposes. You're only getting a partial answer (whether to round) which doesn't actually help in resolving dilemmas: you're not asking the DIRECTION.

You are confident you are right, so you can ask 2 more usefulr questions based on the assumption you are right:

1) when you wrote game X in YEAR, when you say to divide damage and it doesn't divide evenly, when did you intend for remainders to round down, and when did you intend for remainders to round up?
2) why didn't you print this in any of the books?

What's the basis for you thinking it's more essential? Knowing the outcome is the whole point, and you can't know it without knowing the direction.

The 2 rounded possibilities are further apart from each other than the non-rounded result would be from either.


You are instructed to repeat the combat steps against each attack that targets you, so I believe so.

I mean, I don't think it says anywhere that you can dodge more than once per turn either, but it's pretty much implied by following the steps, even though this would mean (barring auto) that you would use up not just your next turn's attack, but additional turns thereafter.


If we know one aspect of the rules doesn't carry over about a technique, then I don't see why we should assume any others do.

Dodging is another issue worth examining: N&S says you roll once and that roll applies against ALL enemies who target you that turn.

Even though no other games assert that... they don't rule it out either. So are you thinking that the N&S policy applies to other games' dodges?


If you're left with "may or may not" because of different wording, it isn't the same.

There has never been a "megaversal rules" thing, while there are certainly observable "RWB no stated cost" / "RWB one action cost" eras, we still observe those on a book-by-book basis, just like N&S/TMNT recovery of SDC rates, while fellow-80s RPG Heroes Unlimited had the daily rates...

Weirdly I can't find SDC recovery rates at all in Robotech 1 Macross even though humans did have SDC in it, it only mentions HP recovery rates as far as I can see.


5>4, I accept as a typo,
7>5, I do not. Too big a margin. Too big a coincidence. Why didn't he type 6, 8 or 9? Or T/Y/U/I for that matter?


I think it's a safe bet based on observable inconsistencies that regardless of a name-stamp that he didn't review the combat section/example here with much specificity.

The "new rule" is basically the omission of rounding: you don't need to add ("don't round!") when told to divide, you just divide.


Palladium rule differences measurable as game-by-game differences. Not every change in a new book is necessarily intended to apply retroactively to all other games, though obviously when sharing games a GM needs to decide on what to use and is free to decide for one or the other.


If you're playing that way in N&S, you're not playing by N&S rules. The only way to ascertain "costs an action" is intended for N&S is to be told in some form of errata that we should be playing it that way, and that the new rules for RWB from future games are intended to apply retroactively to N&S.


As above: if this policy was intended for other games, it's something that we could prove through its inclusion in the errata.

RUE had an extensive PDF making corrections, for example, but didn't include that, even though it's bound to be an issue that would've come up over the decades of Rifts' existence.

We even see on 16/19 that they addressed RUE 283 (adding a parenthesized "GM's disretion") to a part which talks about rounding down halved skill percentages, so the subject of rounding would've been on Brandon K. Aten's mind when writing this.

RMBp12 "How to Determine Psionics" is an example of where we see a precedent of being told when to round, and being told in what direction to round when it becomes necessary:

The major psionic must select an O.C.C. but all skill bonuses are reduced by half
(round down fractions)

Now, admittedly, this is immediately followed by

the number of "other skills" are also reduced by half

This followup doesn't have a parenthesized instruction whether to round the fraction up or down, so in theory you could be left with "half an other skill". Since it's a followup thought ("also") it's probably reasonable to assume that you would also round down (ignore) half an other skill.

It might be worth tracking though. RMB52 a CS Grunt would clearly start with 4, get 1 at 3rd, another at 6th.

Instead of halving 1 at 9/12 to 0 at 9/12 you might look at that as getting half a skill at 9 and the 2nd half by 12, at which point you could select one...

Unless of course, you wanted to take a WP, in which case, since you have half a WP skill at level 3, you could spend that half an other skill from level 6th to get a WP at 6th, but then you get nothing at 12. Seem reasonable?

Not in any meaningful way, no.



You don't trust the creator of the game to remember whether or not he intended for partial points of damage to be a part of his game?

I mean, if they were intended to be a thing, they'd be a thing in most game sessions.
Taking partial damage is everywhere, and taking partial points of damage would be too.
It would be a basic game function, not the kind of thing a person would forget.

I mean, he created Palladium's system by adapting Dungeons & Dragons.
Are you saying that you think that he at some point made the choice, "Hey, every time somebody takes half damage, that should NOT be rounded off. I mean, half of 7 points of damage is 3 points of damage, after all, so even though D&D has rounding, I'm going to deliberately change that for all my games, without ever telling anybody specifically,"
AND THEN HE FORGOT THAT DECISION....?

Get real.



My purpose is to get to the truth.
Your entire "partial points of damage are intended to be a thing" get in the way of finding the truth.
So YEAH, dispelling that nonsense would indeed serve my purposes.

If it wouldn't serve YOUR purpose, then that would necessarily mean that you have a different purpose in this conversation than I do.

IF we got an answer to that question,
and IF you accept the answer,
THEN we could always argue or ask about the other side points.



It's more essential to our conversation because the foundation of your stance is a claimed belief that we're not suppose to round.
IF that foundation is faulty, then pretty much everything else you have stacked upon it comes tumbling down.
If that foundation is NOT faulty, then I need to reassess my own position rather drastically, and the answer would render the issue of "rounding up or down" entirely moot, as there would only ever be rounding when we're directed to round.

It's more essential to Kevin, IMO, because simply NOT rounding would be something completely out of left field to him, and while he's pretty loosey-goosey with how people play (often too much so), enough that he probably wouldn't care whether people round up or down,
NOT ROUNDING would be a different case.



What's the direct quote that instructs us that?



Because assuming a change in the rules due to a lack of repetition of the rule is a self-defeating, game-breaking paradigm.



It's ruled out on page 1125-116 of the Collected MOPs:
If both bullets were aimed shots, then the attacker does roll individually to strike for each and the defender must roll to dodge each shot. In this case, two separate aimed shots requires two separate dodge rolls.


If you're left with "may or may not" because of different wording, it isn't the same.[/quote]

That depends on the wording in question, and the rule in question.
If you want to compare and contrast two different versions of a rule, quote them both and we can break down any differences.



Untrue.
I can pull any number of quotes about the Megaversal System.
Do you really need me to...?
It's a thing.

And, again, the answers given on pages 115-116 of The Collected MOPs are for "Palladium Combat," and not in the sense of PFRPG, but rather the Palladium System overall.



By your logic, that lack of recovery rates must be a deliberate omission intended to change the rules, and humans in Robotech 1 Macross don't recover SDC at all, since there are no rules for it.
By my logic, they use the general SDC recovery rates that the rest of Palladium uses.



Why somebody makes a typo doesn't unmake it a typo.



Possibly, but possibly not.
There's no real way to tell.
Unless you'd like to ask Kevin, and trust his answer?
(And on THIS point, I'm not sure we should trust him; it's a minor editorial point from decades ago)



Lack of stating a rule is not a rule.
By definition.



I agree that not every change in a new book is necessarily intended to apply retroactively to all other games, but sometimes they are.



What edition are you looking at?
Is it the latest?
What year was it printed?



Wrong.
If this policy was NOT intended for other games, it's something that probably would have been mentioned by now at some point, such as in the RUE errata.

Well, we can always ask him.

I'll take you up on that bet...

why is this topic still open? I don't understand how this question can go on three pages

Because somebody's arguing just to argue and not enough people have placed him on their blocked list yet.