Rifts House Rules - My Combat Cheatsheet Part 3

Most of this page is taken up with the two critical hit tables - one for humanoid, one for vehicles. I spent a lot of time working these out and tried to come up with some concrete effects that could be fun in the game and give players a chance to decide when enough was enough and it was time to retreat. It also gave a parallel path for driving off NPC bad guys beyond just mowing through hundreds of MDC and many minutes of playing time. If you can blow out the power plant or kill the fire control or the main weapon systems, then the fight may well be over. It also gives a chance for some characters to shine by getting damaged systems back online - "Scotty I need warp power in 3 mniutes or we're all dead" just made the fight that much more interesting than yet another session of shaving down 500 MDC on that Northern Gun Explorer Bot.

The E-clip section is there because I don't like the pricing structure in the main book. I also wanted options for bad things to happen in combat and some specificity in charging up e-clips in the field. 

The Armor Goop is my own creation from back in my first campaign in the early 90's. In a mega-damage world, your body armor effectively becomes your hit points, as no normal character can withstand even a single point of MD. Considering that a typical rifle does 4d6 MD per attack and a fairly standard set of MD Body armor has 50 points, with 80 being a "heavy" suit, it only takes one firefight to shred your armor. The armor repair rules in the book are limited and ridiculous and make no sense as far as field repairs so I decided we needed a "healing potion" for body armor, ala D&D. Thus, armor goop: It comes in a 1-meter tube (like a toothpaste tube)  about 6 inches in diameter and there's a spreading tool attached to the cap. After opening the cap the user can squeeze out the goop and spread it around with the tool. It takes about an hour to fix one suit of armor and the goop sets in about 4 hours. It fixes all but 1d6 of the damage to the armor, so the 50-point suit will have from 44-49 points after being "gooped" If it's gooped again before being repaired in a shop, it loses another d6. 

The whole point of this is to allow players to have more than one combat before heading back to town to buy new armor, or having to haul around multiple sets of it. It does still put a clock on the players in that it's not a 100% fix, so they will eventually have to get some work done, but it prevents the momentum-killing post-combat regroup and retreat - instead the party just patches up overnight then continues.

Anyway that's the end of the Rifts bit for now. If anyone is interested I can put them up on a file site if they need a better copy. As you might guess I really do like a lot of the ideas in Rifts I just don't like the mechanical execution and expression of some of those ideas. Even when I'm not running or playing it, the ideas never stop for long. I've recently been re-reading the old Marvel Super Heroes RPG (FASERIP) thinking about using it as the introductory supers game for the apprentices, and it struck me that it might  be worth a shot at converting RIFTS to FASERIP. I'll let you know how that goes. 

Rifts House Rules - My Combat Cheet Sheet Part 2

Page 2 of the Cheatsheet covers the ranged attack modifiers, size modifiers (something else Rifts really needed), then the Defense and Damage process and tables.  So someone shooting will mainly look at page 1 while someone being shot will mainly look at page 2 - the goal was to not have to flip back and forth a whole lot. 

A lot of this is purely my own addition to the game, and it can look like a lot but it's really not bad once a player has been through the sequence one time. Plus it's a lot more organized compared to the by-the-book system. Additionally my players like to know where they hit that giant robot - cockpit, gun, arm, leg. I have also found that hit location sometimes helps a fairly lethal game - it's better to lose an arm than the whole character most of the time, and in a world of magic and super-tech replacing it isn't all that hard. 

I will say that looking at it now that the DR/armor piercing thing might be a little more detail than I would want if I started a new campaign tomorrow. It is cool, but it is one more step in resolving combat that might be better left out. I wanted vehicles and robots to have more to them than a big gun and a 500 MDC main body, so detail was what I was looking for at the time - it might not be everyone's cup of tea. 

There's also the system damage section it makes more sense with page 3 which has the crit charts. More on that tomorrow.

Rifts House Rules - Ability Scores

Rifts and house rules are inevitable in my mind. It feels a lot like the old days for D&D when systems were much more malleable than 4th or even 3rd edition. There are several areas where I feel  some changes make for a better game. One of the changes I have made is to ability scores.
Rifts has always been confusing as far as stats, bonuses, and when they apply, plus the method for rolling is odd. Humans roll 3d6 for each stat but if they score a 16,17, or 18 then they get to add an additional d6. I scrapped this for 4d6 drop the lowest. Rifts actually has some skills (Physical Skills) that can be selected to add to certain attributes, so if you want a Physical Strength of 20 it's easily accomplished by rolling a decent score and then choosing weightlifting, boxing, etc.during skill selection. One problem solved.
Nonhuman races roll differing amounts of dice  - Ogres might roll 4 or 5 dice for strength, Orcs might have 4d6 for Physical Endurance, Pixies might only roll 2d6 for strength - I'm fine with that approach and leave it as-is.
Now that stats are a little more "regular" let's get some decent modifiers for them. I pretty much adapted the d20 ability score modifiers wholesale. My players and I were familiar with them and they do make the full range of scores count for something. So PS of 10-11 = +0, 12-13 = +1, 14-15=+2, etc. A Physical Strength of 40 now has a +15 modifier - but to what?
Rifts has a somewhat arbitrary division when it comes to combat, the infamous "Mega-Damage".  The ideas is that some super-high-tech weapons and powerful magic just operate on a while different scale than conventional weapons like guns and swords. It's an important part of the setting as characters cause superhero levels of damage without technically having superpowers.
For some reason though it was decided that mega-damage guns don't work the same way as regular ones so the Physical Prowess bonus doesn't count when using MD weapons. This makes little sense to me and additionally it makes character abilities like a high Prowess  less important than equipment bonuses like a +1 for a laser sight. The game also forbids adding character strength bonuses to MD melee damage, instead referring to a chart for punching damage based on strength number and type - yes there is "regular" strength, "augmented" strength, and "supernatural" strength - which all kind of matrixes together to tell you whether you do 1d6 or 2d4 or some other slightly different amount of damage.
I scrapped all of that. PS (Physical Strength) adds its modifier to all HTH combat damage. PP (Physical Prowess) adds its modifier to all to-hit rolls and dodge and parry rolls. There, I fixed it.
IQ (Rifts version of Int) and PP both affect initiative rolls.
IQ adds to the base percentages for skills
Mental Endurance (ME) adds to saves vs. fear and magic
Physical Endurance (PE) adds to saves vs poison etc.
Mental Affinity (MA) [Charisma] adds to reaction adjustments
Pretty much what you would expect them to do based on D&D style modifiers.
One reason for adding the strength bonus to all damage is that a mega-damage sword does about the same damage as a D&D sword but the MD armor you have to cut through starts at about 50 points for almost anything and rapidly scales up from there. Rolling 1d8 to beat down 50 points takes a long time. Considering that many PC's will be in the 20+ strength bracket, adding a +5 or +10 to that really helps keep the game from dragging and actually promotes the more frequent use of HTH combat that the game background seems to suggest. It's also one less fiddly rule to worry about.
Adding the PP bonus to all to hit rolls also ensures that hitting isn't much of a problem when you have the 30 PP Juicer going against the 10 PP mercenary. Rifts uses opposed d20 rolls in HTH as the attacker rolls to hit and the defender rolls to parry, high score wins. Classes, skills, equipment, and race can all add various bonuses to attack and to parry so adding in one more bonus from PP doesn't really upset things.
In the end it was more natural to my (then) 3rd edition D&D crew to use these modifiers and it kept combat flowing a little more smoothly. I still wasn't satisfied though as combat  still confused some people as all PCs end up with multiple attacks and hit locations were still causing trouble. More on that tomorrow.

Rifts - An encounter sheet

Here's a sample of how I was handling encounters in my last Rifts campaign. Rifts beasties have a lot of fiddly bits as far as attributes and modifiers, plus the added complication of a hit location system. I used to keep stats on an index card (which I do for a lot of my games) nd then track hit points on my spiral notepad page for that session. This can get confusing however, especially when monster #1 has been shot in the leg, monster 2 has been shot in the head, etc. This doesn't happen in every encounter but it came up often enough that I wanted to get ahead of it this time. This was the result. It allows me to run 12 ghouls on one sheet without having to refer back to other books, and hit locations are covered with ease. I used these guys in one of the early encounters in the campaign and it was much easier than before. Now granted, it was some work up front but I just thought of it as prep time for that session. 

System-wise, this is why I like D&D's monster presentation better in every edition over Rifts. For Rifts I have to know the creatures stats and its attacks, and its HP value for all locations. For older D&D it's something like "8 HD, Bite 2d6, AC7"  for a useable stat block. Even newer versions will have something like "Bite +3 (2d6)" for the attacks. 

Additionally I have come to think that hit point and hit locations are a tough mix. The main advantage of hit point systems is simplicity, giving up some realism. Hit locations give some realism at the cost of simplicity. I liked the approach in both Hero and GURPS where hit locations can give some modifiers but do not require tracking of separate damage totals. Rifts gives totals for some locations but doesn't really give effects tied to those locations other than losing your head = dead. This is the kind of opening that leads to house rules and eventually to conversion.

Anyway, I have a few more like this including a minion of splugorth so if anyone is interested I can post them up too.

Motivational Monday!

The New Old Campaign - House Rules

I thought I ought to post the house rules I am using for our basic red book campaign, so here they are:

1. Max hit points at 1st level 
2. Natural 20 to hit = maximum damage for that attack
3. Natural 1 to hit =  dropped weapon unless shooting into melee, in which case it means an ally is hit
4. 0 hit points= unconscious, not dead.
5. Anyone can "bind wounds" as their action for a round or after combat. Binding wounds adds a d3 hp to a wounded character and wakes up an unconscious character. It does nothing for a dead character.
6. NEW - Monster XP = 100xp per hit die

#1 is there for simple survivability and is an old favorite in every edition
#2 is as close to a "critical hit" rule as D&D needs in my opinion. I have a crit chart I used for a lot of 3rd edition but I like the simplicity of this rule better.
#3 is to counterbalance #2 and add a little humor to the game. It gives a reason to carry a second weapon, and it can also add a little danger to an otherwise routine fight. I've seen some games where Nat 1 = free attack from an enemy and I might experiment with that down the road, but I like this for now. Plus this one discourages firing into melee but doesn't completely rule it out.
#4 is to give one last tiny chance to characters before they die
#5 helps in a world where 1st lvl Clerics get no spells and healing potions are pricy. No skill or stat rolls, just a little bit recovery that can make a big difference.
#6 is new because leveling past 1st has been taking a long time and I just read about this on some other old-school blogs and like it a lot. It makes a big difference at low levels and then doesn't matter so much as they progress. I'm fine with a system where gp's = xp's but I've always thought the monsters should contribute more and with this change, they do.

New Old Campaign: Interlude

After the last few sessions I am having a bit of a crisis of conscience. I like the old-school B/X rules but I am worried that the parade of character deaths might discourage the boys from continuing. It's worse than I even remember as far as the death rate. My "bind wounds" rule helps a little, but 1 hp or even 1d3 does not put a fighter back into fighting shape, it just keeps him from dying and maybe lets him shoot a bow from the back of the party. They have started to see 2nd level as the safety zone - lots more hit points. They have also already asked if there's a way to play an elf that doesn't need 4000 xp's  to get to 2nd level. So I'm tempted to make some changes. 

We're going to finish the Keep as-is - no major changes. I was planning to run them to the Isle of Dread after this, but now I'm not sure. I had also planned to start a 1st edition AD&D campaign this fall using the Temple of Elemental Evil after they had some B/X experience under their belts. I do like my little homebrew "Dragonport" world but the Temple belongs in Greyhawk, and I don't really like world-jumping low-level characters. Plus Lady Blacksteel has not been a player in the B/X games but I would like to expose her to 1st edition. 

So my answer is this: Dragonport (the New Old Campaign) will continue after the Keep as a side campaign for me and the boys and anyone else who wants to play. It probably won't have a regular schedule but I don't want it to disappear and I don't want to convert it to a different edition - Labyrinth Lord, maybe, but not another edition of D&D. I've always wondered how a high-level BECMI game would work and hopefully we'll get the chance to explore it. I will finish out the map and place some more of the classic modules, figure my wandering monster tables, and generally flesh it out. Plus I can use a new version of the same map for my Mutant Future games down the road as a prequel campaign. 

As soon as we finish the Keep I am going to figure out a night to start the TOEE campaign with the Apprentices and the Lady and possibly some of the friends from my other 2 campaigns if they can find the time. I have 2 PHB's and a DM Screen coming via ebay and I need one more. I'll post my house rules here once I've decided what they are - probably PHB + a few items from UA, Max HP's at 1st level and that's it. We will play on a regular night or afternoon every week as much as possible so it will be the standing game and Dragonport will be more of a fill-in.

All in all the old-school future looks promising and I feel pretty good about the solution to my problem. Now if I can find time to squeeze in some Star Wars d6 and another Supers campaign everything will be perfect.

The New Old Campaign - Part 7 (July Sessions)

Having the party back together again at the Keep the team heads back to the Caves. Moving into the same cave they have been exploring for a week now and head stright back to where the goblin guards used to be. There are no gobbos, but they do find a locked door. Smashing it open they see a room full of hobgoblins. A big fight breaks out with 6 heroes on one side and 13 hobgoblins (males and females) on the other. It goes on for 9 rounds and all of the evil humanoids are slain but Thaddeus II falls as well.  The group decides to head back to the Keep as everyone is beat up.

At the Keep everyone is healed up and Orick the Dwarf is recruited to join the party. They head back to the Caves after one day of rest.

Deciding to change things up a bit the group heads into the western part of the goblin lair and encounters no opposition. they spend a few hours searching the chief's room , a common room, and a storage room and much loot is gathered - finally!

Encouraged by their finds they now head back to the hobgoblin room they fought in last time and once again kick down the door. Four males and two females now occupy the room but are quickly dispatched. 

Moving deeper into the caves they come to a torture chamber with two hobgoblin torturers watching over some prisoners chained up to a wall. Some stealth is attempted here, but their shots go wide and melee is soon joined. These two scarred hobgoblins are quite tough but fate is with the heroes and they dispatch them without losses beyond a few minor wounds. Now they begin to debate what to do with the prisoners...

DM Notes - 

This one went much better than the last few sessions with only 1 character casualty and much loot found. The prisoners are an interesting mix and the debate should be interesting as well. The party is mostly lawful with a few neutrals.

I am still debating on some changes as when 1 PC death is a "good" session it seems things are still a little more bloody than i would like them to be. 

The New Old Campaign - Part 6 (July Sessions)

After 3 days of R&R at the keep our heroes return to the Caves of Chaos:

• Apollo the Elf
• Steven the Thief
• Thaddeus II the Fighter
• Horus the Dwarf
• Isidore the Cleric
• Skullduggery II the Magic-User

Deciding they needed to pay back the goblins the group heads into the same cave they exited previously. They quickly encounter goblin watchmen near the same room as before and battle is joined. Apollo the Elf is a beast during this fight as he strikes for max damage no less than 3 times during this epic ten-round fight. It becomes a epic fight when one of the goblins runs for reinforcements and comes back with 5 hobgoblins ready to assist. Horus the Dwarf fought valiantly but was laid out cold near the end of the battle but survived. 

After the battle they discovered (among other things) a potion a discussion started about how to identify them. Informed of the possible dangers, Apollo the Elf offered Horus 150 gp to taste it. This transaction was completed and when Hours' hand faded from view they had a moment of panic then realized it was an invisibility potion. Horus then offered Apollo 300 gp to buy the potion from him and this transaction was also completed. All of this happened on the way back to the Keep to recover from injury.

After another 3 days of recovery, the team arrives back at the Caves and enters the same cave entrance. This time too they encounter a goblin watch party and engage, only to find the goblin chief and his bodyguards coming up behind them. This turns into a brutal fight for survival as these new goblins are quite a bit tougher than what they are used to fighting, and when the chief is finally slain only Apollo and Isidore are left standing among the heroes. They gather up the bodies of their friends, throw them over the back of the horses and head back to the keep. 

Here, they are fortunate enough to meet Lord Swift, castellian of the Keep, and he is full of praise for ridding his lands of that ogre (see Part 4) and saddended to hear that so many have fallen. He commands his chief cleric to raise the fallen heroes in honor of the service they have already given, though they will owe him one more service which he will disclose at a later time. The cleric complies and the group is reunited at the chapel once again. 

DM Notes -

Yeah I wussed out there. I'm trying to keep most of the party intact while playing by the book as much as I can but 4 dead characters in one trip is a lot. Plus I'm thinking about having them fight a black dragon down in the swampy section as the climax of this adventure and that will be the mission they are given. So yeah, I admit it, I didn't like the way this went and decided to stick my hand in pretty blatantly. Basic is pretty unforgiving at low levels with o hp = dead, so I am considering making some changes. That said those were 2 good fights.

The funniest part of this session was the potion-haggling. Coins were being exchanged all through this conversation as this was the first one they had found and once they figured out the dwarf had the best saves then it got serious. There has been some tension over looting dead characters, so I was glad to see them work this out peacefully.

That pretty much finished off the goblins, so next time we will see them go into the Hobgoblin lair...

Motivational Monday!