balancing magic, psychic, cyborg, power armor. RIFTS

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:48 pm

So while working on my Fantasy Heartbreaker I was thinking "Man, I really want to play some RIFTS" and by play RIFTS I mean some hypothetical game with psychics, power armor, robots and wizards all together, in a rules system that hopefully works.

*So this isn't really about the RIFTS rules as it is a RIFTS-like environment, and a hypothetical system to begin with.

But god damn, how do you even begin doing that.

So a guy with super drugs becomes a super fast/strongtough superhuman with a spidey sense

A guy can also use psychic implants to become a superhuman with a spideysense, and maybe some minor psionics

A guy can use magic spells to become a superhuman with a spide sense, and shoot stuff from his hands.

A guy can turn into a cyborg and become a superhuman, and have super robo senses, and shoot lasers from his eyes.

A guy can be a normal dude, but ride around in flying power armor with combat computer senses and shoot missiles and whatever.

...and a guy can be a dragon. A baby dragon but still a dragon.

There just seems to be so many things to take into consideration. The closest playable game I can think of is... Shadowrun. If a Rigger wore his drones, then he's a PA pilot.

but how does Shadowrun go about making a street samurai and adept both superhuman warriors while feeling different? How does an un-augumented (technology/magic) guy even exist in such a party (or do they not?)

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:56 pm

Nexus: the Infinite City comes to mind. Maybe GURPS.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:59 pm

You play Exalted, which has balance: "what balance?" but includes the full kitchen sink.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 3:01 pm

And, as strange and terrible as it was, there's always Mutans & Masterminds.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:01 pm

This basically sounds like a superheroes campaign/setting (whether it's set in the modern age is irrelevant); it's exactly the sort of thing that HERO was designed to do. Or any other superhero system.

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:30 pm

I'll put in another vote for GURPS. A lot of the balance has to come from the DM outlawing chunks of the system, but at least it kind of works.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:39 pm

OgreBattle wrote: How does an un-augumented (technology/magic) guy even exist in such a party (or do they not?)

Vell, the Vagabond and Scholar are in the same book as the Dragon, Glitterboy and Juicer, but that doesn't mean that they are actually valid choices in a PC party, anymore than GCPD detective Harvey Bullock is a valid character in a DC Heroes campaign, even though he's probably statted out somewhere.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:52 pm

Champions.

Seriously, that's just a Supers game with an unusual backdrop.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:21 pm

Yeah, when I want to play RIFTS, I kind of just suck up the fact that it's not balanced, and use the books so I don't have to make everything from scratch, if you want something actually balanced, you want Mutants and Masterminds, HERO, GURPS, etc.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:28 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Champions.

Seriously, that's just a Supers game with an unusual backdrop.

Yeah, anything points based would be the way to go. Balancing different schticks isn't necessarily hard, RIFTS just didn't really try. Whether you are putting up a magic shield, using pain numbing super-drugs that kill you in a few years, or piloting Giant-Robo the end result is you can take a bazooka to the chest without dying. Ditto for movement and offensive powers.

As to how the "unaugmented" fit with the supers, they basically don't. It's like playing the Aristocrat in D&D. You either run a "powers" game where everyone is a super-dude, or a "norms" game where you all play bounty hunters or mechanics and stuff.

The only sticking point I can see is when the "Pilot" characters get out of their robo-suits. At that point they are basically normal people, which could be bad depending on how lethal your combat simulator is to civilians. RIFTS hilariously had Mega-damage handguns that fit in your pocket and can destroy tanks, so how anyone ever walked around without MDC armor at all times is a mystery to me. Even if you tone down the crazy, you'd have to make sure Pilots had some protection outside their rides so they could contribute during the talky and investigation bits without randomly dying when a Juicer punched their head off.

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Thu Jan 10, 2013 11:52 pm

I expect GURPS-Rifts would end up with allowed concepts being limited heavily by whatever point total you give people, followed by the PCs turning into a red vapour due to the 'realistic' hit point system.

I'd pick either Feng Shui or (going from what I've heard about it, haven't played it) maybe the latest version of Gamma World, the 4E D&D compatible one.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 2:03 am

GURPS, HERO, M&M, Champions, NEXUS, I'm not familiar with these systems. Is there a Den review for those?
Which one would be most familiar to someone who knows D&D?

I have some rough idea of power levels

Unagumented Human
-merc soldiers
-scouts, scoundrels (rural/urban 'rogues')
-brainy guy

Augumented
-Juicer
-Crazy
-Magic user
-Partial cyborg
-light powered armor

Augumented+
-full cyborgs
-larger power armor
-robot vehicles

I'm really only interested in the augumented category. A dragon could be powered down to that level, or called some other kind of dimensional being.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 2:32 am

OgreBattle wrote:GURPS, HERO, M&M, Champions, NEXUS, I'm not familiar with these systems. Is there a Den review for those?
Which one would be most familiar to someone who knows D&D?

If I remember correctly M&M is a d20 game so I thing that's the most D&D like one. My memory is that the system is shenanigans heavy type that requires the MC to proofread your character sheet. (It can only be a step up from RIFTS terrible balance though.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 6:29 am

OgreBattle wrote:GURPS, HERO, M&M, Champions, NEXUS, I'm not familiar with these systems. Is there a Den review for those?
Which one would be most familiar to someone who knows D&D?

The search function should turn up a decent bit about M&M, at minimum. Here's the first one I got. Hero doesn't have much actual discussion, but is frequently regarded as the best system for supers (I disagree, but that's something else).

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 8:23 am

The HERO book can stop small arms fire, and that's only half the rules needed for play. The other half is a second book which costs $40-$60, just like the first. Unless the books are able to suck my cock, I don't care how good it is.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 8:33 am

Lord Mistborn wrote:
OgreBattle wrote:GURPS, HERO, M&M, Champions, NEXUS, I'm not familiar with these systems. Is there a Den review for those?
Which one would be most familiar to someone who knows D&D?
If I remember correctly M&M is a d20 game so I thing that's the most D&D like one. My memory is that the system is shenanigans heavy type that requires the MC to proofread your character sheet. (It can only be a step up from RIFTS terrible balance though.

Yes, M&M is a point-buy D20 game that sets hard limits on what the final numbers are allowed to be, but that's practically the extent of the limitation. So you make sure your defences are at the maximum, make your Toughness Save Invulnerable or whatever it is so you flat-out ignore most damage, and then you take powers and find things that don't really interact with those numerical limits, they simply create objects that weigh a billion tonnes or whatever.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 2:05 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:The HERO book can stop small arms fire, and that's only half the rules needed for play. The other half is a second book which costs $40-$60, just like the first. Unless the books are able to suck my cock, I don't care how good it is.

Actually, they recently released a much more reasonable book called Champions Complete, which is 240 pages, contains everything needed to play, and retails for $40.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 5:25 pm

Prak is being inaccurate. It was HERO 5th Revised (reFred) in the ballistics test and that only stopped archaic black-powder rounds and bayonets. It's HERO 6th edition where they split the core rules into 2 books. Presumably they did this to offer protection against more modern firearms.

And if you were even thinking of GURPs, you're better off going with HERO. Both are highly detailed, highly complicated "universal" meta-systems that allow you to run any type of setting by toggling optional rules for combat and chargen. However as much as I love me some CHAMPIONS (which is the superheroic mode of HERO) I cannot recommend either of these systems to someone unfamiliar with them - what you gain in flexibility of chargen you more than lose in complexity. Furthermore, neither GURPS nor HERO is quite workable out of the box - the MC needs to understand the ruleset well enough to fully understand what the various optional rules toggles do and outright veto some of the cheesier book-legal chargen options.

But yeah, if you want to due a Rifts-like setting, without the problems that are RIFTs, then you need either a superhero or a universal setting. If there are any of those which you are familiar with, use that.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jan 11, 2013 8:16 pm

It stopped a .22 round as well, if I recall correctly. But good to know they released a less ridiculous book.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 8:55 am

Does M&M present different power schedules to choose from? Like a guy that shoots fire like a wizard vs a guy that shoots fire at-will, basically those things discussed here:

Assassin

Warm up is the name of the game here. You have various abilities, but they require time to activate. You can do your basic super crossbow shot by giving up movement for the turn, but if you want to do your death strike, you have to give up an entire turn.

Berserker

Someone gets to have a Rage Bar, and the Berserker is a good obvious fit for that. Power up your super moves by hitting people and taking damage. You could institute a limit on sacrificing chickens to the Berserker by having fatigue set in a certain amount of time after the ragebar starts up.

Druid

Druids have always been way overcrowded conceptually, being everything from spirit shamans to nature priests to lycanthropic fighting machines. Here, we're going for the more "deals with nature spirits" end of things and less with the "bear warrior". You have a number of spirits that can aid you and at any given moment one of them is available. This is like a Green Arrow WoF setup, where you randomly determine which spirit you get to use each round and that spirit comes with a fixed set of options. So if you get Thunder Spirit this round you can use any of the Thunder Spirit powers, and if you get the Oak Spirit or Wave Spirit instead, you get a different set of powers to choose from.

Hero

Someone is going to want a "simple" character where they can spam the same attacks over and over again if that is what they want to do. There does need to be an "everything at will" class, and I think the Hero is it.

Monk

Magical martial arts are based on the linking of stances and maneuvers. That is, you can spend an action to change to a new stance, which will give you a new list of maneuvers you can use. Kind of like a warblade, but the maneuvers you get each time you refresh are fixed to short lists, in order to make the mid-battle resculpts take less table-time.

Necromancer

Incarnum was terrible, but many of the underlying concepts were not bad. Necromancers get a certain amount of Life Essence that they can route to various things. Basically this means that the army you can have gets bigger (and if you go for a big Diablo 2 style golem instead, that can be bigger) as you go up in level, and also that as your army (or bodyguard) gets more powerful you drain off your own ability to shoot black beams that kill people. Most importantly of all, it gives a solid in-character reason why your personal attacks are less level appropriate than those of the other characters when you have a skeleton army going.

Paladin

The new improved Paladin is basically a Crusader with more healing and protection wards. So you get a small deck-based WoF. Divine inspiration gives you a couple of choices each turn and you do whatever seems most useful at the time.

Psion

I am not a fan of spell point systems, but many people are. The Psion would get power points and use them to power their abilities. In essence, everything is available all the time, but there's a pretty short battery per encounter. Power Points would come back quickly with meditation. To balance this with the Wizard (see below), you'd give them less powers known and also give them few enough power points (and a steep enough cost curve) that they want to use their smaller powers sometimes.

Rogue

The Rogue is also nominally an "everything at will" class, except that all their tricks have trigger conditions (like Sneak Attacks requiring enemies to be flanked or denied their dex bonus). This means that while all of your tricks are theoretically unlimited, the actual class is fairly complex to play because you have to set up special conditions to use your stuff.

Warlock

You have big powers and small powers. The big powers all have Drain of various kinds, which makes you want to use them as close to the end of battles as possible. But you still have your eldritch blasts.

Wizard

The idea here is to do spell preparation, but to do so in a way that is less annoying than 3e's "prepare 30 spells and tough it out all day" version. With this you get a small pile of spell slots to prepare into, but you can prepare new spells between encounters. So it's like 4e in that you have what are essentially encounter powers, but unlike 4e in that that is all you have and that you can trade those out in a few minutes. When you run out of prepared spells, you can fallback on your cantrips and reserve spells.

There should probably be some mechanical difference between the superhuman psychic and superhuman cyborg.

I figure having some set game mechanics difference between cyborgs and psychics would be good for making them feel distinct, even if both chose to be superhuman shooty guys.

Lately I've been having more fun writing rules down (...that noone will use) than actually playing heh.

Roog · Post by **Roog** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 12:42 pm

OgreBattle wrote:Does M&M present different power schedules to choose from? Like a guy that shoots fire like a wizard vs a guy that shoots fire at-will, basically those things discussed here:

Those power styles could also be implemented using M&M, but some will work better then others

Assassin : Easy to implement using standard power limitations
Berserker : Hard to implement, would be likely to have badly costed powers
Druid : Relatively easy to implement, would be somewhat complex power set
Hero : Definitely
Monk : Relatively easy to implement, would be somewhat complex power set
Necromancer : Easy to implement using standard power stuctures
Paladin : Relatively easy to implement, would be somewhat complex power set
Psion : Hard to implement, would be likely to have badly costed powers
Rogue : Easy to implement using standard power limitations
Warlock : Relatively easy to implement, would be likely to have badly costed powers
Wizard : Hard to implement, would be likely to have badly costed powers

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 2:16 am

At its core, M&M has all powers always active all the time. You can jigger it around a bit with various modifiers:

Alternate Power: everyone takes this. Basically, you take another power with up to the same cost, and it only costs 1 point, but you can't use both at the same time. So for dudes with a Fire Blast AND an Ice Blast, it works well because you shouldn't pay double just for two elements. For people with Flight AND Invulnerability, if done this way, you can't be a flying brick wall.
There's a disadvantage that reduces the cost and makes it so the power Fatigues you (you can spend a hero point thing to negate this, effectively turning it into "uses the hero point resource")

Those are the main ones I remember. But you're not going to get a *great* diversity where cyborgs feel totally different from mages feel totally different from psychics.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 8:06 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote: The other half is a second book which costs $40-$60, just like the first. Unless the books are able to suck my cock, I don't care how good it is.
Actually, they recently released a much more reasonable book called Champions Complete, which is 240 pages, contains everything needed to play, and retails for $40.

It only gives you a handjob though.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:42 pm

I second the suggestion for Champions. Some guidelines:

1) The game should be "Superheroic". That is, if you want to salvage a suit of SAMAS power-armor, you have to pay points for it.

2) Your PPE is an END reserve, and costs just like an END reserve. Powers which are fueled off of PPE have the -1/2 disadvantage "Is Magic"; powers which work against magic have the -1/2 limitation "Only vs Magic". "Magic" always requires both Incantation and Gestures (at no extra points savings.)

As a special rule, you get more of this END reserve when you stand on ley lines, make human or animal sacrifices and so forth. The ability to do all that doesn't cost any points.

Abilities which only work on or near ley lines are either: Only w/in one mile of a ley line (-1/2), or Only one a ley line (-1). These powers however "Cost No End" automatically (for accounting reasons this is free.)

Shifters don't actually have "Summoning" as a spell (well, they may, but that's not their core feature) - that's just a special effect for their "Followers Pool", which costs +50% more than whatever followers they'd have, but they can swap followers out from one session to another if desired.

3) Psionic powers run off of a second END reserve. "Is Psionic" is not a disadvantage; "only vs psionics" is a -3/4 disadvantage.

Lenny the Ley Line Walker (200 points)
60 pts worth of stats.
20 pts for misc. technology, mainly his armor.
15 pts worth of skills.
15 pts for an END reserve
90 active points in his Multipower (-1/2 "Is Magic" = 60 points)
30 points is then enough for half a dozen spells, including Flight, Fireball, Mass Confusion, Invisibility, Ley Line Teleport and Ley Line Force Field.

George the Glitter Boy (200 points)
90 points worth of stats.
30 points worth of misc. technology
40 points for his Glitter Boy (which is a vehicle built in 200 points)
40 points worth of skills

Paul the Power Armor Dude (200 points)
80 points worth of stats
50 points for more stats, with OIF: Power Armor (75 pts of stats)
40 points for 60 points of powers with OIF: Power Armor (Armor, Life Support and so forth)
30 points of skills

Roger the Rogue Scholar (200 points)
80 points worth of stats
40 points for four dice of luck
40 points of misc. technology
40 points of skills

and so on.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:53 pm

OgreBattle wrote:Does M&M present different power schedules to choose from? Like a guy that shoots fire like a wizard vs a guy that shoots fire at-will, basically those things discussed here:

Actually it's interesting how many of those have a straight up analogue in HERO. The randomised ones are the only ones that really don't, and they can use a variation of Limited Power based on how often they show up.

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balancing magic, psychic, cyborg, power armor. RIFTS

balancing magic, psychic, cyborg, power armor. RIFTS

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