Zenvis wrote:Killer Cyborg wrote:zyanitevp wrote:Back to topic please - need constructive feedback on Palladium, not another system
Well, the topic at hand is what can be done to improve Palladium games, and one of the things that people have said is that they need to revamp their core system, "like D&D 3.0 did."
That part's not really discussing D&D; it's discussing what Palladium should do.
But yes, the same points can very well be made without referring to D&D.
Explain revamp... its too open ended. What needs to be done in their revamp? What have you used in the Palladium System that has worked and what has not worked? Be specific, please.
That's where D&D came in handy as a reference.
But, as I said, I suppose it can be explained without making that reference.
The core of Palladium's system is:
-A combat system based on opposed D20s
-A skill system based on unopposed (roll-under) percentile dice.
-A Saving Throw system based on roll-over D20s
-d6 based attribute generation
While that was once standard or ahead of the curve, it's generally considered to be pretty clunky these days. Every time you roll the dice, you're either rolling different dice, or you're rolling the same die a different way.
While some degree of variety is definitely good, the way things stand with this core system is that sometimes I'm using d20s, and sometimes I'm using percentile dice, and sometimes there's no real way to resolve what I'm trying to do within the rules.
If I want to clean/repair my gun, I roll d100.
If I want to fire my gun, then I roll d20.
If I want to use my Intelligence attribute to figure out a gun, then.... well, there's no completely official answer there. Some people would have you do d20 vs. Intelligence, but Palladium staff has at one point at least indicated that the proper thing would be to do roll-under percentile dice vs. Intelligence.
If I want to chuck a basketball through a hoop...
-I can roll a d20, trying to beat a certain number.
-I can make a successful Basketball skill roll on d100, trying to roll under a certain number
-I can do something else, based on attributes, and however a given GM handles attribute resolution.
It's not exactly rocket science, but it's more confusing to switch back and forth between roll-over d20s and roll-under percentile dice, than to just pick one resolution mechanic and to stick with it.
It's not necessarily wrong that skills and combat attacks use different mechanisms, but it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense why using my Weapon Proficiency skills works so differently from using other Skills.
And since neither combat nor skills are based on rolling Xd6, why are attributes that way? And how do you resolve attempts to do something useful with attributes?
What are the gains from having the system set up this way?
What are the costs?
I don't think that Palladium has really thought about those questions, not in terms of the overall system.
As the system is:
-It's hard to make skills interact with combat attacks.
-It's hard to make combat attacks interact with attributes.
-It's hard to make skills interact with attributes.
And there's stuff like Perception that doesn't really work the same as any of the other stuff.
Meanwhile, there are countless systems out there that take one resolution mechanic, and make that one thing the core of the system.
Those systems are easy to learn, easier to play, easier to improvise with, and are overall more versatile in what the rules can allow you to do.
Say you have a generic system that replaces Palladium's variety of resolution mechanics with just d10s (and there ARE systems out there like that).
If you need to roll attributes, you roll a d10.
If you need to roll an attack, you roll a d10.
If you need to roll a skill, you roll a d10.
If you need to oppose your attributes vs. somebody else's attributes, you both roll d10s and add modifiers.
If you need to oppose your attribute vs. an attack for some reason, you both roll d10s and add modifiers.
If you need to oppose your attributes. vs. a skill for some reason, you both roll d10s and add modifiers.
If you need to oppose an incoming attack with a skill, then you yet again both roll d10s and add modifiers.
It's simple. It's elegant.
And it's more versatile than Palladium's system, where if you need to throw a baseball at somebody's head during combat, your basketball skill of 98% doesn't do anything to help you hit the target.
Or where if you have the Arm Wrestling skill, and you're arm wrestling somebody without that skill, there's no official way to resolve things.
Or where if one character attempts to use his Prowl skill, up until RUE there was no way to oppose his roll (in Rifts). Either he makes his skill check, and breezes past you, or he doesn't, and the GM decides whether he's seen or not, regardless of your own abilities.
Post-RUE, there's Perception, which has the inelegant solution of having the Prowler roll d100 for his skill check, then roll a d20 to oppose your Perception score. The Prowler gets +1 to his d20 for ever 10 points of his Prowl score, and the person with Perception gets his usual Perception bonuses.
In a stealth-based game, this can get very tedious, very very quickly.
Whereas in that generic D10 system above, the Prowler only has to make the one roll, and it can instantly be matched against any means that the opposition has which might detect him.
If it's an observation type skill, then it's D10 based, and can easily be matched vs. the Prowl roll without modification.
If it's an attribute, then it's again d10 based, and can again be easily be matched vs. the Prowl roll without modification.
And so forth.
The net result is that a stealth-based Rifts game requires a Prowler to make twice as many rolls as in that generic D10 game.
And you have other tack-ons causing other problems.
For example, SDC for living beings is a tack-on.
It wasn't in PFRPG1 and other early Palladium games only had Hit Points.
Why's that a problem?
Because weapon damage was based on targets only having HP, NOT on them having HP+SDC.
Having SDC makes people roughly 2x as tough (at least) at first level, which means that they're at least 2x more impervious to knives, swords, and bullets.
So now when somebody pulls a 1d6 knife on you... you don't really care. You know it's not likely to seriously injure you.
Which kills realism for the game, because characters behave ways that people simply don't behave in real life. They charge into gunfire or spears, because they know that they'll survive getting shot or stabbed.
And it makes combat take longer. Roughly 2x (or more) longer, in fact, because now you can't just dispatch an NPC cannon-fodder guard with a single thrust of your blade, now you have to stab or shoot them multiple times before they drop, even with successful hits.
An average first-level character is going to have about 14 Hit Points on average, plus another (as of RUE) 19 SDC, for a total of 33 HP/SDC combined.
A Long Bow arrow does 2d6 damage, for an average of 7.
So in order to drop an average first-level character who has NO bonuses to HP/SDC/PE from skills or anything, a professional long bowman is going to have to shoot FIVE arrows into the guy.
Even with maximum damage (12 SDC), you're still going to need to shoot that McDonalds' clerk with THREE arrows to get him to drop.
Even with maximum damage and a critical strike, you're still going to need to shoot Pee-Wee Herman (assuming he's first level) TWO TIMES in order to drop him.
Why?
Because the damage for weapons wasn't updated once SDC was tacked onto the game.
Then there's the Two Attacks For Living, which wasn't in Rifts originally, then was added sometime around the Atlantis book, without mention.
So now your average first level character goes from 2 attacks to 4 attacks per melee.
But animals don't, so now your average guy on the street can attack twice as fast as a puma, bear, or weasel.
And Juicers didn't get a boost, so now instead of being twice as fast as a normal human, they're only 50% faster. (Same with robots, vampires, and other stuff, btw)
And mages who used to be able to hold their own a bit in combat with their 2 spells per melee suddenly found themselves only getting of 1 spell for every two times the got shot.
Then there's the Mage Armor rule, which came out without any new types of armor for mages. RUE finally introduced one generic kind, for LLWs, but the rule is still that most mages start off their adventures with armor that impedes their spellcasting abilities.
And the way that the armor impedes spellcasting is to require extra math and extra dice rolls every time you cast a spell, further bogging down combat.
When I say "revamp," I mean "set the entire system aside, figure out how you want it to feel to play Rifts, then only bring back the mechanisms that facilitate that feeling, and modify the rest into a streamlined, unified system where the different aspects interact easily and logically with each other."
Does that answer your question?
Edit:
Oh, and needless to say, all the tacked-on rules, scattered through countless books, often in obscure or unexpected places, means that NOBODY is likely to ever run even a single combat while successfully remembering and utilizing all of the different rules.
Another issue that comes from decades of rules-bloat, which comes from tacking on new rules instead of updating/fixing the core of the system
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