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Underseas despite its flaws is severely under rated in my opinion.

This is THE bridge book for travel in Rifts between the numerous other world books. Unless your group is planning on taking a chance on a Rift then eventually you'll need to cross a body of water if you plan on traveling.

Both of the South America books are filled with great stuff, but got caught up in the C.J. power creep stigma. If some of the equipment like the Glitter Boy 7, Mastodon Battle Robot & Galapagos Submersible Robot and R.C.C.s like Master Blood rider, Monster Hunter, Neo Human and Anti-Monster had been introduced in later books I bet they would have seen more play. How could a class like Monster Hunter not be a blast to play. In a world were your battling Samas, Glitter Boys and demons, wielding a little extra power isn't going to upset the balance since all of the R.C.C.s abilities have a very limited range compared to Rifts weaponry. If a R.C.C. seems too strong have the GM limit their P.P.E., I.S.P., M.D.C. and have the player roll the character under GM supervision.

Africa had too much focus on the gods and the Horsemen, really needed to be more versatile to bring life to the setting. Really needs a second book to round it out, but don't see that happening anytime soon.

Two of my favorite Rifts books have always been Mercenaries and Juicer Uprising. They both a have a bit of everything:world information, adventure ideas, and some equipment.

Juicer Uprising was packed with cool stuff and Arthur Knight leader of the Grim Reapers cult is the coolest villain in Rifts. Mercenaries is a little out of date now, but still a great book and gave us the Naruni Juggernaut Hover Tank, something that gives CS troops nightmares.

C J had alot of good ideas. The only real problem was in the damages. Some weapons were woefully underpowered while the vast majority were to much.

I liked Mystic Russia. That entertained me the most. Juicer Uprisings is probably one of the most popular books out there, so I wouldn't call it underrated.

As for the best villain in Rifts...I'll take the endless feud between Alexander Duncson and the Prosek family as the "Villain." That single sticking point has caused more needless death and destruction than any other effect in North America. One hundred years of torture, violence, bitter revenge, death squads, and human rights violations is hard to beat for villainy.

Mercenary adventures.

rat_bastard wrote:Mercenary adventures.

ooh yeah. Good one.

I'd have to cast my vote with Sourcebook one. Because it was one of the early books, its often overlooked for newer things, but I've found that whenever people underestimate ARCHIE, things get ugly.

Hagan Lonovich wrote:I wouldnt count SB1, Juicer Uprising or Merc's to be underrated. Many characters are used from them and they are staples of most campaigns. I was wondering what books that dont get alot of pc's made from them or even used at all, were underused or underrated.

As for favorite villains: Myself, the Horsemen, Rama-Set, Dr. Bradford and Gen. Drogue were all loads of fun. My favorite non powerful villain: Manitoba Saskatchewan!

Mercenary adventures, not Mercenaries, two different books.

Honestly Mercenary Adventures is probably the least used book in my collection. Other than the Combat Mage O.C.C. and the new spells, it was just a bunch of adventures for Merc-Town and specialist O.C.C's. Useful but it is not used very much, by me anyway.

Seneca wrote:Honestly Mercenary Adventures is probably the least used book in my collection. Other than the Combat Mage O.C.C. and the new spells, it was just a bunch of adventures for Merc-Town and specialist O.C.C's. Useful but it is not used very much, by me anyway.

Mercenary Adventures is an underrated book, in my opinion. Many of the Combat Mage spells are quite useful, and many of them would really powerful if built into a suit of TW armor.

I voted for Mystic Russia. Seriously, more Archaic Demons than you can shake a stick at and most of them are pretty much bad news for players! Russian Fire magic is very nice and it's availability to Russian LLW's makes for an interesting twist to a staple OCC!

The Sohei Deathless Ones are just nasty as you can get. Strategists supreme AND they make magic weapons to give away to potential mortal evil doers.

EDIT: Almost forgot about the much needed overhaul the the Necromancer OCC!

I voted for Xiticix invasion. After that I would say Merc adventures (YEAH MAGEBANE!!!) and Mystic Russia.

Mercenary Adventures is so overused in my game that I can't honestly say the book is underrated either. Paratrooper? Amazing. Gladiator? Awesome if you can deal with the randomness, or want to be a politician. (Yeah. An entirely human or master psychic gladiator makes an awesome politician)

And those spells. My god, those spells are wonderful. Put some of those on your Battle Magus and watch the fun. I particularly like Invisibility to Sensors and Mystic Invisibility. If you have Dogboy problems, these spells are terrific. Once those are up, you just cast Simple Invisibility and go hog wild. You still need Aura of Death for natural thermal vision, but it's got great potential.

Balabanto wrote:Mercenary Adventures is so overused in my game that I can't honestly say the book is underrated either. Paratrooper? Amazing. Gladiator? Awesome if you can deal with the randomness, or want to be a politician. (Yeah. An entirely human or master psychic gladiator makes an awesome politician)

And those spells. My god, those spells are wonderful. Put some of those on your Battle Magus and watch the fun. I particularly like Invisibility to Sensors and Mystic Invisibility. If you have Dogboy problems, these spells are terrific. Once those are up, you just cast Simple Invisibility and go hog wild. You still need Aura of Death for natural thermal vision, but it's got great potential.

Let's not forget Stealthwalk. Mercenary Adventures has more sneaking around spells, I believe, than any other Rifts supplement. Mystic Water Blast is loads of fun if you want to ruin a vampire's entire night.

Hagan Lonovich wrote:Mystic russia is definately underrated, is the deathless one the thing with the egg?

Indeed it is! One hell of a weakness, but a hard one to find.

ak-73 wrote: Triax (BTW... how are things going? )

...

PS I have to add that I only managed to glance at D-Bees - it does hold some potential. With a little luck I can borrow a copy from a friend in... 2 weeks, when we have our next scheduled session.

Triax 2 has been turned in for a while and we hope it sees print by the end of the year. I'm working on a variety of projects right now, all at varrying stages of development (I just started a new job, so its been tough getting everything going).

D-bees of North America is one of my favorite books ever. It started as some fun project, butturned into a fantastic resource.

Out of that list, Dinosaur Swamp, Mystic Russia and Xiticix Invasion are my three favorite books. Xiticix Invasion and Mystic Russia are good companion books for Canada (along with Free Quebec if they go east). Dinosaur Swamp is my favorite are of Rifts earth outside of Canada (which requires quite a few books to get a complete setting). Merc Ops is one of the best books for adventure ideas and weapons.

ak-73 wrote:

The Galactus Kid wrote:
Triax 2 has been turned in for a while and we hope it sees print by the end of the year. I'm working on a variety of projects right now, all at varrying stages of development (I just started a new job, so its been tough getting everything going).

Don't forget to make sure that the translations are better this time.

Although I doubt you will be able to top Games Workshop's work in that regard . I'll only mention "Judge Richter", lol.

Not a problem. As opposed to trying something interesting and new...being that people will go bat-crazy over it for no reason other than to prove they spek bter germany...I'm hoping this time they completely left it out.

As such...Everyone everywhere now speaks English American, as GOD intended.

Actually, if it's an issue for German people, why don't we just let someone who's german on these boards get together with Galactus Kid and translate it? Then everyone will be happy, one more person gets a small check, and life goes on.

Balabanto wrote:Actually, if it's an issue for German people, why don't we just let someone who's german on these boards get together with Galactus Kid and translate it? Then everyone will be happy, one more person gets a small check, and life goes on.

Doesn't matter. There will be someone who is "more german" who will nitpick.

dark brandon wrote:

Balabanto wrote:Actually, if it's an issue for German people, why don't we just let someone who's german on these boards get together with Galactus Kid and translate it? Then everyone will be happy, one more person gets a small check, and life goes on.

Doesn't matter. There will be someone who is "more german" who will nitpick.

All who hear this, pay heed to the words of Dark Brandon!!!

My question is who is picking Source Book 2 The Mechanoids? Other than a one shot adventure, yes of fairly epic scale like Africa, it is extremely limited. In the cannon it states that the Mechnoids were defeated and Archie stole their tech.

So why do you feel this book is "underrated"? I'd honestly would have called this one a Adventure model instead of a source book. Play out the conflict and then it gathers dust.

For me Mechanoids space needs the RUE treatment. I recently bought the book and the MDC values of the Mechnoids needs to be increased. Not to much but imo they are underpowered in terms of MDC compared to the overall increase in power level. The Wasp has 150 mdc. Not much a challenge imo for an experienced group. Second I think they should put the adventures and updated Mechanoids stats in Mechanoids Space. A 112 page sourcebook des not imo do them justice.

ak-73 wrote:

dark brandon wrote:

Balabanto wrote:Actually, if it's an issue for German people, why don't we just let someone who's german on these boards get together with Galactus Kid and translate it? Then everyone will be happy, one more person gets a small check, and life goes on.

Doesn't matter. There will be someone who is "more german" who will nitpick.

Well, if you say that the actual content of the book is more important you are certainly right. But if you decide to include -for flavour- German terms, then in the globalized 21st century there is no excuse for not getting them half-way right. I don't believe hat this willd much of a problem for the authors either, it's just that in Triax1 the appendix has been strikingly odd on some accounts. Okay? You'd also be bewildered if I translated some German words into English via altavista babelfish and put that into a commercial product.

I have already offered my help on that for free but quite likely it they won't have to draw on it in my estimation. Still the offer stands.

Alex

I think it's funny you assume that when Triax was first published, they didn't already do this...

and yet here you are...

So, to avoid such conflicts in the future...we should probably just forget about it...and just use well known German words...like blitzkrieg or Mercedes-Benz

I'm not even sure there were a lot of online translators back when Triax was released. That came out in what, 94, 95?

ak-73 wrote:That's of course an option. Otoh, as a GM I always did enjoy using some buzzwords. I liked, for example, Cyberpunk's inclusion of Yakuza slang in Pacific Rim - I can't guarantee, however, that they ain't complete nonsense in Japanese as I don't speak the language.

Alex

Wait till you see the Mercedes-benz Cyborg!

I'm not even sure there were a lot of online translators back when Triax was released. That came out in what, 94, 95?

Probably not...but that doesn't mean people who spoke german couldn't be found.

Robert wrote:Well the thing about the Mechanoids is that while they are at a Medium level of power each, they can clone and build themselves endlessly and if a brain survives they can create whichever Mechanoid type is needed as they have the cells of each type in storage (Or so I was led to believe).

I can no lnger consider them medium power level imo. When the Rifts mechanoids book was released yes now I find them low power. A regular Wasp has 150 MDC. A person in a old style Samas suit has a decent chance of badly damaging one. Let's say for example that the person in the Samas suit rolls a natural 20 and rolls max damage with his railgun. That is 80 mdc off the main body. Instead he uses Rocket Launcer and fires two plasma mini-missles. He rolls good and gets max damage. Right there 120 mdc off the main body. If you play with ust Rue and a few books then yes they are a threat. If you allow everything imo they become rapidly outclassed.

You make a good point with a Mechanoid brain being able to clone more troops as needed. Unfortunately the Mechanoids resources are very limited and they do not have the number needed to be a real threat. At least at first. They are cut off from the rest of the main Mechanoid force and may not have access to the tech required. What would be an interesting and frightening combination is mixing Mechanoids with splicers. Imagine the Mechanoids growing organic superwarriors as needed all the while using captured brainwashed human slaves as the basis of their Splicer army.

Mindwerks.

I just love that book And I have not GMed a game in ten years in europe where they were not the bad guys.

They are just so much fun.

Rifts Japan is the most underrated book in the entire Rifts line ..

Better tech then even the NGR ..

Better overall Monster Hunters ..

Better Cyborgs ..

Rifts Japan in my opinion is the single most under rated of all the rifts books.

Iron Manticore wrote:Three words...Dolphin...Power...Armor...no, but seriously...it's a great book.

Those 3 words are the very thing that turned me off of Rifts Undersea ..

I mean there are now more Dolphins in the ocean then sentient populations on the Rifts Earth's surface ..

And to be able to train an equip them .. with little to no resources .. to me makes me think of them as the Coalition of the Sea ..

To much to just "Suspend Disbelief" if you ask me ..

Iron Manticore wrote:So, I guess you never wanted them to just strap a few torpedoes onto Darwin from SeaQuest DSV, eh?

It is weird, but I challenge you to find another mainstream RPG that openly embraces the Intelligent Cetacean as a playable character race? Has any other game ever existed that has let you be a Humpack Whale? Or the Pneuma-Biforms? They are weird, yes...and probably turned a lot of people off...but playing a Pneuma-Biform Killer Whale has always struck me as a rather kewl character concept. Especially if most of the rest of the group is some form of humanoid and when they battle underwater they require mechanized support - and you can join them by strapping on your own suit of Power Armor.

My problem is not with the OCC in an of itself ..

My problem an the reason it turned me off .. is simply put ..

The number of those species left unchecked for hundreds of years .. would be something on the lvl of 10-50 times the overall population of the Surface world.

And in a "Post Apocolyptical" setting .. if everything in the sea has special powers .. English as a launguage and is in some type of P.A.

Is it REALLY .. a Post Apocolyptical setting ?

Rifts is not post-apocalypse.

Rifts is post-post-apocalypse. (No, I didn't mistype that.)

Rifts is not post-apocalypse.

Rifts is post-post-apocalypse. (No, I didn't mistype that.)

Truth.

My vote goes to Warlords of Russia; not perhaps the must underrated, Undersea or Bugs probably does take that one. I just ab-so-freaking-lutely LOVE the Russia books, especially Warlords. I have wanted to play a Sovietski borg that got Rifted to North America, spreading the words of Comrade Marx to the proleteriat and peasant masses.

Energy Hammer.

Vibro Sickle.

A Red Star Dawns...

BTW, has anyone read The Red Star comic? It's phenomenal. I literally cannot wait for the Sovietski book.

If it ever happens.

Which if the capitalist pig dogs have their way, it won't!

Glory to the Revolution!

In defense of Underseas, I didn't think the idea of playing a dolphin in power armor was all that bad. At least they didn't take the opportunity to introduce the pre-rifts DOLPHIN SAMAS (or D-Sam)!

GlitterKnight wrote:

Rifts is not post-apocalypse.

Rifts is post-post-apocalypse. (No, I didn't mistype that.)

Truth.

My vote goes to Warlords of Russia; not perhaps the must underrated, Undersea or Bugs probably does take that one. I just ab-so-freaking-lutely LOVE the Russia books, especially Warlords. I have wanted to play a Sovietski borg that got Rifted to North America, spreading the words of Comrade Marx to the proleteriat and peasant masses.

Energy Hammer.

Vibro Sickle.

A Red Star Dawns...

BTW, has anyone read The Red Star comic? It's phenomenal. I literally cannot wait for the Sovietski book.

If it ever happens.

Which if the capitalist pig dogs have their way, it won't!

Glory to the Revolution!

We're working on that. Hopefully it will be out sometime next year.

The Galactus Kid wrote:

GlitterKnight wrote:

Rifts is not post-apocalypse.

Rifts is post-post-apocalypse. (No, I didn't mistype that.)

Truth.

My vote goes to Warlords of Russia; not perhaps the must underrated, Undersea or Bugs probably does take that one. I just ab-so-freaking-lutely LOVE the Russia books, especially Warlords. I have wanted to play a Sovietski borg that got Rifted to North America, spreading the words of Comrade Marx to the proleteriat and peasant masses.

Energy Hammer.

Vibro Sickle.

A Red Star Dawns...

BTW, has anyone read The Red Star comic? It's phenomenal. I literally cannot wait for the Sovietski book.

If it ever happens.

Which if the capitalist pig dogs have their way, it won't!

Glory to the Revolution!

We're working on that. Hopefully it will be out sometime next year.

Sweet news to my ears ...

Munchkin Slappin GM wrote:Lets get back on topic.

The Sovietski Sourcebook is the most underrated anticipated release. hahaha

But seriously, I do think that many people underestimate Mystic Russia, russian fire magic, and russian demons.

There's a really good seciton in the Choas Earth source book Creatures of Chaos about odd demonic weaknesses (bird calls and such).

From other canon sources, it seems that the screwy weakness is mora a domain of the archaic demons, but I sometimes arbitrarily assign screwy weaknesses to existing big name demons just for flavor.