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Never played it myself, but I was just wondering how others fared against the 4 horseman?

My party took out Pestilence by casting Phobia: Insects on him.

Anthar wrote:My party took out Pestilence by casting Phobia: Insects on him.

Devious!

But thinking about it, I'm not sure how that'd do it. Since he already has the power to send all his inscets out in a swarm anyway, he'd do that and then continue fighting normally

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

Anthar wrote:My party took out Pestilence by casting Phobia: Insects on him.

Devious!

But thinking about it, I'm not sure how that'd do it. Since he already has the power to send all his inscets out in a swarm anyway, he'd do that and then continue fighting normally

Of course that wasn't the only thing done to him, but it sure made it a lot easier to take him out.

There's a phobia spell? Also I guess it depends if he rolled to save, failed and went catatonic..

My 13th level undead slayer and his party of Godling/Cybernight/Power armor commandos did very well with the 4 horseman. Only Death survuved

Poorly. Very, ridiculously poorly.

DevastationBob wrote:Never played it myself, but I was just wondering how others fared against the 4 horseman?

I would love to play this scenario, I have been wanting to for almost 20 years, but the power level is so high, that most GMs won't touch it with the proverbial 10' pole.

I think you would have to be both high in level, like 8th+, as well as high in power setting in order to survive and win the day.

A godling, or demigod, dragon hatchings, glitterboys, dragon juicers, all kinds of super powerful characters can get thrashed by these demons, so it is a chance to really pull out and play the toughest PCs you can get. There are only so many challenges on Rifts Earth for this kind of party, so the game would probably have to be a one shot if you were going to start in Africa, but I think it would be a lot of fun.

Gryphon wrote:Do you remember those old Keystoen Cops movies?

That.

It was embarrassing really. In the end, they resorted to basically carpet bombing Pestilence with scads of MRMs...which weakened him enough that only two players got greased. Sad, very, very sad. Players wouldn't work together in any real way, and team work is the key to taking them out, NOT trying to freaking challenge War one on freaking one because you think you are Billy Bad Arse!!!!

The 10th level cosmo knight in our group was actually doing very well with a 1 on 1 with War. Until War disarmed him and stole his cosmic blade.

Considering we just had the character classes from the main book, we still annihilated the Four Horsemen.

We went in with the Rifts version of a Heavy Brigade Combat Team. The losses were horrific between the Phoenix Empire and the four Horsemen we had over 50% losses. Not casualties which are wounded..those were over 200%.

Rockwolf66 wrote:We went in with the Rifts version of a Heavy Brigade Combat Team. The losses were horrific between the Phoenix Empire and the four Horsemen we had over 50% losses. Not casualties which are wounded..those were over 200%.

how preciecly does one get get 200% injury rating? are you including civilian injuries?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

Rockwolf66 wrote:We went in with the Rifts version of a Heavy Brigade Combat Team. The losses were horrific between the Phoenix Empire and the four Horsemen we had over 50% losses. Not casualties which are wounded..those were over 200%.

how preciecly does one get get 200% injury rating? are you including civilian injuries?

I had a sales manager at a company I worked at that would always say, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

If he says there were 50% fatalities and 200% wounded, I am all for it, makes for a great ending.

maybe he's confusing Proof with Percent...

I think it was tongue in cheek what he said... I don't think anyone really believes you can have more than 100% of your people wounded

I was there, and as a pretty significant hero, I saved the day.

It was a slaughter, most of the party was wiped out along with the cadre of NPC's. The day was saved by a full nuclear strike from the NGR.

Gryphon wrote:Nope, magical healing takes a casualty and gets them right back in the fight, and for this sort of thing, magical healing would be absolutely rampant. That and with such stuff as Pestilence, you are going to need absolutely scads of cure diseases.

I would tend to get percentages after teh battle was entirely over, but some people will recount a newly wounded trooper. You should see the casualty ratings at a typical SCA Pensig event!

"Wait...how many dead guys did we have today?"

"Umm...looks like....carry the four...7,365!"

"But...we only have 3,000 fighters for both side total!!!"

lol, ok, gamer math then... in the army, if you get shot or wounded and go back to fighting and get shot again or wounded again, you are just one casualty. have never heard of anyone getting to be multiple casualties

Athos wrote:

Gryphon wrote:Nope, magical healing takes a casualty and gets them right back in the fight, and for this sort of thing, magical healing would be absolutely rampant. That and with such stuff as Pestilence, you are going to need absolutely scads of cure diseases.

I would tend to get percentages after teh battle was entirely over, but some people will recount a newly wounded trooper. You should see the casualty ratings at a typical SCA Pensig event!

"Wait...how many dead guys did we have today?"

"Umm...looks like....carry the four...7,365!"

"But...we only have 3,000 fighters for both side total!!!"

lol, ok, gamer math then... in the army, if you get shot or wounded and go back to fighting and get shot again or wounded again, you are just one casualty. have never heard of anyone getting to be multiple casualties

Basically people were wounded...got healed and then got wounded in a different incident. basically saying that everyone was wounded bad enough to take them out of a fight at least twice.

Which time?
I've ran that meta-plotz scenario like 3 times to justify the waste of money that book was.

You could also have a 200% injury rate if you also take into account new people rotating in to replace people who have died or were so badly injured that they couldn't continue fighting the good fight (which in Rifts with healing spells/psionic powers really says something).

There were units in WWII that saw casualty rates 150% (or something like that, I can't remember specific numbers, I feel lucky to be halfway coherent this early in the morning) because a unit would have say 100 people in it at any time and through out the unit's deployment saw 150 people die in the line of battle.

Did that make the situation a little bit more clear.

Subjugator wrote:I was there, and as a pretty significant hero, I saved the day.

Well don't just tease us, what were you, how'd you save it? Did you disconnect the GM's laptop?

DhAkael wrote:Which time?
I've ran that meta-plotz scenario like 3 times to justify the waste of money that book was.

The most entertaining one?

I think it would be good to see some of the heroes from this gathering as npcs in offficial books

Athos wrote:

Gryphon wrote:Nope, magical healing takes a casualty and gets them right back in the fight, and for this sort of thing, magical healing would be absolutely rampant. That and with such stuff as Pestilence, you are going to need absolutely scads of cure diseases.

I would tend to get percentages after teh battle was entirely over, but some people will recount a newly wounded trooper. You should see the casualty ratings at a typical SCA Pensig event!

"Wait...how many dead guys did we have today?"

"Umm...looks like....carry the four...7,365!"

"But...we only have 3,000 fighters for both side total!!!"

lol, ok, gamer math then... in the army, if you get shot or wounded and go back to fighting and get shot again or wounded again, you are just one casualty. have never heard of anyone getting to be multiple casualties

Was in a group that had 130% death percentage. People whould be killed magicaly braght back to life to die again. Modern causalty reporting whould be confused ok we lost PFC Joe Snuffy, wait he is already listed as killed in action 9 times.

I guess I am old fashioned then, because if you live to tell the tale, you don't get to be counted as a death...

If your character is dead and not coming back, then and only then are you a casualty.

If you die and come back, to me that is more like wounded in action.

The Gathering of Heroes has always fascinated me in a sad sort of way, as an opportunity for peace, lost.

New Camelot sent forces, the NGR sent forces, and, I believe, so did the Gargoyle Empire.

This would have meant that it is likely at some point in time that Gargoyles and NGR troops were fighting the good fight, shoulder to shoulder. That sort of thing builds bonds between people, even ones that don't like one another.

This sort of camaraderie could have carried over towards a lasting peace in Europe, with understanding replacing mutual distrust. With Triax supplying the Gargoyles with machines and equipment, the NGR could have quickly expanded to become the New European Union (or, as I think of it, NEU, which means 'new' in German anyway). Undermining this, of course, would have been Splugorth agents who certainly don't want a lasting peace in one of their more profitable wars, and Coalition agents, who don't want their one true ally to start associating with d-bees. Wars, and covert wars in particular, make for strange bedfellows. Perhaps this might have happened. Perhaps the Splugorth and/or Coalition were successful. We will never know. An untold story of Rifts, life, and loss.

Not according to Canon.

The Splugorth send a few elite minions and teams of Minions, New Camelot eventually sends in Knights over Mrr'lyn's protests and the NGR only has a handful of Recon Teams.


The Gargoyles are supplied by the Phoenix Empire so they son't want to cut their own supply lines.

The CS knows nothing about Africa and could care less at this point in the timeline.

Basically you have a bunch of disparate groups all working to try and stop something that would kill them all. For the most part it's a war that is forgotten by those who didn't fight it.

Rockwolf66 wrote:Not according to Canon.

The Splugorth send a few elite minions and teams of Minions, New Camelot eventually sends in Knights over Mrr'lyn's protests and the NGR only has a handful of Recon Teams.

Elite minions are effectively spies. Battles of espionage behind-the-scenes is what I was getting at.

The NGR certainly sends more, as evidenced by the 'Aramis Knight' entry in Juicer uprising. Squadrons of fighter-bombers, for starters. This contradicts what was written in the first Triax book.

The Gargoyles are supplied by the Phoenix Empire so they son't want to cut their own supply lines.

a) I expect they would if they got a better deal. Emperor Zerstrun (sp?) isn't an idiot.
b) I also thought they were supplied by Atlantis, but it's been a while since I read that, so you may well be right.

The CS knows nothing about Africa and could care less at this point in the timeline.

Nor do they have to. They WOULD, however, care rather a lot if the NGR was getting cosy with d-bees. The odd 'accident' here, the odd false flag incident there... It's surprising how quickly people's prejudices can be re-inflamed with the right motivation, and Joseph Prosek is a master of such manipulation. With the CS working behind the wings, the NGR would never have an alliance with anyone ever again except for the CS. Not Tarnow, Not Romanov or the Sovietski, Just their good and dear friends the CS.

Basically you have a bunch of disparate groups all working to try and stop something that would kill them all. For the most part it's a war that is forgotten by those who didn't fight it.

That's true. Sad and scary but true. I just threw the NEU idea out there to see if people liked the scenario.

Comrade Corsarius wrote:The Gathering of Heroes has always fascinated me in a sad sort of way, as an opportunity for peace, lost.

New Camelot sent forces, the NGR sent forces, and, I believe, so did the Gargoyle Empire.

This would have meant that it is likely at some point in time that Gargoyles and NGR troops were fighting the good fight, shoulder to shoulder. That sort of thing builds bonds between people, even ones that don't like one another.

This sort of camaraderie could have carried over towards a lasting peace in Europe, with understanding replacing mutual distrust. With Triax supplying the Gargoyles with machines and equipment, the NGR could have quickly expanded to become the New European Union (or, as I think of it, NEU, which means 'new' in German anyway). Undermining this, of course, would have been Splugorth agents who certainly don't want a lasting peace in one of their more profitable wars, and Coalition agents, who don't want their one true ally to start associating with d-bees. Wars, and covert wars in particular, make for strange bedfellows. Perhaps this might have happened. Perhaps the Splugorth and/or Coalition were successful. We will never know. An untold story of Rifts, life, and loss.

Sadly that's too much a real life phenomenon. Look at the Christmas Truce of WWI, the soldiers on both sides just decided to spend the time around Christmas being decent to one another and hooking up in friendship and playing games and such in one area which horrified High Command which made sure it wasn't possible the following year since *gasp* that could lead to PEACE and leave them with nothing to do. It almost reached the literal expression of that question 'what if they held a war and nobody came?'.

Gryphon wrote:In the end, they resorted to basically carpet bombing Pestilence with scads of MRMs...

Josh Hilden wrote:The day was saved by a full nuclear strike from the NGR.

Isn't this pretty much canonically how it happened anyway? NGR doing the bulk of damage from near-orbit and then I imagine the whole 'Gathering of Heroes' group just came in to sweep up the bones.

Comrade Corsarius wrote:The NGR certainly sends more, as evidenced by the 'Aramis Knight' entry in Juicer uprising. Squadrons of fighter-bombers, for starters. This contradicts what was written in the first Triax book.

Not necessarily contradicts, we can assume that the 4 horsemen were still around and undefeated during NGR's publication. Juicer Uprising is the first world book I recall actually referencing them being beaten.