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So, I've not played Rifts since 1996 when my college game group graduated and we all left.

I have the new RUE book.

It seems our old characters (I still have my TW I've had since I was 14.) had waaaay too high of a modifier for shooting. We had been adding P.P., HTH, Sniper, weapon systems, physical skills and RP:Elite bonus's all together when using power armor and robot vehicles.

So, as I understand the current rules it breaks down like this?

Punching on foot: P.P. + Physical skills (boxing etc.) + HTH skill.

Hand to hand with weapons : same as above, but with the specific type of W.P. Ancient skill added too. It seems strange that having a knife makes me more accurate than with a fist but, whatever.

Shooting on foot: W.P. Modern Weapon of choice + Sniper skill(if any) + Sharpshooting W.P. skill(if any) + Laser sight/innate weapon bonus(if any). No P.P. attribute bonus. No natural born shooters in this world, just better training.

Punching in a power armor and robots: Same as on foot, but add Robot Combat Elite.

Hand to hand weapons in power armor: same as punching, but add Ancient W.P.'s.

Shooting in power armor/robot: "Weapon Systems" skill + "Weapons Engineer" skill + W.P. Heavy Mega-Damage Weapons + whatever innate shooting (not hth, it has to be specifically about shooting) bonus's the armor/robot/vehicle might have. No sniper or sharpshooting skill. I suppose you could take sharpshooting and name a single weapon system built into the robot, but that is a GM call. Not sure if sniper skill applies.

So 6 types of to-hit bonus's, fist/sword/gun on foot and fist/sword/gun in a robot.

This seem like how its supposed to be? I've seen some talk that physical skills like Boxing should not apply to using a sword.

You may have Robot Combat Basic, if not in armor for which you have Elite, which also adds a bonus.

Weapons Engineer skill adds a +1 where appropriate.

Also, don't forget any bonuses if under the influence of psychic powers or spells like Intuitive Combat (RUE, pg 173).

Grazzik wrote:You may have Robot Combat Basic, if not in armor for which you have Elite, which also adds a bonus.

Weapons Engineer skill adds a +1 where appropriate.

Also, don't forget any bonuses if under the influence of psychic powers or spells like Intuitive Combat (RUE, pg 173).

Thanks, I added Weapons Engineer skill into the list of potential modifier sources as an edit. I hadn't known about that one.

AceTW wrote:So, I've not played Rifts since 1996 when my college game group graduated and we all left.

I have the new RUE book.

It seems our old characters (I still have my TW I've had since I was 14.) had waaaay too high of a modifier for shooting. We had been adding P.P., HTH, Sniper, weapon systems, physical skills and RP:Elite bonus's all together when using power armor and robot vehicles.
.

A similar question popped up in the Macross/Robotech forum a while back...viewtopic.php?f=9&t=183051#p3115193

Since each rulebook is different best stick to the answer Grazzik gave since it is specific to Rifts.

AceTW wrote:Shooting in power armor/Robot: "Weapon Systems" skill + "Weapons Engineer" skill + W.P. Heavy Mega-Damage Weapons + whatever innate shooting (not hth, it has to be specifically about shooting) bonus's the armor/robot/vehicle might have. No sniper or sharpshooting skill. I suppose you could take sharpshooting and name a single weapon system built into the robot, but that is a GM call. Not sure if sniper skill applies.

I would double-check your Rifts sourcebook which includes the Sharpshooting skill. I thought the Sharpshooting skill was specific to W.P. Energy Rifle and W.P. Energy Pistol so you would not be able to use it with Weapon Systems or W.P. Heavy. Also, I thought the skill was unique to Rifts New West O.C.C.'s such as the Gunslinger and Gunfighter; granting unique bonuses such as initiative for a high Physical Prowess. It has been a long time and I do not own that sourcebook so I might not be recalling the rules correctly.

"Since each rule book is different best stick to the answer Grazzik gave since it is specific to Rifts."

Indeed.

Even Chaos Earth and Rifts UE contradict each other in the game rules. Even though they take place on the same planet separated by 200 years of time.

Chaos Earth: P.P. always matters.
Rifts UE: P.P. is just for punching and cutting, not for shooting.

Personally, I think P.P. should matter to both since there has to be people who are just better at shooting when given the same skills. But IRL some people shoot well but suck at punching, and the opposite. But it's a game. You are either good at both or niether. As long as the rules are fair, they do not have to be pedantically accurate.

And good point about W.P. Sharpshooting not being able to be applied to W.P. Heavy Mega-Damage Weapons. I guess that what Pilot Related: Weapon Systems and Mechanical: Weapons Engineer are for. Both are taking extra skills to supplement the main skill, the W.P.

However, there is a wrinkle that i just read about tonight! The newest Rifter has a breakdown of variations of USA-G10 GB pilots. Now the stock OCC in the RUE gets a set of bonus's over and above the pilot's HTH skill+GB Elite+physical skills when it comes to HTH fighting. Rifter #85 lets you opt out of the stock set bonus (I.e. "Generational" GB pilot) in favor of someone who was chosen because they were a Exceptional Marksman. In this case the bonus is a special skill where the Sharpshooter skill gets tacked onto W.P. MDC weapons which is normally not allowed. But only for the Boom Gun. This is an edge case and adapted for a player who wants more shooty/less punchy. But there can be a path where it can be done.

AceTW wrote:Chaos Earth: P.P. always matters.
Rifts UE: P.P. is just for punching and cutting, not for shooting.

Chaos Earth page 149 “Character P.P. Bonuses do NOT count when shooting an auto­matic weapon, rail gun, shotgun, energy weapon or any modern weapon.”

Mlp7029 wrote:

AceTW wrote:Chaos Earth: P.P. always matters.
Rifts UE: P.P. is just for punching and cutting, not for shooting.

Chaos Earth page 149 “Character P.P. Bonuses do NOT count when shooting an auto­matic weapon, rail gun, shotgun, energy weapon or any modern weapon.”

If I recall correctly older books had PP counting then around the time of robotech coming back to PB they changed it to not counting. With shadow updates it is possible to people could have different versions of rules in the same book.

Blue_Lion wrote:

Mlp7029 wrote:

AceTW wrote:Chaos Earth: P.P. always matters.
Rifts UE: P.P. is just for punching and cutting, not for shooting.

Chaos Earth page 149 “Character P.P. Bonuses do NOT count when shooting an auto­matic weapon, rail gun, shotgun, energy weapon or any modern weapon.”

If I recall correctly older books had PP counting then around the time of robotech coming back to PB they changed it to not counting. With shadow updates it is possible to people could have different versions of rules in the same book.

That would be a first for Palladium. PP bonus not counting when shooting has been one of the few consistent rules in all of Palladium's settings.

So I definitely miss-read the part about P.P being applicable to gun combat in Chaos Earth.

However, in the original Rifts main book on page 40, RH column, when describing attacking with weapons on a robot.

"Strike Bonuses
Bonuses to strike can be gained by skills, such as hand to hand
combat and/or Robot combat and/or from a high Physical Prowess
(P .P.) attribute. All bonuses are accumulative. Remember, bonuses
from Robot combat apply only when a robot is being piloted."

I should point out that the paragraphs just previous to this was describing bursts from guns, so naturally we read on believing we were still talking about guns, not just punching or swords.

Even worse is part of the example of modern combat narration that starts on page 42 of the old Rifts Main Book(RMB).

"The second person to act is the bandit SAMAS! In this case, the
pilot has a total. of four (4) melee attacks. On his first attack he stands
and opens up with a rail gun burst on the Enforcer. A roll to strike is
made (1020) . A roll of 14+ 1 (burst W.P. bonus), plus another + 1
from a basic power armor training makes the total strike roll a 16. A
definite hit. Damage is rolled; 20 mega-damage (M.D.) is inflicted on
the UAR-I Enforcer."

The guy presumably has no high P.P. bonus, not that it matters in normal ranged combat. He may or may not have the Weapon Systems skill, but that only applies to non-handheld weapons. He is using the C40R railgun in the SAMAS's hands so W.P. Heavy M.D.C. Energy Weapons skill gives him the +1 to burst and presumably is lower than level 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15 because each of those levels adds an additional +1 to aim. That used to be the W.P. skill progression. Now, it is at levels 2, 4, 7, 10 and 13.

But then they add in the +1 to strike from basic power armor training.

This was a mistake.

That bonus is for punching or swinging a sword while in the power armor. Hand to hand only.

They also forget the +1 to aim from the laser targeting feature commons to all power armor (page 211, item #5). But wait! SAMAS have superior sensors as listed in the description of the SAMAS on page 194, Weapons System #5. "Sensor System Note" where all Samas have a +2 to ranged combat as well as a +1 to dodge long range weapons shot at it. At least it was noted with the common power armor features that the SAMAS is supposed to use its own, better, bonus.

Instead of a +2 to hit from a W.P. burst and Basic Power Armor Training he should have had a +3 from...

+1 from W.P. Heavy Energy Weapon in burst mode.
+1 from laser targeting common to all power armor. Not for a SAMAS, see next.
+2 from the special sensor systems of the PA-06A SAMAS model.

This changed in the RUE as the Sensors of the PA-06A now lists it as "Standard". But they forgot to edit the "standard" list item 5 when specifically say the SAMAS doesn't use +1 to aim (because it is supposed to have its own +2 to aim). So according to the RUE that SAMAS is actually worse than other power armors because doesn't have the laser targeting as listed on RUE page 271. I have to treat this as a typo. So now in the RUE the SAMAS and Sampson have the same aiming bonus. No more superior Coalition tech advantage.

I can see why we thought that P.P. had an effect on shooting. To us a + to strike was always cumulative. We added everything to our bonus to hit. P.P., HtH skill, Robot HTH skill, weapon systems skill, targeting bonus's from sights , all of it. At least we did the same for the NPC's so it was even, but man, we never missed.

One good thing they added to the RUE is to mention in Robot (and Power Armor) Combat: Basic and Elite skill charts that there is a strike bonus for HTH only and another for ranged combat.

They go on to mention that the power armor guns only benefit from Weapon Systems training and W.P. Heavy MDC weapon. Though it is still a little vague as to whether or not these are supposed to be combined or Weapon Systems is strictly for mounted weapons and W.P. Heavy MDC is just for the handheld weapons.