What is Rifts like?

[Devall2000]

If cover art determined the success of a game, Rifts would be doing pretty well(I think).

What's it like? I played it once a long time ago and don't have a grasp of the rules. What's the general dice-rolling mechanic that's used in Rifts? Is it hard to learn?

thanks,
Jamie

 

[Andor]

Ha. I'm filled with foreboding about where this thread is going to go...

But to answer your question:

Combat is d20 based. Roll d20 +modifiers for skills and stats. These boosts are small, but by default you only need a 4 or better to hit. The defender usually has some active defense options however, and the attack has to beat the defenders roll to connect.

Armour is ablative.

Skills are percentile based and increase with level. One feature of the system is that a character can select physical skills to increase stats. (For example the almost mandatory boxing skill adds +1 attacks per round.)

There are magic and psionics rules which are quite powerful. In fact the base power level of Rifts is MDC which is about like main battle tanks. A human out of armour is a dead man.

Now a word of caution. Rifts has no character balance. Period. The GM can force the construction of a balanced party by limiting character selection, but even in the main book you can make a character anywhere from a Vagabond (I.E. a bum, with no MDC equipment) to a Dragon with hundreds of MDC and many powers including regeneration. The supplements only expand the disparity. And if you include the other palladium games (as many GMs do, and there is even a conversion book to aid this) it can get more ridiculous. I've seen characters on the Palladium message boards that were capable of slaughtering Pantheons in a single round.

 

[jdrakeh]

HaSkills are percentile based and increase with level. One feature of the system is that a character can select physical skills to increase stats. (For example the almost mandatory boxing skill adds +1 attacks per round.)

You do hit on something here. Most skills are percentile based, while others are used purely as modifiers for basic physical or mental attributes. The lack of a unified skill system is actually one of my biggest gripes with Rifts (but, hey, at least they explain how the percentile-based skills are used now -- for more than a decade, the rules only told you how to calculate the ratings, not how to use them in actual play).

As for how Rifts plays, my general experience has been that character creation takes a ridiculously long time (due in part to a lack of unified mechanics) but that game play itself is fast-paced. The only time the lack of mechancial balance has been an issue during a Rifts game (again, IME) is when either the GM is inexperienced and/or when the players are immature spotlight hogs who don't understand the principle of cooperative play.

If you have a good GM and unselfish players who aren't all about stealing everybody else's thunder, Rifts can be a blast. Using multiple rule books helps cut down on the amount of time it takes to generate a character (I've seen it get whittled down to around 30 minutes per character with a group of six people and three rule books).

 

[Michael Silverbane]

As for how Rifts plays, my general experience has been that character creation takes a ridiculously long time (due in part to a lack of unified mechanics) but that game play itself is fast-paced. The only time the lack of mechancial balance has been an issue during a Rifts game (again, IME) is when either the GM is inexperienced and/or when the players are immature spotlight hogs who don't understand the principle of cooperative play.

If you have a good GM and unselfish players who aren't all about stealing everybody else's thunder, Rifts can be a blast. Using multiple rule books helps cut down on the amount of time it takes to generate a character (I've seen it get whittled down to around 30 minutes per character with a group of six people and three rule books).

I pretty much agree with all of this.

RIFTS (and the entire Palladium system) has a lot of missing ground as far as the rules go, as well. So you're going to need players that are okay with the GM making a lot of judgment calls.

Later
silver

 

[Jerrand Redband]

i believe the kool thing about Rifts is all the different characters you could have in a i ran we had a rift open in space in the Robotech world bringing in a veritech fighter and one opened near an old t.v. that had loony tunes playing and out poped Daffy Duck then Dr. Doom had a machine go wrong and Spider-Man was in the group too

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

I had bought three Rifts books at the beginning but only played it once.

During that time, I wondered why in the world I was wandering over a wasteland in a converted dump truck with a psion and a mega juicer foraging for food and killing monsters in my glitter boy armor. Somehow I figured this was the better course of action. Why was I doing this? Why did I have Glitter Boy Armor. Why didn't I buy food?

 

[Jerrand Redband]

LOL How do you eat when your in the glitterboy armor like if your on patrol i would not like to be caught out of my suit if something the GM had for an encounter that could take on a glitterboy stopped by while i was having a sandwich LOL


i remember a player using the stabilizers in a gliterboy suit to pierce a monster that had knocked her over remember they shot out of the feet to hold a glitterboy to the ground when they fired their

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

The three-foot pitons, I know.

I wasn't worried about being caught out of my suit because there was a mega-juicer who could punch holes in the Earth and a psion with some gun from the Russian sourcebook that fired sawblades and hit like a plasma cannon...

...god, that game was dumb...

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

Great flavor, fantastic world.
Love the politics and touches: the Coalition, Tolkeen, etc.

Not so great mechanics. But they do hold a sentimental place in my heart as does the whole Palladium system because it was one of the first I picked up and have played TMNT so much I wore out my books.

 

[Stoat]

I haven't played Rifts in about 10 years, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but . . .

Rifts needs a strong-willed GM with a clear idea of where the campaign is going and a solid knowledge of whatever rules the party chooses to use.

Rifts also needs a group of PC's with similar interests in the type of game they want to play.

These rules may apply to other games, but IMO, apply trebly to Rifts. As noted above, the core rulebook alone contains rules for creating ordinary run-of-the-mill vagabonds, gigantic super robots with an effective weapons range of more than a mile, or a damn dragon. If player "A" expects a gritty game of post-apocalyptic survival, player "B" wants to be a heroic mech pilot, and player "C" wants to be a werewolf struggling with his dark side, they can all do that. And, in my experience, trying to do all of that at once leads to an unsatisfying game. Try to decide the tone you're going for immediately, and require the players to create characters that fit that general tone.

Also note that the Rifts ruleset is wonky. Some rules don't make sense as written. There are a lot of little subsystems that use different rules from each other. (Magic, in particular, seems to be a collection of ad hoc subsystems created without reference to each other.)

Character creation and NPC generation can take a looong time.

I dug on the system for awhile, but found it to be a lot more work than I was willing to put in. Also, I had moment that might qualify for the "worst RPG experience" thread, which was unrelated to the system.