So what's the most powerful combo in Rifts?

Saeviomagy said:

I've seen players who were perfectly willing to go into battle with a decent weapon and no armor. In this, they shared common tactics with many of the world's irregulars, who may enter battle with only an RPG and no helmet or flak vest.

Click to expand...

There's a pretty big difference between the effectiveness of a flak vest/helmet in the real world, and having or not having MDC capacity.

Click to expand...

How do you figure?

A muhadjin who is just wearing tribal robes and firing an RPG could be killed with a single bullet or the thrust of a knife. If he actually took a round from a tank shell, he's gone...no more dead, just more spectacularly so.

A RIFTS PC without MDC armor is like that irregular. He's all offense and no defense. He can deliver a punch, but can't take one at all.

And in an ambush? I mean sure, you can play your character as though you're a 3e wizard with 5 con, but eventually someone is going to hit you.

Click to expand...

While I can't say I've actually played a Con5 Wizard, I've played one with Con8. He survived by not getting hit. When he finally did get hit and killed, the extra 12 HP wouldn't have helped- he'd have needed an extra 40.

Dannyalcatraz said:

How do you figure?

A muhadjin who is just wearing tribal robes and firing an RPG could be killed with a single bullet or the thrust of a knife. If he actually took a round from a tank shell, he's gone...no more dead, just more spectacularly so.

A RIFTS PC without MDC armor is like that irregular. He's all offense and no defense. He can deliver a punch, but can't take one at all.

Click to expand...

IIRC, MDC damage gets multiplied by 100 (or is it 10??) when applied to SDC, yes? And starting characters get something like 3d6 sdc?

That means that a rifts muhadjin who gets hit by a bullet from an MDC pistol IS DEAD, guaranteed. Same for the thrust of an MDC knife. Or a nearby MDC grenade hit. That's pretty different from real-world weapons: while a bullet might kill you, it's quite likely to just wound you, and even if you are killed by it, it's not necessarily straight away.

Meanwhile, the guy wearing an MDC flakjacket cannot be killed by a single hit from any of these things.

Which, again, is different to the real world. A flakjacket reduces the chance that you'll die by a significant margin, but it's far, far, far from 100%.

And then there's the fact that the wall that you're taking cover behind is not going to be an MDC structure unless it's specifically fortified. That means if a grenade catches you within it's radius, you're dead, cover or no.

Guys without MDC armor in rifts are surviving combat purely through the good graces of their DM.

Actually, RW muhadjin who get hit by modern battlefield weaponry don't generally live to tell the tale.

Simply put, RW or RIFTS, unarmored combatants actually hit by military munitions have about the same survival rate.

The reason is this: RIFTS weaponry, whether heavy battlefield pieces or sidearms, are generally at least as powerful as RW artillery of various kinds- and according to certain studies, it is the heavy weapons like artillery, tanks, etc., that cause as much as 86% of battlefield casualties.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/urbancasstudy.pdf

So, if you're a resistance fighter whose black-market budget options are between purchasing MDC armor or a powerful MDC weapon, you're probably going to opt for the weapon. Armor lets you survive, yes, but the weapon gives you the chance to actually strike a meaningful blow.

The original South America book had some things so over the top powerful that K.S. pulled it and said "oops, we goofed. This is too powerful." I can't recall any particulars, but there were some crazy powerful aliens that made the Splugorth look like teletubbies.

I haven't played Rifts in a while (I think the last book I bought for the game was Rifts Japan or Rifts South America). The most powerful combo I ever saw was an Atlantian Tattooed Undead Slayer with a glitter boy power armor suit.

The glitter boy armor itself ruined the game with it's long range, massive damage, and high M.D.C., but the Undead Slayer is a powerful M.D.C. warrior as well. A laser resistant heavily armored walking tank with a supernatural, super-powerful, center. Mmmm...

That's sort of why we don't play Rifts anymore. Someone always has to be a glitter boy.

Vaslov said:

The original South America book had some things so over the top powerful that K.S. pulled it and said "oops, we goofed. This is too powerful." I can't recall any particulars, but there were some crazy powerful aliens that made the Splugorth look like teletubbies.

Click to expand...

There was nothing in the South America books that outstripped the Splugorth, or even approached them. A Splugorth has supernatural PS 50 (doing 6d6 MD on a melee attack), 56,000 MDC, 13,000 PPE, 3,000 ISP, regenerated 2d6x10 MDC per minute, had the unlimited ability to teleport across dimensions(!), possession, teleport 600 miles, turn up to 600 undead, animate and control up to 600 undead, summon 2d6 Splugorth High Lords, summon 6d6 lesser minions three times per 24 hours, 11 melee attacks per round, and to top it off, it knew every single Ley Line Walker and Stone Mage spell, as well as every psychic power up to 10th-level. And I left stuff out! The only things in those books that even approached a Splugorth in power were the gods. And even then, they only achieved full power when inside the Great Palace of Omagua, or when in Cuzco. Outside of those places of power, they were drastically reduced in strength, and far easier to take out than a Splugorth.

The weaponry was more powerful than what you found in the main rulebook, sure (one rifle did 1d6x10+10 on a three-round burst), but from what I understand, CJ Carella purposefully did it that way because of the fact that combat in Rifts took way to long (which I can personally attest to. Fighting War of the Four Horsemen was an unbelievable act of masochism which, once begun, you just have to soldier your way through til it's over). So he upped the damage on the weapons.

Siembieda calling someone out for making "overpowered" items is grossly hypocritical of him to do, though, seeing as how he's the man who invented the Glitter Boy, with its 3d6x10 MD gun and 770 MDC armor, and throwing that, the Juicer, and the Dragon Hatchling into the game right alongside the Rogue Scientist, City Rat, and Vagabond. His claiming someone else's work is overpowered is pretty damn laughable. And the way he did it, outright calling CJ Carella out in a game product, was grossly unprofessional. Especially since all the decisions of what to put into the South America books ultimately rested with him. He could've easily toned down any stats that he felt were out of line. But to not do so and then pass the blame onto Carella? When I read that blurb he put into one of his own game books all I could think was "Wow... what an ass."

Green Knight said:

Siembieda calling someone out for making "overpowered" items is grossly hypocritical of him to do, though, seeing as how he's the man who invented the Glitter Boy, with its 3d6x10 MD gun and 770 MDC armor, and throwing that, the Juicer, and the Dragon Hatchling into the game right alongside the Rogue Scientist, City Rat, and Vagabond. His claiming someone else's work is overpowered is pretty damn laughable. And the way he did it, outright calling CJ Carella out in a game product, was grossly unprofessional. Especially since all the decisions of what to put into the South America books ultimately rested with him. He could've easily toned down any stats that he felt were out of line. But to not do so and then pass the blame onto Carella? When I read that blurb he put into one of his own game books all I could think was "Wow... what an ass."

Click to expand...

And that, there, is pretty standard for him. He definitely has a "me" complex in how he approaches things - there are plenty of documents floating around the net that attest to this sort of behaviour... I should dig them up so everyone can do a jaw-drop.

Personally, I hated his tendency to get on a soapbox defending how his game works in the rules text, and how he moved towards "onetruewayism". But really, I just got miffed because while the basic idea of Rifts is awesome (post-apocalyptic earth becomes ground zero for an intergalactic war) it just got so super crazy and comicbook like that it just felt silly.

That being said, I did run a pretty awesome adventure once involving a Wilderness Scout (played by my dad, who must always be a "ranger", regardless of game system) and a Glitter Boy (my little brother, about ten at the time) found themselves under attack by a couple of Coalition SAMAS pilots. the two escaped into a building (I think the Glitter Boy wasn't in his armour, though I can't recall if he was even PRESENT during this encounter) that was so destroyed from a century's worth of water damage to be falling apart. The SAMAS started filling the place with bullet holes, while the two struggled to escape without being seen.

That was actually pretty cool, and the vision stuck with me. If only the rules didn't blow so bad.

A friend of mine attested that using a Robotech Shadow Fighter in a RIFTS Multiverse made him nigh unstoppable, as his automatic dodge score was so high, nothing could hurt him, and he didn't lose attacks for making the dodge attempts. Combine this with the shield-busting cannon built in to the device and you've got a float like a butterfly, sting like a ... shield-busting cannon-type character.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Actually, RW muhadjin who get hit by modern battlefield weaponry don't generally live to tell the tale.

Click to expand...

Your study would seem to dispute that. It gives a ~60% usage of body armor, and a 77% wia vs total casualties rate (in other words, twice as many people survive as wear armor). In rifts that ends up being a more-or-less 100% correlation.

I wasn't saying that wearing body armor was ineffective. If it were, modern forces wouldn't wear it.

I was saying that many irregular armies are forced to decide between heavier weaponry and body armor- they usually can't afford both- and usually opt for heavier weapons.

When those unarmored irregulars take fire from conventional forces, they take high casualties, but are also able to inflict damage because of their choice of armament. Irregulars with body armor and sidearms won't do much damage to mixed regular infantry and armor. They may kill and injure a few and escape, but in terms of the actual degradation of the force they attacked, their strike was minimally effective.

But equip those same irregulars with RPGs, Mortars, Bazookas, LAW's, etc, at the cost of not having body armor, and they can inflict heavy casualties, maybe even take out some of the armored vehicles. Even if irregular casualties are near 100%, the mission could arguably considered more successful from their perspective- they've degraded their enemy's capacity to do battle by a significant amount.

This is the same logic that unarmored characters with MDC weapons in RIFTS live (and die) by- surviving the encounter is a bonus, the goal is to make sure your foes don't.