Coverting Rifts to D&D?

[warlord]

Is there anyway to convert old rifts books to D&D and have an explanation for it that doedsn't make your setting painfuly magi-tek.

 

[kroh]

Yep...Get the D20 modern book followed by the D20 future book and

BAMMO...

Rifts conversion...
Walt

 

[warlord]

your tellin' me d20 future has dragon borgs and cyber nija & samurai

 

[Felon]

Yep...Get the D20 modern book followed by the D20 future book and

BAMMO...

....you still have about a million years worth of work ahead of you.

Loved the RIFTS setting, hated Palladium's system.

 

[LoneWolf23]

Ok, who's timing this before the Palladium Lawyers come in and force us to shut down this thread?

...Otherwise, I agree.. D20 Modern/Future is a good place to start, along with Urban Arcana as a good start for magic. D20 Modern could use a more high-powered Advanced/Prestige Class system to allow for magic-users capable of 9th level spells...

 

[Felon]

Well, that largely depends on how closely you want to replicate the Palladium magic system, where spells are pretty damn lame. I remember that a spell that made a character fart for a few rounds was somewhere around 8th level.

 

[Dragon-Slayer]

There was a thread about this in the D20 Modern section of these boards (the D20/Modern/OGL/etc area), and a discussion ensued as to whether being a Juicer was a template or a prestige class.

D20 Modern/Urban Arcana/Future/Menace Manual is probably your best bet to start small. Instead of starting with Glitter Boys and Robot Power Armor, I would suggest starting small with psychics, cyberknights and headhunters, experiment with what works for you and build on that. Because of the way Palladium guards their IP you know nothing will ever get past your homebrew so you are better off building up what you and your players want. However, please share with us here what you get to work.

 

[scourger]

Ow

The best rules set I found for my Rifts d20 converted game was Omega World (OW--from the Polyhedron side of Dungeon #94). The mutations can be easily applied to simulate dog-boys or whatever you want to have for mutants or psychics. Standard D&D classes & spells for magic. And the OW game has good high-tech items presented in a simple system. I didn't use mega-damage, but you could easily incorporate it.

I do suggest using d20 from the get-go. I think my game ultimately failed because the players were continually comparing the d20 versions of their characters to the Palladium versions. Just use Rifts as the world setting.

A game that I'm running now that accomplishes the same flavor is a D&D adventure (the Shackled City adventure path) with OW, Jedi & Judge Dredd characters mixed in. One player even called it Rifts d20.

 

[Particle_Man]

You also might want to look at Mutants and Masterminds. Think of the effect of the character, then stat it out, then see how many points it cost, and you have an ECL for that "class". I imagine a Glitterboy would cost most points than a Wilderness Scout, for example. Or you have BATMAN as your Wilderness Scout, which would be cool.

 

[Roudi]

There was a thread about this in the D20 Modern section of these boards (the D20/Modern/OGL/etc area), and a discussion ensued as to whether being a Juicer was a template or a prestige class.

That thread actually came to some fruit, Dragon-Slayer, as I ended up building an Advanced Class for d20 modern / future that certainly is, uhm, inspired by the Juicer. It's certainly not the same class, as it requires initial cybernetics just to join and it's a military class rather than the Juicer's unique cultural niche it holds in RIFTS. Still, I think it's worth a look... it will appear in the next issue of MODERNIZED, due out sometime this week. Just follow the link in my banner signature.