We've almost got the whole gang back together again now, and with more tattoos than a Hells Angels convention.

Man, there are certainly a lot of things we did that I had no recollection of, like that trip to Alfheim. Damn good thing you have these logs still.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:18, Sat 05 Sept 2015.

So question, on the last summary about that fake Erin Tarn that stabbed Mika, what kind of stab was it? Just with a regular knife or something; seems like it was a bit more foreboding for you to make such a note of it? I have no recollection of that occurrence.

Those openRPG logs are pretty fragmented, but at least there was something left.

Welcome back, monsieur Sophes!

In reply to Vrryl (msg # 15):

Ion Storm.. wow.. totally forgot about that...

I did too!  Mike had to remind me.

Yeah, just wait until you see the crazy maps of our HQ I'm doing up. I'll admit the base is probably more pimp than anticipated simply cuz I'm finding all kinds of neat stuff to do with the mapping program. I'll hopefully have them done in the next week or so; there is a separate map for each floor.

I think what we should do for advertising is set-up a TW system that generates a mini lightning storm above the base once a day; so people know where Ion Storm is :P

In reply to Mika no Krynn (msg # 18):

We can have a massive static/light in ball on the roof with lightning constantly lapping over the sides of the building following a faraday cage... Easy

Ok, so I created a separate game room (Ion Storm Archive) where I am putting all the old adventure summary information.  This will help not clutter up this game room.

Currently it 'only' has all of the England-based adventures.  Enjoy the trip down memory lane, and if you see something that sounds wrong or could use more information let me know.  There are a few holes for adventures that had less written notes. :)

And yes, Rob has played 3 different characters, and came and left 5 times!

I also added a small post-Pestilence chat log Mike had recovered from OpenRPG. :)

Reading through those logs brings back some good memories.  It sucks that life put me in a position that I couldn't play through all of it, now I can be a part of it and I am excited!  I had forgotten about the falcons until I read that part, was awesome that you included that as part of the whole story.

I wonder what you would have done with Sophes in Avalon as he was unable to be changed by any means being an Atlantean?

At the time, I was actually happy Sophes wasn't there to create that difficulty.  Though, the Merlin of that world was quite powerful.

I even did something fancy for Vrryl, since he was less alterable.  It was more of a cooperative shapechange for his character, especially since he was still hiding his true form from the entire group.

I remember that... that was a really cool adventure you did. Fun getting to change shape.

What happened that Mika was taken out during the fight with Pestilence?
This message was last edited by the player at 22:13, Sun 13 Sept 2015.

I don't have the exact details, but if my memory serves right, you guys had lit Pestilence on fire with numerous Fire Globes, and it was taking hundreds, if not a thousand, MDC every melee as a result of being covered in magical napalm.  Basically, the battle result was a given at that point - demon torched really fast and nothing really significant happened.

She got hit by his Plague Touch; which is a super-bad ass magical sickness. It just wore her down during the fight but then it was cured afterwards.

Oh that's what you meant, oops. ;)
What Mike said.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:10, Tue 15 Sept 2015.

I read an interesting article in the Best of the Rifter book regarding spell casting, the original was from Rifter #21 I think. This idea originated back when you could only cast 2 spells a round, and naturally the GM ran into the usual problems when you have a high level caster that takes 7.5seconds to cast a spell when being assaulted by 4 people.

Considering the idea is in the Best of the Rifter I think they may have used it as a starting point in Palladium's move to an actions/spell system, like in the Ultimate Edition. Though I do like this idea better as the problem with actions/spell system is that it treats all spell-casters essentially the same regardless of level; hence Gandalf the White is the same as Smedrick the Wizard.

Anyway, the idea is that depending on your casting class category (dedicated/specialist/dabbler) you can channel X-number of PPE/XP level per action/attack. In the original article this was 5PPE/level for dedicated casters like Ley Line Walkers, for specialists like TechnoWizards and Shifters it is 5PPE/Level for spells in their focus field or 3PPE/lvl outside. Finally, the Dabblers are like Priests or Magic Super Spies, and they get 3PPE/lvl.

On top of those levels the author suggests Supernaturals add 2PPE/Level to the above, and Creatures of Magic (Dragons, Faeries, etc) add 5PPE/lvl to the above totals, due to their magically-infused natures. Similarly for those few NPC/RCC/OCC's that gave extra spell attacks you could just say they can channel X more PPE for each of their regular attacks.

I'm not sure if the author was using the old 2att/melee base or the newer 4att/melee system.  May need to play around with PPE/Level amounts a little to adjust, but I think a system like this works better than an arbitrary # of actions to cast a spell of X level, and it makes high level casters that must more impressive since they can rip-out the big guns very quickly. Meanwhile your level 1 ley line walker, though technically capable of casting Annihilate, wouldn't do so because it'd take him forever.

The PPE costs of spells in Rifts doesn't always trend linearly with level, for example level 6 and 7 spell have a lot of overlap in the 20PPE range, but the heavy hitters are usually reflected in PPE cost. I mean a spell like Annihilate costs 600PPE (300PPE for some), and thus even Vrryl would need 4 actions to cast it with the above numbers (10PPE X 9lvl = 90PPE/action x 4 = 360PPE), but he could cast most 9~10 level spells in a single action.

Thus it becomes a more strategic game for higher level casters; balancing their PPE reserves with the combat around them (dodging, positioning, etc). Since there's so much magic in this group figured this would be a good discussion, especially since the casting system was changing regardless.

It would certainly improve the situation where I'm sitting around for an hour waiting for my spell to go off. But I'm biased, as it would benefit me immensely.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:12, Mon 21 Sept 2015.

I really wasn't fond of the optional PPE channeling rules.  To start, it felt like the GM didn't understand that combat with mages didn't have to start in melee range, and he made a lot of off statements about mage capabilities and how a combat might go.  Also, he didn't seem to account for the fact that mages can prepare for combat, have magic items, and can run away.  I mean, I made that mistake really early in my GMing career when you guys encountered that mage on Mars, but I never made it again. ;)

But just focusing on the PPE channeling idea, I didn't like that it mages low level mages less capable than the old system.  Also, any wizard class that focuses on higher level spells will be completely useless for a long time in game.  It ignores the fact that spell level indicates complexity while PPE cost indicates power; The higher level, low cost spells are supposed to represent finesse.

Also, I think the new rules really knock out the need for something like that.  Most everyone now gets to cast 1 lower level spell per combat action, 1 medium level spell per 2 combat actions, and 1 high level spell per 3 combat actions.  This means that Vrryl can actually cast Annihilate twice per round!  I don't think PPE channeling actually benefits the highest level spells under the new system, I think it penalizes it and requires a lot of extra math.  Also, because of how fast they are cast, it will more often take a concerted effort by people to disrupt the casting instead of it happening accidentally.

By the way, before I was defining low level as 1-6, medium level as 7-11, and high as 12-15-Legend.  We may have to look at that too, though it might be ok to keep using those designations.

As a side note, the only spells that ever took a half hour or hour to cast were ritual magic, and those still take that long regardless.

I think Brett was referring to real-time to cast... while the rest of us did 3~4 combat actions, and the enemy was involved similarly he was often sitting around quite a while between "actions."

The Ultimate Edition rules state casting levels are 1~5, 6~10 and 11+ for 1/2/3 actions. I think the channeling rules for mid to higher level mages aren't that different from this set-up, but certainly lower level mages are punished. Additional attacks and non-combat actions that are gained by mages as they level do give level some weight; ie if you have 6 actions per round that's three mid-level spells versus 2.Annihilate would therefore be 3 action cast, so likely 1/2 a melee round for most casters.

The PPE channeling rules do make very high level casters extremely powerful as they could conceivably cast level 9 and 10 spells in one action. While first level mages become as useless as old D&D wizards. I thought I'd throw the idea out there anyways; I'm ambivalent towards which system since I'll likely be using psionics and attacks mostly while in combat.

It is just important for everyone to realize that if you are casting a multi-action spell to make sure you're out of harms way. Any parry, dodge, strike, knockdown, etc. disrupts casting. So make sure you have sufficient cover while casting.

I think figuring out the ranged combat rules is of greater import, for example penalties to dodge modern weapons and the like. They've made it much more complicated than before; keep mashing together rules.

Shadowrun rule #1: Kill the mage first!

Related to ranged combat I just noticed a slight discrepancy or mis-edit in the Rifts Ultimate Edition book; in the Skill section under Weapon Proficiency it does not list any bonuses to strike by level for Energy Weapons. These bonus are instead found in the combat section under ranged combat (page 360); who knows why.

Essentially they gave Energy Pistols the same bonus advancement as regular Rifts, and same deal for E-Rifles and Handguns.

Ok, I've been working hard on going through the rule systems.

Everything I'm posting is based on a combination of Rifts rules.  The new edition has some good things, but also has some really bad things, so I tried to take the best of all worlds and create a better system (and undo mistakes).

Today, I posted the combat basics, slightly revised ranged combat rules, and slightly revised "hand to hand combat" and "ranged combat" skill tables.

I tackled this and the magic rules first since they had the most problems.

I've been talking to Mike a bit about some of these things, but I welcome any feedback.  I tried hard to not over-complicate it, but at the same time leave it reasonable.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:05, Sun 11 Oct 2015.

On a related note I've uploaded a whole bunch more books to the shared GoogleDrive.

Rifters: 11~58 (except 50 and 57... not sure why, but couldn't find them). Numbers 49 and 58 have some really great material on Lazlo, doubly amazing since so much of the stuff in the Rifter is meh at best.

Shemarrian Nation - Source book about the Shemarrian Warriors

Vampire Sourcebook - Additional material about vamps, in addition to World Book 1

Black Market - Not much gear, but a great breakdown of how the BM operates and is organized

Merc Town- Sourcebook for Mercs, could be a World Book really since it describes the place called Merc Town, which is just what you'd expect.

Dimension Books 11~15: Dyval, Dimensional Outbreak, Fleets of the 3 Galaxies, Thundercould Galaxy and Heroes of the Megaverse. Mostly stuff about the Minion War storyline, and some more stuff on the Phase World/3 Galaxies setting

World Book 31: Triax 2 - brings the NGR/Triax setting up to the current date of 109 PA; good stuff in there.

World Book 32: Lemuria - the sea-based equivalent of the true Atlanteans. Instead of dimensional travel they became masters of Biomancy.

World Books 33 & 34: Northern Gun 1 & 2 - Total explanation of the NG/Ishpeming/Manistique Imperium - TONS OF ROBOTS!!! and a bunch of other tech. Cool artist they got for the robot drawings.

In checking out various weapons in the books it also struck me that we likely need to re-think the secondary effect of the spell Sub-Particle Acceleration, the part where it re-charges e-clips. There is a glaring error in how it is written, somewhat typical, since it states it chargers 6 blasts... except almost every gun in the game has a different number of blasts per e-clip. Hence a particle beam rifle with only 6 shots can be charged fully for your 40PPE, but your Wilk's 457 (30shots) requires the equivalent of 200PPE to fill the same e-clip!

Since we use so much magic it's never been an issue, but I think we should come up with X% of an e-clip is recharged per casting instead. Something like 66% of a short e-clip, 50% of a standard and 33% of a long e-clip. A mage is likely burning through 33~75% of their PPE just to recharge one clip in that case.

Can you add me to your google drive, please. So I can look through all the books. Erik is needing me to make a few choices, and I'm a wee bit shy on resources to make them.