House Rules. What you coulden't game without ..

[Lenwen]

What are your top 5 House rules that without which, you could not run your games?

Or to a lesser extent .. what are your "favored" of house rules ?

[Dustin Fireblade]

Well the only thing I've really changed is how ranged combat works.

1. I've added stuff for range, visibility, size and cover.
2. I've also changed how Dodge works (if you dodge a attack it doesn't use your next attack, but makes it a Wild Shot),
3. How the Weapon Proficiencies give their bonuses. Men-at-Arms are better and get bonuses faster.
4. Ranged weapons are all tweaked making nearly all of them single shot, but capable of double-tapping.

[SkyeFyre]

Edit to the G.I.Joe rule: If you take more than your armor's total MDC capacity in one shot, the G.I.Joe rule does not apply. So if you're wearing armor with 35MDC and are hit by 36, dead. Basically my ruling is even if your armor is damaged, there's bound to be parts of it still in good condition so the highest possible max that your armor could absorb would be it's initial capacity.

That's my only house rule. Everything else we play it by the book.

[The Beast]

When it came to adding bonuses to stats, HP, PPE, ect, the last group I played with just added in the maximum amount.

[cyber-yukongil v2.5]

volleys of missiles of 4 or more are not undodgable, they just give a -2 penalty to dodge for each beyond the 4th

Add a Perception score, making stealth vs. perception tests easier

completely revamped the way MDC/SDC works. Acts more like penetrating/absorbing properties than scale of damage

use PPE channeling for magic/psionics

oh, and I completely redid every skill, HtH style and so on.

[runebeo]

Edit to the G.I.Joe rule: If you take more than your armor's total MDC capacity in one shot, the G.I.Joe rule does not apply. So if you're wearing armor with 35MDC and are hit by 36, dead. Basically my ruling is even if your armor is damaged, there's bound to be parts of it still in good condition so the highest possible max that your armor could absorb would be it's initial capacity.

That's my only house rule. Everything else we play it by the book.

I really like your rule change and our GM says were going to do it your way from now on. Thanks man!

[Proseksword]

Well, I prefer RIFTs to be played like a John Wu action flick, so I don't use any penalties to dodge ranged attacks: if you can see your opponent firing upon you, you can dodge.

I also increase the rate at which I.S.P. regenerates for Psychics. Other than that, it's just minor tweaks to this or that equipment.

[runebeo]

- When we roll for I.S.P., P.P.E., HP, S.D.C., special points like Bio-E and Attributes if we roll a one it becomes a 2.

- If we run out of dodges and still getting attacked our character may still dodge with no bonuses by forfeiting actions in the next round and loss of initiative.

- In mass combat roll strike, parry & dodge once for each PC & NPC and write them down and keep those numbers till the boss fight begins. (Really speeds up combat).

- Rolling a natural 20 on initiative gains one additional attack for that turn.

- Rolling a Natural 20 to parry gains an automatic disarm roll.

- Rolling a natural 20 to dodge does not use up an action.

- Characters can gain one extra skill O.C.C. related skill by taking a training program at the beginning of a level where they don't gain any other O.C.C. related skills or Secondary skills.

[Lenwen]

When it came to adding bonuses to stats, HP, PPE, ect, the last group I played with just added in the maximum amount.

And how did you like this style ?

1) - Personally when I roll up characters or have my PC's roll them up, I use the how ever many die is per that race for each stat, then reroll any 1's, and any 6's get an added die. But each naturally rolled 6 gets you 1 extra die roll up to 2 die rolls over normal.

-Example-
Human -3d6 normal. PC rolls a 6, I then grant him another die per that stat, if he rolls another 6 yet again he is awarded another die for that stat. For a grand total of a max amount of 5d6.

[The Beast]

When it came to adding bonuses to stats, HP, PPE, ect, the last group I played with just added in the maximum amount.

And how did you like this style ?

1) - Personally when I roll up characters or have my PC's roll them up, I use the how ever many die is per that race for each stat, then reroll any 1's, and any 6's get an added die. But each naturally rolled 6 gets you 1 extra die roll up to 2 die rolls over normal.

-Example-
Human -3d6 normal. PC rolls a 6, I then grant him another die per that stat, if he rolls another 6 yet again he is awarded another die for that stat. For a grand total of a max amount of 5d6.

In Rifts the only time it really made a difference was when mages & psychics leveled up. The was more of a difference in PFRPG due to it being a SDC enviornment. Made combat go a little faster, and fights with minions usually had the PCs favor. Bosses though were made the same way the PCs were, so we had to plan our fight with them.

[Steeler49er]

1): Hardness rules...
AR's are fine and dandy fer the oldschool D&D day-players, but never made much sence in game play, and cause WAY to much MDC LUV'n
Universal Protection (U.P.) is based on the Moh's hardness chart And The Palladium P.V. rules where in a P.V. or Moh's of (let's say) 5.5 would equal out to an U.P. of 55... This mean that, unless you've got a weapon that can do Penetration attacks, you MUST do that said amount inorder to do ANY damage at all to the armor... This is a means bywhich one CAN use SDC armors to defend against a limited amount of MDC attack. It also gives players a chance to make up New spells that are Weaker versions of spells like Armor of Ith, or to create Armor Penetrating spells. And this means that SOME SD-weapons can now canonistically harm MD creatures (even if the force of the damage is lower than MD attacks) simply by making have a High enough APV-Armor Penetartion Value.

2): Hit Locations.
You should NEVER need to deplete ALL of a targets DC inorder to simply Cut-off a finger!

3): Using your PE Save bonus as a +modifier to your Normal healing rates.

4): Negative/Positive Attribute bonuses chart.
I can't FATHOM why PB bonuses Start at 16 and you Never get negatives for low stats...
I start ALL bonuses at 11 and up and give Negative skill and combat modifiers for attributes at 9 and Below, with 10 being the Zero +/- attribute...

Players LUV IT!

5): The Dodge & Strike Successes Rule.
Whenever a player fails to dodge, but they're roll was close, I apply a rule that says "Damage Done is at 10% of MAX for every point the Dodgy failed the roll By"! This implies that Yes, you did get hit, but it May have been a Nick, which in the case of MDC attacks may mean that a mere SDC squishy May survive a full on MDC attack.

The Reverse Happen For strike rolls. For every 1 point of success the ATTACKER has, they do +10% More damage upto their level or a base +100% (similar to double damage from a NAT 20). Both of these are used to represent the nature of Super Beings like Juicers, Merc with High combat trainning, Quick Flex aleins, Mutants with super powers, and some SN & CoM beings Quick Reflexes.



Again, the players LUV All these rules as it Grows up the game a bit AND adresses the sheer stupidity of many of the Much more illogical rules.



FYI-The Last Rule I have is for Inititive and is that:
For every +10 successes scored on an Initative roll over 20, you gain +1 extra attack which MUST be used on your First attack. This attack may be used As your [b]First Attack[/b] but may Not be held. If used in conjunction with your Normal First attack, this mean that you can go more than once. Others may defend both attacks, but the second one will be done at ½ bonuses to do so... Only Auto-Dodge bonuses are uneffected.
This is Also used to represents that Some being are just Really fast.





______________________________________________________________________BATTS
☻

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

4): Negative/Positive Attribute bonuses chart.
I can't FATHOM why PB bonuses Start at 16 and you Never get negatives for low stats...

You do get negatives for low stats as of RUE.

~ Josh

[Steeler49er]

Hummm...
Good to know.
Danka fer the Heads up Josh

[slade the sniper]

Everything is now % based including HtH attacks, dodges, parries, etc. Every +1 for a D20 = +5% on % dice

Redid MDC for just about everything, but basically if it is less than 10 tons the MDC is on a 1 to 10 ratio to keep Powered Armor between body armor and mecha, where it should "logically" be.

Body Armor is also reduced by the same ratio...

Redid weapons damages using the same formula with some exceptions (Boom Gun primarily), so all weapons under about 500 pounds do MDC on the same 1/10 ratio.

All of the above were done to better integrate HU/N&SS/Robotech into the game...along with other games too unspeakable to be spoken here...

-STS

[Mallak's Place]

Top 5 House rules
#1: we have a complicated set of rules for changing O.O.C.s
#2: SDC to MDC ratio is 10:1 not 100:1
#3: a called shots take 2 actions, a called shot to a non-armored area is direct to hit points (Encourages character to keep thier helmets on)
#4: A armors A.R. is the target roll for a called shot to hit a non-armored area, Half the Armors Armor rating is the Number of points out of every 10 points of damage done that is absorbed by the armors S.D.C. (Example a guy in a suit with a A.R. of 14 and 40 S.D.C. is hit by a laser pistol for 30 S.D.C. in damage, the suit will absorb 7 points out of every 10 points of damage, taking 21 S.D.C. in damage dropping its S.D.C. to 19, the remaining 9 points of damage is done to the guy in the armor.)
#5: For M.D.C. armors if a suit is hit for damage over 10% of its normal max MDC the person inside will take S.D.C. damage equal to the differance. (Example a guy wearing a 50 MDC Suit get hits by a Ion blast of 15 points, the uit drops to 35 MDC but the guy in the suit takes 10 S.D.C. in damage as well.. we find this encourages characters to dodge, take cover and keep thier heads down.)

[Library Ogre]

A few that I have considered, but not yet used:

1) +1D6/level SDC, not HP.
2) Add whole attribute to skills, as appropriate.
3) Roll as high as possible without going over for skills; number of successes equal to your 10's die, +1 if you hit your number exactly.
4) Jason Marker-style initiative (Roll initiative. Divide total by # of attacks; you go first on your initiative total, and again in increments of the dividend; GM counts initiative down from top).

Just a few off the top of my head.

[runebeo]

We played around with the idea of rolling for the number of attacks for the round. If a player has 5 attacks roll 1D4+1, but actions still remained at 5 mainly for dodging purposes, we didn't work all the kinks out, it seemed OK the few sessions we tried. Made vehicle combat more one sided and made things more interesting.

[The Beast]

2): Hit Locations.
You should NEVER need to deplete ALL of a targets DC inorder to simply Cut-off a finger!

The Compendium of Contemporary Weapons has SDC/HP breakdowns for the human body.

[Steeler49er]

2): Hit Locations.
You should NEVER need to deplete ALL of a targets DC inorder to simply Cut-off a finger!

The Compendium of Contemporary Weapons has SDC/HP breakdowns for the human body.

Yuppers, that's why I LUV that book!

PV, Hit locs, and alot more juicy Juice Juice

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Hummm...
Good to know.
Danka fer the Heads up Josh

No prob.

~ Josh

[Lenwen]

2): Hit Locations.
You should NEVER need to deplete ALL of a targets DC inorder to simply Cut-off a finger!

The Compendium of Contemporary Weapons has SDC/HP breakdowns for the human body.

Yuppers, that's why I LUV that book!

PV, Hit locs, and alot more juicy Juice Juice

I just might have to get me that book now haha

[mobuttu]

Aside from some of the stated above:

1) Madness: When rolling for HF, roll again. A failure means 1 point near madness until ME. Then reset ME counter and PC acquires an Insanity (roll on Insanity table).
2) Shields are AR based.
3) Equipment availability.
4) Drugs addiction rules.
5) Stray bullets.

[Shorty Lickens]

1 - Lots of stuff to weapons. I made pencil notes in many of my books. Most energy guns do NOT follow the generic rules for burst and wild spray. Most guns have had their payload and cost tweaked to be more realistic. Many melee MD weapons (magic & hi-tech) have had damage adjusted. I also officially declared which W.P. all weapons use.

2 - Protection spells. I've posted this in plenty of other places.

3 - Repair and ammo costs. When I finally realized this game isnt perfect, this was the first thing I fixed. Most have been seriously reduced. As have some of the costs for upgrading vehicles and robots.

4 - Power armor, Robot and Vehicle costs. In most cases they have been reduced quite a bit, some of them which were more reasonable have only been tweaked down slightly. Also changed some ranges, damage and payloads of weapons. For robots and vehicles, if they were advanced enough I often add a combat computer which can automatically fire secondary weapons when the pilot designates a target. It seemed to me this would be standard in the hi-tech, war-themed world of Rifts and yet in the books I think I only saw it on one item.

5 - Spells in general. I have tweaked damage for attack spells, and PPE costs for most spells. Also started making a bunch of spells that I thought were useful. Seemed like the Rifts spell book was a little light on utility and protection spells, but I started with AD&D 2nd so maybe I'm biased.

[Proseksword]

3 - Repair and ammo costs. When I finally realized this game isnt perfect, this was the first thing I fixed. Most have been seriously reduced. As have some of the costs for upgrading vehicles and robots.

YES, VERY THIS.

The cost for repairing armor and reloading ammo in RIFTs is ridiculous. Often times your better off buying new armor after every firefight than paying to repair it, and the cost is so prohibitive as to prevent any independent adventurer from being able to keep going. I divide the cost for all repairs and ammunition by 10. I don't know how Mr. Siembieda thinks that a post-apocalyptic world can be this flush with cash, but I just can't make it work in my games.

[Balabanto]

Most of my groups have a quick and dirty means of recharging E-Clips of some kind. Plus, they tend to take mechanical skills to reduce the price of things. I always make sure that there is ample justification for the PC's to spend their money.

[runebeo]

Most of my groups have a quick and dirty means of recharging E-Clips of some kind. Plus, they tend to take mechanical skills to reduce the price of things. I always make sure that there is ample justification for the PC's to spend their money.

In our game our GM makes us spend money left and right on every kind of expense and deducts living expenses weekly on feed for the mounts, food, transportation, bribes, tolls, fees, rent, hotels, brothel visits, entertainment, gambling, drinks, drugs, shopping and restocking supplies. It varies weekly and she rolls for a 6 sided dice times 10% and takes that amount from our personal budget. This really adds some reality to the cost of living and helped to curb some of our vices, except our youngest player who goes out of his way to blow his money on women, drug & booze to stay in character, hes always broke trying to borrow money and get advances on his pay to blow in town, it has added a very funny & sad situation to the game.

What really funny is our Glitter Girl has very few vices and her repair cost has put her so far into debt their little chance she'll ever climb on. Our Monster Hunter has lots of vices, but lives off the land and has few other expenses so he has gigantic bank account (over 80 million credits) unknown to the other teammates. He a very generous man who usually pays for most dinner & drinks we in town, a real big spender and the other think he doesn't know how to mange his money

[Ziggurat the Eternal]

I "fixed" my ammo and repair costs the second I saw them. They be crap, yo. I divided by ten as well.

I did add a protection spell or two. Added some new rules for magic too.

Rewrote all the robot and vehicle stats, cuz they are all teh suxorz. If your weapons all do the same damage as the larger and more powerful versions on the vehicles, and have the same range, why get a vehicle? If you would be better off by nailing your body armor to a wood frame and running, why buy a vehicle?

Have almost completely redone the entire psionics system. Cuz they was Ghey.

Messed with quite a few weapons, primarily to make the e-clips more universal on power capacity, long eclips shouldn't behave so erratically in power capacity when compared to short e-clips.

Generally speaking, I have changed a little of everything, and a lot of some things, because while I like the Palladium system, it is kind of a piece of crap. But its my piece of crap now!

[Shorty Lickens]

Most of my groups have a quick and dirty means of recharging E-Clips of some kind. Plus, they tend to take mechanical skills to reduce the price of things. I always make sure that there is ample justification for the PC's to spend their money.

In my game e-clip rechargers are so easy they dont need an Operator. If we have a Scientist or a Borg with plenty of technical skills, they can do it too.

[Ziggurat the Eternal]

Yeah, I love how palladium didn't have any statted ee-clip chargers until merc ops I think. that was awesome.

[Ziggurat the Eternal]

Really? that seems a little extensive to me. And I rewrote as few of the mechanics myself.

[Steeler49er]

Yeah, I love how palladium didn't have any statted ee-clip chargers until merc ops I think. that was awesome.

I recalled them much eariler on

[Ziggurat the Eternal]

Must have been in a book I didn't own, like the archie one.

[Proseksword]

Rewrote all the robot and vehicle stats, cuz they are all teh suxorz. If your weapons all do the same damage as the larger and more powerful versions on the vehicles, and have the same range, why get a vehicle? If you would be better off by nailing your body armor to a wood frame and running, why buy a vehicle?

I kind of understand where you are coming from. Part of the problem is that the RIFTs rules make power armor, robots, & tanks more powerful by adding additional attacks per melee round, not typically increasing weapons damage. In general, I tend to leave things as is if I can help it. Sure, I think the 1D6x10 MD main guns on things like the CS Linebacker MBT to be kind of lame, but I think the fact that each one gets to fire four or more times per melee round partially makes up for that. The real problem I have with the vehicles is that the bonuses for them tend to be all over the place. On the one hand, the Glitter Boy Killer is described as having incredible mobility & dexterity, yet gets no bonuses for any of that. Meanwhile, some harley with oversized off-road tires gets something like a +2 to parry & dodge. What? Parry with what?

Have almost completely redone the entire psionics system. Cuz they was Ghey.

Aw, I think the psionic system is pretty awesome, forgiving one or two little weaknesses. The one thing I've always thought was a little lame about the psionics system is how the fiction & art always seems to portray mind melters as mind controlling lots of people, but there really isn't any psionic equivalent to things like the magic domination spell. Sure, you can use Mentally Possess Others, but you've got to touch the victim and abandon your body to do it. LAME!

Messed with quite a few weapons, primarily to make the e-clips more universal on power capacity, long eclips shouldn't behave so erratically in power capacity when compared to short e-clips.

Yeah, I usually just chalk that up to the erratic energy efficiency of this or that weapon system.

[Shark_Force]

Aw, I think the psionic system is pretty awesome, forgiving one or two little weaknesses. The one thing I've always thought was a little lame about the psionics system is how the fiction & art always seems to portray mind melters as mind controlling lots of people, but there really isn't any psionic equivalent to things like the magic domination spell. Sure, you can use Mentally Possess Others, but you've got to touch the victim and abandon your body to do it. LAME!

try using empathic projection (trust) and hypnotic suggestion more? mind bond can help you figure out what sort of things the person will accept, mind wipe will allow you to erase memories that are causing them to fight your control (and their memories of knowing what you know from mind bond).

[Lenwen]

He's right though.

I added an adapted, slightly more powerful version of Domination as a Mind Melter/Mind Bleeder only power (they have their own sub-category to choose from, as Dominator-class psychics), and it makes a huge difference.

My version penetrates body and light power armor. Both it and the spell are capped at 1 mind at level 1, 2 at level 2, and then one every other level (4, 6, 8, etc) from then on. A high-level mind melter can be a pretty powerful SoB, in my games, whether PC or NPC.

Besides...why mages get something like that for 10-15 PPE and psychics have to cobble together 2-3 abilities, each with fairly high ISP costs, has always been beyond me.

So then is your version of this power remotly close to the duration and cost of the similar spell ?

Or did you basically increase everything across the baord .. and kept the low cost to use/maintain the psionic ability ?

[Vrykolas2k]

As Gypsy-Dancer mentioned, the "true" vampires in my games are like wampyr for Nightbane, my "false" vampires are like those for Rifts but the only intelligences in existance are those specifically named in the various Palladium books. There are of course also the vampires who become that way due to the necromancer spell.
Weapon ranges are in yards, rather than feet.
Big guns, like those on tanks and so on, do big damage.

[Lenwen]

Did I just read that people actually threw out EVERY rule .. to create thier own ..

for running a game of Rifts ?

HOLY MAD COW !!

[Shorty Lickens]

:eek:
Did I just read that people actually threw out EVERY rule .. to create thier own ..
for running a game of Rifts ?
HOLY MAD COW !!

We have already had a dozen or more threads on this but........
A lot of folks love the Rifts setting more than anything else in the world.
Unfortunately, many of them also despise the game system. So much so that some people have actually done a complete conversion of all the source material to another game system like D&D or whatever.
Please keep in mind that if you do this yourself, you have to keep it to yourself. You would never be allowed to share this conversion with the public. And damn sure dont do it here on the forums.

[Lenwen]

:eek:
Did I just read that people actually threw out EVERY rule .. to create thier own ..
for running a game of Rifts ?
HOLY MAD COW !!

We have already had a dozen or more threads on this but........
A lot of folks love the Rifts setting more than anything else in the world.
Unfortunately, many of them also despise the game system. So much so that some people have actually done a complete conversion of all the source material to another game system like D&D or whatever.
Please keep in mind that if you do this yourself, you have to keep it to yourself. You would never be allowed to share this conversion with the public. And damn sure dont do it here on the forums.

I'd never dream of doing something of that nature .. I "attempt" and I say that loosly .. to play the setting/game system as is ..

I have extended the ranges of "Combat" type spells from lvls 1-7 to match those of almost any Energy weapon tech wise .. and walla .. its done the trick .. so far that I am concerned about the "Balancing" of the two ..

[Proseksword]

To be fair Lenwen, I think even the majority of Palladium's staunchest fans understand that Palladium plays it "fast and loose" with the rules. There are a lot of glaring errors in the rules, a number of contradictions, and numerous situations which simply aren't covered.

That is okay. RIFTs is not a table-top war game. It is an RPG, which relies on the good personal judgement of the GM to make a call on what works and what doesn't work in a given situation. It's pretty much impossible to play RIFTs "by the book", since there simply are a host of situations which aren't covered by the book, and there are a host of additional issues which pop up when you insist on keeping things to the way they are in the book.

It's one of Kevin's favorite sayings, it seems, but it's true "Do whatever works in your game". The rules for RIFTs aren't meant to be inviolate, they are meant to be a guideline for the GM to do what he feels he should so that everyone has a good time.

Now some GMs prefer a more rules heavy RPG, and for those GMs, it's going to mean rewriting a lot of the rules, since a lot of the things you find in RIFTs are a little bit wonky. Me? I like the way the Palladium system is written, and I just tweak things here and there to make things jive a little better.

[keir451]

My GM follows a fairly strict "physics works" policy, I've also changed the experience tables for my games, I follow the levelcharts from 3.0 D&D as it allows more rapid advancement.