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Exactly. I played 3 different characters in WE SW and I don't remember any of them. I played a pilot of some kind who died, an alien force user that was not a Jedi, and some sort of modified character. Most of the players in my high school group had at lest one SW character died and they didn't care. In Rifts, the first time a character died, we had been playing for almost two years at this point, the player was visibly upset and the other players were so upset they undertook a quest to get the resurrection spell for the groups mage.

PB characters a hard to make and they are complicated but they are also memorable. I have had players at a local convention ask to play the same character they had the year before because they like the character so much and I don't know how you take level of detail and versatility and boil it down into something easy. But, if you figure it out I hope you will share it.

So lets say character one is a Mercenary. He takes the following skills for PS bonuses:
Athletics +1
Body building +2
Boxing +2
Wrestling +1

He now has an exceptional PS with a bonus to damage of +3. Kinda rest me case there.
Also, just looking at the rolls, character two ends up with 80 points. Bang on average human.
Character one ended up with 91 points total. Quite a bit above even without an exceptional from straight rolling. The additional of a few skills will quickly get two attributes to exceptional (PS and Spd).

No one rolls their PC with the RAW. Killer Cyborg did a great post explaining this in detail around a year or so ago.

You may be correct. However, the point I was making is that with the way the rules are written, characters do not often have exceptional attributes, which means the point about PS bonus balancing out SDC in a fight is not valid per the written rules. Now, I don't have a problem with SDC, and I don't have a problem with house ruling character creation. I was simply noting that according to the published rules, SDC does in fact prolong combat and PS bonuses to damage are not common.
Basically, the only way that PS damage bonuses balance out the SDC protection is to invoke house rules. Sure, we may all do that, but that means we are not playing RAW, which was the point made previously by kiralon who was noting how SDC skewed combat values.

That is a bit exaggerated (and I realize that you likely weren't aiming to be exact). If we are talking about characters rolled using straight 3d6 for all 8 attributes, there is a 31.56% chance of having at least one exceptional attribute out of the 8 (assuming that I still remember how to calculate probabilities correctly).

I'm not against SDC in principle. The Hit Point Only system means that older, more-experienced characters can endure far more physical harm than younger ones. From a game design standpoint, I like that characters get tougher with age/experience, but a 30-year-old 4th-level-person shouldn't be able to endure getting stabbed twice as many times as a 1st-level person at age 18. I like the way that SDC reduces the relative impact of leveling up on physical toughness. There are fewer physical skills available in Palladium Fantasy than in most other megaversal system books, and the bonuses are more modest than in some other settings.

I also like that the SDC bonus is highly variable based on race and O.C.C. As an example, I created a human pirate NPC generator with no special physical skills, and the default SDC is 10, which doubles the 10 starting hit points. At low level, this makes a big difference. By level 11, that same pirate has 4x as many HP as SDC. My Ogre Mercenary NPC generator, by contrast, has 35 SDC and 16 HP at level 1. As levels rise, the life point advantage of the default Ogre Merc over the default Human Pirate attenuates from about 2.5-to-1 to about 1.5-to-1 from level 1 to level 10. This seems appropriate.

My issue is more with how Palladium Fantasy handles damage. Hand-to-hand attacks are far more dangerous than they should be (special kick attacks are particularly out of whack), while many weapon attacks are weaker than they should be. Getting stabbed should be more worrisome than a roundhouse kick.

No argument here.

31% seems absurdly high. Given that the chance to roll a 16 or better is only about 4.6% (rounding up; see here http://www.thedarkfortress.co.uk/tech_r ... MItVehKjic), the odds of getting at least one 16 on 8 rolls would have to be extremely low, given that (lets round up to 5% for easy math) out of 100 rolls, only 5 will be 16 or higher.

im not a math guru, though. Someone else will have to weight in.

strike/parry/dodge bonuses also irk me as they get way too high, a character with a pp of 24 are so much more powerful than say a character with any mental stat at 24 and even the other physical stats cant match it. Everyone who I dm who have fighting characters and play humans will put their over 20 stat as PP, even the mind mages and wizards, because it makes that much difference.

2nd eds stat rolling for humans is a bit odd (or 3d6 stats)
Most people don't realise that humans are the only race that can get all 30's for stats.
Each roll they a 3 in 18 chance of getting an exceptional stat (roll a 16, 17 or 18 and roll again)
So +1d6
however if you roll a 6 on that second roll (3d6 rolls only) you get to roll and add that on too.
and a second potential +1d6.

So it's pretty complicated. The main book itself says it's pretty unlikely for there to be more than 4 18+ stats.
and 16 is impossible to roll on 3d6 (always get an extra 1d6).

You calculate the success of something occuring at least once in a given set of instances by taking the odds of failure and multiplying it by itself for the number of instances. There is a 95.37% chance of failing to roll a 16+ on a given roll, and there are 8 rolls. so you take 0.9537⁸, and you get 0.68438. Subtract that from 1, and you get 0.31562, which converted to percent and rounded to the nearest 100th is 31.56%.

Think of it this way; 27 characters is 216 individual 3d6 rolls. Out of those 216 rolls, you'd average 10 16+ results. So, if none of those 10 16+ rolls would occur in the same set of 8, you'd end up with 10 out of the 27 characters with at least one 16+ stat. 10/27 is 0.3704, or 37.04%. The actual odds are lower than that, of course, as illustrated above.

dreicunan is correct. There's about a 1 in 3 chance that a character will have at least one exceptional attribute. Having 2 or more is ~1 in 12 and having 3 or more is ~1 in 45 (ish). I've occasionally wanted to write a dice-rolling code with the Palladium attribute bonus die rules, loop it a few hundred thousand times, and see what the actual distribution of the results looks like on both a per-attribute and a per-character basis. The 3D6 would look like a normal distribution, but the bonus die would skew the upper tail, and there would be a weird gap at 16.

Update: I made a few minor modifications, re-worked the formatting, and added in three examples that illustrate how armor, weapon damage, and initiative work.

Update: I adjusted armor rules for SDC.

In most cases, heavy armor no longer takes damage in combat. Treat it like you'd treat a shield. Exception: true giants (and similarly-scaled monsters) will damage heavy armor, regardless of the weapon they use and the armor of their opponent.

Light armor like leather, padding, and cloth takes damage from edged weapons, fire, and other weapons that are likely to rip and tear their material.

Update: I went through the melee weapons of the basic book and selected some dual-use weapons that can either be used as one or two-handed weapons, or with different W.P.'s. I tried to pick weapons that aren't quite as strong as the strongest 2-handed weapons in each category. The only exception was Chain, where the Mace-and-Chain is equal to the strongest 2-handed option. Since parrying isn't an option for chain weapons, I can live with this.

Update: I added a fourth example of a gnome assassin with knives to illustrate the usefulness of short-reach weapons when combat starts in close quarters under these rules.

Well, how fortuante this thread recieved a bump. I was just about to ask a question like this. We've discussed polearms automatically winning inititative, which I like. But here's another thing that just came up in my online game. If someone is wielding a polearm, and his or her opponent is using some sort of hand held weapon (paired Battle Axes in this case) can the person with shorter weapons go with a simultaneous attack? It wouldn't make much sense physically since the polearm would create too much distance for the hand held weapons to reach. This assuming the two combatants are the same size. My gut instinct is to say that those longer weapons preclude an opponent doing a simultaneous strike.

-Vek
"Hot Rod with the serendipity!"

FWIW, Hackmaster has the longer weapon go first when

1) the person with the longer weapon has reached initiative
2) only in the initial exchange of blows

If you've got a pike and I've got a short sword, you're probably going to hit me first, but if you failed to keep me at bay, then I'm going to be able to close and carve you like a turkey.

Interesting issue; I hadn't addressed this at all with these house rules. The central goal of these is to make melee choices more interesting, not necessarily to make melee combat more realistic. The flipside of what you're saying is that if a fight starts at an arm's reach away, it becomes difficult if not impossible to engage with a long-reaching weapon like a pike. Another complicating factor is that if you're charging at someone who's using a long pike, it becomes difficult for them to do much to you with that pike once you get past the point.

One thing to keep in mind is that pole-arms as described in the book tend to be things like the voulge, halberd, and beaked axe, not so much the super-long pike. The advantage of such weapons in practical terms comes from the better leverage provided to the wielder; they can control a heavier weapon head. Unlike a sword you can only grip the weapon in a small area, the hands are spread out along the haft, so these weapons benefit from a lot of mechanical advantage. While it's certainly possible to grip such a weapon from the end to improve reach, that approach sacrifices all that mechanical advantage, making for a very awkward attack. In practice, I'm not at all sure that the reach would be so much greater than that of a longsword as to make a simultaneous attack impossible.

That said, a spear, thrown weapon, or arrow/dart all benefit from very long reach that should preclude any simultaneous attack, and I like the idea of a spear that doesn't get the double-damage bonus having an additional advantage of not allowing an enemy to do simultaneous attacks. I'll throw that wrinkle in.

That's a good point (oh the puns). I'm not sure how I'd implement it. Ninjas & Superspies includes a bit on different melee ranges, but in practice, I found no way to use it.

Ok, I added the following line to the initiative section:
"Simultaneous attacks are only possible against weapons with the same reach unless a paired weapon is used for a simultaneous parry/strike."

I also combined some of the reach categories. All missile weapons are now in the same category, and knives/throwing axes are in the same category as unarmed.

So a spear vs a 2-hander now benefits from reach and immunity to simultaneous attacks, which makes it a more viable choice for people whose main goal is to stay alive during a fight.

In Palladium? I think "Tie on first conflict goes to longer weapon" is a simple one, but Palladium doesn't really have a speed mechanic.

If I were to deal with engagement ranges, I'd be inclined to make switching engagement ranges cost an action, which could immediately be countered by your opponent maintaining engagement ranges... the sort of action that doesn't necessarily require a role, but does require an APM.

Since I don't remember the N&SS ranges, I'll make some up to do an example.

Close (Roughly w/i 1-4 feet; punches, knives, some kicks)
Armed (3-6 feet; most hand weapons, some kicks)
Great Weapon (5-8 feet; two-handed weapons, like flamberge and halberds; also, leap kicks)
Long Pole Arms (8-12 feet; spears, pikes, etc).

Now, you can function at your range with no penalty, or at an adjacent range with a -2 penalty to attack, parry, and damage; if you have a long sword, you can try to brain someone with the hilt if they get too closer or lunge a bit to get someone who has bigger reach, but you can't really attack someone with a long pole arm without some work.

Initial melee range, assuming no one is surprised, is at the longest applicable range... so if I have a knife and you have a pole-arm, we start at LPA range... if we both have knives, we start at close range (but if I'm a martial artist, I might choose to start at Armed range by kicking you in the face).

Changing melee range takes an action and will usually be all you can do for that action; if we start at LPA range and I want to hit you with my sword, I need to move inside your range... but you can counter by immediately stepping back, if you want and can (i.e. you can't if there's another pikeman behind you, or a wall, or a pit of lava you don't want to step into). We can both fight at Great Weapon range, but with a -2... I can't get a good hit, and you're kinda slapping me with a pole, but it works. If I want to move into Armed range, where you can't keep fighting with a pole arm, I can with another action... but you might maintain range.

It can turn the game into a dance, with people giving and ceding space. We'd need to talk about moves that combine closing or retreating with attacks, and ways to push people back. But it also gives a lot of those martial arts moves a purpose... if you're in Armed range and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with a knife-fighter, the ability to throw a knee is useful.

Generally the better fighter has better footwork, so when a strike and parry is done whomever won (hit successfully or parried successfully) could change ranges without response from the opponent if desired.

That sounds like a pretty reasonable (and easy to remember) way to go about it.

My goals with these rules are:
1. Keep all existing stats, so there's no need to alter character sheets or book values.
2. Make armor and weapon choices more interesting.
3. Keep things as simple as possible.

In a one-on-one duel, changing the range/initiative order on the fly would be fine. In a multiple-person fight, it would be a nightmare to work out and keep track of the initiative order.

My favorite video game is Rome: Total War (the first one). In that game, charging units into enemy units of prepared spearmen is a bad idea; you'll lose a lot in the initial impact. After the first 15 seconds or so, however, fights between units tend to become loosely-organized mosh pits. Perhaps it would be more elegant to revert to standard initiative rolls after the first round of combat?

Speaking of melee ranges, did anyone see the video of Psylocke finding her sword while on lockdown?

While we're still working on this living document, would Armor of Ithan have the same damage mitigating propoerties as regular armor? I vote no. It's sort of overpowered as is, and it would be another reason to take regular armor as opposed to using the spell.

-Vek
"I have a PC with Armor of Ithan and it's annoying. But it was great on my wizard when I was a PC."

Armor of Ithan just means you need more Energy Bolt. Since it doesn't require an attack roll, armor doesn't apply. Since it isn't fire, cold, or lightning, they don't get half damage.

It would be nice if the spell actually said automatically hit, the fact that it can be dodged on an 18+ (17 to strike) means it isn't an automatic hit.

Yes, but if it is an 18 to hit, then it will bypass an AR of 17.

Well, I actually had that problem occur in my game. One PC1 tried to shoot an NPC while PC2 was inbetween the two, engaged in combat with PC2. So, PC2 becomes cover for NPC1. I made PC1 roll a strike to see if he could overcome the cover, which he did not. I took the damage off of the AoI. Since Energy Bolt requires an 18 or higher to dodge, I ruled that it automatically hits with a roll of 18. The AR on AoI is 18, so I ruled it took damage. The same would apply for a fireball, but not for Call Lightning, which requires a dodge roll of 24!

-Vek
"I can see Mark's view as well."

Yeah, it will go straight through full plate, but not AR:18 Armour of Ithan, and truly if the player argued for it im not sure how strongly i'd argue against the half damage to the armour for the energy bolt. At 4d6 damage the person will likely have to recast the AoI spell from the duration running out before energy bolts take it down.

Well, as Mark pointed out:

Armor of Ithan just means you need more Energy Bolt. Since it doesn't require an attack roll, armor doesn't apply. Since it isn't fire, cold, or lightning, they don't get half damage.

So, half damage shouldn't apply.

-Vek
"Besides, even at 1st level AoI has so much SDC that the piddly Energy Bolt isn't a concern."

My point was it doesn't say that it needs an attack roll just as much it doesn't say it doesn't need an attack roll(as in it doesn't) so either is just an assumption, and if it hit automatically you wouldn't be able to dodge it. It just says it's mind guided. (Note, the start of the combat description page says every combat move needs a strike roll, is energy bolt a combat move, are wizards supposed to be rolling to strike with their spells ?) if so its a strike roll that pretty much ignores the attack roll as you always have to roll an 18+ to dodge, but would then matter for armour penetration)

and to follow on with the thought what would you need to parry it then with a psi shield, psi shields can parry energy blasts with -3 negative, if there's no number any number rolled to parry is higher than no number to strike, so it will parry pretty much automatically which doesn't seem right.

The answer is we will never know for sure unless someone at palladium clears it up, and is until then open to interpretation, and to me a permanent strike roll of 17 makes more sense then anything else.

also if the wizard is high enough level and say has hth expert, since the number of spells he casts comes of his hth style so hth definitely effects spell casting, do the other bonuses count like +2 strike, can you do triple energy bolt damage from behind, or just knock people out, does the plus to damage count. You wouldn't think they would, but you would also think that a level 15 wizard without a hth style would after all his practice, be able to cast more spells in a round then a lvl 4 wizard with hth basic.

With convention Chars: I think it is more that the player had a good time playing with a group of people that they don't have any pet peeves (that they have with players in their normal group) to interfere with having a good time just playing. And then they want to have that same experience again this year. The player might of intentionally saved that char for playing at the convention.

That means the spell has an automatic strike roll of 18.

Erm i be confused, i have always played defender always wins and the spell says 18 or higher by dodge, and if defender always wins tied dodges, it would have to be 17

From the 2nd ed book
Note: The defender can only defend against attacks within his line of vision. Attacks from the rear cannot be parried, dodged or entangled. The defender always wins ties when parrying, entangling or dodging. Page 43

My initial instinct is to say yes... and no. Basically, this makes me want to add an extra wrinkle to my house rules for armor: only those trained to use armor (men-at-arms) can take full advantage of armor. So if a wizard wants to wear armor or cast Armor of Ithan, he can do that, but he can't add the AR to his dodge/parry roll. If a melee fighter gets Armor of Ithan, he gets to use it like it's a full-on suit of armor.

As for what the auto-strike roll is when a defender needs an 18 or better to dodge, I would treat it as an automatic 18 to strike and have done with it.

Sorry, i had just come of a big 16 hour gaming session and apparently my brain decided to turn off, you guys were dead right, for some reason i was thinking full plate. Thank you for using small words my brain could understand.

I feel stupid now

Well, Hotrod, let me add another wrinkle. Armor of Ithan can be case on someone else. So it COULD be cast upon a fighter who is trained to wear armor. Then we're back to yes. I'd still go with it not mitigating damage.

Prysus, you mention that H2H attacks affect spells level 1-2. Where is that? I know the original book has it that two spells levels 1-8 can be cast per round, spells levle 9-10 are one per melee, and spells level 11-15 are a minimum of two melees to cast (P184 main book). I believe the casting speeds were changed megaversally in a Rifts book. to levels 1-4 can be done in one attack, 5-8 were two per round, and then the rest stays the same. If there are some canon rules I haven't seen I would greatly appreciate being directed to them!

-Vek
"1st Edition Wizards could cast one measly spell per melee, until level 4 when it became 2 per melee."

The rules for Palladium Fantasy were changed in the Mysteries of Magic book. Now, level 1-2 spells can be cast in a single attack. levels 3-8 use up "half the wizard's attacks that melee round", levels 9-10 take a full melee, and levels 11 and higher take two melees.

I rather like that idea that a wizard could team up with a man-at-arms in ways that make the team greater than the sum of its parts. Having Armor of Ithan bolster someone else more than the caster is something I'd see as a feature, not a bug. Most antagonists and evil alignments don't work well in groups and wouldn't take advantage of such opportunities, giving players a potential edge.

I guess the question is, would you want that sort of edge available? There's not really a right or wrong answer on that one; it's more a question of GM style than anything else.

I have also played where spells just cost more actions per round

And anyone can use a scroll if they can read it, but the cost is pretty high

Heh.

So, the original MoM manuscript was done in... 2002? Has to be, because it was before I started teaching. The rules there did not reference the as-yet-unwritten RUE rules, and had an option to rattle off a spell level 1-8 quickly so it only took one attack (or higher level spells took half their usual time). There was a chance of failure or other bad effects.

When the RUE came out, I wrote Kevin and said "Hey, you haven't done anything with that manuscript I sent you; how about I revise it a bit to fit in with the RUE?" He said sure and by the end of 2006, I had written a full revision... which looked shorter in page count (by, like, A LOT) because I'd done it in a different program with different margins. I sent that in. And then MoM came out, covered a bit less than a third of what I'd written, and the rest is history.

Are we going to see MoM2 & MoM3?

*shrug* Ask Kevin. I sent him what I had 14 years ago. I still have it all handy (I mean, I looked up both the original and the revision in order to check that), and can share the files with a few keystrokes, in case he lost it again. I don't work with Palladium enough these days to have much more to write about it, and I've kind of reached the point of "I like my headcanons so much I don't want to deal with canon anymore." So, give me my summoners as stage managers, my hedge wizards, lay priests, and suppressed warlocks... I don't particularly want to go back.