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Okay, I have a PC that is playing a full-conversion cyborg who has seen ancient, pre-Rifts videos of Wrestlemania, and wants to focus his character's hand to hand in that style.
My question is how much damage would the maneuvers do for a one ton cyborg (Triax Red Type Manhunter, mostly stock, but with the Robotic PS addition)?
I have the in-ring method of working combat pretty much down. It's extremely free-form, but includes a lot of combination moves, as well as all of the damage being considered pulled by default (in the ring, it's performance, not battle). But what would this cyborg do for damage in an Atomic Elbow Drop, for example?

I think it would be a standard elbow plus PS bonus and then I guess you could add the weight damage which I don't remember which book it is in. You would also have to figure out height of the drop.

Okay, I can see that. But what about the other maneuvers? Wrestling fans, please share your ideas!

If a cyborg is fighting and uses an atomic elbow and there is no mushroom cloud, you're doing it wrong.

Check out demon wrestling from China 2. It may be a good place to start. I generally use a strainght S.D.C. to M.D.C. conversion but I modify things on the fly.

The fact is, most 'pro wrestling' maneuvers if done for real would cripple most people normally. If you have a full conversion borg doing them to someone...it's probably going to be lethal.

Generally, 1D4 to 1D6 MDC.

That's a very good place to start, thank you. I was also hoping that other people here would have similar characters. After all, what's the damage from a Piledriver? Or a DDT? OR even a Leg Drop? Or a Flying Knee Strike when the borg has a jet pack?

As for the inside-the-ring deal, it's pretty much MD creature vs MD creature, with pulled punches and such. It's outside the ring that I'm asking about.

OH, I totally fogot. Rifter 28 has an article about the CS Janissary project and it has rules for MD hold, locks and stings like that.

Oh, I forgot about that too! Thanks for reminding me about that; I'll get on that right away!

Try this:

http://kuseru.com/PMAN/StyleP.htm

It is what I use for wacko styles that are not found in Ninjas & Superspies or in the Rifters.

As for the conversion to MDC...use the PS rules for the base punch/kick damage and go from there.

-STS

If it's truly 'performance', you wouldn't add anything for weight; they (pro-wrestlers) don't apply weight to their hits. When you see a big guy like Yokozuna, it's all acting on part of his counter[part].

As for damage, I'd peg him at doing standard wrestling damage as mega-damage due to his robotic strength.

Picture this, one ton cyborg (Triax Red Type Manhunter, mostly stock, but with the Robotic PS addition) comes off the top rope (high tension steel cable in order to support the weight of the borg) in this case lands the elbow drop on some dope and both go crashing thur the ring to the floor beneath. Unless the borgs opponent is another MDC being I would say its safe to say "it's dead Jim"

Actually, the main kinds of damage I need is for a one ton Red Type pulling an Atomic Elbow Drop onto the back of a dragon from the top of a Behemoth Explorer Vehicle. It's the damage in actual combat that I'm looking for, because that's what my player wants to do.
Proper MD from height rules, rules for knees and elbows for Robotic strength, etc. The basic wrestling maneuvers are decent, but they really don't take into account the massive weight and strength.

One thing you should consider though, is that his chassis would need to be modified a bit to handle those types of maneuvers, otherwise it might be a case of doing more damage to himself than his opponents over time. Wrestlers wear pads for a reason, and they do a lot of training to strengthen the joints. Borgs don't do that, and like most tech, the joints are the weakest parts. I'd say 100,000 credits for a full body wrestling mod to install proper shock absorbers, and what have you, would be appropriate.

A,, good post, the one about the borg doing an elbow drop and not seeing a mushroom cloud was great. What dog of war posted here sounds good. A skill roll to avoid damage should be made when the borg is performing. I would also throw Rifter #3 in there tor the damage. It has a chart on page 60, and on page 43 they have Wrestling written up as martial art as well.

I would look at adding a Horror Factor (maybe 8 or 10) if the cyborg also stomps or claps when the hits take place.

As I learned in the ring, if the audience can't hear it, it doesn't really hurt.
However, a foot stomp when you miss with a punch (even noticeably) most fans will be cringing in the seats.

to do theose moves, your borg would also have to take gymnasitcs.
pro-wrestling is a real sport; it's hand-to-hand gymnastics.

Maybe use the tumbling skill from PFRPG too ?

All very, very good suggestions, thank you. I believe the foundations have been laid for doing this properly. I plan to work on this until I've got something roughly workable, and then I'll post it, in case you guys want to have a hatchling dragon DDT one of your PCs.

The thing is, those weakest joints are already MDC material. I don't think a few elbow drops are gonna damage them even if they do them for a week straight.

Maybe all the tweaking, pulling, and twisting that wrestling requires would make reinforcement necessary ? While Pro-wrestling is not much more then theater, it is very dangerous theater, and requires LOTS of skill NOT to kill some one. Unless the borg was in actuel combat, I would require a skill roll or pull punch for every move, even against other borgs. Pro wrestlers are far from the "roid ragen fools" they make them selves out to be.

Umm, unless any of those wrestlers are dealing MD damage...no, no they would not. that's the very definition of MDC, no amount of accumulated sdc damage has any effect whatsoever.

You mean for the skill checks ? Pro wrestlers spend hours choreographing there matches. they even use the little foot prints like they have in dance classes. This is why real injuries are so rare, as well as why real injuries are so bad and some times deadly. Big guys throwing and jumping on either big guys is dangerous. So in actual combat no skill checks. in a sanctioned match for credits, the participants should have to both make skill checks.

And unless a poorly performed move causes their arm to explode in a gout of red mist, it's not doing MD.

Maybe on a squishy of some type, but a borg body is built to take mega damage. The skill roll would be to NOT inflict damage. in order to do that the two would have to word together to not inflict mega damage. No one would pay to watch a borg slap boxing match, they would want to see full contact borg combat. If they were moving at full speed it would require great skill to not inflict mega damage. lust watch 30 seconds of a pro wrestling match and you will see, they pull very little punches, and the only thing that saves the recipiant from a trip to the hospital (most of the time) is sticking to the practiced fight. So if two borgs were doing a show, and one throws a full force punch ot the others head you are saying that is SDC ? Or if one has the other in some sadistic arm or leg lock that would not stress the joints, or if it did it would be SDC ? I dont see that, it needs a skill roll. Maybe I need to look at my books again.

I see some people have seen the trailer's for Hugh Jackman's newest movie, Real Steel huh? lol

Sadly I just saw the trailer last night. Robot Rocky.

Really? I've been seeing them for a few months. Heck the toys have been in target for 2 or 3 weeks. lol

You realize that in actual authentic pro-wrestling, your megadamage 'borg is going to have to be rolling to pull his punches, right?
And on Rifts Earth you probably have a Operator running special effects under the ring, and an illusionist standing by for real-time 'retouch'.
Have at least two high P.B. ladies(or guys for a mixed gender crowd) wandering around the ring throwing chairs at each other(and the occasional over-enthusiastic fan out into the crowd).
And an obnoxious manager with political ambitions inciting the crowd.

And 'Real Steel' is the 'Rock-em Sock-em Robots' movie realized; another old game made into a movie however possible. I expect at some point we'll see 'Monopoly'(unless you consider 'Wall Street' to be that movie), 'Chutes and Ladders', and 'Yatzee!' eventually made into movies.

BATTLESHIP!?! This is a movie!?!?! Yes

-STS

Books made into movies is an entirely different sort of barrel-scraping.
Veering temporarily off topic, Hollywood(or Inde-wood) does this when a) remaking movies for the umpteenth time before the older versions have vanished from moviegoers' memories(Conan the Barbarian...I mean, I know Arnold's fallen from grace, but really, did we need a 3D Conan movie THAT bad?), b) 'americanizing' foreign films(because presumably American audiences can't be bothered to read subtitles), c) cashing on nostalgia, with reference to old games, entertainments, and TV shows, often warping the original beyond recognition(occasionally this works; Pirates of the Carribean), and d) appealing to specific built-in audiences looking for movies appealing to their specific sensibilities(typically by telegraphing the entire point way before anybody even sets foot in the theater).

Veering slightly more towards original topic:
-This means that post-Rifts entertainment will STILL be recycling old themes from surviving movies, often with varying quality, results, and accuracy. Rifts professional wrestling, for instance, might also be the place to see such wrestling-related entertainments as the post-Rifts reconstruction and restoration of that classic pre-Rifts pro-wrestling video feature Jesse Ventura-Pet Wrestler.

Oh yeah. In the ring, all damage is assumed to be considered 'Pulled Punch' damage, unless something bad happens with the rolls.
For special effects, we have a Battle Magus and a Ley Line Walker.
And right now, only one high P.B. female (Maxi-Man) as the ring Number Girl for rounds (we kind of mixed boxing-style matches in for presentation). Nobody planted in the audience stirring up the crowd, but we do have a pair of robotic announcers (Triax robots, expressly programmed for announcing. And yes, one of them wears a cowboy hat).
No manager yet, but the 'sport' is just starting (it began about a week prior, and the first videos are being released by K'Zaa out of Stormspire), and it's really picking up speed among sporting combat-types.

Thats what I have been saying.

My point about the damage to the joint actually has nothing to do with the damage being done by the joint. The reason joints are weak is because they're the points where in humans for example, bone meets bone, and that would be the same for a borg. A car hits a bad enough pot hole, they may do no damage to the road, but the shock might still snap like a twig because it's the metal in the car hitting the metal in the car.

Case in point: http://youtu.be/oKEENCpRdIY (warning, don't watch if you have a squimish stomach). Psycho sid jumps from the top rope and snaps his ankle (the the point that it's hanging off). Bone is strong, stronger than the wood that makes up the ring, but there's no hole in the ring after that break.

yes, but it still won't do any damage unless it's enough to deal MDC. hitting someone with a weapon that is super-tough in rifts just means the weapon is less likely to break, not that it suddenly deals mega-damage.

All the damage is indeed MDC, but pulled to minimize real damage. After all, it's a show, not a battle to the death.
And I'm working it up so that other combat types will be getting in on it. It's going to be the new Juicer sport. Except that Juicers tend to get bloodier about it.
But think about the promotional potential in this. Holodiscs being passed around, word of mouth, the new 'legends' of the sport... After Juicer Uprising, there really isn't much mention about the Juicer Football professional circuit. And K'Zaa, a consummate businessman, would be a fool not to get in on this kind of thing. The profit from the video sales alone would be staggering. Not much in the business of pay per view options, but once word gets around (and adventurers in vehicles travelling the wilds are better gossip-mills than old ladies along the back fence), crowds will start forming, admissions will start getting charged, and holodisc sales will go through the roof.
But in real combat, the damage would escalate. After all, almost all pro-wrestling moves, if they're not properly rehearsed, would do nasty, nasty damage to people.

in many cases they would probably also do nasty, nasty damage to the guy doing the move.

There are some excellent movies out there on the subject that A GM could use as a reference for the business aspect of borg wrestling. If you Google it, you can find an X-ray of the top jaw detached from the skull of a pro wrestling match gone wrong. After watching some documentary on the industry, its hard to think of pro wrestlers as roid raging rednecks.

Aren't they more quasi athletic stage actors?

In my opinion, I would class them as professional stun men and women as well as full blown stage actors. I dont want to or mean to detract from there profession (it is a profession) or anything. Some folks get real touchy about it.

...and professional concussed men and women, professional strained men and women, professional knocked senseless by that folding chair to the face men and women....
And I agree, you don't want somebody annoyed at you who can can get really touchy and grabby and grappley and flexy and bend you into a meat-pretzel.

I'll give them that. Professional stunt men and actors. *nods*

This is a story from my youth, My Dad Got some tickets to an event that used to hit Houston monthly. I had the opportunity to meet one of the wrestlers. The guy was about 6'3 and 280, huge when you are only 5. He told me to eat healthy, do good in school and signed an autograph. Shortly there after he was talking to a local news personality and was asked " so what do you have to say to those who say pro wrestling is staged" ? The big fellow slapped him and asked " was that fake buddy "? and proceed to body slam him and stomp his head. Then, about 5 more equally huge men exploded out of the crowed with out so much as disturbing a hair on the bystanders heads and joined the frey. I was horrified. The next weekend my dad was watching TV, and the exact same thing happened again the exact same way. Ever since I was amazed by two things. One was how agile thees huge men were (and are) and two was how they could throw a 50 something around and not send him to the hospital. The reporter was doing sports the very next night.

The on-stage action is pretty easy to resolve. After all, it's not combat to the death, but there are a lot of combination moves (combination moves are really common in real combat and actual hand to hand training) that would properly allow for the in-ring maneuvers.
Using the maneuvers in combat, however, would be a bit different. After all, a Stone Cold Stunner would do partial damage to the character, and full to the creature that the maneuver is being performed on.

proof positive that it's fake violence.
but the gymnastics, THAT'S real. they must have given the reporter a crash-course (reall,y no pun intended) on how to take the hit (tuck and roll or something like that) without getting hit.

lime i said, your borg will have to take gymnatics courses. (whole he's at it, he might wanna have his gears specially modified for that purpose, but retaining the "big tough guy" styling).

Oh for sure, The reporter was told how it would go, and the way the other guys moved in the crowed was more proof that it was rehearsed. Thats why I say that if the borg character was performing for money, that he would roll frequent skill checks to not do or receive damage. Especially if he was going to do a "slap, and slam the squishy" performance. I would try not to be unreasonable with them, but definitely would have frequent skill checks

Isn't there already a gladiator OOC in rifts including the gladiator combat that is more showy, less 'quickly lethal'?

Double-joints, extra shock absorbers, and maybe some fake rubber artificial musculature on the outside that can be flexed for effect(and which can double as passive shock absorption). Plastic bristle hair pieces that serve the same purpose.
Extra gyroscopes for balance, and center-of-gravity shifting mechanisms for those complicated aerials.

Or just do it cheeper and cooler with Juicers. *Grins* IF you're going to do the above and what not, it'd likely not be borgs, but... robots.. Pretty much exactly like the Hugh Jackman movie. Wouldn't it? Why Risk death when a robots' just a machine that you can rebuild if it gets wrecked?

Yes, but those guys typically aren't full-cons; they're meat-types maybe with the odd cyborg limb or biowizardry mod. The same skill sets and combat style can still apply to cyborg wrestlers, however, if they're all-out professional.
IMO, if the combat style is geared to 'tuning down' routinely lethal MD blows, that style can be used for professional sports where hammering and submission holds aren't supposed to end fatal holes punched through people or terminal dismemberment.