Novemterra

Rifts will be your core book for all the basic rules and character creation stuffs. From what I understand Ben to say, you can use any of the other books by Palladium (Rifts: South America, Rifts: Africa, Rifts: Psyscape, Rifts: Japan, Rifts: Undersea, Rifts: Juicers, etc.) to create a character. Some books will have more exotic type classes/races that may have intriguing abilities, but will stand out in our starting environment significantly more. Additionally, those classes/races may not have access to replacement items due to their being 'far from home' in a way. Despite that, I'll probably end up playing one... when have I ever played just a plain-ol-jane type character? heh.

What alex says is true, however, rifts is a world of inter dimensional and inter-time travel. The rifts themselves allow any character from any palladium series book to be found on "Rifts" earth in the "present" rifts time. The core book has all your stats, and most of your skills as well. Basically, just follow the character creation guidelines up until choosing an RCC and an OCC (Racial Character Class and Occupational Character Class). Think of them as Race and Class respectively. You can have both an RCC and an OCC or you may have human as your RCC and an OCC class. Sounds kinda complex, but its really not. If you read the descriptions, they are really mostly self explanatory. If you are wondering why anyone would ever be human, they are the only race that can conceivably have any value for any stat. They roll 3d6 for every stat, if any stat is 16 or higher you roll an additional d6. For every consecutive 6 that is rolled you roll another and keep adding. A lucky roller could get stats up around 30 or 40. An incredibly lucky roller (with rigged dice) could have stats over 1000 (though the dm would be highly suggested to question such rolls). Thats the only advantage I know of...if someone knows another let me know, I haven't read the book in quite awhile. I'll review it all when I get your characters. Psionics can be chosen, but only if you are a psionic class. Otherwise everyone gets a % roll and if it is like 5 or something you have psionics. That is under character creation as well. The 1991 sounds correct for the date of the book. Any specific questions about any confusing rules or just for help in understanding the game mechanics (read MDC vs SDC) let me know.
Actually...I'll clarify the MDC/SDC/HP because it makes a big difference when choosing a character. Rifts Earth is considered an MDC world. That is mega-damage capacity. SDC is structural damage capacity. MDC creatures and equipment operate at a much higher lvl than SDC creatures/equipment. Using an SDC weapon against an MDC creature won't harm it, no matter how much damage you do (with the exception of a nuke, which is still an SDC weapon). An MDC dmg weapon will hurt both mdc and sdc creatures/structures, but does 100dmg per 1dmg when going against SDC. So, SDC railgun against a creature with 1 MDC remaining doing 300 dmg, wouldn't harm the MDC creature, even though the 300 is equivalent of 3 MDC. The reverse isn't true...an MDC pistol doing 1 MDC to an SDC creature with 95 SDC/HP would kill it instantly since it did 100 SDC dmg equivalent. An SDC creature with 101 SDC/HP would survive a single point of MDC damage. HP is like permanent damage. Humans and humanoids are typically SDC creatures and so they have HP as well. SDC is like your skin, you can get scratched and it heals pretty easily. HP is like your bone. If it gets damaged it heals much more slowly. Some weapons deal damage right to HP, which is a much lower number. 0 SDC and you are fine as long as you have 1 HP left. If you have 1000 SDC and 0 HP you are dead. Vampires have HP and no SDC, but they are very hard to deal damage to.
Ok, so if that is totally confusing and makes no sense, let me know. Anyone who thinks they can clarify, feel free.

there is actually a 25% chance a nonplanned psychic human will be psychic. on a d% roll, 1-9 you get major psionics, and 10-25% you get minor psionics. that's another added benefit to being human.

Is it just me or is the forum seriously broken?

no, i think it is broken..... at least the rifts an this section work though :)

yeah, it seems to have been breaking down over the past week... my text box is really small now (only holds 3 lines of visible text), and now the front page and the forum index is all jacked up. it's like it became unformatted html... the individual forums (at least the ones i've checked) seem to be ok at this point. we should probably email jerry to get him to check it out. he seriously hasn't even logged on in 2 weeks. (whatever happened to Gary? or the others who took the summer off?)

I'm back ... well ... sort of ... ... I came back and had no group, and also because I had no permission, I stayed quiet. Though you are right .. .. .. not sure what the official date is, but summer should be almost over if not already. To me it is.

I had a problem with the forums briefly. Then I restarted firefox and currently seem to have no problems. But then again, I haven't gone browsing through the old forums, just the active ones.

EDIT: Seems I spoke too soon. I have a problem reading the new posts in the RIFTS forum. They're all either blanks or underlines, or some crazy thing y'all doing and getting me confused.

Yeah, it looks like the RIFTS forum is messed up now too. Andrew's character description is gone as are a few posts in the OOC thread... on the bright side, the main page was displaying correctly when I loaded the page this time.

Yeah, I'm getting the blanks as well. In fact, this is the only thread that I can read normally Sad times, just when I was gonna be able to actually start a game. And if you wanna join it Zadok, you're more than welcome. I think I gave everyone permissions on it...of course, that'll be moot if we can't post anything.

Everything looks fixed on my end now..... i reposted my character and replied on the OOC thread. Ben, just to confirm, did you get my character in your email? either way, i'm also looking forward to starting, so if it is indeed fixed, please start soon! :)

I am interested in doing something. The Jerry / David combo isn't doing much lately. Yours is the closest to anything happening right now.

Just create a character, email it to me and I'll start you in the game. It's open to any and all, and I don't care what you are, alignment or character. However, I warn you, when I run a game I scale it vs. the most powerful character in the group, so if you're a cosmo-knight, for instance, the rest of the group is as good as dead, unless you intend to sit in front of every blast and try to protect them. So be careful what you choose. There are always gods in the game that are more powerful than you I much prefer players choose something that they will enjoy playing. Combat is often optional. I never know what I'm doing till I do it :D

And yes, I did get your character andrew, and I'm glad to see the forum issues have been resolved.

yeah..... until i get to the point where i have an ultra modified glitterboy armor that i can pilot, i probably won't wanna do much in combat other than run. My character isn't a fighter..... he's a builder :)

so by all means, play a cosmo knight. As long as you're willing to take the first couple of hits, (as all cosmo knights are), i'll be more than happy to be running as fast as possible so you can do your thing and i can watch from the safe distance of as far away as i can fricken get.

i'm still "flipping" through all the new resources that i've got my hands on now. what is the take on RCCs? allowed? hunted? ostracized? shunned? if I were to play something like a Kwarla is that acceptable in the setting or would i need to live in hiding?

while i kinda liked what i saw, i'm not necessarily going to do something like that. though, if andrew is a builder i guess that means i'll need to play something that at least has some combat ability. heh, like usual

lol. but like i said, i have a large truck for transportation, so don't worry about that. unless you decide to play one of those annoying as hell flying tigers again :'( RCC's are allowed, and see normal coalition thoughts on those types. "hated unless working with them." but yeah..... i'm not a typical human anyway, so the coalition wouldn't be to happy finding me either, so feel free to play whatever. Just keep in mind that if we do get into a fight, i'll be happy to watch you from a safe distance such that i won't get killed if they kill you and look for their next victim. However, if/when I acquire a badass power armor, i might be willing to help out, as i have a knack for giant robots :)

Remember, Cosmo Knights can operate on the planet destruction level...so I don't think you can run far enough away if he really gets into it ;P

then i'll just have to get me a space ship, and fly away at the speed of light x 2

RaSa wrote:

unless you decide to play one of those annoying as hell flying tigers again

::sad face::

he just had the munchies, man.

"BOOM"

oh gosh......

Then there was the "come with me if you want to live"

Uh .. i don't have time to read all the other resources. So unless there is a really powerful character in the RPG - Rifts book that I need to worry about. I do appreciate the tip. Anything else I should know about?

Alterith wrote:

"BOOM"

And that's how I became Gary's hero for a long time. the end.

Snaphin wrote:

Uh .. i don't have time to read all the other resources. So unless there is a really powerful character in the RPG - Rifts book that I need to worry about. I do appreciate the tip. Anything else I should know about?

just follow the basic steps for creating a character, but remember it is fairly different from D&D. If you don't want to get all the resources, there are plenty of quality character builds in the main book. If you want something more exotic, take a look at one of the other books... they pretty much have what you'd expect, though a few are a waste of time for character creation (China 1... are there any playable OCC/RCC in that book?). If you have an idea of what you want, I'm sure that Ben, Andrew or I could suggest a book to look in that might fit what you're looking for.

Yeah.... if you have a specific Idea, we could definitely steer you in the right direction. quick draw guy, android, hand to hand fighter, something crazy (you name it, we could probably find a template), etc., just let us know, we'll help.

otherwise, the easiest way to make a character is just going off of the main book. something i've never done, and my characters always seem to take way more time than they should.

RaSa wrote:

Yeah.... if you have a specific Idea, we could definitely steer you in the right direction. quick draw guy, android, hand to hand fighter, something crazy (you name it, we could probably find a template), etc., just let us know, we'll help.

otherwise, the easiest way to make a character is just going off of the main book. something i've never done, and my characters always seem to take way more time than they should.

same here. well, except when using the Heroes book. I've never done it for Rifts though.

There are a friggin ton of possibilities, but if you just want something quick and dirty, there are a lot of good classes/races in the main book.