My Life As A Gamer: Filling The Holes In RIFTS (Part Five)

(Previous Parts: One, Two, Three, Four. Also, Braunstein defined here.)

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. As Palladium is a D&D-derivative, the solution--summarized--is to revert to D&D. As much as possible, the goal is to flat-out substitute orthodox AD&D for Palladium versions. Fortunately, this is easier to do than it seems.

In order to fix RIFTS, we start with Palladium's Fantasy game, which can also be summarized:

• Attributes: "Physical Beauty" and "Speed" are eliminated, and the remaineder reverted to D&D labels and AD&D1e tables.
• Races & Monsters: Reverted one-for-one where possible, use closest approximation in the Monster Manual(s) or Fiend Folio.
• Classes: It is convenient that Palladium has "Men At Arms", "Men Of Magic", and "Adventurers" (and a nebulous "Other" which should be NPCs). This maps to Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief; if the Palladium class isn't a direct D&D analog, then it will fit into one well enough most of the time (e.g. Longbowmen are Fighters with Longbow specialization, Knights are Fighters with cavalry training, etc.). We could make Priests (etc.) akin to Clerics, but that messes big time with what Clerics actually are (i.e. Van Helsing in plate, not generic priests) so they remain Magic-Users by default. Simply lump all such classes into one of those categories and be done with it; certain difficulties like the magic practices are better handled by other means.
• Magic: Psionics just get moved over wholesale and "Mind-Mage" is just a Magic-User that focuses on Psionics. Wizardry is standard spell-casting. Wards and Circles are written as spells with stupid-long casting time and bothersome material component requiments, and the Palladium terms for them are (mostly) ignored. "Warlocks" are elemental specialists with a weird backstory, but still Magic-Users.
• SDC: Gone. Just use Hit Points and Item Saves.

It really is this easy, and you won't have to do much more than this to unfuck Palladium Fantasy.

Moving this up to RIFTS, you still have Arms/Magic/Adventurer for general classifications and Other that covers corner cases or improperly includes NPCs like random saloon whores.

• Magic: Still Magic-Users, and their abilities are still best handled as specific spells. Tattooes are magic items, not something to build a class around.
• Tech: Still gear. Yes, even Full Conversion Cyborg shells.

You'll note that I ripped out the Skill system entirely. It's a needless complication. All that matters is if a character can do the thing or not, and a lot of what Skills cover don't need that sort of detail. "Can he pilot the giant robot?" is just as relevant as "Can he ride a warhorse into battle and not get thrown?" and deserve the same manner of answering that question.

As for religion, get yourself a copy of Deities & Demigods (go for the original version with Elric and Cthulhu). Palladium, for a reason that only makes sense if you know the US comic zeitgeist of the '70s, flat-out appropriates Ancient Egypt's pantheon as the major pantheon of Palladium's fantasy world and thus influential in RIFTS (followed, of course, by the Greco-Roman and Norse pantheons) and there's just enough Dollar Store Lovecraft to pretend to be all "Oh noes, Muh Sanity Blasting Horrors!" in the Old Gods and a few similar things in RIFTS.

You'll note that I also yeeted the PPE system. Palladium original did Spells/Day--up through Transdimensional Turtles for their TMNT RPG--so that's hardly a stretch to revert to. What needs to be accounted for are the effects of ley lines and Nexus Points, which isn't that hard to do, and the effects of sacrifice (etc.) as a means of fueling magic usage.

For this, we can look to (believe it or not) White Wolf's now-abandoned Scarred Lands setting for D&D3.X, where ritual magic provided boosts to effecting casting level (and thus to the effects of the magic). If you want to add value to the tracting of the passage of time, or of the movement of the starts, this boost to magic-usage efficacy is how you would go about it. If you want to add value to maintaining a body of cultists or other non-caster participants, this sort of procedure will work.

Statting things up will take time, but if you have a framework in place then most of it will go quickly and all that remains to be determined are specific ratings for things like the Armor Class of Coalition Body Armor and the attack table of a man-portable railgun.

Some subsystems, like the BIO-E system for Mutant Animals, can be ported over without much (if any) changes. Others, like for Martial Arts, need things like Oriental Adventures to handle.

The end result is that you now have a ruleset ready for Braunstein play that actually supports Braunstein play because it's rooted in proper wargaming. Have at it.