What's wrong with Palladium?

[Ragdoll]

A combat, as played out with Palladium rules:

Neato! Let's try GURPS now!

Lefty, the thief, is thieving an apartment when Granny Johnson walks in on him. Lefty decides to bolt, grabs a chair (1 attack) so he can use it with his next attack.

Granny Johnson runs over to her gun cabinet and pulls out the 9mm she keeps for home defense. She waits for Lefty to act.

Turn 1. Granny Waits.

Lefty, seeing that he is outclassed in firepower, furiously pounds the chair against the window (2nd action), doing 1d6 damage (his 14 STR gives him no damage bonus). The windows has 12 SDC. Lefty's chair slam does *roll* 3 points of damage, bouncing off the glass. (The chair has taken an equal amount of damage).

Turn 2

In GURPS Lefty does 1d+1 swing, his chair acting as a light club. Before he resolves his roll against the window, Granny using her wait maneuver opens fire. She fires 3 bullets at Lefty as he whirls on the window behind him. She hits him only once, though, in the torso or back for 8 HP damage. Lefty has a Major Wound. His move and dodge are cut by 1/2 and is -4 to his DX and IQ rolls due to shock until the end of the next turn. He must also make a HT roll due to the major wound or be stunned, fail by 5 or more and Lefty will lose conciousness. He just makes his HT roll.

Lefty rolls a 6 for a total of 7 damage with his chair. A plate glass window is DR 1 HP 3, so he shatters it on the first try.

Granny adopts a firing stance and squeezes the trigger, just like the nice man at the NRA showed her, doing 2d6 to Lefty, who can't dodge since he has no actions left. Left loses 8 pts from his 35 SDC.

Turn 3

Granny has a speed of 4.75 Lefty has a speed of 5.00. Lefty leaps out the 2nd window and falls to the street below taking 10 HP damage and breaking his left leg. Lefty is now at negative HP and must roll under HT to remain concious. He fails and loses conciousness. Granny sees Lefty fall and hit the pavement limp, and goes downstairs to check on him. Because she's not a loon, she doesn't jump from a 2 story window onto the pavement below.

This exchange has taken 3 seconds, and the combat ends. Granny may never meet the cop or be shot.

This is fun! Anyone want to convert this combat to another system to see how it plays out?

[lemming]

Ok. Rolemaster:

Lefty picks up the chair swinging it at the window, but stumbles over the imaginary dead turtle, crashing thru the window to the street below.

[Ragdoll]

Ok. Rolemaster:

Lefty picks up the chair swinging it at the window, but stumbles over the imaginary dead turtle, crashing thru the window to the street below.

LOL!! Rolemaster and its fumble tables! XD

[Narratio]

A lot of this goes back to the Hero system having guns do normal damage, likewise leaping from buildings. The house rules we used to play with make guns RKA's, which brings about a slightly different effect. Jump from a multistory building and whether it's a normal or a KA damage depends upon what you land on and the hieght you jumped from.

[steamteck]

Um, guns do killing damage in HERO. what did you really mean?

[Toadmaster]

Also, you have to admit, the binding on his books is very good. I have not had any of my Palladium books have pages fall out.

This is true, none of my Paladium books have had their bindings fail... of course most have only been opened once.

Neato! Let's try GURPS now!

Turn 1. Granny Waits.

Turn 2

In GURPS Lefty does 1d+1 swing, his chair acting as a light club. Before he resolves his roll against the window, Granny using her wait maneuver opens fire. She fires 3 bullets at Lefty as he whirls on the window behind him. She hits him only once, though, in the torso or back for 8 HP damage. Lefty has a Major Wound. His move and dodge are cut by 1/2 and is -4 to his DX and IQ rolls due to shock until the end of the next turn. He must also make a HT roll due to the major wound or be stunned, fail by 5 or more and Lefty will lose conciousness. He just makes his HT roll.

Lefty rolls a 6 for a total of 7 damage with his chair. A plate glass window is DR 1 HP 3, so he shatters it on the first try.

Turn 3

Granny has a speed of 4.75 Lefty has a speed of 5.00. Lefty leaps out the 2nd window and falls to the street below taking 10 HP damage and breaking his left leg. Lefty is now at negative HP and must roll under HT to remain concious. He fails and loses conciousness. Granny sees Lefty fall and hit the pavement limp, and goes downstairs to check on him. Because she's not a loon, she doesn't jump from a 2 story window onto the pavement below.

This exchange has taken 3 seconds, and the combat ends. Granny may never meet the cop or be shot.

This is fun! Anyone want to convert this combat to another system to see how it plays out?

Oooh, oooh Phoenix Command

Granny picks up her Benelli M3 semi auto 12 gauge because Granny doesn't believe in pop guns.

Seeing he is out gunned Lefty picks up a chair to break the window.

Granny assumes a firing stance taking a quick shot, she scores a hit with 7 pellets (of 12), the first pellet enters Leftys upper back, piercing his lung and severs an artery, the second pellet... never mind.

Time elapsed .5 seconds.

[ercarlson1974]

I had no idea you held that much contempt for 2 year olds.

[Supreme Serpent]

Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP)!

Lefty, the thief, is thieving an apartment when Granny Johnson walks in on him. Lefty decides to bolt and grabs a chair so he can use it with his next action.

Granny Johnson runs over to her gun cabinet and pulls out the 9mm she keeps for home defense.

Lefty, seeing that he is outclassed in firepower, furiously pounds the chair against the window. He has Typical strength and makes the Green FEAT to bash through the Feeble material strength of the glass.

Granny adopts a firing stance and squeezes the trigger, just like the nice man at the NRA showed her. She has Poor Agility and no actual Skill with guns, so misses.

Swinging nearby, Spider-Man sees the window breaking and hears the shot from Granny's gun. He swings in through the window, catching Leftie with a foot, knocking him down and alerted to the location of Granny's gun by his Spider-Sense, webs it up. He checks that everyone is alright, and hearing the kids waking up in the next room berates Granny for keeping her gun loaded even though her grandkids are in the apartment. He leaves Lefty hanging in a web-cocoon from a neaby streetlight for the cops and swings off to have sex with either Mary Jane or the Black Cat, depending. He picks up a bunch of Karma for catching the criminal, delivering a civic service message and for making his date.

The exchange has taken a few panels, and nobody really cares about Lefty or Granny anyways - this is a game about superheroes.

[incrdbil]

Given the lack of real difference in speed, Granny should have checked if her current Genre settings allowed her to Haymaker the pistol shot

[Shoutybloke]

you think it palladium is bad? here's how it would go down in white wolfs minds eye theater:

Granny spots lefty rifleing her apartment and goes for her 9mm/ lefty grabs the chair.

granny opens fire. she has 2 dex, no fiearms(-2), and a light pistol (+2) for a total of 2 she draws a card and gets 6. missing. lefty runs up to her and hits her with the chair (str3 weaponry 2, chair +1,- grannys defense of 2, total 3.he pulls a 6, also missing. They both need a total of 10 to do any damage whatsoever, lefty has 7 health levels and granny has 6. each round lasts 3 seconds in game time. worse, at melee range, lefty gets his defese against granny, reducing her to a chance pull, of ten only. lefty is therefore doing 0.3 heath levels per round to grannys 0.1. lefty finally batters her unconsious after 20 round, or about a minute, 45 seconds after she ran out of ammo.

[Ternaugh]

Toon:
Lefty sees Granny reach into the gun cabinet and pull out her Acme(tm) Hurtsalot pistol (with the 6' barrel), and his eyes bug out. His legs immediately start spinning, and he attempts to run through the wall.

Unfortunately, Lefty makes his Smarts roll, and bounces off the wall, to end up eye to eye with the end of Granny's gun barrel. She pulls the trigger, and a bullet fires out of the end, cracks open, and slams Lefty with a large mallet. A hit! A circle of stars appears around Lefty's head, as he takes a Time Out for the next 3 minutes.

JoeG

[Susano]

I'm trying to imagine this for Feng Shui. I think it ends with the house collapsing after the two characters blow it apart.

[lemming]

Paranioa:

Gran-r-maa 1 finds Left-r-ded 5 rifling thru her Tina-O-MLY CDs and pulls out her Cone Rifle that she picked up from R&D.

Left-R-Ded 5 is trapped since there's no such things as windows here.

Gran-R-Maa 1 pulls the trigger.

Gran-R-Maa 2 is billed for the destruction of sector H due to clone #1 using a nuclear round.

[Vondy]

I must admit I'm partial to the Palladium system. The first pen&paper I played was TMNT, and it was a blast. I found Palladium vastly superior to D&D at the time (though I must admit that might have just been the quality of local Palladium players vs. D&D players), and my friends and I spent a lot of time having a blast in Rifts. Of course, we usually made new characters about every other session, but that was part of the fun for us, getting to try out new characters.

And I _really_ enjoyed Nightbane. I thought about spinning up something similar in Hero...

Not all Palladium games were created equal. TMNT was heads above the rest. And players do make the difference.

[The Main Man]

Not all Palladium games were created equal. TMNT was heads above the rest. And players do make the difference.

I was late in that game as I first checked that out after the TMNT license was lost and the core game was named after the After the Bomb setting.

I found it to be fun and it was my first taste of point-based character creation.