What's wrong with Palladium?

[Koshka]

I know little or nothing about the Palladium system. What I know is that when Primal Order book--which I really liked--came out, it including conversion notes for a number of game systems in the appendix (including GURPS, Champions and others, including Palladium's). The Palladium guy had a conniption and raised holy hell.

I could have sworn I'd read that Pyramid Online automatically rejects any articles with Palladium stats or tie-ins because they don't want to have to deal with getting permission from Kevin Siembiada ... but I double-checked the writers guidelines and they don't mention Palladium at all.

(OTOH, they specifically list Champions as a game they're willing to print stuff for. Anyone else feel like flooding Steven Marsh's inbox with Hero articles? )

[Koshka]

forget genre conventions. has he every been to a professional boxing match? or been hit in the head with a hard blunt object?

Heck, I think we're up to three high school football players in NE who have been hauled off to the emergency room after legal but really, really hard hits. I don't recall offhand if they were actually knocked out, but since at least two of them had emergency head surgery ....

[THartman]

What's right about Palladium games:

• Quick character creation.

• Quick combat resolution.

After playing Palladium (fantasy), TMNT&OS, Robotech, Macross II AND Rifts, the fastest I ever got at making a character was the 1-hour mark. Maybe. If I was on a roll. SO much page-flipping and cross-reference. This skill raises this stat. That one raises these three. All by dice roll values. Back and forth and back again, all over the place. That's my biggest gripe - not only are your rolls random for your starting stats, but most of the bonuses your skills grant you to the stats are random. Everything is random. The first time I played Champions, I fell in love with point-based CharGen and with the exception of an AD&D2E game a friend of mine runs, I've never looked back.

I never found combat resolution to be fast in Palladium. No faster than any other game from the time... AD&D, Palladium, Gurps... They all seemed about the same for time. Okay, I'll give you, HERO fights could last a long time. And battletech, if you want to compare there. Right now, though, I'm used to Silhouette rules, which are insanely gritty - you want to avoid any combat if at all possible as it's so deadly that it'll probably be over in three to five turns. Each of which last only a couple minutes with experienced players.

But I'll agree, the settings are cool. I still have fond memories of Rifts, despite the serious game imbalances. I've thought now and then about rebuilding it for my own purposes in other gamesystems.

-Todd

Edit: Clarification - I played Gurps before Champions and even THEN I didn't want to go back to random-roll characters.

[Almafeta]

Nothing wrong with Palladium... it's great source material for Hero!

Just don't let them know about it.

[teh bunneh]

On the character balance issue:

A friend of mine wanted to run a "pick-up" game of Rifts and told everyone to just bring their favorite xth-level character. He figured on us all bringing a bunch of MDC monsters -- Juicers, Glitterboys, baby Dragons, whatever. He didn't figure on someone bringing a "Cosmic Knight" from one of the later supplements. This dude could've eaten the rest of the team for breakfast and still been hungry afterwards. Things that were credible threats to the team were a cakewalk to him. His presence basically ruined the game -- "The monster attacks!" "We ready our weapons!" "I yawn and incinerate it."

Now, a lot of that can be chalked up to the GM -- after all, he's the one who said anything goes. But still, you'd think a game system would enforce *some* parity between characters of the same level in the same system.

Bill.

[JeffreyWKramer]

... you'd think a game system would enforce *some* parity between characters of the same level in the same system.

Well, in fairness, it used to be a rare game that did have any sort of parity. Hero always did - with everyone more or less equally competent, assuming competent build - as did CALL OF CTHULHU - everyone is equally helpless before the Great Old Ones - but until 3E, DnD didn't even *try* at parity. Historically, it's always been "wizards stink until around level 9, and by level 12+ nobody should even bother, and thieves and monks are never as competent overall as other characters." That's changed a fair bit in 3 and 3.5.

At worst, Palladium just exaggertes the lack of parity that used to be fairly common. As someone else noted, this just worsened as they kept adding new character classes that weren't balanced against old ones - but that happened in 2nd Edition ADnD, too, particularly with the wild disparity in power between the various character kits.

[Nyrath]

I remember the old newsprint edition of Mechanoids. I was bemused to see that a battleship had five million hit points. I had a mental image of a persistent fellow with a dagger stabbing the the battleship for the next couple of decades in an attempt to destroy it.

[Jhamin]

I think my issue with Palladium really boils down to Offense vs. Defense.

While everyone gets a zillion attacks/round, it is easier to block than to hit and even if you do land one you usually do 2d6 damage to their 400 SDC.

It takes a long time for anyone to get worried about the abuse they are taking. Unless of course Megadamage is involved.

The incredible disparity between MDC and SDC damage made sense in Robotech (where MDC was invented) but it makes less and less sense as Rifts continues.

[Samaritan]

Yeah, I agree... the system is almost laughably broken. That said, the lines for Nightbane (formerly Nightspawn), Mystic China (sourcebook for Ninjas & Superspies), and Robotech made for some good reading material! (And let's not forget the Manhunter crossover book and the Wormwood dimension book!)

[Adventus]

I am always amazed that Palladium is always criticized for play balance. I have found that Palladium system expects you to have the gm balance his campaign. If you have a Knight of the cosmic forge in tha game, The gm just needs to make sure that he scales the opposition to that character and make sure the rest of the players are equally as capable. Or take the player aside and tell him/her that character doesn't fit what you are trying to run. It is the GM responsibility in the end to make sure the campaign is balanced per the character that are being played. The same as it is in any game.

I have personally run Heroes Unlimited. I have enjoyed it immensely. In my experience, combat goes relatively fast. You just need to enforce the rules system. I even had fun playing in it. Except when the Gm didn't enforce any sort of game balance. Of course, I have had that happen in Champions as well. This causes munchkinism to prolifirate, cusing this kind of negative behavior.

Balance should be enforced by the gm in any game system.

[Jhamin]

Balance should absolutely be enforced by the GM.

Problem is that even if you do enforce a pretty well rounded PC group, you still end up with problems in play.

I ran a Rifts game for years & had a blast. It also got messier and messier the longer it went on. Each new supplement changed the power balance of the world. When each new sourcebook came out & forced the PCs to ditch their old equipment for the new equipment they could now aquire it got tedious.
When the PC who was supposed to be a combat monster was suddenly a second rate nobody compared to the new combat OCCs that were being introduced it was not only lame, it violated his character.
When the Glitterboy pilot treasured his "best of the best of the best" pre-cataclysm power armor, it got a little sad when there were arbitrarily more powerful suits introduced in a new supplement.

So I eventually switched to Palladium Fantasy. Where the same thing happened. The gladiator started out amazing (she was from a supplent after all) right up until a new book came out and introduced army grunts that could do anything she could plus more because they belonged to a really big empire. Magic was rare and precious, until every NPC had an artifact of the ancient onces. and so on.

I was perfectly able to balance my game, but after a while I noticed that I had houseruled half the combat system, the entire damage system, and was letting people play the concepts behind new OCCs but then totally rewriting them to fit into the established power level of the first couple books.
I got tired of it.

And reading this thread makes me feel I am not the only one.

[JohnOSpencer]

As far as I'm concerned, Palladium begins and ends with Robotech. It was IMHO, the best game they put out. Granted, I've played and enjoyed just about every one of their games, but Robotech is one I would consider playing today.

John Spencer

[oberon]

Well, my opinions have been well stated already

Liked the Rifts setting, but after going through a half-dozen characters in as many sessions, I realised I would have to play the latest bit of cheese in the latest supplement to remain competitive with the rest of the party (more specifically the opponents designed with them in mind).

Loved Robotech. I think it all worked well, simply because we only had a few books, which kept the power escalation down.
We were playing in an Invid campaign. The remainder of the party were all Veritech pilots (ALL of them ) and I had a ball playing a Techie/Mechanic. I wasn't even left out of the battles, since I fulfilled a sniper role. While the enemy was engaging the obvious threat, I'd be taking potshots at them with a rocket launcher

oberon

[Samaritan]

As far as I'm concerned, Palladium begins and ends with Robotech. It was IMHO, the best game they put out. Granted, I've played and enjoyed just about every one of their games, but Robotech is one I would consider playing today.

John Spencer

I'd go with you here, though the "Return of the Masters" book had the feel of 'homebrew' to it. Mecha Su-Dai? Not a bad thing, mind you, but I don't recall a lot of the stuff from the series. And as I understand it, their tech specs were way off from official numbers. Still, it worked within the game so I never payed much attention to that fact.

Though, I always felt the Veritech pilots in Macross got too much facetime; it wasn't until Southern Cross (a sorely under-appreciated timeline and supplement) that I felt PC OCCs were becoming more equal.

[JohnOSpencer]

I'd go with you here, though the "Return of the Masters" book had the feel of 'homebrew' to it. Mecha Su-Dai? Not a bad thing, mind you, but I don't recall a lot of the stuff from the series. And as I understand it, their tech specs were way off from official numbers. Still, it worked within the game so I never payed much attention to that fact.

Though, I always felt the Veritech pilots in Macross got too much facetime; it wasn't until Southern Cross (a sorely under-appreciated timeline and supplement) that I felt PC OCCs were becoming more equal.

I agree on both counts. Some of the Return of the Masters stuff was Ok, and other was "WTF?"

Southern Cross was very equal, and we played quite a bit of it. But I think the crown gem was Invid Invasion. This was the first RPG book I was ever "exited" about. It had the most potential and the fighter pilots didn't always get to run around in the Mecha all the time. I am actaully thinking of trying to convert Invid Invasion stuff to HERO.

John