What's wrong with Palladium?

[JMcL63]

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.

ROFL!

[Wil Hyral]

Palladium hasn't evolved hardly at all in the 20+ years they've been around.

Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with them. I like Rifts enough, but one of my favorites will always be Hero Unlimited.

[Samaritan]

On the Robotech count, anybody remember the "Magic of Palladium" newsletter that they did for awhile? There was an 'official' Veritech car in one of those issues... never DID get a chance to use it.

Man, I would SO LOVE TO SEE an official, licensed Robotech game again...

Wasn't too fond of the Sentinels RPG... just didn't have the 'wartime' feel of the Macross/SC saga.

I agree with the Invid Invasion bit. Great setting for combat and RPing alike.

[Nuadha]

What is right with Palladium:
The art. Palladium Books have some of the coolest black and white artists.

The original Palladium Fantasy. It worked a lot better than AD&D. Recently they have screwed it up by making it more like their other games.

The Rifts setting. The Rifts setting is a lot of fun.

Erick Wujick. His TMNT character generation system was a lot of fun and Mystic China is one of the best sourcebooks available to any GM that is running a game using mystical Chinese elements. (I use it a lot in the Buffy game I run these days.)

What is wrong with Palladium:
The system. It had a ton of flaws that they have never attempted to address. One of my major complaints about the basic system is this: Character always miss when they roll a one through four. That is a 20% chance to miss every time, no matter how skilled your character is or how stationary the target is. Heck, even if the target is trying to get hit by you, yuo will miss the same percentage of the time. NOw if the target is actively defending, you will compare your total attack roll to their defense roll so that works better, but for anything else Bullseye would have the same percentage chance of missing as "Captain Can't Hit the Side of a Barn."

Power-gamers. The sourcebooks are a power gamer's dream as each Rifts sourcebook came out with more and more powerful stuff for players to be able to exploit.

Random Character Generation. This is always a minus, in my opinion.

Automatic Rifles. Do a full burst with an automatic rifle? You do more damage than the strongest supers could ever hope to do. I played Heroes Unlimited in high school and eventually all my power-gaming friends were carrying around machine guns in the game because they were so much better than anything else available.

[Susano]

I have a few RIFTS suppliments and am interested in converting some creatures to HERO. Does anyone have even a basic breakdown of RIFTS stats to HERO (at the very least?). A lot of the rest I'm not concerned about.

[Blue]

Palladium were the makers of Heroes Unlimited right? I barely even recall the system. I never owned a copy, but I did play it. I honestly can't recall if my character Anthem began as a Superworld Character then was ported to HU or vice versa, but of course she's in Champions now since those campaigns are dead.

I don't recall any major difficulties, and I had fun. That's about it. If I'd been a GM and had to design a bunch of things I'd probably have a stronger opinion.

[Greg]

I have a few RIFTS suppliments and am interested in converting some creatures to HERO. Does anyone have even a basic breakdown of RIFTS stats to HERO (at the very least?). A lot of the rest I'm not concerned about.

I sent you an email through the board with some stuff I've compiled from here. Stats are D&D range 3-18 with bonuses for various classes pushing them higher so they pretty much just convert straight across. The odd thing is that strength is measured differently depending on the type of creature, so for example a cyborg with 30 strength can lift more than a normal human with 30 strength but less than a dragon with 30 strength.

[Susano]

I sent you an email through the board with some stuff I've compiled from here. Stats are D&D range 3-18 with bonuses for various classes pushing them higher so they pretty much just convert straight across. The odd thing is that strength is measured differently depending on the type of creature, so for example a cyborg with 30 strength can lift more than a normal human with 30 strength but less than a dragon with 30 strength.

Wow... that makes a lot of sense....

Not.

[Captain Obvious]

I suppose you could make the argument that their muscles are equally strong, but there are leverage issues that give bigger guys or guys with engineered bodies the advantage, but then you have to wonder why they didn't just take that into consideration when designing the character templates instead of adding unnecessary BS.

[Pentoth]

Quote:Originally Posted by Greg
I sent you an email through the board with some stuff I've compiled from here. Stats are D&D range 3-18 with bonuses for various classes pushing them higher so they pretty much just convert straight across. The odd thing is that strength is measured differently depending on the type of creature, so for example a cyborg with 30 strength can lift more than a normal human with 30 strength but less than a dragon with 30 strength.



Wow... that makes a lot of sense....

Not.

The whole idea is that it is a scale so that you don't get stats in the 100+ mark. It just makes for easier bookeeping. Palladiums rules are more RPG in mind and less wargammerish. It's not perfect however the set up works well for what they are looking to do.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Wow... this was some particularly bizarre thread necromancy... and it wasn't even from Bubba!

[lemming]

Wow... this was some particularly bizarre thread necromancy... and it wasn't even from Bubba!

He'd been sitting on that post for four years. Finally, it was time!

[Lucius]

Like many folks here, I like the world concepts but don't much care for the mechanics.

The thing that completely turned me off of Palladium was an essay in "Villains Unlimited," in which Kevin S goes on at great length about how it is simply impossible for a person to knock another person unconscious. Any game designer who wastes a page and a half for a rant against one of the staple conventions of the superhero genre is missing a few cards from his deck, IMHO. :P

Bill.

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

And if not....why not?

The system's great, especially when you get good writers like Wujcik to work with it.

It's the company's actions and KS's additudes towards his own customers that really turns people off.

Err...umm....no, I don' think so. See below...

The odd thing is that strength is measured differently depending on the type of creature, so for example a cyborg with 30 strength can lift more than a normal human with 30 strength but less than a dragon with 30 strength.

Wow... that makes a lot of sense....

Not.

And from my own experience – I still remember playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – I would have to say, no, the system is not “great.”

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary thinks sitting on a post for four years would be uncomfortable, unless you're an Eastern Orthodox saint. Actually it probably wasn't comfortable for them, either....

[Vulcan]

I give Palladium full credit for coming up with creative, innovative, and interesting settings to play in.

It's just their system that sucks.

The 'everyone misses 20% of the time' has been mentioned. What has not been mentioned is the other side of the equasion: If you take no defensive action, you will be hit 80% of the time. Period.

In other words, unless you blow an action to dodge, the guy running down the street shooting at you is very likely to hit. Statistics notwithstanding.

The system totally blows chunks, which is a shame considering the settings they can come up with. TMNT was expanded greatly from the source material, the Macross/Robotech material was good, I'll give a nod to Rifts for sheer innovation and creativity, and the Ninjas & Superspies book was excellent. Too bad all that uplifting material is all tied to the 200 ton anchor of a system.

[Spence]

I hear this complaint about Kevin Siembieda a lot. He's been a nice guy when I've spoken to him via email and at conventions.

Are you sure it was him and not a pod person


But seriously, I played the Fantasy version for a while because I liked it better than what D&D was becoming at the time. When I started to shift to Rifts I noticed some things that struck me as wrong so I asked on the board if it was a typo or if I missed something. KS responded with a venomous reply about how he was tired of vicious attacks by trolls and I was immediately banned. apparently I hit a nerve.

But on the plus side it eliminated an whole series of books from consideration for purchase saving me mucho dollars