Palladium to HERO conversion?

[lazarus]

Does anyone here have the knowledge on how the Palladium system weapon stats convert to HERO System? I've got a book of weapons for the Palladium System (all SD/SDC) that I would like to be able to use in the HERO system - it shouldn't be too hard, after all, but I don't know enough about the Palladium system to be able to do it myself

 

Laz

[Solomon]

Re: Palladium to HERO conversion?

 

CAVEAT: Palladium's policies regarding conversions to other systems tend to be on the strict, if not outright paranoid, side. That's why you don't see many full conversions on the Web - apparently Palladium asks them to be removed.

 

Anyway, Palladium's normal (SDC) damage sistem is roughly on the same scale as D&D. Medium melee weapons like swords usually deal 1d6 to 1d8 SDC damage plus a Strengh bonus. Two-handed melee weapons deal 2d6 or more.

 

Firearms range from 1d6 SDC (small caliber pistols) to 5d6 (hunting rifles and large bore shotguns). 4d6 is typical for most assault rifles and heavy (.44 or .45) pistols.

 

A typical first-level character (assuming such a thing exists in the Palladium system) will have SDC "hit points" in the low to mid tens.

 

Then there's MDC damage, and here things get messier. MDC damage, or Mega-Damage, was first conceived for the Robotech RPG. It was meant to represent vehicles and structures that are, to most purposes, invulnerable to normal handheld arms and require special weapons to breach. We're talking Varitechs, Mechs, spaceships and the like, though later supplements applied MDC to smaller structures.

 

The rule goes thus: one MDC point equals 100 SDC points. In other words, any amounts of MDC damage will obliterate most SDC characters and things, while usually no amount of SDC damage will scratch a MDC character or thing. It was a crude, but crudely effective, way of keeping man-to-man combat and mecha-to-mecha combat on two distinct levels. Later, the system devolved as SDC and MDC charcaters began to interact on a regular basis, especially in the RIFTS setting.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have my books at hand, and I can't recall what are the damage ranges for MDC weapons. But the gist of it is, any MDC weapon in an anti-tank weapon, even if it deals only 1d6 MDC damage or less.

 

When converting to HERO, I think you'll want to represent Mega-Damage structures by giving them high DEF rather than bucketloads of hit points as Palladium does. You'll also probably want to scale the system so that high-end SDC and low-end MDC weapons almost overlap in effectiveness.

 

Hope this helps.

[Solomon]

Re: Palladium to HERO conversion?

 

Rereading your post I see you're mostly concerned with SDC weapons. Is a Weapon Compendium we're talking here?

 

If yes, here's some harder-and-faster rules of thumb:

 

For melee weapons and muscle-powered ranged weapons:

A 1d6 SDC Palladium weapon equals a 2 to 3 Damage Classes HERO weapon.

A 2d6 SDC Palladium weapon equals a 6 Damage Classes HERO weapon.

A 3d6 SDC Palladium weapon equals a 7 to 8 Damage Classes HERO weapon.

Other weapons should fall somewhere in between: adjudicate based on average damage.

 

For Firearms:

Add 2 to the number or Palladium damage dice to get HERO's DC. Compare results with the HERO firearms table.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Palladium to HERO conversion?

 

Not sure if this will help you, laz, but this thread has HERO stats for a number of the weapons and equipment from Palladium's RIFTS game, as well as some general conversion guidelines.

 

BTW when looking for conversions from other games into HERO, may I humbly suggest that you try here first?