RIFTS Rules Alterations

There are many, many optional and conflicting rules in Rifts. This is my attempt to sort them out.

Combat

Attacks

The books tend to contradict themselves a lot when it comes to attacks per melee, but I think the GM's Guide has finally clarified it. Players without any Hand to Hand skills at all get a base of 2 attacks per round. Players with a Hand to Hand skill get their base 2 attacks, plus whatever extra attacks the skill gives them (usually 2). This can be modified by the Boxing skill, plus any OCC, RCC or PCC bonuses, and any cybernetics.

Dodging

The default rules impose horrific penalties on dodging ranged attacks, particularly energy and projectile weapons (-10 to dodge without any bonuses whatsoever!). Therefore, I am ignoring these rules to extend PC's life expectancies.

Also, a new rule for dodging has been added in the GM's Guide. In short, it allows a character who has ran out of attacks to continue dodging, but each dodge uses up an attack from their next round. Obviously, autododge is not affected.

Parrying

The rules for parrying remain the same. However, I thought I'd point out that serious penalties are applied to characters trying to parry ranged attacks, if they can see them coming.

Rate of Fire

Most weapons state their Rate of Fire as being 'Standard', which is somewhat misleading. To clarify, for my game, Rate of Fire Standard means that a weapon can fire one shot per melee attack the character possesses. So, if a character has 4 melee attacks per round, the weapon can be fired 4 times per round.

Generally, this counts as an aimed shot, so characters possessing the relevant Weapon Proficiency will get at least a +3 to strike.

Some weapons possess Pulse Fire capability, but this still counts as one melee attack.

Bursts

Very few weapons in Rifts are capable of 'true' autofire (i.e. holding down the trigger until the gun is empty). Those that can are usually SDC automatic weapons. Indeed, most weapons are capable of Pulse Fire, which usually fires a 3-round burst.

In the circumstance that a PC gets a weapon capable of autofire, then the existing autofire rules leave a lot to be desired. Therefore, the following revised rules are in order.

Older weapons with Rate of Fire: Standard and no Pulse Fire capability are capable of firing short bursts with repeated pulls of the trigger. This counts as one melee attack and does damage as listed above. Typically, this functionality extends only to pistols and rifles, as energy cannons have too long a recharge rate to fire more than once per melee attack.

Weapon Damage Scale

Rifts has a major shortcoming when it comes to the scale of weapons. Quite often, a personal sidearm can do the same damage as, if not more than, a cannon mounted on a huge vehicle. These rules, in part, try to redress the balance between Infantry (personal) weapons and Power Armour (vehicle) weapons.

To clarify, Infantry (or personal) weapons do half damage to large targets like Power Armour, Robot Vehicles and Tanks. Also, weapons mounted on such large vehicles do 50% more damage to Infantry. Supernatural creatures and damage are effectively exempt from this rule.

Armour Penetration

In the time of high-tech warfare, the role of modern body armour is to slow down or stop an attack so that it does reduced damage to the wearer. However, more often than not, even though a bullet may not penetrate armour, it still deforms it, leaving a nasty bruise.

In Rifts, personal weapons wield the firepower of a modern battle tank, and although armour is good, it cannot fully prevent damage. This rule models this.

Essentially, per every listed amount of damage from a specified weapon to the various armour type, 1 point of SDC / HP damage is inflicted. So, for example, if a low velocity weapon inflicts 16 points of damage to a character wearing EBA, they take 3 points of SDC / HP damage to represent the armour deforming against impact, heating up, or shards being chipped off and flying about inside.

These rules only apply to ranged weapons, close combat weapons are unaffected. They also only apply to SDC / HP creatures… MDC beings are not affected.

Magic

Armour Penalties

The default rules impose a penalty on any mage who is wearing full, man-made armour. After the extra bookkeeping of last years game, I am dropping this rule, as it is too much hassle! Plus this means mages don't get vaporised quite as easily…

Casting Time

The default rules state that a mage can throw only 2 low-level spells per melee, and even less high-level spells. This makes magic extremely weak compared with modern equipment, so the following revision is in effect. This time includes casting the spell, so, for example, it takes one entire action to cast and deploy a level 1 spell, not two.