Jab's Rifts Builds (Rifts- A Final Summation!)

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by Hoid »

I’ve always wanted to play a Rifts game where my character is a Glitterboy piloting a specially-made Veritech.














...it would be awesome. Ridiculous, but awesome.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

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It's a weird little thing, but something I always wanted to do was use the Glitterboy's foot pylons offensively. You know those things in the Glitteryboy's legs that drill into the ground every time they need to lock in place to fire their Boom Gun? For some reason I always wanted to do something akin to the "Iron Man/Boomerang uses his jet boots on someone in a fight" thing. Like the Glitterboy gets knocked on its back, but when the creature attacking it leaps at the GB, it lifts one foot up and plants said foot on the creature's chest to stop it in place, and then you see the pylon emerge from the creature's back, along with a lot of blood and some of the creature's organs.

Or the Glitterboy is fighting someone, knocks them down, then plants their foot on the downed opponents chest. Pylon gets activated and suddenly the pinned creature isn't a problem anymore.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by catsi563 »

Ares wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:56 am It's a weird little thing, but something I always wanted to do was use the Glitterboy's foot pylons offensively. You know those things in the Glitteryboy's legs that drill into the ground every time they need to lock in place to fire their Boom Gun? For some reason I always wanted to do something akin to the "Iron Man/Boomerang uses his jet boots on someone in a fight" thing. Like the Glitterboy gets knocked on its back, but when the creature attacking it leaps at the GB, it lifts one foot up and plants said foot on the creature's chest to stop it in place, and then you see the pylon emerge from the creature's back, along with a lot of blood and some of the creature's organs.

Or the Glitterboy is fighting someone, knocks them down, then plants their foot on the downed opponents chest. Pylon gets activated and suddenly the pinned creature isn't a problem anymore.
you can do that by the by my own glitterboy piloy took out 3 brodkill in a fight blasted 1 punched the lights out of another and after being knocked downstuck her foot in the brods face and told the GM that I activated the foot spikes and backthrusters. speared the poor bastard and pinned him to a tree. :D

OS can confirm it works
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by catsi563 »

Ares wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:14 am
Jabroniville wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:58 am I forget, what’s in Free Quebec that I didn’t stat up already?
It's the Glitterboy version of the Juicer book, with a half-dozen or so armor variants.
yeah free Quebec is basically the coalition war campaign but focused on Quebecs troops and society, it has a listing of tis glitterboy forces and part sof the conflict with the coalition that happens prior to the War with tokien.


The GB character above was modfied after Quebec came out into a glitter girl pilot for the skills while using an updated GB suit
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by Ares »

catsi563 wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:47 am
Ares wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:14 am
Jabroniville wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:58 am I forget, what’s in Free Quebec that I didn’t stat up already?
It's the Glitterboy version of the Juicer book, with a half-dozen or so armor variants.
yeah free Quebec is basically the coalition war campaign but focused on Quebecs troops and society, it has a listing of tis glitterboy forces and part sof the conflict with the coalition that happens prior to the War with tokien.


The GB character above was modfied after Quebec came out into a glitter girl pilot for the skills while using an updated GB suit
Oddly enough, the new Glitterboy variant from that book I liked was the Sidekick armor, designed to be a highly mobile suit of armor with a flight pack that was designed to basically cover the Glitterboy's back, take out the more agile targets, and help set up opponents for the Glitterboy to take down.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by catsi563 »

yeah I liked that one too. One of the modifications that was made was a jump pack for the suit. No flight but the GM agreed on longer jumps which made for some fun combats
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

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catsi563 wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:00 am yeah I liked that one too. One of the modifications that was made was a jump pack for the suit. No flight but the GM agreed on longer jumps which made for some fun combats
Actually, the jump pack could do sustained flight, but sustained flight at max speed would eventually burn out the rockets. You could cruise at a slower pace, but the best way to achieve max speed was to make a jump at max speed, continue running at enhanced speed thanks to the suit, allowing the rockets to cool for another max jump. So in a sense, the Sidekicks were less 'Rocketeer' and more 'Crouching Tiger / Hidden Dragon'.
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Pirate

Post by Jabroniville »

PIRATE O.C.C.
Role:
Scurvy Scalawags
PL 7 (62)
STRENGTH
2 STAMINA 2 AGILITY 2
FIGHTING 3 DEXTERITY 4
INTELLIGENCE 0 AWARENESS 0 PRESENCE 2

Skills:
Athletics 3 (+5)
Deception 4 (+6)
Expertise (Pirate) 4 (+4)
Expertise (Survical) 4 (+4)
Intimidation 2 (+4)
Perception 4 (+4)
Technology 4 (+4)
Treatment 2 (+2)
Vehicles 3 (+7)

Advantages:
Equipment 11 (Gear)

Equipment:
"Trooper Body Armor"
Protection 7 (Impervious 5) (12)
Immunity 6 (Radiation, Vacuum, Hot, Cold, Suffocation 2) (6)
Mini-Computer (2)
Tinted Visor (1)

"AT-88 Energy Rifle" Blast 10 (Extras: Multiattack) (30)
"Assorted Gear" Gas Masks, Radios, etc. (4)

Offense:
Unarmed +3 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Assault Rifle +4 (+10 Ranged Damage, DC 25)
Initiative +2

Defenses:
Dodge +4 (DC 14), Parry +3 (DC 13), Toughness +2 (+9 Trooper Armor), Fortitude +3, Will +2

Complications:
Motivation (Greed)

Total: Abilities: 30 / Skills: 32--16 / Advantages: 11 / Powers: 0 / Defenses: 5 (62)

-Pirates are basically the criminal version of Sailors, and you'd imagine that 90% of all the sentient beings on Rifts Earth are in this O.C.C., given how much the fluff focuses on the fact that either pirates or monsters will attack everything that leaves the radius of a township. The book mentions that some are privateers- essentially, Pirates hired on as a military force to attack rival kingdoms. While some Pirates are called "Robin Hood"-like, 50% are said to operate in the slave trade- the most lucrative one on Earth.

-The Skill section for Pirates are WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY below that of the Sailor, oddly.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by catsi563 »

Ares wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:32 am
catsi563 wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:00 am yeah I liked that one too. One of the modifications that was made was a jump pack for the suit. No flight but the GM agreed on longer jumps which made for some fun combats
Actually, the jump pack could do sustained flight, but sustained flight at max speed would eventually burn out the rockets. You could cruise at a slower pace, but the best way to achieve max speed was to make a jump at max speed, continue running at enhanced speed thanks to the suit, allowing the rockets to cool for another max jump. So in a sense, the Sidekicks were less 'Rocketeer' and more 'Crouching Tiger / Hidden Dragon'.
Oh very true but in this case because I was using the heavier standard GB armor the GM ruled at the time that the jump pack could only make jumps not do the sustained short flights. Did give me a boost to Stability when firing though ;)

we were working on the jump packs flight when the game ended at the time
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by Jabroniville »

From my bits on Rifts Mercenaries, also written by Carella:

Another band are actually Demons. The Demon Ahriman actually gives us some of the book's only real "Power Creep", with some high-end Robot Suits that pack 900 MDC- some of the highest in the setting at this point! And much of their damage output rivals that of a Glitter Boy- you see a lot of 2D6x10 and 2D4x10 shots by the end of the book. This may actually be the start of Rifts' infamous creepage, as little things like that add up, resulting in Coalition War Machine and other books ramping up the baseline technology levels.

Note: This is part of the start of the infamous "Power Creep" inherent to Rifts, and apparently went contrary to KS's wishes. KS was FURIOUS over this apparently, as CJ has noted that "some in the office" didn't care for his executive decision to beef up all the Blasters in the game (he noted that it took too many shots to finish off the high-toughness characters in the game, and wanted to revise the "baseline" gun damage; no editors clued in to this until it was too late), and Kevin himself apparently threw CJ under the bus in an editorial about the Power Creep.

The most obvious blowback to this was that, as soon as CJ Carella was off the Palladium roster (under circumstances most don't talk about- CJ's a pro in the biz, and knows you don't talk smack about your bosses), his "baby", the high-tech Naruni, were systematically wiped out in the margins of the very next book- Coalition War Campaign. Like, they just greased the group from the face of the earth. No mention of Carella's NPC armies was ever made again in any other book, as far as I can tell, making that giant section of Mercenaries completely pointless to the game's history.
It turns out that as CJ Carella left Palladium as staff writer, Kevin Siembieda managed to "un-do" a fair bit of his work. CJ, as I've noted, is notorious for introducing some major "Power Creep" into the setting- fans either love him for his writing and ideas, or HATE him for the way he ramped up the power of guys in South America and Mercenary armies. He's commented off-handedly that the "office" disliked that immensely, and from what I've heard, KS openly blamed him in one book for over-powering things.

Soooo... turns out that in CWC, KS and others wrote a bit about how Naruni Enterprises, written into Carella's Rifts Mercenaries as a band of alien traders selling the highest-tech gear in the setting as an "inroads" into taking chunks of money from Rifts Earth, have been largely wiped out in a Coalition raid. It's said that they somehow found ALL of their known bases, wiped them out, and killed all of their associates. This effectively writes them out of the setting (though leaves the possibility of some leftovers). Probably a "Take That" from The Office at Carella's super-powered gear, as the Naruni tech was a notorious example of Power Creep in the setting.

Apparently Iron Heart, another base of great power, was also taken over, and turned into a standard "Coalition War Factory", so there super-gear might be off-limits as well.

A poster in the thread commented on these after-effects still being felt today, as even the BEAUTIFUL art in stuff like Rifts Lemuria is given to fairly under-powered stuff, as the super-Lemurian Bio-Armors are only packing SAMAS-level stats, for the most part.
Flipping through the "Carella Era", I can see the Power Creep in the guns, and a bit of the Armors as well. The "Pictures of Guns" sections were always the things I skipped 100% of the time, owing to... well, being pictures of the same-looking weapons doing the same-seeming damage. In the Main Rulebook, top of the line guns were 2D6 MD to 4D6 MD- Blast 9-11 in my stats. SAMAS units had a 1D4x10 Rail Gun, while Enforcers had 1D6x10. Glitter Boys were top-tier at 3D6x10. Rail Guns and top-tier Laser Rifles can match the SAMAS only.

In the "Carella" books, you can see the number of guns doing "Rail Gun" damage jumping fairly high. As these guns are much lighter than Rail Guns (typically only wielded by Borgs & Power Armors units), this might be the issue. A few things jump up to the level of an ENFORCER Robot! This seems to jibe with Carella's notes that armor outstripped guns by too much- now, you can kill a Coalition Goon in a single round with many of these guns.

He also boosts up the armor considerably. Rifts Underseas, as it encompasses much of the world's governments, includes a HORDE of stuff that make a SAMAS look puny. Several "City-Ships" sporting THOUSANDS of MDC, and even numerous MDC alien races. The other books have similar things- it really appears that "Power Creep" took a significant jump as of the 1994-1996 offerings. This is really the peak of it, however, and the line stabilizes shortly afterwards- the modern-day Power Creep is only slightly better than this. And, as snarkers note, the Glitter Boy still beats all of this stuff, hands-down. It took a friggin' SUPER-SUBMARINE in RU to surpass the power of the Boom Gun (doing 4D6x10 with its Wave Cannon thingies)!
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Mutant Cats

Post by Jabroniville »

Image

MUTANT CAT R.C.C.s:
-This is given a huge section in South America, stating that Argentina, Pre-Cataclysm, was trying to build a powerful Warrior Race of genetically-engineered cat-folk. Cruelly using them as experiments and slaves, they'd allowed one runt to live on, since he showed psychic powers. Unbenknownst to them, he befriended his fellow Cat-People, eventually leading a revolution with some other psychics. They did so just before the Cataclysm hit (they'd sensed it), leading their fellows into the jungle, where they founded a city of Cat-People with some... Cat Gods from Africa (Simba and Bast) and South America (Yaguar-Ogui). To this day, they've survived in a fortified, magically-hidden Awesome City. And you can play dozens of variants of the "type".

FELINOID R.C.C.: (19 points + Psionics)
Abilities: ST +3, STA +3, AGI +2 [10]
Powers: Athletics +4, Will +1, Senses 3 (Low-Light Vision, Acute Scent, Extended Hearing), Claws +1, Speed 2, Psionics (8 powers from 1 category or 6 from any of Sensitive, Physical or Healer) [9 + Psionics]

-The "Baseline" Felinoids are expected to be Jaguar-people, owing to the proximity to Argentina. However, there are others:

Lion: +2 ST, -1 INT, Speed +1 [3]
Tiger: +2 ST, +2 STA, Speed -1 [7]
Leopard: +1 AGI, -1 AWA, Speed +1 [1]
Cougar: +1 AGI, +1 STA, -1 AWA [2]
Caracal, Ocelot & Serval: -1 ST, -1 AWA, Speed +1 [-5]
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Flying Tiger

Post by Jabroniville »

Image

WHO WOULD LOOK AT THIS ART AND WANT TO PLAY THIS??

FLYING TIGER R.C.C. (85 points + Psionics):
Abilities: ST +3, STA +6, AGI +3, FIGHTING +2 [28]
Powers: Athletics +4, Expertise (Demons & Monsters) +6, Will +1, Senses 3 (Low-Light Vision, Acute Scent, Extended Hearing), Claws +1, Speed 2, Favored Environment (Airborne), Flight 8, "Psionic Field" Protection 2 (Impervious 7), Psionic Blast 10, Psionics (8 powers from 1 category or 6 from any of Sensitive, Physical or Healer) [57 + Psionics]

-These COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS Mutants are a unique mutant strain that gives them flaps under their arms like Flying Squirrels, and Psionic Powers that allow them flight beyond even what most suits of Power Armor are capable of. They even have Force Fields! They're treated more or less like the entire race is one O.C.C., given how they all have to select from the same lists. It's not a bad character if it weren't so insanely stupid-looking.
Last edited by Jabroniville on Wed Mar 20, 2019 6:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by Ares »

Given the stupid number of MDC a lot of suits had, increasing the damage of the firepower just made sense. Especially with the kind of stupid differences in damage you could wind up with. A 6d6 weapon technically has a range of 6 and 36, while a 1d6X10 can do between 10 and 60. It could take a ridiculous amount of time to whittle down someone with the several hundred MDC most characters tended to have. As had been said before, Rifts is a fun, insane setting in search of the right system.

I mean, it's funny how big a disconnect there often is how the art in the book depicts combat and actual in-game combat. I recall the Germany book where they had some humans in Power Armor fighting some Gargoyles in Power Armor, and you'd see things like the Gargoyle use a vibro weapon to slice through the arm of one armor, which is impossible the way MDC works in that game.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Oh yeah, I don't think I mentioned it before, but there's several comics in various books where guys essentially one-shot something, and Rifts is a setting where that's COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE. It's... the most uncinematic gaming universe in the world, with guys basically standing across from each other until MDC runs out.
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Re: Jab's Rifts Builds (Ninja Crazy! Ninja Juicer! Dragon 'Borgs!)

Post by catsi563 »

yeah it got so bad in one run that I basically had to implement Mook rules after a certain point. Otherwise combats would go on for ages
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