So here is my house rules for a MDC world that I think
others will enjoy. My inspiration comes from an SDC game that I am playing
about a Palladium Fantasy parallel world called Regnum. Our house rule have me
the inspiration (so thank you Brian and Jayson) to figure out how to enjoy MDC.
In the rules of the original print of Rifts there were rules
for being bumped around but they were so vague and convoluted that most players
don’t use them; can't blame them. It was a situation that if you were in MDC
of any kind you were invulnerable. MDC had to be destroyed before you got the
soft insides. For MDC creatures they were immune to stun, bleeding profusely,
basically a need to run because you could heal quickly and run away scathed but
not without rapid healing; ridiculous.
I have a ton of Rifts books but have never played Rifts
because MDC pissed me off (and if you are wondering just how many Rifts books I
have, I would say I have almost all of them, really, I am short about 10 of the
total). So I have stewed on the idea and finally I think I have come up with a resolution
for those Rifts gamers that don’t want to convert the whole game so that they
can even play or give it a armor rating for each thing.
Rules for the Living
Say you have a dragon with a butt load of MDC, well how do
you make them fear you? My rules would be if a player is able to roll a natural
20 or modified 24, the player has hit the spot that not only have they done
double damage but now bleeding damage has occurred (-10% of the total damage
coming from the wound). The alternative is that if they hit a limb that it is
severely injured (that means flying is slowed by 20%, running is cut to half or
their arm has lost half strength and is -2 to strike, parry and dodge with all
bonuses lost till the (any of them) limb is healed).
Now this didn't seem like much but it I am not looking to
cripple the game just give it flavor. I mean Kevin gave such flavor to vampires
and their rules (look at Rifts World 2: Vampire Kingdoms, the revised version (told you I had a lot of
books).
Rules for the Machine
When it comes to personal armor the character is a turtle in
a shell. Grab the guy by the limb and shake him like a ragdoll you could kill
him. Throw his glitter boy off the edge of a cliff and the pilot (and anyone else
on board) could take a beating without really doing much damage to the
exterior. This is not about burning holes in helmets with a single shot but
more about impact damage. If you have a Broodkill beat a CS soldier in his
armor, the old rule was until the armor is destroyed, they were safe. Not now!
In the modified rules for each impact blow (this excludes lasers and energy
attacks) the guy inside gets 10% damage from each blow so blows that do 10 MDC
would do 1 SDC to the guy inside. That wouldn't be much for those in body armor
but if they were say in a Spider Skull Walker and it was tossed off the edge,
the pilots, gunners etc would receive 1D6 damage for each 10 feet that walker
fell and for each time a dragon punched the walker the crew would feel the blow
(similar to a scene on Startrek when the ship is hit) and a Natural 20 or
modified 24 would do internal damage to the sensors, weapon systems or
targeting, etc. The screen would blank out or calibration would be wrong and so
that shots would suddenly miss. Perhaps a limb locks up and mobility slows to
half the robots attacks or slows to half speed because of the damage and delay.
For GM’s I would use the MDC location as a model for your personal critical
table.
So yea now you know. You do the double damage but now the
heroes and villains will have a reason to retreat from combat for something
other than being down to your last 10 MDC. Enjoy.
Images are from from two of the books published by Palladium drawn and colored by Kevin Long.
Images are from from two of the books published by Palladium drawn and colored by Kevin Long.
