So, I had an idea I'd try to get myself to do a new kind of "feature" for my blog. I like bitching about Palladium's horribly produced games, and I like tinkering, so why not combine the two passions? I identify something which drives me crazy about a Palladium game, then I offer something resembling a localized patch. Maybe it will help someone out there both in the aspects of knowing they're not alone noticing how broken the rules are, and in trying to actually gather some decent gameplay from their Palladium materials.
Therefore, I present The Sweatshop. I'll be throwing out some thoroughly untested and half assed rules fixes to various Palladium rules problems. Then again, the Palladium rules themselves are half-assed and unworkable, so what have you got to lose?
I begin with a problem faced by every Palladium GM and player. Combat takes too long. This is a complex problem and has many facets, but the one I'm going to focus on is the prolonged HP attrition problem of the Palladium system. It seems everything has FAR too many Hit Points. Even the standard guy on the street has 20 hit points or more (10 SDC and 10 HP according to Heroes Unlimited), meaning they can shrug off 9mm pistol rounds (2d6 damage). This doesn't even venture into the realm of enemies described as common thugs with triple digit hit point scores.
Since I love Robotech, I'm most familiar with it, and it has the most standardized values, I'm going to be using it as an example from now on. In the latest Robotech RPG, the weakest enemy a PC can face is an Invid Scout. This type of enemy has 100 MDC. Meanwhile, the primary weapon of the Alpha (the archetypical UEEF mecha) does 1d4x10 damage for a 5 round burst. As you can see, it's mathematically impossible to kill an Invid Scout in one hit from this weapon, even on a critical strike.
In the Robotech TV show*, the Alpha's gun pod is shown to be capable of easily dispatching an Invid Scout, even from a single blast. A burst wasn't required, but obviously helped. The only Invid Scout which ever survives a successful strike was the one which eventually evolved into Corg. Corg's protoform gets a leg blown up by a missile. Any other example shown in the show indicates a Scout struck by gun pod fire in the wide main body dies.
In a game function, the Scout isn't even a particularly interesting enemy. It doesn't make much sense forcing a pilot have to hammer away on it for an average of 4 to 5 attacks to kill it. Worse yet, the Scout is a horde attacker. Meaning it should attack in large, easily dispatched numbers. The Scout's high MDC has created a situation where what should be the reliable gun pod standby weapon of the Alpha is nothing more than a useless popgun. The player is going to get bored, and wonder why missiles are his only valid attack option.
At first blush, it seems as if everything has too high of a MDC value. But wait! In a later episode of Robotech, Scott's Alpha gets directly struck by Corg's arm cannon. The resulting damage to Scott's mecha is... completely negligible. Similarly, Corg's mecha is pretty tough when resisting Scott and crew's fire. So much for the one shot/one kill theory of Robotech.
The simple reason is that Scott and Corg are aces. They're stars. They're supposed to have elaborate dogfights before they shoot each other down. Hit Point attrition works to simulate that to a certain degree. It also acts as a safety net for your players' minor mistakes.
What this means to me is that any fix to the Palladium damage problem requires a sliding scale. It needs to account for the star players as well as the disposable cannon fodder. To complicate matters, it also reveals how different enemies would have different roles. For example, the Alpha piloted by Scott is significantly tougher than an Alpha piloted by a generic nameless pilot. We don't want to actually modify the stats of all mecha, because the math would be tedious and we'd just have to recalculate everything again if we wanted an enemy of the same type with a different toughness. Doing a blanket increase of damage isn't the answer for much the same reason.
To solve this, I suggest a concept called Vulnerability. Each enemy has an Index which indicates how vulnerable they are to damage. When the enemy is struck, any damage they sustain is multiplied by their Index. Each enemy type has a Vulnerability Index assigned which can be modified for different specific enemies. The higher the Vulnerability Index the flimsier and more disposable the enemy is. And since Palladium stats are so inflated, we can proceed from the basic assumption that all base stats listed in the book are those for a PC Hero or Main Villain.
The recommended range of the Vulnerability Index is a value from 1 to 5. Each number means the following:
1 = PCs, Heroes, Major Villains
2 = Henchmen, Semi-Important NPCs
3 = Elite but standard recurring troops
4 = Tough Thugs
5 = Mooks, Cannon Fodder, Disposable Bad Guys to be cut down in droves.
With these guidelines, the Standard Invid Scout gains a Vulnerability Index of 5. This means whenever they're shot at, they take 5 times the normal amount of damage. This makes it quite probable a 5 shot burst from the Alpha's Gun Pod can deplete its 100 MDC.
An Invid Shock Trooper might have a standard Vulnerability Index of 4, while a Invid Enforcer would have a standard value of 3, reflecting their tougher and more prestigious nature, but still being less invulnerable than their current MDC values indicate. Since these values are independent of the actual MDC of the mecha, any enemy could be upgraded or downgraded. For instance an Invid Commander might have a standard value of 1, but a GM wanting PCs to battle a large number of such enemies might dial them down to values of 3. Or a crafty Invid Scout may be upgraded from a VI of 5 to a VI of 1, indicating future evolution to a new form if he survives.
PCs always have Vulnerability Indexes of 1. They're the stars of our story after all. How else do you explain Rand's survival of the mauling Corg gave him in the final episode of New Generation?
Since this solution is independent of MDC or SDC conversions, it can be used anywhere. While I've used Robotech as an example, since it is near and dear to my heart, the same solution could easily be applied to Rifts. Applying a VI of 5 to Coalition Grunts makes them more like the stormtroopers the setting projects them as. It also helps turn quite a few of the monsters described as cannon fodder in their description text into actual cannon fodder instead of party destroyers. Beyond Rifts, the same solution could be applied to the high SDC/HP fights in TMNT, After the Bomb, and Heroes Unlimited.
Best of all, it can be used to dial in the lethality, not only for cannon fodder enemies, but also for PCs. Want to run an extremely lethal game? There's no reason a PC can't have a VI other than 1. It can conceivably satisfy those wanting a "grittier" game as well as those wanting a more cinematic experience.
The patch has a degree of open endedness, more in the direction of increased lethality than anything else, but that should be fine as the vast hit point pools in Palladium represent a sort of zero lethality end of the scale anyway. Even still, there's no reason you couldn't create a Vulnerability Index of 1/2 or 1/3, indicating those characters take even less damage from successful strikes.
Anyway, that's the kludge for this installment. Try it until it breaks and let me know what you think. Remember, if the people at Palladiumbooks put at least this much thought into their rules, they wouldn't be so broken as to require all this kludging!
* The latest edition of the Robotech RPG is ostensibly based on The Shadow Chronicles, so the argument could be made that my examples taken from the original series New Generation segment are not appropriate. My counter argument would be the Shadow Chronicles RPG is clearly not based off the Shadow Chronicles film, and shows itself more as a recycling of old material from the original series than as a new simulation of a new film.
Tags: Palladium Rifts Robotech TMNT BTS Houserule Heroes Unlimited
