Healer Class, Adding more abilities.

 

In the core Palladium Fantasy 1e book, the Healer class is a powerful support class, capable of healing and protecting their allies. However, one limitation of this class is that their abilities top out at level 3, leaving them without any new tricks to learn beyond that point.

As someone who enjoys creating and homebrewing in RPGs, I felt that the class needed a few more abilities to keep it fresh and exciting at higher levels. So I sat down and came up with some new ideas for level 4 and level 5 abilities that would enhance the Healer's repertoire.

Palladium Fantasy 1e Armor Breakdown and Costs for Repair (new)

 

While I have changed up the Armor Rules from how it works, removing SDC and providing a Damage Resistance to the armor, there is no way for the armor to break down and become useless like how the original rules intended. I know my group liked this method better because they didn’t have to track SDC and then remember to repair it and when SDC gets to a certain point the armor doesn’t provide as much cover.

Adopting Perception Rules from The Rifter 13

 

Since Palladium Fantasy 1e does not have a form of “Perception” like later editions do such as Dead Reign, Nightbane and Rifts Ultimate Edition, I had to figure a way to incorporate it into the game. Looking at The RIFTER #13, we get some answers on page 16, which is later adopted into the game engine as a whole and Palladium themselves recommend using it for all systems. 

Fantasy 1e Armor House Rules Chat

If you are like me, then after playing a certain game for a long time, makes you want to tweak or adjust it to see what happens. As GMs, its always interesting to see what would break a game. Today I decided to go over my house rules for Armor changes. Let me know what you think!

Palladium Fantasy 1e SDC Armor changes

 

I am always looking for ways to change things up in the game, making it easier for book keeping, making combat a bit easier on myself and the players. I seem to always forget to bother with SDC, and will often just say, "that's a miss". Well there is a system in place and a GM has a lot to worry about, not only for the NPC, but the PCs as well. 

House Rules - Fantasy 1e - Armor/Shield Maintenance

 

Something that always bugged me was that in Palladium Fantasy 1e (far as the core book is concerned) does not go into detail or cover anything about Armor & Shield repair/maintenance. So I've come up with some house rules to make things a bit easier to make it happen.

House Rules - Fantasy 1e - Called Shots

 

This mostly applies to Fantasy 1e, but can work for any edition of any game that doesn't clearly have rules defined for this situation. 

In later editions, called shots takes up 2 actions to get a -4 (Head/Arm/Leg) and aiming your shot, which added a +2, ate up another action. So basically you'd be burning 3 actions to hit someone directly in a certain area that you picked (Head/Arm/Leg). 

In my game, a called shot is normally -4, which would be looking to hit a Head/Arm/Leg, rolling above an 17. If the player rolls below an 18, they missed the target as its such a small area to hit, they were off by a small bit and the melee weapon or ranged weapon just misses its target.

Now if someone wants to hit a smaller target, like a hand, a foot, a knee or even a crotch (Hey its been attempted!) its even harder to hit those areas, making a -8 to hit, having to hit a target of 18.

Now of course all this is kind pointless if the AR is reaching 19 or 20...but that's not a worry right now and I can handle it in a case by case basis.

Thoughts?

House Rules - Fantasy 1e - Traps & Locating them

 

As anyone knows who reads my blog, listens to my YouTube videos and actual plays for the Palladium Megaverse Podcast, I tend to run the earlier systems for Palladium games. That's because I grew up playing these games and I felt I really didn't need to update things. I felt the games were good enough on their own and if there was an issue, I can always house rule it to my liking. That's the type of game/system I enjoy and as a GM, I love the challenge of figuring out how to make things work.

House Rule - Memory Recall

 

There comes a time in your campaign that you've given out some important information and it flew past your players, or maybe some time passed between gaming sessions and no one remembers or wrote it down. 

House Rule - Skill rolls, when the character doesn't have the skill..

 

There comes a time in game a player will want to do something with his character, but does not have the skill for it and its frustrating to that player and even more frustrating when no one in the party has the skill as well. 

House Rule - Ways of handling Multiple Attacks?

 

So everyone has their methods of how to handle multiple attacks in the Palladium system.. Some of the early systems like Palladium Fantasy 1e, the Mechanoids and a few others had 1 attack and slow progression towards more then one attack. Later on with games like Heroes Unlimited, TMNT and RIFTS we see that some characters get 4 to 5 attacks right out of the gate. 

So what are some ways to handle it.. well what I do is this.

House Rule: Ambidextrous

 

Not everyone can be ambidextrous, its not something you can easily do; I BELIEVE overtime you can train yourself to use your other hand, but its not a very easy journey to take. Thus in roleplaying games I like to ask players to determine what is their dominate hand, mostly because I am tired of not knowing and when it comes to a character losing a hand, or arm.. the player always saying, "well good thing that I was a LEFTY instead of a RIGHTY!" When their right hand gets injured.