I promised I'd give RIFTS (R) one more crack of the whip in an effort to find the game in amongst all the crazy details and rambling insights. I've tried the introductory bumpf, I've tried the character generation rules, and I've yet to find any consistent core principle or mechanic, anything I can hold up and say "this is how RIFTS (R) works, dudes". This week I'm going to delve into the nether recesses of the mighty Ultimate Edition and check out the combat system; maybe there's some magic here?
This might not actually be a bad idea. Combat systems tend to be the most rigorously written, accurately granular, and extensively detailed bits of RPGs. I think it's probably something to do with having to use your imagination; I'm a firm believer that anyone can put on a funny voice and improvise a conversation with some other people doing the same thing, but I draw the line at getting up and whacking people over the head with Tolkenian cutlery in an effort to perform combat theatrically. Plus it's hard enough getting four players into the same room, never mind a horde of short people to play goblins and get hit lots; unless you're a primary school teacher, I suppose.
Anyway, RIFTS (R) doesn't seem to be breaking any moulds here; there's a stout declaration that all combat moves are resolved by rolling a twenty-sided die, which is a good clear start, and then a fairly typical step-by-step process. Determine initiative for the round: all parties involved roll a d20, whoever scores highest has the initiative, sneak and long range attacks always have the initiative - so far, so clear. Roll to hit - anything over a four is a hit. So far so good. Then... armour does something, and what exactly it does depends on what kind of armour it is.
Artificial S.D.C. armour (the stuff that resists non-life-threatening damage) requires the attacker to beat its armour rating on that d20 roll if they actually want to hurt the contents of the armour; anything between 5 and the armour rating inflicts damage to the S.D.C. of the armour itself instead. So, in other words, if my character hits yours, either your character's getting hurt, or their armour's getting damaged - which is quite nice, even if it does add a layer of book-keeping. Plus it's how I thought vehicle armour values worked in second edition 40K, the first nerd game I ever picked up and played, so I do feel it's quite intuitive. Oh, and the critical hit mechanic's nice too; roll a 20, do double damage. M.D.C. armour works in basically the same way, except there's no armour rating to bypass - whatever damage is dealt comes off the M.D.C. score until there's no M.D.C. score left, at which point it jumps straight to hit points and probable annihilation.
Lest we think it's just about banging numbers together, though, there's the business of parrying, entangling or dodging. These are quite clearly explained as different; a parry is an attempt to attack the attack, as it were, and doesn't involve forfeiting your chance to strike back, while an entangle prevents further attacks at the cost of giving up one of your own, and a dodge gets you out of the way for a similar trade-off. It's not clear until the summary exactly what one rolls to parry, entangle or dodge (aaaaaaaand we're back in RIFTS(R)ville, where telling people things in the order they'll need to use them is the wildest and craziest notion of all), which is annoying, but the mechanic itself is fine - roll a d20 to parry or dodge, and if you equal or exceed the attack roll, the parry or dodge is successful. That's... how I'd do it.
Damage itself is a granular process, but not a tremendously complicated one - base damage plus bonuses from Physical Strength plus bonuses from relevant skills. You realise, of course, that in other circumstances I'd probably be whinging that this is more maths than I want to do every time I hit someone, but by RIFTS (R) standards this is comparatively restrained and transparent. Frankly, I'm grateful. Anyway, there's a caveat that only Mega Damage can erode Mega Damage Capacity, although particularly high Physical Strength (from being a robot, augmented in some way, some form of supernatural, or a Juicer... whatever that is, and no, I don't feel inclined to go back and check, thanks for asking though) does have a Mega Damage rating.
Finally, there's rolling with the impact; if the damage has come from a physical impact of some sort, the defending character may have a d20 rolled for them. Equalling or exceeding the attack roll means the character takes half damage as they get out of the way, or evades the worst of a knockout or death blow.
And that's it. An I-go, you-go, five step process. There's a quick note on GM technique from Mr. Siembieda, advising you to hop back and forth between pairs of combatants rather than resolving one player's fight in its entirety, then the next, then the next, which is pretty elementary but which would be pretty helpful to a novice GM, so no harm done there either. Multiple combats involve the outnumbered party defending against up to three attackers, with the rest getting free shots that can't be parried; the outnumbered party also has to pick one target to attack back in a round.
It's so... simple.
Even the subsequent list of combat moves is pretty tidy, with the different kind of attacks and their effects on the core mechanic - i.e. 'get knocked down, you lose the initiative automatically in the next round' - succinctly defined, and the interactions with particular skills called out when they come up. For all that it's in the wall-of-text style that I'm coming to fear and loathe in RPG books, it's still (mostly) coherent and entirely intuitive; things happen in a reasonable order, there's a few nice touches like damage being inflicted to armour, the defensive moves are refreshingly straightforward.
I'm not actually convinced that you need hard and fast rules for this sort of thing, mind. If it wasn't clear already, I'm all about a simple mechanic, a trustworthy GM, and a general understanding that we don't play with shit GMs. I'm not about all these detailed rules to insulate us from GMs who aren't reasonable enough to say "well, you want to try and knock the guy down, okay, take a -4 to your attack and damage rolls, but if you hit, you'll go first next round and he can only roll out of the way" and apply that consistently. But then, I suppose, that's how these detailed rules get started; people take a simple mechanic and then write down their house rules for ease of reference. I just think there's a point where enough becomes too much, and that point is when RIFTS (R), alas, returns to form and spends the rest of its page count detailing how being trained in a slightly different style of hand to hand combat makes you slightly better or worse at slightly different aspects of the mechanic at each of fifteen slightly different skill levels. There are four pages of rules for firing a missile launcher at something. There are seven stages for psychic combat.
Who cares that much? Not me, I'm afraid. Still, there's something about RIFTS (R) which, at the end of the day, isn't bad. It's only a competently executed core mechanic for fighting, which isn't much of a selling point on its own. It's certainly not enough to make me take on the rest of Mr. Siembieda's over-detailed vision. It is, however, a nice change from the previous 330 pages.
I also like the list of circumstances in which you might need any of the existing RIFTS (R) books. It's definitely a different approach to selling splatbooks, that's for sure. I'd still rather make stuff up though. Next week, I think, it'll be time to consider a system that enables that instead.
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