d20 Rifts - Combat notes and Grenade rules

For combat, 99% of the rules are straight out of Spycraft. I had a couple of notes. But one of the big chunks is a house rule I developed for grenades. In SC, grenades are basically "check if you hit, affect a blast radius". I thought that was boring, and never fit the cinematic tension of grenades.

d20 Rifts - Operator Class

Operator

This is a core class.
The operator is one of the cogs that holds the world together. There is a lot of very advanced technology out there, and precious few people to keep it running. In civilized areas, operators run very profitable businesses, either legitimate or black market. In the wildlands, though, it’s a different story. Very few villages can afford their own specialist, and even fewer can afford parts and supplies. So, traveling operators become part mechanic, part scavenger, and often hero.

d20 Rifts - General rules

Attributes

To generate attributes, you get 36 points to spend on the following chart:

Score	Cost	Modifier
1	—	–5
2–3	—	–4
4–5	—	–3
6–7	—	–2
8	—	–1
9	1	–1
10	2	+0
11	3	+0
12	4	+1
13	6	+1
14	8	+2
15	11	+2
16	14	+3
17	18	+3
18	22	+4
19	N/A	+4

Strength

Strength is raw physical power. It adds to your melee attacks and damage. It also determines how much load you can carry.

Supernatural strength is strength that is well beyond the human scale. It’s measured on the same scale, however, but with two important differences. First, all of the lift/carry amounts are multiplied by 10. Second, a creature with supernatural strength is capable of dealing megadamage with its natural and melee attacks (so long as the melee weapon is an MDC structure).

Dexterity

Dexterity is physical finesse. It adds to your ranged attacks, Defense, Initiative, and Reflex saves.

Constitution

Constitution is physical endurance. It adds to your vitality and Fortitude saves. It also determines your wound points.

Supernatural endurance is an indication that your body is an MDC structure. You gain damage reduction equal to (Con score)/(Con modifier, minimum 0). You are also able to keep going longer than normal humans. You are effectively immune to normal fatigue, are able to hold your breath for a number of minutes equal to your Con score, and can go a number of days without sleep (without penalty) equal to your Con modifier (minimum 0).

Intelligence

Intelligence is a measure of your ability to learn and retain information, and to solve problems. It adds to your skill points and education checks. It also determines your starting languages.

Wisdom

Wisdom is a combination of several mental traits, including acuity and willpower. It adds to your Will saves and intuition checks. It is also important for determining how perceptive your character is.

Charisma

Charisma is a measure of your strength of personality. It adds to your budget and favor checks. It is also very important for most social skills.

Miscellaneous Rules

Favor Checks

Favor checks represent your ability to get miscellaneous aid from the people around you. This can range from information on the local warlord, to borrowing a truck, to bailing you out of jail.

In order to make a favor check, you must spend one GP and choose a person or organization you want to provide the favor. You then make a roll, adding your character level and your Charisma bonus. If you succeed, then your contact will fill your request. If you fail, then you may not make the same request of that contact for the remainder of the session (however, you may make the request of another contact, and another member of your party may ask the same contact).

The difficulty of a favor check is determined both by how difficult/ expensive/ risky/ etc. filling the request will be for the contact (as determined by the GC), and by what kind of relationship you have with the contact. Contacts have qualities of Stranger (-6), Poor (-2), Mediocre (+0), Good (+2), and True Friend (+6). The quality of a contact can be improved with the use of Bureaucracy (for organizations) or Diplomacy (for individuals), or through acts which benefit the contact. Likewise, the quality of a contact may be worsened through acts which harm the contact.

Intuition Checks

Intuition checks are a tool to get a hint from the GC as to what to do next. They represent a sudden flash of insight, or a feeling that you’re on the wrong track.

Making an intuition check requires you to spend 1 GP. You add your character level and Wisdom modifier to the roll.

You cannot actually fail at an intuition check. Simply by making the check, you will get some level of insight. The result of the check simply determines the quality and relevancy of that insight.

Education Checks

Education checks represent the general education and world experience that the character has picked up. This can be anything from recognizing a famous person, to knowing where Ishpeming is, to telling the difference between a legitimate cyber-doc and a body chop shop.

Education checks are free, and can be made whenever a character wishes. You simply roll, and add your character level and Intelligence modifier. If the result is high enough, you know the piece of information you are looking for. If not, you don’t. If you fail an education check, you may not make additional checks on that topic this session. You may take 10 on an education check, but you may not take 20.

Education checks are not a replacement for Knowledge skills. For one thing, information that would be trivial for a character with a relevant Knowledge skill may be difficult with an Education check (meaning, it would have a much higher DC). There are also some things that can only be accomplished with the relevant Knowledge skill. For instance, there is a popular juicer movie hero named Julian Amici. It would be a fairly easy education check to know who he is (DC 15). It would be a difficult education check (DC 25), but a fairly easy Knowledge (Juicers) check (DC 10) to name his favorite weapon. No education check would allow you to name all the actors who have portrayed him, but it would be a difficult Knowledge (Juicers) or Knowledge (Movies) check, or an easy Knowledge (Julian Amici) check.

Education checks regarding people, places, and things not on your home plane have a DC increased by 10.

Languages

There are a large number of languages in the world. Pretty much every traveller ends up learning a few of them.

You will start with fluency and literacy in your native language. If you wish, you can give up literacy in your native language in return for an additional language pick, but you cannot be literate in any other language if you are not literate in your native language. You also start with a number of language picks equal to your Intelligence modifier. You then gain one additional language pick for each rank you have in the Languages skill.

With each language pick, you can choose to gain one of four things. You can become competent in a language you do not already know. This allows you to hold any normal conversation, but you have a distinct accent and occasionally have trouble with idioms or jokes. You can become fluent in a language you are already competent in. This means you speak like a native in all ways. You can become literate in a language you are competent in. This allows you to read and write in that language. (If the language is a “dead” language, you can choose to become literate instead of becoming competent with your first pick.) Finally, you can choose to master a particular lingo. This is generally associated with a particular profession, such as military or technical, and includes the jargon particular to the profession, as well as common phrases and references used by members. Another type of lingo is the dialect of a particular location or population. In either case, learning the lingo allows you to pass yourself off as a member or native of that group.

If you do not possess competency with a language, you can still attempt to make yourself understood with that language, using a few words and frequent gestures. This requires both you and the person you are talking to to make a Languages check, with a DC based on the closest common language. If both people fail, then communication cannot be held. If both people succeed, then most concepts can be communicated. If one person succeeds and the other fails, then only simple concepts can be communicated.

Some common languages on Rifts Earth are: Coalition English (the most common language in North America), Spanish (common in southern North America and Central America), Quebecois (unique to the Coalition State of Free Quebec), Faery, Draconic (also frequently used for magical writings), Gobbledy (a rough language common among a surprising number of less civilized dimensions), and Leet (a much more advanced version of today’s 1337-speak, used by computer and electronics gurus. This is a text-only language, and hence you only need to pick literacy with it). Some less common ones include Atlantean/Splugorth, German, Native American (an amalgamation of Apache, Navajo, and other tongues, that varies widely from group to group), Enochian, Avestan, and Takelma (these three are common among divine and infernal beings and their servants).

d20 Rifts - Spycraft overview

It occurs to me that I know all about Spycraft. I didn't actually include many explanations of its mechanics in my notes. But you guys reading this may not know about it. So let me give a bit of a primer of some of the ways it deviates from standard d20.

Rifts using the d20 system

I've written about this before. I got a bug a few years back to convert the Rifts setting to a d20 system. This would allow for the vast range of options in Rifts, but with more structure, balance, and predictability than the Palladium system provides.

I just ran across some of my old notes. I don't know that I want to necessarily pick the project up again. (Among other things, I think I like using the Gamma World system better than d20.) But I was actually pleased with what I'd written, so wanted to toss it out into the world. Maybe someone else can use it.

Guardians of the Galaxy - Spoilers Within!

*cough* Wow, this place is dusty. I should swing by more often.

So, like a good chunk of the nation, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend. I loved it! And I wanted to have a super spoileriffic discussion of some of the points in the movie. Facebook doesn't really do jump-cuts and the like well, so I figured I'd fire up this old hunk of junk.

<<< There be spoilers within >>>

Harry Dresden, Wizard Private Eye

So, Evil Hat recently threw down a gauntlet. Harry Dresden is statted in the Dresden Files RPG as he appears at the beginning of the series. The series is now around book 14, and he's grown a bit. So, the challenge is to advance Dresden up to the point he would be at the beginning of Changes.

I am totally up to this challenge.

In point of fact, to prep for a DFRPG game (that sadly never got off the ground), I started listening to the series again. (I like the audiobooks because they are narrated by James Marsters, who does a great job.) I was specifically listening for how the action in the books matches up to the system. I was statting a bunch of different things in my head. And, I happen to be at the end of Turn Coat, which is the point in the series the challenge is targetting.

It's like fate. Pun completely intended.

Before I jump into the actual stats, I want to go through my process a bit. I started with the character as described in the book, assuming that that was as of the end of Storm Front (which matches the phases outlined). I assumed that each book thereafter represented a signficant milestone, and every three-ish books represented a major milestone. Boiling it down, that means I get to add 10 skill ranks and 4 refresh. Unfortunately, to make things work, I'm going to need to declare a couple more major milestones, because I need at least 6 refresh.

Harry's injured hand and the presence of Lasciel are both extreme consequences that he has since bought off. Lasciel also gave him a Hellfire power, which was replaced with the Soulfire power after White Night.

Molly doesn't need to be represented, as she is essentially another PC. Adding an aspect that connects the two would be good, but isn't required.

Bob does, IMHO, need to be represented. He does not have independent free will, so is not a separate character. He very clearly boosts Harry's Lore checks. He is almost entirely incapable of defying Harry. There is no question that he is an extension of Harry's character, that grants mechanical benefits. To give Harry Bob without cost is a huge free boost. The fact that Bob changes based on the wizard who owns him is another big indicator that he is a stunt, not an NPC.

Mouse is a little trickier. He is a sidekick. Based on Changes, he is clearly a full NPC in his own right (probably not a PC, though). DFRPG doesn't really handle sidekicks well. Mouse does a lot of good stuff for Harry, especially when it comes to fighting. So, he should have some representation. But, his contributions are not as cleanly defined as Bob's Lore boost. If there is a point of refresh left over to define Mouse with a stunt, I'll want to use it. If not, I can live with defining him as an NPC ally, and letting the GM dictate his actions.

Demonreach is hard. How do you represent that kind of connection? Especially with all we discover in Cold Days? For these purposes, I'm going to say that the connection with Demonreach was a special circumstance in Turn Coat. The groundwork has been laid for Harry to add it as a stunt later, but it isn't on the sheet yet. That way, at least, I don't have to think up rules for it.

Looking through the rules, it is clear that any wizard who has gone through 4 major milestones should have at least one refinement. But, I honestly can't think of a single one that applies to Harry. I guess that's why people still think of him as a thug.

Oh, except that refinements are also used to get more magical doodads. And Harry has significantly upgraded his gadget score a couple of times. There are three enchanted items that need to be represented. The first is his duster. That's very straightforward, and I'll simply accept the 2-slot version that it's in the book. (Since Harry has, unfortunately, stopped doing much with potions, that will just fit into the 2 slots reserved in the Storm Front version.) The second is his force rings. The single ring he used for several books is a very simple item. The crazy three-rings-per-finger brass knuckles version he's sporting by Small Favor is over the top. Created as described, it's 2 slots per ring, so 6 slots per finger, so 36 slots total. That's 9 refresh. How about no? Instead, let's look at how Harry uses the rings. It's pretty much always "punch, punch, punch, OMG-MEGA-PUNCH". So, we just model that. A basic force ring that is Weapon:2 (because Lore of 3) usable three times per session for 2 slots, and a second ring that is Weapon:5 usable once per session for another 2 slots. Boom, same effect, for one measly Refresh.

The third enchanted item is the trickiest by far. Little Chicago is a weird little device for the rules to model. And, honestly, I'm not crazy about how it was done in Our World. It is super powerful, from a straight-up magic perspective. And it gets a lot of things attributed to it, like protecting Harry from Cowl's mental blast. But, does it need to do that? I don't think so. It really does one thing. It allows Harry to cast divinations as though he were in any outdoor space in Chicago from his lab. Honestly, I don't want this to be an enchanted item at all. I'd much rather this be a specialized variant of the "Workshop" stunt. So, that's what I'm running with.

After Proven Guilty, there are numerous examples where Harry notes that teaching an apprentice has really been good for his control and precision. As such, I felt that boosting his Discipline up to Great made sense. And, given the large number of people that Harry is now entangled with, it made sense to boost Contacts up to Good (which also preserves the ladder). That takes up 7 of the 10 ranks from advancement right there. As Harry's reputation builds, and he gets better at fending off social attacks, it makes sense to bump Presence up to Fair. Primarily in order to use up the last point, and playing off the newly found ability to take a few shots in social warfare, I'll bring his Empathy up to Average.

Stunts and powers are always the complicated bits. How many of Harry's tricks need to be represented here? As a decent rule of thumb, it should be something that comes up at least every other book. Ideally, it should have an obvious name from when it is referenced in the books. And, it should give a clear boost that simple skill can't duplicate. Harry's skill at Listening, which is included on the original sheet, is a great example of ticking off these criteria.

As I mentioned above, Harry used to have the Hellfire power, and now has the Soulfire power. Comes up in every book (well, in Small Favor, Turn Coat, and Changes). Has an obvious name. Can do things beyond regular spellcasting. Done. Now we just need details on what it does. Fortunately, Our World has it covered.

I'm very sure that Harry should now have the Za Lord stunt. Comes up frequently. Again with the obvious name. The question is whether Toot Toot and his brigade represent something more than just a Contacts check. Given how steadily the impact of Toot Toot's help has grown over the series, I'm inclined to say that it does. Especially as the fairies are willing to do just about anything for Harry.

I am inclined to remove the Lawbreaker stunt. While it was very important to Harry's interactions early in the series, I feel like he's grown out of it. An argument can be made for keeping it, as part of his relationship with Molly and her Doom of Damocles. And, of course, an argument can be made that you never unbreak a Law. But I just don't see it as all that relevant anymore, and certainly not worth the point of refresh.

The most important part of any FATE character is, of course, the aspects. Harry has changed a great deal since Storm Front, and the original aspects need to change, too.

I'm not going to touch the High Concept or Trouble. I considered changing out Wizard Private Eye for something regarding being a Warden. But, McCoy has a line in Turn Coat about Dresden being the most gifted investigator in the White Council. And, of course, alternating between magus and gumshoe is pretty much how Dresden solves most problems. If I was playing out all the variants of Dresden, I would have had his Trouble change to Lasciel's Shadow during the few books when she was present. But, it has now changed back to The Temptation of Power.

A couple of the aspects are still core to Harry's personality and modus operandi. You just can't argue with Epic Wiseass, or with Not So Subtle, Still Quick to Anger.

After Dead Beat, Harry had two major life changes. First, he became a Warden. Second, and as a direct result, he was getting a steady paycheck that meant he was no longer Perpetually Broke. Not enough to bump up his actual Resources skill, mind you. But enough to change out the aspect. I don't want to go with a vanilla Warden of the White Council aspect, because Harry's relationship with the concept is much more complicated than that. I went for the wording of Drafted Into the Grey Cloak.

I've noticed that Harry's attitude towards women has changed significantly lately. The bit with Ordo Lebes in White Night still nailed him square in his chauvinistic chivalry bone. But, otherwise, he hasn't been such a sucker for the ladies. I blame both Lasciel and Lara Raith. Anyway, it's enough to warrant switching out Chivalry's Not Dead, Dammit. A couple different people brought up that Harry is a creature of habit. And he makes the comment on more than one occasion that he likes things like his apartment and the Blue Beetle because they're his. Hell, that's most of his reasoning behind not getting his hand amputated. So, it's a pretty good move to make the aspect Because It's Mine, Dammit. The symmetry of the wording there is nice, too.

Finally, one of the biggest changes in Harry's life has been finding Thomas. But, I don't just want to make an aspect around Thomas. It's a bit limiting. More importantly, we know that family is going to be HUGE in Changes. We might as well make the aspect about family in general, and not just about Thomas. Furthermore, we know that Harry's mother has left a legacy of landmines throughout the supernatural community. That should play into the aspect, if possible. The aspect really clicked when I thought about the conversations Harry had about being an orphan, and how much he doesn't really get what it's like to have a family. So, I wanted to make the aspect Family is a Mystery to Me. That covers both the general family bits, and the fact that all of his family connections involve secrets. But, it wasn't quite right. First, it doesn't really cover how important Thomas is to Harry. Second, the "to Me" part doesn't entirely feel right. So, I changed it up to Family is a Precious Mystery. I wish I could have used an actual line for the aspect, but I think this covers all the bases as succintly as possible.

So, without further ado, here is Harry Dresden's character sheet:

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden

High Concept:  Wizard Private Eye
Trouble:  The Temptation of Power
Other Aspects:
     Family is a Precious Mystery
     Because It's Mine, Dammit!
     Not So Subtle, Still Quick to Anger
     Epic Wiseass
     Drafted Into the Grey Cloak

Skills:
     Superb (+5):  Conviction
     Great (+4):  Discipline, Endurance, Intimidation
     Good (+3):  Alertness, Contacts, Lore
     Fair (+2):  Athletics, Investigation, Presence, Rapport
     Average (+1):  Empathy, Fists, Scholarship, Stealth, Weapons

Stress:
     Physical:  O  O  O  O
     Mental:    O  O  O  O
     Social:     O  O  O

Stunts and Powers:
     Listening (Investigation) (-1)
     Evocation (-3)
     Thaumaturgy (-3)
     The Sight (-1)
     Soulgaze (0)
     Wizard's Constitution (0)
     Sponsored Magic - Soulfire (-3: -5 reduced by 2 for Evoc and Thaum)
     Refinement (-1) - Gives 4 enchanted item slots for force rings
     Little Chicago (Resources) (-1) - While in lab, Harry may cast divination magic as though he was in any outdoors space in Chicago.
     Za Lord (Contacts) (-1) - Once per session, Harry may call upon Toot Toot and associated fairies, who will serve him with fanatical devotion.
     Bob (Lore) (-1) - Whenever Harry is able to consult with Bob, he gets +2 to his Lore check. Bob is able to do some very limited independent Investigation, though at -2 because he is unreliable. Harry must keep Bob a secret from Molly and the Wardens.

Specializations:
     Evocation: Fire, Air, Spirit
     Thaumaturgy: Divination

Foci:
    Staff, Blasting Rod, Shield Bracelet

Enchanted Items:
     Duster: Armor:3 twice per session
     Force Rings (individual): Weapon:2 three times per session
     Force Rings (burst): Weapon:5 once per session