Advice for playing Palladium

Hi y'all, I just joined a game of Dead Reign and found it fun, I used a premade character the DM had made (firefighter/paramedic Survivor).

I've never played the system, and was looking for some tips on how to maximize my odds of survival and how to best use skills. Sadly, I don't have a copy of the rulebook I can use so any advice would be helpful.

I have no advice to give, but as I am just starting in a Palladium Fantasy game, I will be watching this.

As an unrepentant Rifts/Robotech RPG player, I have been waiting for this thread most of my life. Or was until I saw it was Dead Reign, which I've not played.

Sorry to dash your hopes like this.

Well, even if it's different game lines they still use the same core mechanics right? Well, how does leveling work? Do I get to pick new skills or to improve my % of success? And stats! Are they raised like in DnD every few levels? Also, my character is pretty mediocre in combat (understandable since he's not combat optimized) but what are some good cost effective ways to help him pull his weight more? As a fireman, I kinda want to "level up" his Axe usage.

Assuming they are too different in tone or mechanics, what'd you suggest if I were playing a Rifts/Robotech game. (which sounds like loads of fun btw. )

Well, Rifts and Robotech are MDC systems, which work much differently from purely SDC systems like Palladium Fantasy or Heroes Unlimited. Does Dead Reign use MDC?

The GM mentioned we aren't using MDC, but that he could convert the zombies to it.

Just had the second session. Tense and fun!

It is indeed SDC. Outside of combat, Basic Mechanics was pretty useful for rigging a hummer with snow tires and chain link fence to protect the windows. Also ended up using a lot of First Aid and Paramedics to treat a little girl for frostbite. It's looking like one or more of is going to need to get better at detecting ambushes and other attackers in a house, since we've so far run into two cases of random sounds getting us to think it we were about to be attacked by zombies (none of which panned out) and we walked into a house with a crazy shooter without realizing he also has two dogs at his side (he must be a Houndmaster class I think).

Also, my friend who basically optimizied his character to be a marthon sprinting swordsman (amazing what he managed to pull with the meekish College Student Survivor subclass!) really helped out with the little girl, he literally ran her to an army base on his back in the snow. Of course, the army is turning out to be far less trustworthy so we may have to rescue her from them.

So far no one's dead, but we left off on a cliffhanger since the Houndmaster guy is basically under PTSD and we've riled him up by assuming he was a zombie in a house (and breaking down his door).

Just in general, I think what may be our biggest risk factor is determining whether the house/building we're going into is inhabitted or not, and if it they're crazy, raiders, zombies, freak zombies rather than normal people we can help or barter with. We can't keep walking into this kind of scenario unprepared.

Eh, the system doesn't seem too related. Besides, I always optimized characters for piloted combat roles, with the exception of my Dog Boy. Who has ironically been with me the longest of any tabletop character.

You have to watch out for the nerd classes in these games; they can usually do stuff like that. The Dog Boy is still alive for a similar reason; when you get down to it, being a supernatural sniffer in a world full of shapechangers and supernatural threats means you're first to duck.

edited 8th Dec '13 3:54:43 PM by Night

I'm joining my first rifts game on the 28th. Any tips?

You know any details on it?

Dead Reign update.

Creepiest moment: A taxidermy shack behind a mansion, with a deep hidden hole and tunnel, tunnels painted in purple with death based writing in a dead language written in coral white. All leading to an underground temple for a death cult.

Most unexpectedly useful skill: Philosophy. A combo of Read English and Philosophy is good enough to decipher the basics of what the heck was written on the walls and in the strange tome of eldritch lore.

Failure of common sense: assuming zombies are the only threat you can face. We ran into a trapped mountain lion in a kids room. For the extra lulz, the room was decorated in Voltron stuff.

Badass moment: Said mountain lion knocked me over and had me prone and was goring me by biting my shoulder. I managed to use a semi auto to blow its head off (nat 20 will do that). Being the team medic, needed help to sow myself up, we'll see if my shot didn't attract any attention.

System notes: Percentage roll and perception check are just way too close sounding. Our DM and us kept getting confused.

edited 4th Jan '14 6:52:54 PM by Earnest

Dead Reign Update. (I may end up using this thread a s pseudo-blog to keep notes for myself.) ;)

System notes: For this kind of low powered campaign, having a character with healer abilities seems absolutely essential. Coma rules are pretty brutal, failure to stabilize allows rerols to awaken from a coma at a week, 6 months and a year past. If both the fellow player I was helping and me hadn't rolled successfully to stabilize him he'd have essentially needed to roll a new character as his Scrounger would have been Put on a Bus by the mechanics.

Tactics notes: The SDC for zombies and the need for headshots is forcing us to basically point blank them in the head when we need to expedite combat, despite the noise risk.

Interestingly, getting my axe stuck in a zombie, then using an attack to kick it down and an action to remove the axe came out, on balance, to be a sweet tactic. It allowed me to do modest kicking damage to his torso, roll axe damage as I removed it, and left the zombie prone for an easy shot by another player. May have to refine this.

We're really 5 years: When the DM described a zombie as the one a fellow player was "engaged to", and we all start making jokes about whether Necrosexual Marriage is legal in Oklahoma. ;)

Leveling: As a Survivor, I get a new skill at 3rd level. Toying with getting Mad Science to get better at understanding zombies. Though getting a combat skill or the actual Medical skill seem tempting, as does Botany/Chemistry to try and scrounge/grow medical supplies.

SDC, armor, armor SDC, and HP got me fairly confused this last session.

So armor has SDC, and it provides an AC to dodge attacks (or rather, enemies rolling under it allows the armor to absorb damage if I understood correctly). And what confused me was that I have two SDC's. the one from the armor, and my own. So I took a ton of damage from ambush fire and then flipping an ATV over six times. I though my HP was about gone until the GM explained I lost it from my armor first. I think it makes sense... it's armor wear and tear. It just caught me by surprise.

What I have learned from Palladium Fantasy is that your bonus to strike is essentially useless, and everything is decided by the die roll. If I roll low, I miss or hit the armor. If I'm unlucky and it's an armored foe, it just does a No-Sell. If I hit high, I automatically hit. Sure, your bonuses to hit determine the parry target, but that's even worse half the time, since since you have to get miracle rolls to match an average opponent. And opponents with Constrict and lots of attacks are BULLSHIT.

I'd been getting that feeling. Standard zombies have an AR of 14, and their advantage of not having weak points except for the head makes headshots fairly unlikely. More than once we've hit on smack in the head and it keeps ticking because you have to deplete all of the head's SDC. About the best tactic is to shoot one point blank in the head,but that's usually too noisy to be viable.

At least as a low/no powers game we aren't dealing with too uber opponents, but even our combat optimized characters are pretty vulnerableto bad rolls. One unlucky ambush by riflemen last session could easily have killed one to three PC's.