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So I often read OCC's/RCC's that will say how many attacks/actions a character gets, how many psyionics and often how many by magic. Usually the number appears to be 2 by magic.

I was going thought the Rifts Ultimate Ed and reading up on magic again.. it says in there the time needed to cast spells varies. Ie.. levels 1-5 takes mere seconds so a spell can be cast in a single action. Spells over that, up to a level take 2 actions..and so on.. then some can be cast as rituals which take longer etc etc

So does it mean low levels spells that only at 1 action to cast, I can cast as many spells as I have actions.. ie 4? or 5? Or I can cast two shorts spells and 1 long...or 1 long, a short and make some other actions? I ask this as often it will say a Dragon or someother RCC gets 2 by magic etc.. but a magic OCC might not say you can cast only 2 spells per round

Valbarca wrote:So I often read OCC's/RCC's that will say how many attacks/actions a character gets, how many psyionics and often how many by magic. Usually the number appears to be 2 by magic.

I was going thought the Rifts Ultimate Ed and reading up on magic again.. it says in there the time needed to cast spells varies. Ie.. levels 1-5 takes mere seconds so a spell can be cast in a single action. Spells over that, up to a level take 2 actions..and so on.. then some can be cast as rituals which take longer etc etc

So does it mean low levels spells that only at 1 action to cast, I can cast as many spells as I have actions.. ie 4? or 5? Or I can cast two shorts spells and 1 long...or 1 long, a short and make some other actions? I ask this as often it will say a Dragon or someother RCC gets 2 by magic etc.. but a magic OCC might not say you can cast only 2 spells per round

Ok ok ok ok!! So this is why I got confused. The Rifts Book of Magic says one thing, the core rules says something else. Just want a clarification. Because in the core book it says a spell can be as fast as one action, while the magic book it is always about two melee actions so 6-8 seconds.

It used to be that RIFTs followed Palladium Fantasy's system for spells per melee, which is where most of those references to things like "8 attacks per melee or 2 by spell" come from. Back then there was a hard limit on how many spells you could cast per round, usually 1 but occasionally 2 or more for extremely powerful spellcasters.

Needless to say, in the RIFTs environment this was a horrible burden for spellcasters, because it made even the weakest spells easily interruptible (the old kid with a bag of rocks parable), forcing them to rely in combat on their mundane abilities in most instances.

RIFTs Ultimate Edition updated this in a very sensible fashion - 1 attack per 5 spell levels or fraction thereof. This greatly boosts the utility of low-level spells as they cannot be interrupted & can be spammed rapidly so long as there is PPE available to channel, & as result buoys the value of low level Ley Line Walkers considerably. Ambushed? you can now slap Armor of Ithan on in one action instead of having to worry that you'll get punched & lose concentration. A Fire Warlock can now spam out Fireballs rather than only getting off one or two that each do less damage than a pulse laser rifle.

Easily one of the best changes to the rules. Any reference to spells per melee round separate from attacks per melee in older sourcebooks can be safely ignored.

Basically....rifts ultimate edition rules supersede book of magics rules

Ahh nice of.. the ultimate rules if say you start in.. o PORT to the magic laden-ed Rifts world..otherwise stand/2 spells.. ish.. got ya! So the book of magic rules.. all super seeded? Im assuming the actual book content ie invocations is still more diverse than Ultimate etc etc?

To a degree yes there are more spells

Valbarca wrote:Ahh nice of.. the ultimate rules if say you start in.. o PORT to the magic laden-ed Rifts world..otherwise stand/2 spells.. ish.. got ya! So the book of magic rules.. all super seeded? Im assuming the actual book content ie invocations is still more diverse than Ultimate etc etc?

All rules mechanics in Ultimate Edition trump all previous publications. All other content stands. Where they contradict each other, Ultimate Edition rules.

Id love them to release more o update core rules more often. I think people would be happy to pay..They need not be full writes just the important thanks that are missing.

There's also an alternate form of magic combat available in Rifter 21 called PPE Channeling. You basically charge up so much PPE per action per level to cast your spells. So a level 1 mage would have to use a couple turns building up to cast a Fireball spell, but a level 5 mage could spend all of their actions casting the same spell each time (as long as they have the PPE to do so). I find those rules far superior to either of the official rules, but I have yet to meet a GM willing to use them.

I use them Beats. In addition to a modified version fo the magic foci and letting mages gain an increased amount of PPE per level too. I never understood how a 10th level ley line walker with a WHOPPING 180ppe was really much of a threat at all. By the RAW he can still only cast the same number of spells per as a 1st level walker. With PPE channeling and foci as well as an increased ppe level (my average 10th level walker would have about 600 to work with), NOW they are threat to someone or a few someones as they should be. All these NPC mages in the books are supposedly big powerful magic users then you look and see they have 15-200 ppe and I think huh???? My 1st level walker can hang with this mage at least for a little while....