Rifts and Living Armor Question?

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rifter72
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Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by rifter72 »

Question: If a splicer was to be flung into the Rifts world, with living armor and weapons; would the gear be supported by the ambient PPE in the magic rich environment, as opposed to needing the nutrient bath every week or so?
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by The Galactus Kid »

rifter72 wrote:Question: If a splicer was to be flung into the Rifts world, with living armor and weapons; would the gear be supported by the ambient PPE in the magic rich environment, as opposed to needing the nutrient bath every week or so?

No.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Shark_Force »

so you'd better bring a gardener with you :P
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by rifter72 »

thanks
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Razorwing »

While the ambient PPE of Rifts Earth isn't enough to sustain Living Armor and other Bio-Technology, that doesn't mean there isn't a way to maintain them.

It really depends on what your GM plans on doing with the game. Given the fact that most characters from Splicers will be at a serious disadvantage without their bio-tech (they still carry the nano-bot plague which will prevent them from using most technologies... not to mention many won't know how to use anything but the simplest of tools) chances are that he will provide you either with a means to return home before your bio-tech dies or a means to maintain them.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Shark_Force »

true. if nothing else, you can always cast a sustain spell on it ^^
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by kaid »

Make friend with lemurians I am sure they would be pretty friendly to splicers. I am pretty sure you could kludge together food for them at least to sustain them for a while I have to imagine a lot of splicers stuck away from base for extended periods of time have some field expedient equipment feeding experience.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

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My wife wanted to a play a Packmaster O.C.C. in an upcoming Rifts game I’m working on, but after giving it some thought and asking the question that I did; here is the solution (I think). The Lemurians book stats that they have many different O.C.C. available, so it’s possible they have a version of the Packmaster and all I need to do is flesh out the O.C.C. skills a bit to fit a non-splicers environment. The armor would be a bio-armor, just more subdued version like the Wave Strider Body Armor and the weapons would be bio-weapons. The Gorehounds would be created by Biomancer Gene-Mages, but she could create them in the same format as in Splicers, just new creation appear/morph/grow upon the Gorehounds as the level and Bio-E points is spent. Would love some input on this, thanks in advance.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Shark_Force »

honestly, you don't even need to go with lemuria. unless you're planning on having the campaign extend to splicers at some point, who's going to even know (in-character) that she's actually a packmaster or that her pets are gorehounds? all kinds of crazy stuff comes out of the rifts.

if the goal is "i want to have a splicers character on rifts earth", just ignore limitations that would make it impossible unless doing so would actively harm your game. who cares if the rules say it won't work, they're interfering with your group's fun, and fun is more important than those rules. just change them. (or, like i said, technically a simple sustain spell will feed them for days at a time).

one thing i *will* say about bringing a splicers character to rifts earth, however... pay close attention to the power of the different characters. in splicers it is comparatively easy to create a character with massive bonuses, including a massive bonus to automatic dodge. also, damage tends to be a bit higher in splicers, in my experience, and MDC tends to be higher as well to sort of compensate. the packmaster is comparatively speaking on the lower end of the scale (your personal power doesn't go up by much, and getting a small amount of bio-e on each hound rather than a huge amount to put into one thing makes it harder to fit in all the stuff you want; you're less likely to have, say, a fully upgraded spore discharger or omega blaster for your hounds unless you really carefully save up for it).

however, even the low end of the scale can be pretty scary. a simple pod rifle is almost like having a shorter range mini-missile launcher with drastically better ammo. a self-repairing body armour can be an amazing advantage. and while the automatic dodge bonuses may never quite reach the scale of an outrider, that doesn't mean they're bad... a +4 to automatic dodge is fairly cheap and easy to obtain, and makes a world of difference in ranged combat.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Premier »

I agree with Shark Force. If your wife wants to play a Packmaster, then by all means, if it doesn't harm your Rifts campaign then go for it. Sometimes a challenge can turn itself into a nice story additive. Perhaps her Great House is the remnants of a much Greater House and she is one of the few remaining survivors trying to scout out this new world and to return with more resources and recruits for her house. Maybe the Engineer is still functional but the gene pool is dying. So unless another Saint is secured or enough raw materials to sustain it, then the gene pool and the Engineer will cease and so will her upgrades.

Or perhaps there is enough of the Great House that has survived that this issue is not a concern but learning to survive in the Rifts setting with so much to learn and contend with is. Perhaps her Packmaster character is one of several units sent out into this new world to gather intel and to return with as much knowledge, experience, artifacts, etc., for a certain annual season. During her return she can get her annual upgrades and house updates, and venture back out again. The challenges can also arise in keeping her Great House haven's location hidden as she voyages about or contending with enemies made by the other scouts.

There is so... much you can pull from the Splicersverse to support her character importation.

As to limits, yeah this can be subjective on the GM and the Player, but as long as she has to contend with the nanobot plague reaction, this can still balance out as everything is not combat oriented for the bonuses to be applicable or a factor in her survival and gaming experience, however, encounters with metal for her character can be very lethal and emotional.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by kaid »

rifter72 wrote:My wife wanted to a play a Packmaster O.C.C. in an upcoming Rifts game I’m working on, but after giving it some thought and asking the question that I did; here is the solution (I think). The Lemurians book stats that they have many different O.C.C. available, so it’s possible they have a version of the Packmaster and all I need to do is flesh out the O.C.C. skills a bit to fit a non-splicers environment. The armor would be a bio-armor, just more subdued version like the Wave Strider Body Armor and the weapons would be bio-weapons. The Gorehounds would be created by Biomancer Gene-Mages, but she could create them in the same format as in Splicers, just new creation appear/morph/grow upon the Gorehounds as the level and Bio-E points is spent. Would love some input on this, thanks in advance.



Should be a good fit given what we already see for lumerian war mounts something like gorehounds would be completely possible for them to replicate. It would not be much for a GM to retrofit and basically give a player a choice do you want one or two bigger warmounts or more smaller things like gorehounds.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by rifter72 »

thank you for all the input, it's very helpful.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Tor »

Shark_Force wrote:so you'd better bring a gardener with you :P

Yeah luckily the Host Armor which can grow Bao Houses can be fuelled by renewable resources like sun+CO2 or ambient heat. I always thought the soil-mineral metabolism should be adequate for Gardener-armor too, but I guess it was too mouthy for such a peaceful-seeming class.

In fact if enough Gardeners stockpiled that armor and there was an ambient stockpile of living armor and living weapons, people might even break free of dependence on the Engineers and Librarians, so long as you are okay with no more new upgrades.

There are some other options though, per Rifter 50 page 77 a nutrient-filled storage bladder that some Geneticists have might also be used to fuel-up some Living Armor. Although they would still have to return to either a Gene Pool or a Bao House to refill their nutrient bath since they do not produce it.

Shark_Force wrote:true. if nothing else, you can always cast a sustain spell on it ^^

Did not think of this use, does seem to fall within the spirit of the spell, clever.

That spell in theory cures any food problems the Megaverse could have if there is enough PPE...

I mean heck, you could perm it with demon-bone and then demons will cure mortals of metabolic dependencies!

Creatures of Magic or Supernatural Beings would be out of luck though and have to renew the spell, so build some PPE-minimizing TW stuff for them I guess.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by The Galactus Kid »

Yup. What Tor said.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Shark_Force »

on a side note, making sustain permanent is largely overkill. a single ley-line powered TW machine that casts sustain, assuming it can only be used once per melee (which is likely quite low) could cast the spell 5,760 times per day (provided it's used 24 hours, but then with only 2 hours per day required for sleep that's no hardship). if we assume a moderate device level of 5, that's enough to keep 28,800 people fed, assuming perfect efficiency (now *that* seems optimistic, but then again, 1/melee is an rather un-generous assumption when it normally takes 1 action to use a TW device and even untrained schmucks get like 3 of those as long as they aren't combat actions...)

so ummm... yeah, you *could* go to the effort to make it permanent. but that's probably overkill by a significant margin.
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Re: Rifts and Living Armor Question?

Unread post by Slight001 »

Shark_Force wrote:on a side note, making sustain permanent is largely overkill. a single ley-line powered TW machine that casts sustain, assuming it can only be used once per melee (which is likely quite low) could cast the spell 5,760 times per day (provided it's used 24 hours, but then with only 2 hours per day required for sleep that's no hardship). if we assume a moderate device level of 5, that's enough to keep 28,800 people fed, assuming perfect efficiency (now *that* seems optimistic, but then again, 1/melee is an rather un-generous assumption when it normally takes 1 action to use a TW device and even untrained schmucks get like 3 of those as long as they aren't combat actions...)

so ummm... yeah, you *could* go to the effort to make it permanent. but that's probably overkill by a significant margin.


That's also based on the assumption that the TW didn't include an aoe functionality into the design... would make it drastically more efficient.
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