Palladium Cleanup

A few things I would clean up:

1) Standardize XP tables and use a ECL system similar to DND where if you are a lvl1Headhunter OCC with a high power RCC you level at the rate of a 3rd level. http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Effective_character_level
Seriously though the different XP tables are ridiculous and add nothing but tedium to looking up if its 2100 or 2200 xp to level your two classes. This is needlessly complicated.

2) SDC conversion with penetration values

1-100 MD/SDC conversion is crap. With these SDC conversion rules you can do 1/2 damage with modern weapons to MDC items, everything MD is between x2-x7 SDC instead of x100s. It also takes into account penetration using the old weapon compendium rules which can help end tedius battles between two oponents with 100s of MDC. Regardless of these or others, everyone agrees MDC is broken.

3) Standardized templates published with all the RCC/OCCs used. I have written alot of templates based on these:

http://members.cox.net/fiona_mclaud/riftsmain.htm

But really, who has the time? It is time consuming to calculate bonuses for npcs considering the many powers that come into play. Having basic templates premade for the more interesting classes highlighting their powers and listing them along with commonly used tactics would make it more useful as a description than mere dice roll stats. Palladium’s games are quite simply harder to play than say DnD 3.5 (dont talk to me about 4th edition). The ability to quickly throw together stats in with some of the many many toybook creatures published in rifts is there, but you can’t really do it justice without a lot of meticulous rules checking. DND3.5 published templates for stats for basic classes per level which made throwing these into your game a cinch. Not so with Palladium.

4) STOP ADDING RCCS AND OCCS. We have too many. TOO MANY. What rifts needs is more story. Do you know in all of Psyscape there is only 1 PAGE describing Psyscape itself and the rest is toys and new RCCs?

5) Adopt publishing standards not used in the 70s. Modern books look so great but palladiums are just so predicable inside its a shame as some of the material is top notch, but the presentation could be sooooo much better.

6) prune duplicate skills/occs

id plants/fruits is already taken care of by wilderness survival/botany/holistic medicine
demolitions could cover disposal as well
Fencing is basically overpowered wp sword (no other weapon gets this special bonus, why?
Read Sensors, TV Video, Surveilance Systems are all basically the same thing.
Chemistry/Analytic

The skills just seem awkwardly tacked on and don’t really add much to the game experience other than making character generation a chore.