Comprehensive List of Vulnerabilities of SN Creatures

[shadrak]

Is Palladium going to publish a comprehensive list or at least expand listings?

Now that Palladium Books has published Heroes of Humanity identifying the major vulnerabilities of Demons and Deevils, any chance we will learn that Brodkil are extra sensitive to SDC poisons? Or that the Neuron Beast is vulnerable to electricity?

These vulnerabilities create additional options for people playing on the fringes...the farmer with his shotgun and Fury Beetle armor in the CS State of Missouri just trying to protect his farm and his family...it would be nice to see some additional options that bring the game more in line with the original Rifts publication.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Is Palladium going to publish a comprehensive list or at least expand listings?

Now that Palladium Books has published Heroes of Humanity identifying the major vulnerabilities of Demons and Deevils, any chance we will learn that Brodkil are extra sensitive to SDC poisons? Or that the Neuron Beast is vulnerable to electricity?

These vulnerabilities create additional options for people playing on the fringes...the farmer with his shotgun and Fury Beetle armor in the CS State of Missouri just trying to protect his farm and his family...it would be nice to see some additional options that bring the game more in line with the original Rifts publication.

Doubtful. a fair number of supernatural beings do have various vunerabilities to certain mundane things, if it's not listed, it's not likely to be added later on.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

Is Palladium going to publish a comprehensive list or at least expand listings?

Now that Palladium Books has published Heroes of Humanity identifying the major vulnerabilities of Demons and Deevils, any chance we will learn that Brodkil are extra sensitive to SDC poisons? Or that the Neuron Beast is vulnerable to electricity?

These vulnerabilities create additional options for people playing on the fringes...the farmer with his shotgun and Fury Beetle armor in the CS State of Missouri just trying to protect his farm and his family...

is not a PC. PC are heroes, at least, in Kevin's vision of the game. If your gaming group wants to play regular-schlubs, thats cool, but thats not the intent of the game. The whole point is that regular schlubs CANT stand off some of these supernatural threats and therefore need heroes (or the CS) to protect them.

it would be nice to see some additional options that bring the game more in line with the original Rifts publication.

The original Rifts publication... where everyone is armed with high tech weapons and full body armor and/or magic?

PCs aren't supposed to be farmer Joe. Not even the Vagabond is that weak.

[shadrak]

So when the CS SF team is working with the local population to defend against a supernatural threat or to attack Supernatural threat or the player characters are helping a local Village to build their defenses, there are some additional options.

[Nekira Sudacne]

So when the CS SF team is working with the local population to defend against a supernatural threat or to attack Supernatural threat or the player characters are helping a local Village to build their defenses, there are some additional options.

Those are indeed some of the intended games! but truthfully I think the intention is that the PC's either already have MDC level weapons to give to them or can aquire them.

Rememeber that any PC group should be collecting MDC weapons and scrap at a pretty incredible rate. a single skirmish with high tech bandits should yeild several high tech or magical weapons and plenty of MDC scrap. Presumably the party sells some of this to finance, but they can also elect to keep some to distrubte to the needy so they can defend themselves.

Second: Farmers know this too. Historically speaking, whenever there is a major battle, once it's over, the loosing side is stripped bare of arms and armor by the time the next morning comes. if the winning side doesn't take them because they're in a hurry, the locals will inevitably decend on the dead to strip them of gear because that stuff is valuble. even on into WW I and WW II and the Vietnam war this was true. if the winning side didn't strip the dead of gear, the gear would be gone by the time either side got back there. And this is the other way farmers can get gear: they could well have just salvaged it from a previous fight in the area. But wait, you say, wouldn't gear from the loosing side of the fight likely be damaged or broken? Well, yes. Could be a rush for the party mechanic to repair the farmer's old salvaged laser gun in time.

Rifts has pretty brisk trade in battle scrap, both used and damaged, because all of it is valuble. While most farms and towns might not have any functioning MDC gear, it's very likely they have MDC gear in various stages of disrepair; as even if it worked when their great-Grandpappy got it it doesn't work now and won't work without replacing some complex parts. That is one of the primary reasons to play an operator: you'll never be short of side hustles.

[guardiandashi]

in a Campaign I was in I had a character that ended up mostly retired, because she wanted to take a break from adventuring after decades of adventuring. Granted in this case the character was a Godling (minor Goddess) so after going through the "Macross Saga" 3 or 4 times in multiple minor variations, she went in with a friend to set up and run a Bar/Tavern. They setup in the new west area, and My character was running a Repair /Weapons/Armor/Vehicles/Power Armor Business. and her "sidekick" was involved in setting up the "coat/weapons" check to keep bar fights at a lower level, One thing thing that was non standard is the Team had actually visited DS9 and liked the idea of the weapons scanners, but they took it a step farther, as you walked through the door there was a scanner Arch that you walked through, that teleported all weapons into a storage area and you were given a "claim check" that looked like a receipt with a complete inventory. Until my characters sidekick walked through the longest claim check was around 4-5 inches long. My characters sidekicks claim check was an optical disk. because she had access to a pocket dimension ~the size of the solar system out to the Oort cloud with hundreds of years of "acquired" gear from adventuring that they hadn't gotten rid of, including a star dock, and ships that they had built or acquired.

Because of the bar and the repair(and sales) shop pretty soon a town grew up because they didn't put up with real banditry, or other crimes. so the area within about 10 mile radius was pretty safe. After all when you have people who could literally deploy over a billion credits worth of hardware if they chose to... also My character if she got ticked enough could wipe the coalition of the face of the earth in a day. She really wouldn't but she could.

[Blue_Lion]

So when the CS SF team is working with the local population to defend against a supernatural threat or to attack Supernatural threat or the player characters are helping a local Village to build their defenses, there are some additional options.

Those are indeed some of the intended games! but truthfully I think the intention is that the PC's either already have MDC level weapons to give to them or can aquire them.

Rememeber that any PC group should be collecting MDC weapons and scrap at a pretty incredible rate. a single skirmish with high tech bandits should yeild several high tech or magical weapons and plenty of MDC scrap. Presumably the party sells some of this to finance, but they can also elect to keep some to distrubte to the needy so they can defend themselves.

Second: Farmers know this too. Historically speaking, whenever there is a major battle, once it's over, the loosing side is stripped bare of arms and armor by the time the next morning comes. if the winning side doesn't take them because they're in a hurry, the locals will inevitably decend on the dead to strip them of gear because that stuff is valuble. even on into WW I and WW II and the Vietnam war this was true. if the winning side didn't strip the dead of gear, the gear would be gone by the time either side got back there. And this is the other way farmers can get gear: they could well have just salvaged it from a previous fight in the area. But wait, you say, wouldn't gear from the loosing side of the fight likely be damaged or broken? Well, yes. Could be a rush for the party mechanic to repair the farmer's old salvaged laser gun in time.

Rifts has pretty brisk trade in battle scrap, both used and damaged, because all of it is valuble. While most farms and towns might not have any functioning MDC gear, it's very likely they have MDC gear in various stages of disrepair; as even if it worked when their great-Grandpappy got it it doesn't work now and won't work without replacing some complex parts. That is one of the primary reasons to play an operator: you'll never be short of side hustles.

I have played a game where instead of stopping the threat on their own the players armed and trained towns to defend themselves. Then stop them as a team and use the loot from the fight is used to fund arming the next town/village. Basically the players had developed armed militias to help them and it led to a new nation. Unless the target was immune to MDC they did not worry about a special weakness. We did make it a point never to arm them with CS gear to avoid unneeded hassle from CS.

[Killer Cyborg]

Is Palladium going to publish a comprehensive list or at least expand listings?

Now that Palladium Books has published Heroes of Humanity identifying the major vulnerabilities of Demons and Deevils, any chance we will learn that Brodkil are extra sensitive to SDC poisons? Or that the Neuron Beast is vulnerable to electricity?

These vulnerabilities create additional options for people playing on the fringes...the farmer with his shotgun and Fury Beetle armor in the CS State of Missouri just trying to protect his farm and his family...

is not a PC. PC are heroes, at least, in Kevin's vision of the game. If your gaming group wants to play regular-schlubs, thats cool, but thats not the intent of the game. The whole point is that regular schlubs CANT stand off some of these supernatural threats and therefore need heroes (or the CS) to protect them.

it would be nice to see some additional options that bring the game more in line with the original Rifts publication.

The original Rifts publication... where everyone is armed with high tech weapons and full body armor and/or magic?

PCs aren't supposed to be farmer Joe. Not even the Vagabond is that weak.

The original Vagabond was supposed to be pretty close, though, and did NOT start with MDC armor.
Whether or not they could start with MD weapons hinged on how a GM interpreted the word "gun."

While the original intent was for the SDC population to need heroes/champions, this doesn't mean that everybody else was supposed to be completely helpless against everything.
All the random Supernatural Creatures in the RMB had vulnerabilities to mundane things or forces, and I think the clear intent was for both PCs and NPCs to be able to take advantage of those vulnerabilities. This can also be seen in the Starting Equipment lists, which often included things like iron, silver, or wood weapons of some kind.

[Curbludgeon]

Shadrak, I am so sorry that some of the posters here took your straightforward post as an invitation to needlessly pontificate on topics tangential at best.

In addition to the weaknesses described in Heroes of Humanity, I'd take a look at Chaos Earth:Creatures of Chaos, pp 11-14. That section not only describes specific vulnerabilities endemic to the Day and Night Demons detailed therein, it gives general examples that a GM might apply to various demons such as the calls of various birds, materials, and times of day. It's generally more thematic than directly applicable, but there are also a couple of examples to be found in the herb magic of WB3:England.

While one would think a comprehensive list of being/monster weaknesses would be a useful chapter in a Megaverse in Flames book, or even an online adjunct to such, there is no chance of that happening. While I guess PB thinks an easily indexable list somehow promotes the theft of such, failing to provide that sort of useful material is an even bigger reason to not give them money. I've been looking around a bit for an organized list of vulnerabilities as noted in classical and medieval bestiaries to limited avail, but a systematic attempt to do so would be a good second step. I've been going through Palladium books to compile lists of things closely related for a separate issue, but haven't been noting Achilles' Heels. If someone was interested in putting together a comprehensive list I'd be delighted to contribute.

In the spirit of the Creatures of Chaos book's model, it could be fun to think of optional vulnerabilities held by creatures that one might apply in a game. While Neuron Beasts, for example, ain't actual bundles of neurons, maybe they're wildly susceptible to aerosolized CNS agents. Just be sure to occasionally use words like perhaps and maybe so as to stave off harassment from those whom find "house rules" to be a slur and "canon" to constitute an argument.

[shadrak]

Shadrak, I am so sorry that some of the posters here took your straightforward post as an invitation to needlessly pontificate on topics tangential at best.

In addition to the weaknesses described in Heroes of Humanity, I'd take a look at Chaos Earth:Creatures of Chaos, pp 11-14. That section not only describes specific vulnerabilities endemic to the Day and Night Demons detailed therein, it gives general examples that a GM might apply to various demons such as the calls of various birds, materials, and times of day. It's generally more thematic than directly applicable, but there are also a couple of examples to be found in the herb magic of WB3:England.

While one would think a comprehensive list of being/monster weaknesses would be a useful chapter in a Megaverse in Flames book, or even an online adjunct to such, there is no chance of that happening. While I guess PB thinks an easily indexable list somehow promotes the theft of such, failing to provide that sort of useful material is an even bigger reason to not give them money. I've been looking around a bit for an organized list of vulnerabilities as noted in classical and medieval bestiaries to limited avail, but a systematic attempt to do so would be a good second step. I've been going through Palladium books to compile lists of things closely related for a separate issue, but haven't been noting Achilles' Heels. If someone was interested in putting together a comprehensive list I'd be delighted to contribute.

In the spirit of the Creatures of Chaos book's model, it could be fun to think of optional vulnerabilities held by creatures that one might apply in a game. While Neuron Beasts, for example, ain't actual bundles of neurons, maybe they're wildly susceptible to aerosolized CNS agents. Just be sure to occasionally use words like perhaps and maybe so as to stave off harassment from those whom find "house rules" to be a slur and "canon" to constitute an argument.

Thanks! I have the Chaos Earth books but I didn’t realize that was there!