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ok someone talk me down from the ledge here. I have found some glaring holes that just defy any kind of reason I can produce.
I want some answers that will make the hurting stop. I love palladium and have so for many years, but now now I am feeling a bit lost.

A) It started with trying to convert vampire intelligences to an SDC setting and I couldn't find any in the palladium fantasy books. where are they?

B) Ok so I look at vampire Kingdoms and find the stats for the intelligence, which is supposed to be something impressive. Agreed they are to a point, but then I actually look at stuff; It has HP but no SDC, but it does have MDC, which for everything else in the mega damage verse, is suppose supplant the HP. Make it make sense

C) Going further, the MDC of a VI is on average is 3000 for the main body, which isn't a lot but considering that only wood silver and holy water are really the only things that can hurt it, it gets a bit more impressive. but why doesn't the wood just break or the silver bend?

D) 3000 MDC. An maxed out full strength hit from one using full actions will do 5d6. which in reference to MDC to SDC is impressive (30000). But it falls so short. A VI vs VI in melee combat is just going to take forever, even assuming they are supernatural creatures and doing supernatural damage, average damage of 15 vs average MDC of 3000 is 200 successful hits. This will take 25 melees. 6.25 minutes. Ok then we are out of MDC, and moving on to Hit Points. Are the HP MDC? or are the 2d6x100 only 2d6 MD, since they have both?

E) What is there PE? Infinite? Non-existent?

F) Why can't they change shape? and what do wolves and bats have to do with intergalactic evils that are presumably older than the earth, to say the least of wolves and bats?

G) SDC VI: How the hell do you do it? One option is to do straight conversion, but then what does the restrained tentacle strike of 6d6 SDC become? On the other tentacle, that would mean that a regular tentacle strike from a terrible evil does 5d6, which is less than a high powered revolver. Ancient Evil = Ruger Redhawk? Would you then add the damage from PS 40? If so, what changes from MDC and SDC that allows for PS to be used? Why isn't there a MD PS bonus?

H) A clue to the straight across conversion is in the palladium fantasy Dragons and Gods the gods weapons are pretty comparable to normal weapons doing single digit d6, which I would assume would be converted into single digit d6 MD. How the hell is this supposed to be impressive? And why would the gods use them? It would take forever to kill anyone. the gods don't fight other gods for fear of destroying worlds. No, they would just get bored and forget why they were fighting in the first place.
Rurga: 3000 SDC, 2880 HP, Regenerating 6d6 per melee. Which seems paltry at first but then you look at the warrior goddess' damage capacity: 6d6+ PS 24. Forgive me for being utterly underwhelemed. And it isn't even a magical 6d6, it is simply kind of large, adding an extra 3d6.

I) How does rurga survive? She has 650 PPE. She has no spells, no offensive psionics. She can do a mobile sphere of destruction at 250 pts +25 for each additional melee. It does 2d4x10 (max 80) in a single attack but 1500 per melee if held against something. Rurga, dear, throw your sword away as it is completely useless. But that comes out to 100 pts per second. Any mage god would destroy her easily, especially if they have 2000 pts to spare for the godblaze.
Damage Capacity and Damage Ability just does NOT effing scale. And gods aren't gods they just take longer to kill

J) OK so it is my understanding the the influx of the ley lines or what have you are what allows for MDC in rifts. How so? How is manufactured armor affected? Advanced technology? Why didn't we figure it out? I mean either A) its 300 some odd years after the apocalypse where any technology we would have developed would have been destroyed or degraded, because everything is digital and we all know there is nothing more than a hard drive vs whatever caused the rifts. or B) civilization hit a reboot and we started as einstein pointed out by throwing stones again. I don't get where this is suppose to be coming from. The more I look at MDC it just breaks the hole game, and the more I look for an easy fix, I keep hitting road blocks.

K) Why is magic powered by someone Physical Endurance? Isn't that supposed to be the battery for Chi? Is Chi really PPE? And why is Potential Psychic Energy not used for Psychic Powers? And why do psychic powers use Inner Strength Points? And why do spells have levels in the first place? As far as I can tell mages can take any spell (up to 10) at any time, regardless of level. A level one wizard can have a level 5 spell. why not just lump them all together? Whats the point? And why the hell is Lantern Light and Globe of Daylight anywhere near each other? One creates an orb of light that actually hurts vampires because it is actual sunlight, the other is good if you don't have a candle. the spells are so chaotic. Levels mean nothing for characters or for potency. And even if levels WERE tied to character development, how is summoning dogs, not hellhounds, not super wolves, canines a level nine spell? Further more why is summon rodents one level higher, the SAME level as summoning shadow beasts-an inter dimensional creature composed of elemental darkness. hmm what level ten spell should I take, squeeky cheese eaters or dimensional beasts,.... can I get back to you on that? Ah, you say, but summon shadow beast is more potent as seen in the PPE cost of 140 vs 70. Both level ten, But then we head to level 11 where I get to summon fog and make it hard to see me (don't look at invisibility superior) and I see Summon & Control Animals for 125. So what is the point of spells having levels if there is no scale. And why is it so hard to summon anything useful?

L) Why are humans in any MDC setting? I mean really even friendly MDC beings would reach out to gently shake someone's hand not even doing a full point of MD and accidentally rip someone's arm off by doing .5 MD there are smarter and more durable beings to spend your time with in the three galaxies. And gods forbid anyone want to actually harm them. SDC beings are the feeble children who everyone else has to dance around and be extra careful they don't in anyway serious bump into or their spines will literally shoot out of their bodies and disintegrate upon impact with an MDC tankard (ok not literally but close). Ok its bad in D&D where humans get almost bupkis, but in palladium let alone any MDC setting you might as well be asking if you could play the thing that is begging to be killed at the onset. "But we have so much to offer" as compared to who or what? We are nothing without our armor and weapons. we might as well all become borgs. human spell casters are great until they run out of points. In an MDC environment all we are are brain stems in armor

M) Conversions-more gripe. Ok so getting past all of that Rifts earth has MDC because of the rifts. According to Dragons and Gods MDC creatures are beings whose physical body is so tough armored magical or supernatural that it functions as a natural mega damage body armor. Ok I can SEE, even if I don't agree that the available "dimensional energies" of a given world might limit a god's, devel's or other magical creature to do MDC type actions or be MDC in an SDC, but why tech? do MDC worlds have different laws of physics? while exploring space in an MDC ship and landing on an SDC planet does my ship suddenly become non-mdc? An explanation is given that these changes are brought on by dimensional anomalies, which just smacks of "because I want it and I said so"

N) Spell Costs: How the hell do we go from level 1 spells having using 1 PPE to level 14 needing on average 500 points? For 300 you can summon a 10 mile radius storm. which in its description is more of a nuisance and a really costly way to get out of going to school as because of flooding there is a 30% chance that nothing will happen, or because of high winds that there is a 40% of a vehicle flipping over. But wait won't the water stabilize me against the wind? And why isn't there cacophonous thunder and high powered random lightning strikes? for f sake at level 1 I get thunderclap. And where are these mages getting enough PPE to cast these spells? there is absolutely no sense of scale here.

And protection circles? FU. Am I really understanding correctly that if I spend an hour drawing a protection circle spending 70 points that the demons can still attack from the outside? There is no protective shell> Hope they don't figure out how to do ranged attacks

A Summoner has to spend hours drawing two circles, one for protection and one for the actual summoning, summoning of something that will hate the summoner and try to kill it any chance it gets, VERSUS a tattooed man who can summon knights beasts, monsters all with little effort and little time. Fair?

O) Monsters. There aren't any. They are all optional player characters, and the monsters and animals guide is only useful for the animal stats. The monsters are poorly drawn and mostly unimpressive anyhow. Here you see a majestic Ki Lin. Really? Looks like a tarded dragon mated with a deer.

P) Another point for gods not being gods other than that they are epic fails, is that gods of strength like Magnus who has I think a 90 SNPS is less than half of those from HUs Gramercy Island, and I would really like to know why the government has identified mutants as walking disaster areas and began the cleansing, or even how captain chaos and crew got captured in the first place?

Q) Mind numbing super power redundancies even though they are supposed to be new. Slight changes are character flare not new powers. anda gain the scale is crap. Screw minors and majors, just have powers that develop and get more impressive as the character grows. APS Metal: AR 10+1 per 2 or 3 levels, 100 SDC per level
APS Fire: Shoot fire: 1d10 per level, Level 5 Body of fire and flight, level 10 shape fire
its like palladium has this theme of all or nothing. Nevermind its just all. All the spells you want off the bat, all the power right away. And going back to rurga, how do I do as much damage as her favored weapon at level 3? As much as her weilding it at level 7 and as much to demons at level 10.

R) Listen I am annoyed and grumpy and it's 3 am but seriously, aren't these valid? If not explain it so that it makes sense. where is the proverbial rosetta stone here? Its like a case of murder on the orient express, the left hands don't know what the right hands are doing. and it makes even less sense knowing that only one guy is approving and editing this stuff. Is there an in-house buy who's job it is to keep track of rules and crap like that? I used to love palladium. but now that I am trying to really work in the system I am finding all these key things that make it hard for me to ignore, like MDC/SDC, like ineffectual "gods", like the fact that it is better to shoot a guy 30 times with 30 single rounds than it is to do a burst of 30 rounds despite them both hitting the same general area by default (should be 2d6x30)

I agree with most of your points. Some of them (like MDC materials) you miss some logic lines. I'll field this one, and let the forums work out the others; Not every computer in the world exploded when the Dark Ages hit. Some areas came through pretty ok. Chi-Town withstood the entire thing, along with almost all of those big city - buildings. NGR survived pretty well. MDC that isn't magic is tech, high powered tanks that we are now breaching into in the 21st Century. We even have the start of Power Armor! The other reason is the writers of the game are not super mechanics / scientists, and some is left to interpretation / vaguearities or just down right wrong for those reasons.

Some things (many things) in this game REQUIRE modification to make any bloody sense when translated into the game.

I have interpreted P.P.E differently simply to make it being drawn from ones P.E to make sense, which is to say it is ambient, and a characters P.P.E value shows how much they can channel through them before their body starts to reject it or be harmed by it. Regular use (like mages) gains more tolerance to its damaging effects, a reason for their increased P.P.E base.

I'll add more to this later, (like, not when it's 5 AM) but that's a huge ton of questions to field at once! But you've summed up many of the problems I have with the system in general.

KillWatch wrote:ok someone talk me down from the ledge here. I have found some glaring holes that just defy any kind of reason I can produce.
I want some answers that will make the hurting stop. I love palladium and have so for many years, but now now I am feeling a bit lost.

I'll answer what i can partner. Hope it helps

Killwatch wrote:A) It started with trying to convert vampire intelligences to an SDC setting and I couldn't find any in the palladium fantasy books. where are they?

To the best of my knowledge, there aren't any. My lack of many of the PF books may prove me wrong on that though. There is , however, an interesting hybrid of a Vampire Intelligence mingled with a Human Mage. This interesting hybrid is none other than Vald-Tegor, the PF Vampire God, noted in Dragons and Gods pg. 127-130.

Killwatch wrote:B) Ok so I look at vampire Kingdoms and find the stats for the intelligence, which is supposed to be something impressive. Agreed they are to a point, but then I actually look at stuff; It has HP but no SDC, but it does have MDC, which for everything else in the mega damage verse, is suppose supplant the HP. Make it make sense

Last i knew, the traditional weapons of silver and wood used against vampires, and thus vampire intelligences, bypasses any MDC and does damage directly to HP. If anyone else can quote canon for or against that, it would be appreciated. (mostly working from memory here )

Killwatch wrote:C) Going further, the MDC of a VI is on average is 3000 for the main body, which isn't a lot but considering that only wood silver and holy water are really the only things that can hurt it, it gets a bit more impressive. but why doesn't the wood just break or the silver bend?

See the above answer.

Killwatch wrote:D) 3000 MDC. An maxed out full strength hit from one using full actions will do 5d6. which in reference to MDC to SDC is impressive (30000). But it falls so short. A VI vs VI in melee combat is just going to take forever, even assuming they are supernatural creatures and doing supernatural damage, average damage of 15 vs average MDC of 3000 is 200 successful hits. This will take 25 melees. 6.25 minutes. Ok then we are out of MDC, and moving on to Hit Points. Are the HP MDC? or are the 2d6x100 only 2d6 MD, since they have both?

HP is HP, MDC is MDC. If the fight does go that way, the first VI to run out of MDC loses big time.

Killwatch wrote:E) What is there PE? Infinite? Non-existent?

Really, really, really high

Killwatch wrote:F) Why can't they change shape? and what do wolves and bats have to do with intergalactic evils that are presumably older than the earth, to say the least of wolves and bats?

Last I heard, Alien Intelligences of any kind couldn't change shape. If I'm wrong, who knows? Why can't Mighty Wooly Dragons change shape when other Dragons can? As for the wolves and bats, I can hazard a guess and say that these are animals that are traditionally associated with evil presences so they may be attracted to a VI's presence. Maybe?

Killwatch wrote:G) SDC VI: How the hell do you do it? One option is to do straight conversion, but then what does the restrained tentacle strike of 6d6 SDC become? On the other tentacle, that would mean that a regular tentacle strike from a terrible evil does 5d6, which is less than a high powered revolver. Ancient Evil = Ruger Redhawk? Would you then add the damage from PS 40? If so, what changes from MDC and SDC that allows for PS to be used? Why isn't there a MD PS bonus?

Straight conversion MDC to SDC, restrained tentacle 6d6 SDC, regular tentacle 1d6x10, add PS damage bonuses. As for MD PS bonuses, I think the standard PS damage bonuses apply to Supernatural PS, too.

Killwatch wrote:H) A clue to the straight across conversion is in the palladium fantasy Dragons and Gods the gods weapons are pretty comparable to normal weapons doing single digit d6, which I would assume would be converted into single digit d6 MD. How the hell is this supposed to be impressive? And why would the gods use them? It would take forever to kill anyone. the gods don't fight other gods for fear of destroying worlds. No, they would just get bored and forget why they were fighting in the first place.
Rurga: 3000 SDC, 2880 HP, Regenerating 6d6 per melee. Which seems paltry at first but then you look at the warrior goddess' damage capacity: 6d6+ PS 24. Forgive me for being utterly underwhelemed. And it isn't even a magical 6d6, it is simply kind of large, adding an extra 3d6.

The main thing that is supposed to make a god's weapon impressive is the supernatural strength wielding it. If a creature with supernatural strength uses a weapon, the weapon's damage capacity is added to the supernatural PS damage. Suddenly, Rurga's "paltry" 6d6 sword is doing upwards of 9d6 damage (6 from the sword and, I think, another 3 from the supernatural PS of 31. Can't find the SNPS table at the moment) plus her damage bonus of 24 coming out at a minimum of 33 points of damage. Running on averages, you're looking at about 50+ per strike. And, hate to tell ya, but "Vlaa the Demon Slayer", her "paltry" 6d6 sword is magical. Matter of fact, it's a lesser rune weapon with an IQ of 20 that does double damage to demons and undead and creates a Blinding Flash as often as once per minute when held over her head. Did you even read that?

Killwatch wrote:I) How does rurga survive? She has 650 PPE. She has no spells, no offensive psionics. She can do a mobile sphere of destruction at 250 pts +25 for each additional melee. It does 2d4x10 (max 80) in a single attack but 1500 per melee if held against something. Rurga, dear, throw your sword away as it is completely useless. But that comes out to 100 pts per second. Any mage god would destroy her easily, especially if they have 2000 pts to spare for the godblaze.
Damage Capacity and Damage Ability just does NOT effing scale. And gods aren't gods they just take longer to kill

Again, did you even read this? No spells... true enough. No "offensive psionics"? What do you call Psi-Sword? (ok, so it's ONE offensive Psi power, but it's still pretty darned offensive ) And yes, she is sorely lacking in PPE, but at least has the ability to also channel PPE from her followers just as ALL gods do (Dragons and Gods pg 88-89) The main reason for her relative lack of power is due to her corresponding lack of popularity. Remember, a god's level of power is directly related to the amount of worshippers the god has. For proof of this just take a look at the Church of Light and Dark in the same book. Gives a real good indication of which church is more powerful in terms of followers/worshippers.

Killwatch wrote:J) OK so it is my understanding the the influx of the ley lines or what have you are what allows for MDC in rifts. How so? How is manufactured armor affected? Advanced technology? Why didn't we figure it out? I mean either A) its 300 some odd years after the apocalypse where any technology we would have developed would have been destroyed or degraded, because everything is digital and we all know there is nothing more than a hard drive vs whatever caused the rifts. or B) civilization hit a reboot and we started as einstein pointed out by throwing stones again. I don't get where this is suppose to be coming from. The more I look at MDC it just breaks the hole game, and the more I look for an easy fix, I keep hitting road blocks.

Actually, the way I've always interpreted it was that MDC existed before the coming of the rifts. High tech items such as the Glitterboy were out and about before the Crash hit doing MDC in what was largely an SDC world. Then the tech of other places started catching up and the world became an MDC setting. When the rifts came around, it buried it all to be found a few hundred years later by man and still MDC capable. What the coming of the rifts and ley lines did was make Magic available again as well as boost it to equivalent MDC levels.

Killwatch wrote:K) Why is magic powered by someone Physical Endurance? Isn't that supposed to be the battery for Chi? Is Chi really PPE? And why is Potential Psychic Energy not used for Psychic Powers? And why do psychic powers use Inner Strength Points? And why do spells have levels in the first place? As far as I can tell mages can take any spell (up to 10) at any time, regardless of level. A level one wizard can have a level 5 spell. why not just lump them all together? Whats the point? And why the hell is Lantern Light and Globe of Daylight anywhere near each other? One creates an orb of light that actually hurts vampires because it is actual sunlight, the other is good if you don't have a candle. the spells are so chaotic. Levels mean nothing for characters or for potency. And even if levels WERE tied to character development, how is summoning dogs, not hellhounds, not super wolves, canines a level nine spell? Further more why is summon rodents one level higher, the SAME level as summoning shadow beasts-an inter dimensional creature composed of elemental darkness. hmm what level ten spell should I take, squeeky cheese eaters or dimensional beasts,.... can I get back to you on that? Ah, you say, but summon shadow beast is more potent as seen in the PPE cost of 140 vs 70. Both level ten, But then we head to level 11 where I get to summon fog and make it hard to see me (don't look at invisibility superior) and I see Summon & Control Animals for 125. So what is the point of spells having levels if there is no scale. And why is it so hard to summon anything useful?

Quit making magic users.

Killwatch wrote:L) Why are humans in any MDC setting? I mean really even friendly MDC beings would reach out to gently shake someone's hand not even doing a full point of MD and accidentally rip someone's arm off by doing .5 MD there are smarter and more durable beings to spend your time with in the three galaxies. And gods forbid anyone want to actually harm them. SDC beings are the feeble children who everyone else has to dance around and be extra careful they don't in anyway serious bump into or their spines will literally shoot out of their bodies and disintegrate upon impact with an MDC tankard (ok not literally but close). Ok its bad in D&D where humans get almost bupkis, but in palladium let alone any MDC setting you might as well be asking if you could play the thing that is begging to be killed at the onset. "But we have so much to offer" as compared to who or what? We are nothing without our armor and weapons. we might as well all become borgs. human spell casters are great until they run out of points. In an MDC environment all we are are brain stems in armor

Quit making humans.

Killwatch wrote:M) Conversions-more gripe. Ok so getting past all of that Rifts earth has MDC because of the rifts. According to Dragons and Gods MDC creatures are beings whose physical body is so tough armored magical or supernatural that it functions as a natural mega damage body armor. Ok I can SEE, even if I don't agree that the available "dimensional energies" of a given world might limit a god's, devel's or other magical creature to do MDC type actions or be MDC in an SDC, but why tech? do MDC worlds have different laws of physics? while exploring space in an MDC ship and landing on an SDC planet does my ship suddenly become non-mdc? An explanation is given that these changes are brought on by dimensional anomalies, which just smacks of "because I want it and I said so"

yeah that's pretty much right. But how fun would it be if your SDC superhero's SDC world suddenly got invaded by an MDC being with MDC weapons armor and equipment that didn't convert to SDC. Suddenly your character is more useless than 44DD's on a 2 oz canary because absolutely nothing you or anyone else could do would ever hurt him. You'd better just let your character learn to bow to his new leader. The main reason for the downgrade is to let people in SDC worlds actually have a fighting chance against the (usually) superior tech of an MDC environment. At least, that's my take on it.

Killwatch wrote:N) Spell Costs: How the hell do we go from level 1 spells having using 1 PPE to level 14 needing on average 500 points? For 300 you can summon a 10 mile radius storm. which in its description is more of a nuisance and a really costly way to get out of going to school as because of flooding there is a 30% chance that nothing will happen, or because of high winds that there is a 40% of a vehicle flipping over. But wait won't the water stabilize me against the wind? And why isn't there cacophonous thunder and high powered random lightning strikes? for f sake at level 1 I get thunderclap. And where are these mages getting enough PPE to cast these spells? there is absolutely no sense of scale here.

And protection circles? FU. Am I really understanding correctly that if I spend an hour drawing a protection circle spending 70 points that the demons can still attack from the outside? There is no protective shell> Hope they don't figure out how to do ranged attacks

A Summoner has to spend hours drawing two circles, one for protection and one for the actual summoning, summoning of something that will hate the summoner and try to kill it any chance it gets, VERSUS a tattooed man who can summon knights beasts, monsters all with little effort and little time. Fair?

With protection circles that really is the only way a creature can hurt you from outside the circle. I've often pointed this little factoid out to my players that try hiding in circles. with the summoner, no. He spends the time drawing only one circle. A summoning circle has a built in area of protection that he stands in when summoning whatever creature the circle is geared for. As long as he remains in that part of the circle (the lower quadrant of it to be precise) he is protected from the creature brought by the circle. And I've always ran the T-Man as not summoning a beast, monster, knight etc. per se, but rather a magical construct (a'la Doppleganger) created to look like/imitate whatever is represented on the tattoo.

Killwatch wrote:O) Monsters. There aren't any. They are all optional player characters, and the monsters and animals guide is only useful for the animal stats. The monsters are poorly drawn and mostly unimpressive anyhow. Here you see a majestic Ki Lin. Really? Looks like a tarded dragon mated with a deer.

Grab your D&D Monster manuals and start converting!

Killwatch wrote:P) Another point for gods not being gods other than that they are epic fails, is that gods of strength like Magnus who has I think a 90 SNPS is less than half of those from HUs Gramercy Island, and I would really like to know why the government has identified mutants as walking disaster areas and began the cleansing, or even how captain chaos and crew got captured in the first place?

Don't have Gramercy Island so I can't comment. Are you sure they have a Supernatural PS that high? or is it Superhuman?

Killwatch wrote:Q) Mind numbing super power redundancies even though they are supposed to be new. Slight changes are character flare not new powers. anda gain the scale is crap. Screw minors and majors, just have powers that develop and get more impressive as the character grows. APS Metal: AR 10+1 per 2 or 3 levels, 100 SDC per level
APS Fire: Shoot fire: 1d10 per level, Level 5 Body of fire and flight, level 10 shape fire
its like palladium has this theme of all or nothing. Nevermind its just all. All the spells you want off the bat, all the power right away. And going back to rurga, how do I do as much damage as her favored weapon at level 3? As much as her weilding it at level 7 and as much to demons at level 10.

I mostly agree with you here. Personally i like the idea of Major and Minor powers, but when the Powers Unlimited books started coming out and seeing over 100 pages on the New Powers thread in the HU forum, I just kinda lost interest in anything with HU. After a while there's just too damn much.

Killwatch wrote:R) Listen I am annoyed and grumpy and it's 3 am but seriously, aren't these valid? If not explain it so that it makes sense. where is the proverbial rosetta stone here? Its like a case of murder on the orient express, the left hands don't know what the right hands are doing. and it makes even less sense knowing that only one guy is approving and editing this stuff. Is there an in-house buy who's job it is to keep track of rules and crap like that? I used to love palladium. but now that I am trying to really work in the system I am finding all these key things that make it hard for me to ignore, like MDC/SDC, like ineffectual "gods", like the fact that it is better to shoot a guy 30 times with 30 single rounds than it is to do a burst of 30 rounds despite them both hitting the same general area by default (should be 2d6x30)

All I can say is enjoy the most beautiful part of the Palladium system... if it doesn't work for you, change it! If changing it isn't working, drop it! So Rurga seems underpowered when she's supposed to be a major god? Triple her HP and SDC and make her weapon do 1d6x20 damage and be a soul sucking greatest rune weapon! Levels for spells when a wizard can have them anytime? Drop them! If he wants it he gets it! PPE, Chi, ISP... for all intents and purposes they seem like same thing, so lets drop the seperate identifiers, call it all Magic Points and use it to power Spells, Psionics, Chi Mastery abilities and anything else that seems to need to be powered by this stuff!
Alright some of the stuff may seem over the top a bit, but while you do have a few valid points up there, the easiest soultion is, and has always been, Palladiums golden rule. It's your game. Run it the way you want to.

Oh and as for that whole 30 single shots versus 1 30 round burst, I personally challenge you to empty the 30 round clip of an AK-47 in a single pull of the trigger at a single man-sized target 25 meters away and hit the target with EVERY SINGLE BULLET. Having fired weapons like that myself I can tell you that the weapon jumping and kicking in your hands as much as it does will make getting even half of them on target more than a challenge.

KillWatch wrote:ok someone talk me down from the ledge here. I have found some glaring holes that just defy any kind of reason I can produce.
I want some answers that will make the hurting stop. I love palladium and have so for many years, but now now I am feeling a bit lost.

A) It started with trying to convert vampire intelligences to an SDC setting and I couldn't find any in the palladium fantasy books. where are they?

If it's not in Western Empire or Dragons & Gods, it's probably not in PFRPG.
Not sure what conversion would be necessary, though, other than MDC to SDC, and the general rule of thumb there is to double a creature's MDC and make it SDC.
The CB1 rules for converting SDC creatures to Rifts, and converting Rifts to SDC, might help.

B) Ok so I look at vampire Kingdoms and find the stats for the intelligence, which is supposed to be something impressive. Agreed they are to a point, but then I actually look at stuff; It has HP but no SDC, but it does have MDC, which for everything else in the mega damage verse, is suppose supplant the HP. Make it make sense

Not much I can do on that front.
The way it's written (whether or not that's how it was intended), the VI has both Hit Points and MDC.
If you want to hurt it, you can do that by taking out the MDC, which is affected only by magic.
If you want to kill it, you have to use wood, silver, running water, etc.

C) Going further, the MDC of a VI is on average is 3000 for the main body, which isn't a lot but considering that only wood silver and holy water are really the only things that can hurt it, it gets a bit more impressive. but why doesn't the wood just break or the silver bend?

Because vampires have a magical vulnerability to certain substances.

D) 3000 MDC. An maxed out full strength hit from one using full actions will do 5d6. which in reference to MDC to SDC is impressive (30000). But it falls so short. A VI vs VI in melee combat is just going to take forever, even assuming they are supernatural creatures and doing supernatural damage, average damage of 15 vs average MDC of 3000 is 200 successful hits. This will take 25 melees. 6.25 minutes. Ok then we are out of MDC, and moving on to Hit Points. Are the HP MDC? or are the 2d6x100 only 2d6 MD, since they have both?

The Hit Points are Hit Points, and the MDC is MDC.
Vampires fighting other vampires inflict direct-to-hp damage, and I'd say that the VI counts as a vampire for that. So two VIs slugging it out wouldn't have to break through each other's MDC.
The damage would be the same dice, but HP damage instead of Mega-Damage.

E) What is there PE? Infinite? Non-existent?

Hm.
I'd say that it doesn't have any, kind of like Bots. Which is a problem in there rules, since a lot of things can depend on PE (like save vs. magic).
Or see if CB1 or Dragons & Gods has the PE for an average Supernatural Intelligence, and port it over.

Barring that, I guess you could swipe the PE stat from the Master Vampire and go with 18+1d6.

F) Why can't they change shape? and what do wolves and bats have to do with intergalactic evils that are presumably older than the earth, to say the least of wolves and bats?

a) Just to pull an answer out of my hat, I'd say that they can't naturally turn into bats and wolves simply because their natural chemistry is such that they're too alien to do it. Unlike vampires, which are flesh-and-blood creatures that were once living things, and therefore share a kind of kinship with other living beings.
b) Other than the vampires being able to turn into wolves and bats, I'd say nothing.
You're probably wondering why wolves and bats are the critters that vampires can turn into, and that's a valid question, but it's kind of like asking why werewolves can turn into wolves. No real reason given; that's just how things are.
If you need some kind of non-canon backstory, though, I could make one up.

G) SDC VI: How the hell do you do it? One option is to do straight conversion, but then what does the restrained tentacle strike of 6d6 SDC become? On the other tentacle, that would mean that a regular tentacle strike from a terrible evil does 5d6, which is less than a high powered revolver. Ancient Evil = Ruger Redhawk? Would you then add the damage from PS 40? If so, what changes from MDC and SDC that allows for PS to be used? Why isn't there a MD PS bonus?

This one is easier than you think.
See, back in the day, when VK came out, Supernatural PS did not inflict Mega-Damage. That's why every vampire does the same damage, and why the Pogtals need that energy field.
But now Supernatural PS does inflict MD, so all you have to do is look at the PS of the VI and use the PFRPG Supernatural PS Damage Table. According to PFRPG, you DO add the PS damage bonus on top of what's listed in the table.
PS 40:
Restrained Punch 2d6+25
Full Strength Punch 6d6+25
Power Punch 1d4x10+25

There isn't an MD PS bonus to Mega-Damage because mega-damage is so powerful already.
If you gently set a 100 lb sack of plastic explosives on somebody's head, then detonate it, the effect is pretty much the same as if you dropped that sack onto their head from the top of a tall building.
The extra kinetic impact doesn't make a significant amount of difference.
But you could always include it, so their attack would inflict 5d6 MD +25 SDC.

If you're wondering they the PS damage bonus wouldn't be in Mega-Damage, that's because it never is. It just doesn't work that way.
While there is a correlation between Supernatural Physical Strength and the damage it deals, the damage isn't caused by the force behind the blow.
Which is why there can be cases where a human can lift and carry more than a supernatural creature, but the supernatural creature can punch through brick walls.
Or, for that matter, through the human.

H) A clue to the straight across conversion is in the palladium fantasy Dragons and Gods the gods weapons are pretty comparable to normal weapons doing single digit d6, which I would assume would be converted into single digit d6 MD. How the hell is this supposed to be impressive? And why would the gods use them? It would take forever to kill anyone. the gods don't fight other gods for fear of destroying worlds. No, they would just get bored and forget why they were fighting in the first place.
Rurga: 3000 SDC, 2880 HP, Regenerating 6d6 per melee. Which seems paltry at first but then you look at the warrior goddess' damage capacity: 6d6+ PS 24. Forgive me for being utterly underwhelemed. And it isn't even a magical 6d6, it is simply kind of large, adding an extra 3d6.

Ever read much mythology?
The Gods weren't always much better than normal humans, depending on the pantheon and the myth in question.

One of my friends, though, proposed a sensible house rule:
With Gods, the "P.S." score is actually the number by which their strength surpasses the strength of the the strongest mortal in the area.
So if there's some guy with PS 30, and he wants to arm wrestle a God with PS 10, under this rule the God's strength would actually be, in this situation, PS 30+10, or PS 40.

Also, keep in mind, 6d6 SDC is about the same damage as a stick of dynamite. It's nothing to sneeze at.
It's also the damage that the most powerful rune weapons in the early books inflicted. Most were 2d6-4d6 SDC.

I) How does rurga survive? She has 650 PPE. She has no spells, no offensive psionics. She can do a mobile sphere of destruction at 250 pts +25 for each additional melee. It does 2d4x10 (max 80) in a single attack but 1500 per melee if held against something. Rurga, dear, throw your sword away as it is completely useless. But that comes out to 100 pts per second. Any mage god would destroy her easily, especially if they have 2000 pts to spare for the godblaze.
Damage Capacity and Damage Ability just does NOT effing scale. And gods aren't gods they just take longer to kill

Not familiar enough with Rurga to say.
Is she constantly battling other Gods to the death?

J) OK so it is my understanding the the influx of the ley lines or what have you are what allows for MDC in rifts. How so? How is manufactured armor affected? Advanced technology? Why didn't we figure it out? I mean either A) its 300 some odd years after the apocalypse where any technology we would have developed would have been destroyed or degraded, because everything is digital and we all know there is nothing more than a hard drive vs whatever caused the rifts. or B) civilization hit a reboot and we started as einstein pointed out by throwing stones again. I don't get where this is suppose to be coming from. The more I look at MDC it just breaks the hole game, and the more I look for an easy fix, I keep hitting road blocks.

Originally, there were two reasons for Mega-Damage in the Rifts setting:
1. Magic/psionics was boosted incredibly
2. High technology.

Unfortunately, later Palladium decided that there was only one reason:
1. Some Dimensions have Mega-Damage in them, Some Don't.

As for armor, it's manufactured.
You assume that the tech would have been destroyed or degraded, BUT there are a few factors you're not taking into consideration:
-It's not like all of humanity disappeared, then suddenly reappeared 300 years later and tried to pick up the old equipment they left lying around. There have been pockets of civilization here and there that have endured the whole time. Or endured a long time, then broken up and the people scattered, spreading bits of knowledge and technology here and there.
Or whatever. Point being, while certain areas got set back to zero tech, a lot of places didn't.
-MDC materials can only be harmed by Mega-Damage. Erosion and corrosion are SDC damage. So any MDC structures that weren't actively destroyed in the apocalypse would still be around.

As for SDC stuff that's still around, a lot of that is simply because when Rifts was first written, nobody really knew how bad that kind of scenario would be. With shows like Life After People, we understand more about what might and might not survive. But I don't hold it against Palladium; how were they to know?
Besides, museums are chock full of stuff from much longer ago than just a few hundred years.

You want an easy fix?
There were a lot of MDC buildings and/or underground complexes that got abandoned during the apocalypse. They were sealed tight (maybe even vacuum-sealed) as they were abandoned, so the contents were intact when somebody eventually found them again.
Some of these places were factories, and people could figure out how to use them.
Sometimes they were even fully-automated factories, staffed by robots (who, btw, could maintain a facility indefinitely under the right circumstances, even if it wasn't completely sealed).
Other times, stuff was preserved in other ways. There are survivalists and militia folk today, in the really-real world who bury barrels of grease-coated firearms in sealed barrels underground, so they can be dug up later when they're needed. Same thing probably happened before the coming of the Rifts, and even AFTER the coming of the Rifts.
Also, we know that sometimes the Rifts bring us stuff from Rifts Earth, from Pre-Rifts times. There have been two cities (one Native American, and one Japanese) that have pretty much been time-shifted to after the coming of the Rifts.
The same thing could have happened on a much smaller scale, much more often.
Maybe every 1d4x10+10 years, somewhere in North America, a rift would open up and spit out some people that got swallowed up by rifts in the apocalypse. They'd have knowledge and maybe even some technology with them.

I could go on, and I will if you like, but for now I'll move on.

K) Why is magic powered by someone Physical Endurance?

Because the body and spirit are linked.

Isn't that supposed to be the battery for Chi?

Kind of.

Is Chi really PPE?

Yes and no. It's been equated to both PPE and to ISP, in different books.
Personally, I treat all three as separate things.
Palladium just tries to merge Chi with one of the other two now and then to simply things.

And why is Potential Psychic Energy not used for Psychic Powers?

It is, just not the way you think.
PPE is our potential for psychic abilities. As you develop psychic abilities, it permanently lowers your PPE, as the potential psychic energy turns into actual psychic energy in the form of powers and ISP.
Read Beyond the Supernatural for more info on all that.

And why do psychic powers use Inner Strength Points?

Because ISP are actual psychic energy.

And why do spells have levels in the first place? As far as I can tell mages can take any spell (up to 10) at any time, regardless of level. A level one wizard can have a level 5 spell. why not just lump them all together? Whats the point?

Because there are more factors than just when wizards can learn them.
Each level gives a general idea of the power of the spell, for example.
Also, it makes it easier to organize things like the costs of buying spells from people/organizations/creatures.
Also, some wizards (like mystics) can't learn spells higher than their level.

And why the hell is Lantern Light and Globe of Daylight anywhere near each other? One creates an orb of light that actually hurts vampires because it is actual sunlight, the other is good if you don't have a candle. the spells are so chaotic.

Check the durations.
One's a big, bright light for a short amount of time, the other is a small light for a long amount of time.
And Lantern Light cane be a lot more powerful than a candle, unless you have a 300 watt candle.

Levels mean nothing for characters or for potency. And even if levels WERE tied to character development, how is summoning dogs, not hellhounds, not super wolves, canines a level nine spell?

Summoning things isn't always easy.
Of course, part of the deal with that particular spell was that it was created in an SDC environment, where a dog pack was a bigger deal. In a Mega-Damage environment, the spell is less useful... but that doesn't mean that it's easier to learn.
But then again, dogs can inflict MD to supernatural creatures with their bite. So it's not that useless.
And summoning spells in general can be abused by players who summon animals, kill them and drain the PPE, summon more animals, kill them, drain the PPE, etc. to come up with PPE for powerful spells.
But another problem is that Palladium didn't use logic when adjusting Magic to a Mega-Damage setting. They made the spells (some of them) inflict 100x more damage, but that's all they did to represent this massive amount of magic energy flowing around. If you want things to make a bit more sense, go through the spells and increase other affects for all non-damage-inflicting spells. Instead of summoning 1d4+1/level canines, make it 1d4x10+10/level. Or 1d4x100+100/level.
That any better?
Likewise, instead of 3 minutes per level, make Globe of Daylight last 30 minutes, or 300.

Further more why is summon rodents one level higher, the SAME level as summoning shadow beasts-an inter dimensional creature composed of elemental darkness. hmm what level ten spell should I take, squeeky cheese eaters or dimensional beasts,.... can I get back to you on that? Ah, you say, but summon shadow beast is more potent as seen in the PPE cost of 140 vs 70. Both level ten, But then we head to level 11 where I get to summon fog and make it hard to see me (don't look at invisibility superior) and I see Summon & Control Animals for 125. So what is the point of spells having levels if there is no scale.

Not sure what kind of scale you're looking for here.
Also, look at the two spells.
Summon Shadow Beast gives you a single, powerful minion that's good at assassination and general combat. A being that has a 15% chance of sticking around after the spell is over, and maybe trying to kill you.
Summon and Control Rodents gives you 30 rodents per level. They're not as powerful as that shadow beast, but at 10th level you can summon 300 of them, which is enough to inflict 600 SDC per melee round. Not as much damage as a shadow beast, but it can still be significant.
Also, in a pinch, would you rather try to eat rats to survive, or a shadow beast?
And hey, the summoning circle for rodents lets you control any kind of rodents. That could be pretty handy in a Night of the Lepus scenario.
You might not know it, but there are quite a few kinds of rodents.
Could be handy for dealing with any number of animal swarms, or for other odd situations.

Basically, each spell is useful in different ways.

Summon & Control Animals is more powerful, so it's a level higher. Not sure what the issue there is.

And why is it so hard to summon anything useful?

I dunno. What use are you trying to fulfill?

L) Why are humans in any MDC setting? I mean really even friendly MDC beings would reach out to gently shake someone's hand not even doing a full point of MD and accidentally rip someone's arm off by doing .5 MD there are smarter and more durable beings to spend your time with in the three galaxies. And gods forbid anyone want to actually harm them. SDC beings are the feeble children who everyone else has to dance around and be extra careful they don't in anyway serious bump into or their spines will literally shoot out of their bodies and disintegrate upon impact with an MDC tankard (ok not literally but close). Ok its bad in D&D where humans get almost bupkis, but in palladium let alone any MDC setting you might as well be asking if you could play the thing that is begging to be killed at the onset. "But we have so much to offer" as compared to who or what? We are nothing without our armor and weapons. we might as well all become borgs. human spell casters are great until they run out of points. In an MDC environment all we are are brain stems in armor

Nah, mega-damage inflicting critters can generally control their own strength. They won't hurt you by accident.
As for why we're in an MDC setting, it's because we can be.
You might think that humans are begging to get killed, but they're the most powerful force on the face of Rifts Earth, other than maybe Atlantis. As we should be; it's our planet.
Read this for more info.

M) Conversions-more gripe. Ok so getting past all of that Rifts earth has MDC because of the rifts. According to Dragons and Gods MDC creatures are beings whose physical body is so tough armored magical or supernatural that it functions as a natural mega damage body armor. Ok I can SEE, even if I don't agree that the available "dimensional energies" of a given world might limit a god's, devel's or other magical creature to do MDC type actions or be MDC in an SDC, but why tech? do MDC worlds have different laws of physics? while exploring space in an MDC ship and landing on an SDC planet does my ship suddenly become non-mdc? An explanation is given that these changes are brought on by dimensional anomalies, which just smacks of "because I want it and I said so"

That's because that's what it is.
Before they started that crap, I just did one of two things when dealing with interdimensional travel between realities with different power levels (like PFRPG and Rifts):
1. Nothing. I played it as it lay.
2. I chalked any conversions up to the nature of the specific rift that was traveled through. Maybe everything got converted to SDC, maybe no metal could even enter the Rift, maybe any high-tech materials that were brought through became incredibly brittle.

CB1 was a great idea for Palladium to have, but it was very poorly implemented. They wanted their superheroes to be able to run around in tights, and their karate champs to be able to run around in a gi. The chose to preserve the flavor of the people being brought in instead of preserving the flavor of the world, logic be damned.
That book did a LOT of damage, set a LOT of bad precedents, and defenestrated a heck of a lot of logic.
(pretty good book other than that, though).

N) Spell Costs: How the hell do we go from level 1 spells having using 1 PPE to level 14 needing on average 500 points? For 300 you can summon a 10 mile radius storm. which in its description is more of a nuisance and a really costly way to get out of going to school as because of flooding there is a 30% chance that nothing will happen, or because of high winds that there is a 40% of a vehicle flipping over. But wait won't the water stabilize me against the wind? And why isn't there cacophonous thunder and high powered random lightning strikes? for f sake at level 1 I get thunderclap. And where are these mages getting enough PPE to cast these spells? there is absolutely no sense of scale here.

I'm not sure why you think that Lantern Light (1 PPE) should be anywhere near the same cost as Summon & Control Storms.
Oh, and that 30% chance of nothing happening is per 2 miles of travel, so you get more than one chance.
Why isn't there thunder and lightning? There probably is, just not where you can really pick targets to get zapped, so it's just sound effects and light shows.

As for getting the PPE, you should probably read up on magic in Rifts.
RUE 186-187 discusses this very question.

For example:
Summon & Control Storms is most likely to be performed as a ritual, and it's a level 13 spell (here's another case where spell level matters), so that means that it will take 1d4x10+15 minutes to complete.
So let's start off with just one mage.
He's got 150 PPE by himself.
He's at a ley line, so he can draw 10 PPE per melee round from the ley line. Since the ritual takes an average of 40 minutes to complete, he probably has 40 minutes to spend gathering power. 10 PPE per melee = 40 PPE per minute x40 minutes = 160 PPE+ the 150 he already has in his personal reserve = 310 PPE total available at the end of the ritual.
The spell only costs 300 PPE, so he even has 10 left over afterward.
And since they cast it on a Ley Line, the spell's range and duration are increased by 50%, so the storm can now be created 15 miles away instead of 10, and last 1.5 hours per level of the caster instead of 1 hour per level.

OR let's say he's not on a ley line, but he has two buddies with him, both of whom are mages with 100 PPE of their own.
They get together to make a storm, so they pool their PPE. If one of the 100 PPE mages is the caster then he can take 70 PPE from the other 100 PPE mage, and 105 from the 150 PPE mage.
100+100+105= 305 PPE.
They don't even need a ritual; they can cast this as an outright incantation.

But let's say you want to cast a REALLY powerful spell for something seriously important.
You get a high (10th) level mage with 220 PPE, and 100 level 1 mages that are going to average around 110 PPE each.
You get them all together on a Nexus point, at midnight, on the autumnal equinox, during a lunar eclipse.
They can each draw 20 PPE per minute normally since it's a nexus, plus an additional 20 for the first 1d4 minutes after midnight, plus 40 more because it's the equinox, plus 180 more because of the planetary alignment (though it only happens once every 8 years or so).
So that's (20+20+40+180=260) 260 PPE per minute per mage for the first say 2 minutes, which would be about 26,000 PPE, and 240 PPE per minute for the next 38 minutes or so (240x38=9120), so that's 912,000, plus the 26,000 from earlier, so that's 938,000 PPE, plus the personal reserves of the mages (700+250=950), for a total of about 938,950 PPE.
Pretty much enough to do anything you like, hundreds of times.
For example, you could cast the spell of legend Warrior Horde 850 times, and have yourself an army of 170,000 magic warriors for the next 15 minutes.

Sure, that's kind of extreme, and it involves a planetary alignment that only pops up once every 8 years or so.
But take out that planetary alignment, and you've still got over 300,000 PPE to spend.
Reduce the number of mages down to 10, and you've still got several thousand PPE (I think. Do the math yourself if you want 100% accuracy here; I'm just trying to give you the gist of the possibilities).

And protection circles? FU. Am I really understanding correctly that if I spend an hour drawing a protection circle spending 70 points that the demons can still attack from the outside? There is no protective shell> Hope they don't figure out how to do ranged attacks

Don't cast that one, then.
I've found it to be pretty useful from time to time.
Most demons are more dangerous in melee than they are chucking rocks.

A Summoner has to spend hours drawing two circles, one for protection and one for the actual summoning, summoning of something that will hate the summoner and try to kill it any chance it gets, VERSUS a tattooed man who can summon knights beasts, monsters all with little effort and little time. Fair?

Nah, but it's balanced.
That Summoner can do a LOT of stuff the T-man can't.

O) Monsters. There aren't any. They are all optional player characters, and the monsters and animals guide is only useful for the animal stats. The monsters are poorly drawn and mostly unimpressive anyhow. Here you see a majestic Ki Lin. Really? Looks like a tarded dragon mated with a deer.

No idea what you're talking about here.
Where aren't there any monsters?

P) Another point for gods not being gods other than that they are epic fails, is that gods of strength like Magnus who has I think a 90 SNPS is less than half of those from HUs Gramercy Island, and I would really like to know why the government has identified mutants as walking disaster areas and began the cleansing, or even how captain chaos and crew got captured in the first place?

No idea; never read that book.

Q) Mind numbing super power redundancies even though they are supposed to be new. Slight changes are character flare not new powers. anda gain the scale is crap. Screw minors and majors, just have powers that develop and get more impressive as the character grows. APS Metal: AR 10+1 per 2 or 3 levels, 100 SDC per level
APS Fire: Shoot fire: 1d10 per level, Level 5 Body of fire and flight, level 10 shape fire
its like palladium has this theme of all or nothing. Nevermind its just all. All the spells you want off the bat, all the power right away. And going back to rurga, how do I do as much damage as her favored weapon at level 3? As much as her weilding it at level 7 and as much to demons at level 10.

You kinda had me with you when you were suggesting one level of power that gets more impressive over time (though being able to start with major powers is kinda necessary for a supers campaign, so it shouldn't be based just off of level, or you should get 1 power at 10th level when you're level one, or something), but then you kinda started rambling.
Nobody gets all the spells they want off the bat.
Sure, a level 1 mage can learn a Spell of Legend.
Just like a level 1 Soldier could own a planet-destroying spaceship.
It an happen in theory, but only if the GM isn't very good (or he's VERY good, and has quite a trick or three up his sleeve).
Not sure why you're obsessed with Rurga, either.

R) Listen I am annoyed and grumpy and it's 3 am but seriously, aren't these valid?

Some are, some aren't, and some are partially valid.
The game's far from perfect, but it's a heck of a lot of fun if you do it right.

Its like a case of murder on the orient express, the left hands don't know what the right hands are doing. and it makes even less sense knowing that only one guy is approving and editing this stuff.

Well, they have more than one editor.
People write stuff, Kevin Revises and approves, and then there's some other editors in there somewhere.
Kevin approves stuff against his better judgment sometimes, or overlooks stuff, or adds rules simply due to fan demand whether he plays that way or not.
It can be kind of a mess.

If it were ME in charge, the books would be all very much in sync with each other, and the rules would be unified and logical.
And I'd have probably only put out 1-2 books a year.
And, for that matter, I probably wouldn't have even got that far, because I haven't even finished my own system yet, much less written my first setting book.
So I try to keep this in mind when I gripe about all the problems.

Is there an in-house buy who's job it is to keep track of rules and crap like that?

I wish.
Hell, I'd love the job.
And I'd be good at it.

I used to love palladium. but now that I am trying to really work in the system I am finding all these key things that make it hard for me to ignore, like MDC/SDC, like ineffectual "gods", like the fact that it is better to shoot a guy 30 times with 30 single rounds than it is to do a burst of 30 rounds despite them both hitting the same general area by default (should be 2d6x30)

Yeah, you're in the second stage.
Initially, you see the game, see all the cool stuff in it, and have a blast. Any flaws you see, you tend to chalk up to your own lack of knowledge about the system, or assume that it's a minor problem that will be fixed in the near future.
Then, after you get to know the system well enough to actually SEE a lot of the problems, you become disillusioned.
The phase after that is usually either quitting the system and moving on to something else (this phase often seems to include bitter rants about how "Palladium = Suxx0r" or whatever on RPG.Net or someplace), OR you decide to just play on through, fix the issues you see, and talk to other gamers to see how they deal with your issues.
If you go the second route, you'll move on to yet another phase, where you learn enough about the game to realize that even though there are a LOT of problems, there aren't as many as you thought, because some of the ones you think you see at stage two are caused by your own (understandable) lack of understanding of the system, or the setting, or due to some house rules you created yourself interacting with the canon rules.
I'm a few stages past that point. Not sure how to describe it, but the view is interesting.

Hope I helped.

JuliusCreed wrote:The main thing that is supposed to make a god's weapon impressive is the supernatural strength wielding it. If a creature with supernatural strength uses a weapon, the weapon's damage capacity is added to the supernatural PS damage. Suddenly, Rurga's "paltry" 6d6 sword is doing upwards of 9d6 damage (6 from the sword and, I think, another 3 from the supernatural PS of 31. Can't find the SNPS table at the moment) plus her damage bonus of 24 coming out at a minimum of 33 points of damage.

Actually, the official rules are that supernatural PS can over-ride weapon damage, and vice-versa, but they don't stack; you get either punch damage or weapon damage, whichever is more.
Unless you're using gargoyle weapons, xiticix weapons, or Madhaven mutants bone weapons, THEN the punch and damage stack.

The main problem in all this is the existence of the different strength categories in the first place, and the decision to even allow Supernatural PS to deal MD.

Just mentioning this as an aside; I was going to let it go, but ended up seeing a couple other things that I wanted to comment on, so figured I'd bring this up.
Overall, good post.

But how fun would it be if your SDC superhero's SDC world suddenly got invaded by an MDC being with MDC weapons armor and equipment that didn't convert to SDC.

Actually, that could be very fun.
I've often thought it would be neat to run a campaign where the CS discovered a portal to an SDC world and decided to invade, though I usually thought of Palladium.
It'd be cool from either side of things.

In HU Earth, Invulnerable characters would be pretty safe, others could take minor mega-damage, and they'd better all swap their tights out for armor, and some of their powers for guns.
Though to avoid having Energy Expulsion-based heroes lose their main power, I might consider the possibility of super-scientists capturing MD energy weapons and figuring out how to convert them to gauntlets that would make EE blasts MD instead of SDC.
There's all kinds of possibilities in that sort of scenario.

All I can say is enjoy the most beautiful part of the Palladium system... if it doesn't work for you, change it! If changing it isn't working, drop it!

Yup.
I've heard of people that use a different system entirely, but they buy Palladium books for setting material.

The main thing that I think people should keep in mind, though, is that running around house-ruling anything that doesn't instantly make sense to you can sometimes screw things up more than it helps.
Most of the rules are there for reasons.

For example, almost NONE of the players I've played with or interacted with here use the official "roll 3d6" rules for attribute generation. 5d6, drop the two lowest (or keep on, if you get the 4th die) is pretty common, or roll 4d6, or any number of other things to boost stats.
Which is fine, but it seems like a lot of people do that, then complain about how underpowered stuff is, or how lame character/monster X is, or whatever else... but it's not necessarily that anything's underpowered- they just house-rule (or, in some senses, cheated) in order to make their characters more powerful, then didn't like the consequences.

Oh and as for that whole 30 single shots versus 1 30 round burst, I personally challenge you to empty the 30 round clip of an AK-47 in a single pull of the trigger at a single man-sized target 25 meters away and hit the target with EVERY SINGLE BULLET. Having fired weapons like that myself I can tell you that the weapon jumping and kicking in your hands as much as it does will make getting even half of them on target more than a challenge.

Agreed, but one of the problems there is that phrase "Man-sized."
If I'm shooting at a 60' tall, 20' wide robot, a lot more of my bullets should hit than if I'm shooting at a normal person.
But there are no rules to account for this.
Likewise, if I'm firing an energy weapon with little to no kick, I should have more control and therefore more accuracy with bursts than if I'm firing an AK.
The burst/spray rules were pretty good, but they had some issues.
And now they're no longer canon anyway.