Palladium/Rifts Notes:

I honestly never expected someone who had never played Rifts or Palladium to actually care about the stats I gave the Nerima Martial Artist or the Super Seiyan. However, since I have received questions, and people have expressed interest in the system, I will attempt to explain certain basics.

Palladium

Palladium is a word with multiple meanings. In the real world we live in it is simply the company name of the creator of an RPG (Role Playing Game). But wait there's more, it is also the name of the world that the first RPG that this company wrote took place. But hold up, that's not the end of it, the actual RPG system is called the Palladium system. It is not a simple word, but one that denotes a company, a world and a RPG system.

The world of Palladium is a place where magic is common. A good ten percent of the population knows some degree of magic. There are the wizards which are master of spell magic. With a few words they can impose their will on the world around them. There are also Summoners and Diabolists, who create magical effect through rituals, circles, and wards. Warlocks are magic users specializing in elemental magic. Through their link to the Elemental plane they can control earth, fire, water, and air, depending on their specialty. Many of the population are psionics of varying skill. The true masters of this power are Mind Mages, scholars who study to unlock and control their own inner powers of the mind.

Palladium is also a place where gods and demons walk the earth. This is less common than contacting the higher powers through their priestly representatives. Priests usually have little power of their own, but through a direct conduit to their associated god/demon can command truly awesome miracles.

Despite the widespread use of magic, the magical energy level of this world is low. The people of this world have substituted skill and ingenuity to create the effects a world richer in magic would more easily achieve. They say that in the past when the Old Ones ruled the universe and Palladium was one of their bastions of control, magic flowed with incredible ease and even children could create miracles. The Old Ones were overthrown by the Gods, Alien Intelligences and supernatural entities that the Old Ones had created to serve them, the magical bindings requiring so much energy that the ambient magical level was slowly reduced to what is today. That was a hundred thousand years ago, and although most of the wonders that were once common have been lost, few other places in the multiverse have the variety and skill still found on this world.

Rifts Earth

Rifts Earth is our world three hundred years after a holocaust. The holocaust wasn't a nuclear exchange, it was rather the demons and hordes of supernatural entities that followed. Earth had likewise been a once magic rich world. Due to the disaster which caused Atlantis to fade from our dimension ten thousand years ago the magic energy of our world began to dwindle to a pathetic trickle of what it was. Unlike the Palladium world the science of magic did not survive, leaving only the mundane mechanics of the world in it's place. Sometime in the early 21^st century a limited nuclear exchange occurred. It may have been the start of World War III, but it heralded the end of mankind dominion of the Earth. The first salvo merely killed a few million, a terrible tragedy but small on the global scale. The results of this salvo destroyed civilization. The pychic and magical energy released by these simultaneous deaths flowed to the dormant ley lines swelling them into huge torrents off unfocussed power. Where these ley lines met they pooled their energies into reservoirs called nexus. These bloated nexus ripped the very fabric of the universe opening Rifts into other random and often hostile worlds. No, it wasn't the nuclear weaponry that destroyed humanity, it was the supernatural horrors that came after.

The Rifts and heightened magical energy proved self-perpetuating, three hundred years later incredible magical energies still flow across the world along the paths known as ley lines. Supernatural creatures still rage across the face of the planet, mostly keeping each other in check enough to ensure no one entity achieved dominion. Mankind is just recovering enough to cobble something together worthy of being named civilization. Humans have learned through hard fought survival to channel and control the energies known as magic. In other areas science has recovered enough to almost achieve the pinnacle it achieved before the Rifts, giving mankind a chance at winning back a foothold on the world they once claimed.

Rifts Earth: Atlantis

As for the once lost continent of Atlantis? It has reappeared. The original noble race that once inhabited it is long gone, replacing them is the Splugorth and their minions. The Splugorth, a race of powerful extra dimensional Alien Intellegences, maintain control of this new land. Mostly watching the events around them. Occasionally raiding other lands for slaves. For now the struggle with other supernatural entities that total dominion of Rifts Earth would require is felt to be not quite worth the effort. However the untold billions that the Slugorth name their minion remain available, waiting for the call to arms on their own worlds.

Terms

HP: Hit Points. The damage a person can accept before dying. You aren't dead until you reach your negative PE, however once your below zero you are bleeding to death and may lapse into a coma.

SDC: Structural Damage Capacity, superficial bruising damage a character can take before it starts being subtracted from your Hit Points. Inanimate objects only have SDC, once it is gone it is considered broken or destroyed.

MDC: Mega Damage Capacity. Newer alloys and composites enable many types of armor to ignore conventional damage. One MDC is equal to 100 SDC. If a conventional weapon is fired and it does less than 100 SDC it is ignored, round down. An example of this would be a pistol firing at a tank. You can hit it all day and would not expect it to damage it. Supernatural creatures and many creatures of magic live largely off magical energy, if the ambient magical energy is great enough a magical creatures SDC and HP are transformed into MDC as their body using the energy to fortify itself. This allows dragons, demons, gods, supernatural entities and even some enhanced humans to go toe to toe with modern and future technology with an excellent chance of success.

IQ: Intelligence Quotient. How intelligent the character is. This mainly impact skills and perception rolls.

ME: Mental Endurance. How strong minded, focused, or stubborn a character is. This impacts how resistant he may be to psionic attacks, and how well he wields his own psionic skills.

MA: Mental Affinity. How likable or charismatic the character is. Familiarity may help overcome this initial impression, but a really poor first impression may make the point moot.

PS: Physical Strength. How strong the character is. See the descriptions below for modifiers and details. Offer may not be valid in every state.

PE: Physical Endurance. The characters constitution. This impact how long a character may continue strenuous physical activity and gives bonuses resisting poison, magic, as well as recovering from a coma. Certain creatures and beings are classed as having supernatural endurance, meaning they can continue activities for hours, days, even weeks without tiring.

PP: Physical Prowess. The dexterity and agility of the person, as well as the hand-eye coordination. This impacts the character's ability to parry and dodge attacks.

PB: Physical Beauty. How attractive the character looks. This affects peoples initial reaction in a fashion similar to MA. This is also relative. Non-human perception can be very different than how we would interpret beauty.

SPD: Speed. How fast you move, run, hop, fly etc.

ISP: Inner Strength Points. If you use psionics this is the point pool you use to power your abilities. Each ability has it's own point cost depending on the specific ability and how powerful you want the effect to be.

PPE: If you use magic, or similar abilities this is the point pool you use to power your abilities. Each ability has it's own point cost depending on the specific ability and how powerful you want the effect to be.

Mundane Strength: Normal characters with a strength between 3 -16 can lift 10 times his PS attribute in pounds, and carry 20 times his PS attribute in pounds. Normal characters with a strength 17 or higher can lift 20 times his PS attribute in pounds, and carry 40 times his PS attribute in pounds. Although there are bonuses to damage it will be SDC damage regardless of where the character is.

Supernatural Strength: A supernatural creature having the same strength as a mundane human simply is stronger, he can lift 100 times his PS attribute in pounds, and carry 50 times his PS attribute in pounds. The damage he inflicts is magnified by the magical energies flowing through his body.

Mechanical Strength: Robots, forklifts, and similar mechanical devices lift huge amount, but although they inflict more damage than Mundane Strength, they still do less than Supernatural Strength.

Superheroic Strength: A supernatural creature having the same strength as a mundane human simply is stronger, he can lift 200 times his PS attribute in pounds, and carry 100 times his PS attribute in pounds. The damage he inflicts is magnified by the magical energies flowing through his body exactly as Supernatural Strength. Basically lifts more, but does the same damage.

Parry vs Dodge: Anyone with even Basic Hand to Hand can automatically parry single incoming attacks, assuming that he has an appropriate tool. Parrying single shots like gunfire is possible but large penalties apply even if using an appropriate tool. Multiple simultaneous attacks (such as bursts) can only be parried by OCC with that specific ability. Parrying does not require the use of a attack action except under specific circumstances. When an attack cannot be parried (i.e. huge boulder, area affect attack, etc.) the character can choose to dodge. This involved leaping out of the way of the incoming attack. Often the character may be required to leap out of attack range altogether. Dodge does require an attack action. This means that it is possible for a character to spend all his attacks dodging, which in turn means he cannot himself attack. Certain OCCs or RCCs may allow the character to auto-dodge. This means he can simultaneously dodge as well as attack, without using any additional attacks. This used to simulate incredibly fast characters.

AR: Armor Rating. What you need to roll over on a twenty sided die to hit your enemy rather than his armor. A roll of five up to your AR will hit your enemy's armor. If you roll under five, you miss completely. These base rolls are, of course, modified with your martial arts skills, other physical skills, OCC/RCC bonuses, and specific powers the character may have. This may sound complex, but once you have this number you write it down and simply add it to the dice you roll. The AR number is mostly irrelevant in an MDC environment. SDC armor will most likely be instantly vaporized along with the SDC person wearing the armor. All they basically have to do is roll over a five to hit in the first place.