Some thoughts of an old campaign




 Some Thought on an old Campaign 

I've been playing Palladium FRP since about 1990, and running a campaign
for the past two years (although I did have the advantage of dating the
GM in the first campaign, so...)

Anyway, some comments:

Someone mentioned earlier about Priests being able to heal a great deal.
Don't forget, it's only every other round (important in combat!).  Also,
my old GM made a few alterations to the rules to make this a little more
difficult.  Instead of limiting the number of times a priest can heal per
day, he limited a priest to only healing a single wound once.  Abstracted
out, for simplicity:  a character can only be healed once by any given
priest after any combat.  So, assuming a character takes 15 points of damage
fighting orcs, he or she can only get back 1d8 of that from healing from
a single priest.  The number of hit points the character has after the
combat and all the  healing is called Local Max.  Thereafter, no matter how
much healing the character gets from that priest, he/she cannot go above
that Local Max  (for example:  Lady Valkris, with 20 HP, gets hit for 10
points of damage during a combat.  The party priest heals her for 5 HP --
Local Max is now 15.  In another combat, Valkris only takes 2 points of
damage (HP 13).  The priest heals her for 7, but she can only go to 15HP --
her old Local Max.)  
     Other priests, healing potions and bedrest will raise the Local Max.
(If you really are confused and want help -- email me and I'll explain 
more).  
     Medical skill (which we use as heals 1d4 if successful -- is this
in the rules?  I forget) must be done BEFORE any healing (including spells
or potions) or it cannot be used.

OK -- other stuff.  For the most part, I've found the magic system simple
and easy to use, especially for players who have trouble grasping difficult
systems (yes, we have one who took 3 game sessions to figure out how to
add up all her bonuses to hit and whatnot).  I don't like the randomness
of the spell choice, though.  It would seem illogical that a priest of a
water or sea god would receive the choice of Fireball but not some of the
other water spells.  I ended up rewriting the spell lists for clergy (giving
them different spells for different gods and changing the levels on the
spells if it made sense) -- also feel free to steal spells from anywhere
else (D&D spells are very compatible and many others (RuneQuest, RoleMaster)
are easy to convert with some time).  This way also the players can be
surprised by clergy or wizards with spells that are not from the book, or
NPCs who have spells that should be much higher level than the character is
(this helps when you have players that also GM and know the rulebook very 
well (i.e. He only has one attack, that wizard.  He's not fourth level yet).
Use your own discretion here:  if you like a spell and Palladium doesn't
have it, USE IT ANYWAY! (you can get cheap 1st edition AD&D Players Handbooks
for auction in rec.frp.marketplace if you don't care about the condition,
or try a used book store).  I have a list of a bunch of spells a friend and
I converted over if people are interested (it's in Word (Mac) format right
now...)

Diabolists are fun but the rules are seriously rapeable if you aren't 
careful.  Sit down with any player playing one and discuss what is and
is not permisible.  The rules in the rulebook are poorly written IMHO, and
the "clarification" in Book 3 (High Seas) is not much better (IMHO).  Anyone
care to discuss this?

Clergy are nicely powered, but Priests/Palladins tend to be all the same.
My old GM and I both decided to give each member of a religion some sort
of special power based on the religion:  clergy of a war god can instantly
tell the hand-to-hand chart and level of any opponent, priests of the
vengeance god can use a "force sword" (like the cyberknights from RIFTS),
priests of change can cause a change in someone (based on a percentile
roll, lasts only a day).  Also, I gave the palladins (2) in my party the
ability to Communion and Divine Intervention at 1/2 the priest chance with
less number of chances (1 communion/day instead of 2, 1 DI per week instead
of per day).  This gives a flavor to different clergy, so the death priest
is very different from the priest of evil, etc. etc.

(ramble, ramble)

Personally, I threw out the random Psionics rules as too powerful: wh
should a character get some of the powers of another class without paying
for them in some way?  

Another personal opinion:  I rarely use Monsters and Animals or the
written adventures/settings from the books.  M&A has some weird things that
just don't work for me, and the new PC races can be difficult to integrate
unless everyone plays the same thing (Tez-Cat, Ratling, things like that)
or sometimes they can't communicate, or carry things, or act like most
players would want them to.  Difficult to do, but not impossible, of course.

My suggestions for source material are basically other role playing games.
Many used book stores carry used modules/rulebooks/etc and can be easily
plundered for their lore.  Many game systems convert easily to Palladium
(AD&D if you understand the rules is easy, and don't forget, an orc is an
orc, no matter what system it is).  Also, these other adventures are great
for plot ideas or trap ideas or dungeon maps, etc.  The Palladium supplements
are well done, but often the adventures aren't easily transferable to another
setting, and frankly there really aren't that many of them (especially if`
you start throwing out the ones with rune swords and really high level
bad guys that would munch your party whole -- great when you are high
level, but not when you are low!).  The most recent book (Yin-Sloth Jungles)
has some new skills (thank you!!!) which can help fill out characters
in more interesting ways.

This is long ... if you have any questions, please post or e-mail
(finally!  Palladium FRP gamers!!!!  yay!!)

Jen 
theraven@imap2.asu.edu