... And the Kitchen Sink

In my last post, I mentioned wanting to highlight the multigenre aspects of my Spectrum Shock setting. After reading the interview with Kevin Sembieda on RPG Blog II (and a conversation with Eric that he probably won't even remember), I think I've finally put my finger on at least one key aspect of Rifts that made it so enjoyable: not knowing whether a given opponent would be too much for the group to handle. Because of this, I've decided to go ahead and toss in everything produced by Wizards of the Coast from the 3E-3.5 era and not worry about balance anymore.

In order to implement this, first I'm going to revisit the advice I gave my players at the beginning of our last Rifts campaign. To summarize:

"This system is inherently unbalanced and I'm not fudging dice rolls. Play accordingly."

Basically, this was a way to let my players know that making combats balanced would be a guessing game at best, so I wasn't even going to try and they would need to rely on their wits to stay alive. If it looks too tough, don't shoot it unless you're feeling lucky.

Second, I need to let them know that all of the classes, prestige classes, feats, spells, etc. from all of the books we have are now fair game. This might cause my players to want to recreate their characters, and some revision is fine with me. As long as they stick to the same general concept, I'm okay with it. And, of course, if a character should die, the player can create a new one from the ground up.

Game night is tonight... so we'll see how the first game with the new additions works out!