Nightspawn & Rifts Notes

for Unisystem

These notes include Unisystem character creation for armor and weapon conversions for Palladium's Nightspawn and Rifts, respectively. They were not done by me.

As always, there is no intention of violating trademarks or copyrights. Palladium owns the Nightspawn and Rifts property, while C.J. Carella and Eden Studios own Unisystem. None of them have anything to do with this site and use of this material is not meant to challenge Palladium Books' or Eden Studios' ownership of said material or Intellectual Properties in any way".

Enjoy it!

NIGHTSPAWN

Creating Nigthspawn

Being a Nightspawn costs 30 character points. They use the Gifted or Greater Gifted Character Types.

Attributes:

• Facade: Normal.
• Morphus: +2 to Strength, Dexterity and Constitution.

Secondary Attributes:

• Life Points:
  • Facade: (Str + Con) x 4 + 15
  • Morphus: (Str + Con) x 5 + 30
• Endurance Points: Normal
• Essence Points: Sum of Attributes (the Facade’s) + 50. Can purchase Extra Essence.

Regeneration Rates: Nightspawn recover secondary attributes as follows:

• Life Points: 5 LPs per turn in Morphus; Con points per hour in Facade form.
• Endurance Points: 5 EP per minute in Morphus form; 1 EP every 10 minutes in Facade form.
• Essence Points: Nighspawn recover 1 Essence point per minute (60 per hour). Characters with Essence Channeling gain Essence more rapidly.

Shape Bonuses and Attributes: Once you are done rolling on the Morphus Tables, total them. Bonuses to Primary Attributes are divided by 4 (rounded up). Bonuses to Secondary Attributes are divided by 5 (rounded up).

Talents: Disregard the normal acquiring rules. Instead, Talents are purchased with character points; use the permanent P.P.E. cost and divide it by 3 (rounded up) to determine the character point cost. Nightbane Talents are purchased with points from the Metaphysics category. Use the P.P.E. cost as Essence.

Using Nightspawn Talents: Characters have a Nightspawn Skill (2 points per level until level 5).

Other Metaphysical Powers: In addition to Talents, Nightspawn can learn Sorcery (Essence Channeling), Necromancy, and Mana Magic.

RIFTS

Body Armor
      The best suits of body armor are environmental suits. They are sealed and have their own oxygen suppy, built-in radio and honeycombed padding that absorbs much of the energy that penetrates its outer armor. In game terms, environmental armor has a number of Damage Points it will absorb before any damage actually affects the wearer. This Damage Capacity is unaffected by damage modifiers (from bullet or energy type, for example; no attacks do double or triple damage). When the suit’s Damage Capacity is exceeded, the suit is no longer environmentally sealed, and all of its built-in systems shut down. The armor still protects the wearer, but any damage that punches through will affect him.
      All suits of armor have a synthetic padding (a jumpsuit or bodysuit) that protects with an AV of 8 versus most forms of attacks. This AV is already included in the formula below. If you are replacing the padding with something else, reduce the AV of the armor by 8 and replace it with the value of the new armor.

Conversion:

Damage Points:

• Use the M.D.C. value of the armor as its Damage Capacity.

Encumbrance:

• Anything with less than -5% is No Encumbrance.
• Anything with -5 to -10% is Light Encumbrance.
• -11 to -15% is Medium Encumbrance.
• Anything higher is Heavy Encumbrance.

Weapon Accessories

E-Clips
      E-Clips are energy batteries, a standard model used by the pre-Rifts military that now is used almost universally by human communities. All E-Clips (as well as the Long E-Clips and the E-Canisters) are rechargeable. Their energy payload varies from weapon to weapon due to such considerations as the power of the energy discharge, and how efficient the weapon design is.
      Cost: A fully charged E-Clip costs 150 credits. Recharging an E-Clip is either free (if the party has access to a CF power plant, or any other powerful generator),

Weapon Damage Conversion Tables
      Let’s face. There’s way too many Rifts weapons to convert ‘em all. Here’s some quick conversion charts for damage, range and so on. The weapons from the basic book are converted here to provide some examples.

• Lasers: Beams of coherent light. Lasers are very armor-piercing (AP 1/3), and they do double damage after penetration (on living beings only). They tend to do less damage than other weapon types.
• Plasma: A magnetically-stabilized plasma discharge. Plasma weapons have no AP capabilities, but do a lot of damage, and it is tripled on penetration against both living and unliving targets. Plasma weapons will also ignite any flammables it hits.
• Particle Beam/Ion Weapons: Charged/Ionized particle streams. These weapons have an AP value of 2, and do double damage to both living and electronic targets (like any high-tech machinery such as power armor; non-electronics only take normal damage).
• Railguns: Bits of metal traveling at hypersonic speeds. Railgun rounds are very armor piercing (divide armor by 3) but do only normal damage. There are two main types: automatic weapons that accelerate a lot of tiny projectiles, and single-shot weapons that fire a single, bigger missile at the same speed. A burst fires so many bullets so closely spaced together (a concentrated burst cycles so fast that 80% of the rounds fired will impact within 1 inch or each other) that they act almost like a single shot with greatly increased damage.

      Use Small Arms Coversion chart for any normal-sized handguns, rifles, or SMG equivalent. For anything tripod or vehicle mounted, as well as power armor weapons, use the Heavy Weapons Conversion Chart.

Small Arms Damage Conversion Chart

Heavy Weapons Damage Conversion Chart

Back to Unisystem

Well, enjoy it! And if you want, you can drop me a line at fred@planetfred.net or leave a comment at the PatchComm.