Palladium System: Two Attacks for Living?

Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, page 50

So I was looking through the pregenerated characters in the Palladium Fantasy Gamemaster's Pack, and I saw a 4th-level ranger with ...five melee attacks? And a rate of fire of five with his longbow?

Then a sense of panic hit me. Five? Five! Where are they getting five?!

Am I getting all the attacks I should be getting?

This is critical in any Palladium game, and this is one thing D&D 3.0 stole from the system: the notion of your attacks per turn going up, and your damage naturally increasing as you level. Granted, in Palladium, attacks can be traded for defense, so there is a balance to the mechanic, where in D&D 3.x, they are just attacks. Wizards did a lousy job at implementing the concept they borrowed, again.

So, where do these attacks come from? Let's look at Palladium Fantasy.

The first two are easy: Hand-to-Hand Combat Expert starts with two attacks per round.

The next one is also easy. Since this character is 4th level, we look up the chart, record the bonuses, and see that at 4th level we get "one additional attack per melee round."

That is three of the five accounted for. Where do these two other attacks come from? We have an explanation on the forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=170392

Later revisions of the rules and game introduced the rule "2 attacks for living," which means that without any melee combat skills, you get two attacks, and these will stack on top of the HTH combat styles in the game. This was present even in some of the older books in the Palladium fantasy line, especially in NPCs and pregenerated characters.

The Palladium Fantasy RPG book needs updating, as do many of the other books in the line.

So this is our five melee attacks, and where they come from:

• 2 attacks for living
• +2 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

For ranged, this is where they come from:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

That HTH Expert extra attack at level 4 DOES apply to missile weapon fire! This may seem surprising, but multiple sources confirm it, and it aligns with the pregens.

And I have sources on the Palladium forums:

https://palladiumbooks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=79257#:~:text=Do%20the%20attacks%20from%20HTH,a%20bonus%20to%20ranged%20combat.&text=Question:Within%20the%20new%20rules,tiny%20+2%20bonus%20from%20aiming?

This is a question that Google's AI gave me both answers for; it insisted the wrong answer was correct, said I was dead wrong, and after I found the official clarifications, it went back on its original answer and admitted I was right. AI can be dead wrong and insist it is 100% right, trying to provide facts and proof, when it is clearly NOT.

AI is a very persuasive liar when it is dead wrong.

This is why we need a human soul in any decision-making process.

And why we need skeptics and those who challenge us.

Be very, very, very careful and never trust AI! It is a known liar in some cases, will lie to prove itself correct, and bases its claims on incorrect sources, trying to use this as justification for the truth. Good luck playing with an AI DM, everybody over there in D&D land. Your character will die because the AI DM goes stupid on you and tries to use someone's incorrect rule interpretation on some forum somewhere as the official rule.

Also, they put a lot of work into making these AI systems sound super confident, which also helps sell the lie and justifies the billions of dollars they are pouring into it all.

In Rifts Ultimate Edition, which is the master rules update for all Palladium games from 2017 onward, the HTH tables were updated to the correct "4 attacks per melee round" value, and the unwritten "2 attacks for living" rule was done away with.

Also, the language for the level 4 bonus in HTH Combat Expert was changed in Rifts Ultimate. In Palladium Fantasy, it is:

• Level 4: One additional attack per melee.

In Rifts Ultimate, it is:

• Level 4: +1 additional attack/action per melee round.

This makes it clear that it is an "attack/action" per melee round, which DOES include missile weapon fire. Missile weapons fire as many times as the character has melee attacks, but some skills do have their own rate of fire rules that these HTH attack bonuses do modify.

So, by Rifts Ultimate, our melee attacks are:

• 4 attacks for HTH Expert
• +1 Attack for HTH Expert at level 4

And for our ranged attacks, by Rifts Ultimate, this is unchanged:

• 2 attacks for WP Archery
• +2 attacks for archery RoF
• +1 at level 2
• +1 at level 4
• +1 attack for HTH Expert at level 4

As far as I am concerned, Rifts Ultimate is the master Palladium rules update, and it should be used with all Palladium games, including Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, Palladium Fantasy, and every other game.