Nightbanes as supernatural baddies

[RainbowDevil]

Hey folks,

In my After the Bomb campaign, I'm including supernatural creatures and demons. The problem is the vast majority of demons in print are for Rifts and have MDC stats. Even though there are conversion rules, I've heard a lot of criticism about it, and I'm unsure the stats are really equivalent.

I was thinking, has anyone tried using the rules for creating Nightbane PCs to represent supernatural creatures? I'm not sure if they would be appropriate as lesser creatures of greater ones, but just wondering what other people have found? Obviously, with the addition of the NB demonic stats too.

Regards,
RainbowDevil

[Glistam]

I don't see why that couldn't work. Oddly enough though, the Rifts Dimension Books for Hades and Dyval do have full S.D.C. stats for the demons and monsters in there.

[drewkitty ~..~]

I don't see why that couldn't work. Oddly enough though, the Rifts Dimension Books for Hades and Dyval do have full S.D.C. stats for the demons and monsters in there.

Odd?? Those two books are also PF supplemental books. So I don't see anything odd about them having the baddies the SDC stats.
Sort of how like the D&G book is a rifts supplemental book also, so has the MDC stats for what is presented in it also.

[Stone Gargoyle]

They are well suited for it.

[RainbowDevil]

Are the converted stats from the Dyval/Hades books really comparable though? They seem fairly weak to me. Keep in mind, they also have no stats for their converted powers/attacks, just their SDC/HP/AR. Sure, you can say that a demon attack that does 4D6 MD just does 4D6 SDC/HP, but I don't think that's really a good conversion in all situations. For example, a level 5 fireball doing 5D4 SDC/HP is pretty pathetic. Using the rules for supernatural PS found in Rifts and After the Bomb/BtS2, it seems to generally be 1 MD should convert to about 2.5 SD. Therefore, for the wizard in my group, I just say all her spells do double damage (except fireball, which becomes 2D6 per level). This seems to work fine with spells, but that then means that many demons would do in the order of 8 or 10D6 with claws alone.

Overall, the MDC to SDC creature conversion rules suck donkey balls, so I'd rather just use straight SDC creatures where possible (which sucks, since I love the Hades/Dyval books!)

[Alrik Vas]

Not all demons have tons of health, the danger involved with them is in being invisible all the damn time. This creates a problem in games where IR goggles or magic powers that can see the invisible are pretty scarce. I think AtB falls into this category.

Though use their punch damage and add their PS bonus, Mega Damage physical attacks in Rifts aren't generally awarded these bonuses. So the PS 20 demon does 3d6+5, etc. The PS 40 demons does 1d4x10+25, or whatever it would be. Scary stuff.

As for Fireball in particular, it's always been sub-par to me. There are better damaging spells.

[SolCannibal]

As others have said, the Dimension Books for Hades, Dyval and Dragon & Gods should cover a large bunch of the canon critters, with Beyond the Supernatural or Palladium Fantasy possibly rounding up the rest.

The Nightbane books are great when it comes to customizing characters touched by the supernatural, even those that are not nightbanes per se, so working from them to make up your own homebrew critters or even magic system of sorts is far from a bad idea, if memory tricks me not.

Another great pick on that area would be PF's "Lands Of The Damned 1 - Chaos Lands" that has a bunch of transdimensional races, mortal and diabolical, involved in one of the main fronts of the Minion War, along with a bunch of tables/rules in making up your own. I for one used it as a springboard for my "Rogue Strangers in the Minion War" game.