Kill Him Faster vs Rifts

Compare Kill Him Faster and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Kill Him Faster	Rifts
Genre	Scifi, Historical	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero
Tags	Comedy, Gonzo, Tactical, Cinematic, Mission-Based, Pulp Action, Fast-Paced	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical
Core Mechanic	Two parallel resolution systems. In match combat, every weapon has an associated set of dice and a Kill Roll value: roll under the Kill Roll on any rolled die to kill a nazi (e.g. a combat knife rolls a d4 and kills on a 1–3). For everything else, roll the polyhedral die assigned to one of four stats (Fightin', Hustle, Lookin' Good, Talkin' Nice, d6 through d12) and succeed on a 4 or higher. Each athlete spends Action Points equal to their current Durability per round on attacks or zone shifts, positioning enemies across Melee, Near, Far, and Distant zones tuned to specific weapon ranges.	Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage.
Dice	d4–d12	d20, d100
Complexity	Medium	Very High
Accessibility	Medium	Medium
Runnability	Low	Very High
License	Standard commercial	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Korvidae Games	Palladium Books Inc.
Year	2026	2005
Best For	Groups who want a gonzo, comedic co-op RPG that splits its focus between fast tactical FPS-style firefights and team-management drama: pre-game rap battles, post-game press conferences, trade days, and off-season scandals. Designed for a GM and four players each managing a roster of time-traveling sports stars.	Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses.
Highlights	Two distinct resolution systems split match combat (roll low under a weapon's Kill Roll) from non-combat actions (roll a stat die, 4+ succeeds). Zone-based combat (Melee, Near, Far, Distant, Ambush) tunes each weapon to a specific range and is designed to feel like a first-person shooter at the table. Twenty Quirk archetypes, each with three escalating drawback tiers, gained through play and off-season vignettes that double as quirk-granting roleplay scenes. Full league simulation wraps the matches: pre-game rap-battle weigh-ins, post-game journalist interviews, trade days, season championships, and off-season scandals.	Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds.
Considerations	Premise is intentionally gonzo: killing Hitler is the central conceit and the rulebook leans into the joke throughout. Built specifically for five (one GM plus four players each managing a roster of four athletes); other group sizes need adjustment. Match combat is co-op against the GM-controlled enemies by default; head-to-head PvP requires the optional scoring system in which both teams play the same scenario in turn. Heavy framing as a futuristic sports league means tables uninterested in the team-management layer (rosters, hype meters, trade days) will lose a substantial portion of the design.	Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system.