Railgun XXVI vs Rifts
Compare Railgun XXVI and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Railgun XXVI | Rifts | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Scifi | Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero |
| Tags | Tactical, Player-Only Rolls, Deadly, Gritty, Mission-Based, Random Character Creation, Beginner-Friendly | Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d20 and add one of four stats (STR, CRD, AGI, or MND) against a standard difficulty of 12. Every roll is player-facing: players roll to attack and also roll to dodge incoming attacks, so the GM never needs to roll dice. Rolling a natural 20 banks an adrenaline point, which buys an extra action on top of the two each character gets per turn. | 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 | d20 | d20, d100 |
| Complexity | Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | Very High | Medium |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | MÖRK BORG Third Party License | 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 | Free | $$ |
| Publisher | Nathan Freeman | Palladium Books Inc. |
| Year | 2026 | 2005 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Groups who want short, lethal firefights on a grid and a GM who narrates enemies rather than rolling for them. Suits a few-session campaign or a drop-in mission night more than a long character-driven arc. | 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 | Every roll is player-facing, including dodges against incoming attacks, so the GM runs enemies without touching the dice. Dropping to 0 HP forces a critical injury roll that permanently reduces a stat, so downed characters degrade instead of bouncing back up. Several weapons chain into a free attack when they drop an enemy, making target order a tactical decision rather than a formality. | 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 | Social scenes have no dedicated stat or subsystem, so persuasion is settled by player argument rather than mechanics. Play assumes a gridded map with movement and line of sight measured in squares, leaving theater-of-the-mind groups to convert those rules themselves. Out-of-combat scenes lean on ad hoc GM rulings and a single falling-forward technique rather than a dedicated exploration or investigation subsystem. | 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. |