Rifts sourcebook 4 Coalition Navy introduces us to the large navy that the Coalition has. This review covers the different aspects of all these entails and the impact of it on the surrounding powers. Only the Splugorth of Atlantis will have a larger more powerful navy than the Coalition states. This is but a taste of what will be covered here.
For a quick summary of the Rifts Coalition Navy, this book contains many war machines including the Sea SAMAS, Trident power armor, and scuba body armor. In addition, a number of warships, submarines, aircraft, and weaponry are included within. Let’s not leave out monsters of the deep, CS navy history, notable NPCs, territories, maps, pirates, and adventure ideas.
An in depth look at the burgeoning power of the Coalition Navy, its mecha, subs, ships, weapons, troops and organization.
Gm Material from Rifts Coalition Navy Sourcebook 4
Gms get quite a good value from this book. Descriptions of many Coalition units, monsters of the deep, pirate groups and sanctuaries, plus the navy multiple headquarters.
Sourcebook 4 Coalition Navy Player Material
Players mostly just have some Pirate OCCs to look forward to. Not much else is to be had other than looking at the Coalition States’ incredible boats, ships, armor, equipment, and airplanes and hoping to snag something here or there. Most of the Coalition OCCs have a clause within them stating that gear and equipment are given on an “as-needed basis”. So even if you play as a Coalition soldier, the stuff you use isn’t “yours”, it’s just on loan.
Story material of Rifts Coalition Navy
The most intriguing part of the book for me comes in the Queenston Harbor. The city has a magic pyramid, a renegade Splugorth High Lord, and some interesting things going on. It’s a free city unaffiliated with anyone else and home to many pirates. A group of Nuhr Dwarves call it home and are pirates themselves (dwarves on the water.. whaaaat!! no it’s cool).
Originality of Rifts Sourcebook 4 Coalition Navy
I think this book ranks up there with being really good and “what do I do with it”. For most players travel over water is actually really easy but also unnecessary. Hovercycles make water travel extremely easy since you can go super fast over it and have little to worry about with the height you can attain. If you are one that says they can’t cover water then a simple get-pack will do the trick or a Sky cycle of some sort. If you are a mage you can bypass water by teleporting from ley line to ley line.
While I personally love swimming, boating, and the like, water adventures have never been top of the list for me. That’s just me though, what about you, what kind of adventures can you come up with from this book?
Is Rifts Sourcebook 4 game breaking
This book is not game-breaking at all. In fact it game filling more than anything else. Giving more stuff to consider and people/places to go. I do really like the pirate town and have used it in games before, and would do so again.
How good are the occs of Sourcebook 4
Most of the OCCs are Coalition specific so they will be useful more for GMs and the occasional game you play as them. Most of the time, though, you’ll see them as either your direct enemies or as “the hated CS that comes in and cleans up”.
The pirate OCCs and the like are flavor classes in my opinion. What sea-faring book wouldn’t be complete without them? They are OK as a class goes, however, they are much more at home on the water and honestly, most of the stuff going on takes place on land. None of the OCCs have any really interesting abilities, or bonuses for that matter, making them only so-so.
How well does Coalition Navy mix with the core book
It fits in with the Ulitmate Edition just fine and compliments the Coalition story there well enough. Overall I think what it does is put more humans around the area for stories to be created. Due to the concentration of humans and humanoids in a dozen or so large cities, much of North America is very open. For the most part what you find out in the open wilderness is usually just monsters, occasional demons, a tiny village, and not much else. So this book really helps populate the Great Lakes and gives GMs and players options to make an adventure on the high seas.