RiftForge

A smart character builder and interactive character sheet for the Rifts® TTRPG (Palladium Books, Rifts Ultimate Edition) — think "D&D Beyond, but for Rifts."

Two halves:

1. Guided builder — a step-by-step wizard that walks you from a blank slate to a rules-legal character, enforcing the rules as you go.
2. Live character sheet — roll saves, attacks, skill checks, and damage with every modifier already derived from the build.

Architecture

The hard part isn't the web app — it's encoding the game rules. Those live in a standalone, framework-agnostic package so they can be validated and tested in isolation:

packages/rules/
  src/content/   rules as page-stamped JSON (transcribed from the rulebook)
  src/schema/    Zod schemas that validate the content at load
  src/engine/    pure TypeScript derivation, strike resolution, and spell damage
packages/backend/
  convex/        Convex storage, server-derived sheets, roster queries, mutations,
                 and seeded dice rolls
apps/web/
  src/           SolidJS routes, hand-rolled Convex bindings, builder, and live sheet

The engine is isomorphic: the Convex backend derives sheets at query time, and the client imports the same package for ephemeral rolls. The runtime never parses the source book. Combat APIs support persisted, server-rolled S.D.C. and M.D. weapon exchanges through one engine-authorized protocol. The delivered core covers critical-before-conversion damage, S.D.C./M.D.C. cross-tier routing, S.D.C. armor A.R. and ablation, intact and depleted M.D.C. armor, final-blast absorption with no spill, immutable route evidence, atomic body damage, and explicit terminal death. Legacy S.D.C. exchange history remains readable without migration. Natural A.R. is intentionally absent per RUE p.339. The optional near-fatal M.D. injury and survival procedure remains deferred to issue #54, and a generic page-stamped effects pipeline remains roadmap work in issue #53. Spell APIs expose load-validated structured damage, derivation, and injected-RNG rolling.

Current status

The first vertical slice — the Ley Line Walker O.C.C. — runs end to end. The web app includes a landing page (/), character roster (/characters), guided builder (/characters/new), and live sheet (/characters/:id). Characters can manage inventory and worn armor, take and recover damage, rest, draw P.P.E. from a ley line, receive treatment, and cast spells through server-validated state changes, while ephemeral sheet rolls use the shared rules package client-side.

Character identity is source-validated: Human is currently the sole playable species, while known but unimplemented identities remain unavailable rather than silently accepted.

The builder persists source choices—O.C.C. slots, O.C.C.-Related and independent Secondary Skill picks, repeatable labels, category routes, and Hand-to-Hand selection—rather than client-authored bonuses. The shared rules engine assembles those choices from the complete printed skill catalog (RUE pp.304–330), validates prerequisites and O.C.C. legality (pp.299–300), and derives the same result in the preview, backend, and saved sheet. Pre-existing flattened characters remain readable, but new and fully edited characters use the authoritative selection contract.

Physical S.D.C. is additive: the p.287 2D6+12 base and every applicable O.C.C./Physical-skill formula are exposed as a sourced breakdown, combined into the preview range, and rolled server-side from that same contribution list.

Starting loadouts follow the same authority boundary. The builder submits only the player's page-stamped O.C.C. choice-group selections; one backend mutation reloads the O.C.C. content, validates those choices, rolls grant quantities and per-suit armor capacity, validates the full character, and atomically stores the result as ordinary one-entry-per-instance inventory. The client cannot author a starting manifest, and request-only selections are not persisted. Characters created before structured loadouts receive no retroactive grants or migration, while later inventory changes remain ordinary mutable character state and do not reapply creation-time loadout legality.

Development

Tooling is Vite+ (vp) over a pnpm workspace.

vp install            # install dependencies
vp run rules#test     # run the rules-engine tests
vp run rules#check    # format + lint + typecheck one package (same for backend#, web#)
vp run ready          # check + test + build across the workspace

vp run backend#dev    # local anonymous Convex deployment (http://127.0.0.1:3210)
vp run web#dev        # SolidJS dev server, pointed at the local deployment

Source material

The Rifts Ultimate Edition rulebook PDF is not committed (it's copyrighted by Palladium Books); it lives locally under docs/rules/ and is git-ignored. docs/rules/PAGE_MAP.md indexes where each rule is transcribed from.

License & intellectual property

The RiftForge software — the code, schemas, and engine — is licensed under the MIT License.

The Rifts® game rules content transcribed from Rifts® Ultimate Edition (the data under packages/rules/src/content/ and docs/) is © Palladium Books Inc. and is not covered by the MIT license. Rifts® is a registered trademark of Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books Inc. That content is included here for personal reference only and is not licensed for redistribution. RiftForge is an unofficial, fan-made project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Palladium Books.