Skill Questions

[lostsoul336]

Ok so lets say someone uses their Camouflage skill to camouflage something and they have a 50% total skill. they roll a 12% so they hid it pretty good. Now lets say another player wants to find it that has an idea where it is but not the exact location. He uses Detect Concealment on it and has a 35% skill total and rolls 20% now of course you can give penalties on his roll for finding it but i was wondering if there is any clarification on how to do PC Vs. PC skills. thanks

[drewkitty ~..~]

In a off the top of the head opinion, in the stated situation, I would say that the person with Detect Concealment would get to roll perception, while anybody else wouldn't even get a chance for a perception roll. With the perception difficulty set relative to how well the camo roll was made, with a base difficulty of 4.

how to convert a skill quality roll to a perception difficulty like above.

roll of 12% vs skill % of 50

divide the skill % into the skill Roll and that will get a 0.XY number

drop the 0. and the XY will be your skill roll relative to domain(area) of a successful skill. to get the relative quality of the skill roll you will need to subtract XY from 100 to get the relative quality %

Then divide the relative quality % by 5, and any whole number before any decimals is the perception bonus to the base perception.

12 divided by 50 is 0.24

0.24 is converted to a %: 24

100-24=76

76 divided by 5=15.2

4+15=19

19 being the perception difficulty
-----------------------------------------
Using the same math you can figure out the perception bonus the guy with DC will get because of the quality of his roll.

skill roll: 20 skill %: 35

20 divided by 35=0.5714 = 57%
100-57=43
43 divided by 5=8.6
perception bonus vs the camouflage of +8

However, this would supersede the char's normal Perception bonus.

[Killer Cyborg]

Ok so lets say someone uses their Camouflage skill to camouflage something and they have a 50% total skill. they roll a 12% so they hid it pretty good. Now lets say another player wants to find it that has an idea where it is but not the exact location. He uses Detect Concealment on it and has a 35% skill total and rolls 20% now of course you can give penalties on his roll for finding it but i was wondering if there is any clarification on how to do PC Vs. PC skills. thanks

Best house rule I could come up with is to have each person make a skill check, and whoever rolls highest without going over their skill %, wins.

[Prysus]

Greetings and Salutations. I believe everything here is going to be a house rule, but I'll state what I've always done (in this type of situation). I've always gone by who passed their skill by a greater degree. In the above example, the character with camouflage passes his skill by 38% ( 50-12=38 ) and the one looking for him passed by 15% ( 35-20=15 ), so the one hiding would be in better shape. I'll admit, I like this way better and have even used a 01-02% roll as a critical success (same as a 99-00% is a critical failure). I personally prefer it this way. It's not who rolled closest to 01, but low rolls will still be helpful.

As for the way listed by Killer Cyborg, I get his method as well. By that method the one looking would win, because he rolled a 20 ( which is higher than 12 ) and still passed his skill. However, that method just never sat right with me. A 3rd level character with a skill of 35% rolls a 35% which, by that method, was a critical success (I've seen it explained before). However, in my personal view, that is barely passing. In fact, last level he wouldn't have even made it and it's only his experience that let him pass at all, not something he should be rewarded for. I personally see it as more you're lucky you're so skilled otherwise it wouldn't have worked at all. It's a difference in view, not saying his way is wrong by any means, but I thought I'd state why it doesn't work right in my mind.

If I were to reduce this to a Perception roll (which may be necessary for rolls that don't have skills to compare) I'd probably use a different method. I've never actually tested it out though and it may have some flaws in it (since I haven't used it I haven't really examined it that much). However, I thought to list it anyways just for options. I had considered using a standard perception check of 10 for anything like that. Then, for every a character hiding and passes by 38% (using the example above again) there would be a +7 or +8 bonus (depending if you rounded up or down) to the number required ( making it 17 or 18 ). The other passed by 15% (as listed above) gives a +3 bonus to the roll of a D20. Now, if the person doesn't have any skill at all and no abilities whatsoever, then they get no bonuses. It's something I've thought about doing, but have been too lazy to work out the exact specifics until I have a good reason. I thought to mention the concept though in case someone did like it and wanted to use it/iron out the finer details.

Anyways, that should be all for now. Hopefully that helped some. At the very least I thought to give alternates for house rules as I don't believe the book has much of an official method for it. My method may have flaws of its own, and I welcome anyone to point out why it would be wrong or not work out (though I haven't had a problem with it so far). Hopefully it helped some. Thank you for your time, please have a nice day. Farewell and safe journeys.

[sHaka]

You could also contest it by dividing each persons skill rating by 10 and adding that to a d20 roll:

e.g.

Camouflage 50% = d20 +5

vs

Detect Concealment 35% = d20 + 4 (I'd round up personally)

Highest total wins.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Best house rule I could come up with is to have each person make a skill check, and whoever rolls highest without going over their skill %, wins.

KC, they already have rolled their quality for the skill in the skill roll. The Lower the Skill Roll is, then better the quality that the skill was performed. Most of the time you can do this by just looking @ the numbers to see which was a better quality. But if you can't do it just by looking, then you'd need the Relative Quality % (as presented above) to tell who had the better skill roll.

Shaka ... why not use the skill % divided by 5? Since it would convert the % into a D20 format better. And since most skills are multiples of 5 it would give the char with a 35 a better bonus then the char with 30.

[Myrrhibis]

I seem to recall something from Nightspawn/Bane - competing skills

% div by 15 = Perception +

Roll d20 - highest wins.

We've been doing - roll % to see if you make *your* skill (Concealment & DC respectively) - then roll off d20 to see who did their thing better.

We've all seen/read about the hero setting his demo perfectly, getting away, and then here comes the flunky who just "happens" to look in the right area & notices the bomb - just in time for it to go BOOM

I'll doublecheck tonite, but I really want to say the above opposed rolls is the way Nightspawn did it.

[Tinker Dragoon]

This message has been moved to the GM's Forum, where the topic is more applicable and appropriate. If you have a problem with how this post was handled please direct all inquires to deific.nmi@gmail.com, including the url to the post in question.

[GA]

My feeling is he successfully camouflaged it and it was successfully detected. The percentages are irrelevant as far as by how much they succeeded by (20 out of 55 for instance). Palladium is a pass fail system. Maybe it shouldn't be but it is a game so....for simplicity sake I would probably play it that way. If the person had failed his detect concealment roll then he wouldn't have seen it. Simple. I don't believe in perception rolls. They tend to make applicable skills (such as detect concealment) irrelevant.

[Killer Cyborg]

Best house rule I could come up with is to have each person make a skill check, and whoever rolls highest without going over their skill %, wins.

KC, they already have rolled their quality for the skill in the skill roll.

That's what I'm referring to.

The Lower the Skill Roll is, then better the quality that the skill was performed.

Nice opinion.

[Northern Ranger]

I generally just apply a negative to the detection skill equal to the difference between the camouflage skill and what was rolled. For instance, if the person doing the camo has a 50% chance of success and rolls a 20, then the difference is 30. If the person trying to detect it has a skill of 35% and wants to find what was camouflaged, then I subtract the 30 from their skill. Thus, they only have a 5% chance to find what was camouflaged! Works well in my games.

[Beatmeclever]

My feeling is he successfully camouflaged it and it was successfully detected. The percentages are irrelevant as far as by how much they succeeded by (20 out of 55 for instance). Palladium is a pass fail system. Maybe it shouldn't be but it is a game so....for simplicity sake I would probably play it that way. If the person had failed his detect concealment roll then he wouldn't have seen it. Simple. I don't believe in perception rolls. They tend to make applicable skills (such as detect concealment) irrelevant.

All your house rules aside, the statement above is the truth. Palladium does not care whether you rolled a 1% or a 35% with a skill at 35%, as long as it was less than the percentage required it succeeds. Still, house rule away.

[Northern Ranger]

I've always thought the way I ruled it made sense. Of course... I always think I make sense!

[Damian Magecraft]

I generally just apply a negative to the detection skill equal to the difference between the camouflage skill and what was rolled. For instance, if the person doing the camo has a 50% chance of success and rolls a 20, then the difference is 30. If the person trying to detect it has a skill of 35% and wants to find what was camouflaged, then I subtract the 30 from their skill. Thus, they only have a 5% chance to find what was camouflaged! Works well in my games.

This is the way I have always handled it...(25 years with Palladium and this has never really been an issue for me). *shrug*

[Northern Ranger]

Knew there was a reason I liked you Damian!