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Sounds like you're trying to get pretty devious there, homeskillet. My best advice would be to go with Rory's idea's. The perception check is a good way to go, but since you say the MA can detect ambushes, then that would be logical too. Especially since most adventurers with any kind of experience behind them don't travel anywhere without scouting for traps and ambushes and the like.

Perception does not apply to this case, and perception is a huge crutch in cases like this for people who don't want to use skills, or downplay the importance in using perception based skills.. The only skill that would apply would be Detect Traps. Sixth sense would warn of danger that's it. It doesn't provide specifics. So the character would be alarmed (if he wasn't already) and may stop but he gets no other information. Now his sixth sense would kick in once he began falling in the trap and possibly dodge might come into play (although i doubt it, unless it had spikes at the bottom then it definitely would, but not to dodge the trap altogether)

If you do a perception check it should be against the IQ roll on a d100 not a d20 because it should be very hard for an untrained character to detect anything. A d20 gives a 5% chance of success for every +1 rolled. Translated a so called "hard roll" of 16 would mean the character has detect ambush at 20%" That is NOT how it works.

The character who built the traps at 74% just means in my mind that he successfully constructed the trap so that most people in most circumstances would not detect it. A trained character might. Even an untrained character might if he was perceptive and lucky enough. Perceptive and lucky meand if he rolls a d100 against an IQ of for example 10 and somehow rolls under it he seriously lucked out and either detected it completely or saw enough to give him pause and another roll may be in order (that he most likely won't have success with).

A player who is trained in detecting traps would roll his base skill in detecting the trap. Now you can GM modifiers to the roll based on how difficult the trap is to detect, but these would be completely GM based decisions, his 74% does not factor in to how good the trap is, unless you want it to;palladium is a pass/fail system not a A-F system. The 74% is effectively meaningless once success is achieved: the 74% doesn't translate into quality of the trap just functionality meaning a person who has it at 34 and succeeds has made a trap as just as good as the person with 74%)

If you do want to factor in modifiers to detect you certainly can make that GM call. A -15 to detect for example would prevent virtually all straight perception checks from success (save people with IQs over 15).

This case it is not a versus scenario. The hunter is rolling for successful trap construction and possibly concealment (which may or may not be a seperate skill roll) to the casual passerby. The player is rolling against his detect trap skill.

Again to reitierate a 14 roll on a d20 against perception roughly translates into giving the player a 30% skill level ability. For most of the skills in rifts and palladium it makes taking perception based skills such as identify secret doors and compartments detect concealment detect ambush intelligence and a number of others completely useless since they have such low based percentages to begin with.

Anytime a person doesn't have a skill in question you roll a d100 against the appropriate attribute. In this particular case I would use intelligence for perception...and it would have to be at least 2 rolls. One for him to detect something is off, and one for him to detect what that is. He would have to be very lucky to get both dice rolls.

Some say use ME on the IQ stat but that's from nightbane where I think it probably applies well due to the subject matter but i just do straight IQ perception rolls on PF and Rifts worlds.

For Charming someone with no seduction skill you would use the PB stat against a d100. For intimidation you would roll a d100 against the MA stat. For perception a d100 skill against IQ. For something physical it would depend but usually the PP stat applies. For something like climbing when they don't have climbing you would roll a d100 against the PP stat.

homeskillet wrote:Sorry if I sound stupid, but when you say roll d100 against IQ, you mean if his IQ is 12, he has to roll 12 or less on a d100, right?

yep, that's right.

Yes. This makes taking those detection based skills worthwhile if you think about it. Otherwise why bother taking them if the GM is always using d20 perception rolls and they never or only partially come into play?