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With Mindwalker's posting of house rules an interesting topic came up: Perception.

According to Palladium's rules, your bonus to perception is based off of IQ. This means that the smarter you are the more perceptive you are.
Mindwalker suggested that Perception be based off of ME instead.
It was also suggested that Perception ought to be a whole new attribute to itself.

So now I wish to propose another idea: Perception based off of MA.
Why? This is based off the concept that MA is Mental Affinity, your ability to socially create affinity with others. I can't help but think that this generally requires an enhanced perception, to read other people. Sure that's not all there is to it, but it is certainly a part of the equation.

So the question is: Does using MA make more or less sense than using IQ? ME?

as far as perception goes it works for me except one thing.....there are some skills that by their nature would seem to either take its place or give a bonus to perception like observation, detect ambush, the vagabond ability of "eyeball a fella" and im sure im missing more. also what perception modifiers are aplied to the occs from the worldbooks that havent been "Rue'd" yet?

I would not replace it with a single attribute because I can see more than one attribute being a possible modifier to a character's Perception; I keep it as it is although it can be modified and can modify dice rolls. Skills, attributes, and situation are all considered.

finn69 wrote:as far as perception goes it works for me except one thing.....there are some skills that by their nature would seem to either take its place or give a bonus to perception like observation, detect ambush, the vagabond ability of "eyeball a fella" and im sure im missing more. also what perception modifiers are aplied to the occs from the worldbooks that havent been "Rue'd" yet?

You're right, there are skills that can take its place in very specific situations. The easiest way to deal with it I suppose would be to say that you use Perception, unless a character has a skill that they would prefer to use as the skill likely allows for a better chance of success than the Perception will.

As for perception modifiers applied to OCCS from previous worldbooks...
Palladium (and Kevin in particular) has always been (at least to my knowledge) adamant in stating that Palladium will not go back and rewrite its catalogue of books, because that would outdate people's existing collection and would then mean that people would have to go and buy everything over again. This is one of the primarily reasons cited for why Palladium does not want to do a new edition or rewrite of its rules system. So, if an OCC does not have a Perception bonus listed then it does not get one, no matter when the book was published. By the rules, the only way to get a Perception Bonus for an older OCC is to have an exceptional IQ.
I imagine that many a GM can be convinced to grant a Perception Bonus to older OCCs if something about the OCC suggests they might get one. For instance, I think it's perfectly reasonable that anyone with an Eye of Eylor should get a bonus.

Striking the balance between perception and skill can be difficult. Usually the difference is in the reaction or comprehension of what was perceived.

The ineffible GM wrote:

finn69 wrote:as far as perception goes it works for me except one thing.....there are some skills that by their nature would seem to either take its place or give a bonus to perception like observation, detect ambush, the vagabond ability of "eyeball a fella" and im sure im missing more. also what perception modifiers are aplied to the occs from the worldbooks that havent been "Rue'd" yet?

You're right, there are skills that can take its place in very specific situations. The easiest way to deal with it I suppose would be to say that you use Perception, unless a character has a skill that they would prefer to use as the skill likely allows for a better chance of success than the Perception will.

As for perception modifiers applied to OCCS from previous worldbooks...
Palladium (and Kevin in particular) has always been (at least to my knowledge) adamant in stating that Palladium will not go back and rewrite its catalogue of books, because that would outdate people's existing collection and would then mean that people would have to go and buy everything over again. This is one of the primarily reasons cited for why Palladium does not want to do a new edition or rewrite of its rules system. So, if an OCC does not have a Perception bonus listed then it does not get one, no matter when the book was published. By the rules, the only way to get a Perception Bonus for an older OCC is to have an exceptional IQ.
I imagine that many a GM can be convinced to grant a Perception Bonus to older OCCs if something about the OCC suggests they might get one. For instance, I think it's perfectly reasonable that anyone with an Eye of Eylor should get a bonus.

no need for a total re-write of all the previous books just put an errata update on the website because there are some occs that only get a perception bonus in specific (sp) situations like the techno-wizard. only gets a bonus when dealing with machines , magic, or their combinations. because not all occs SHOULD get a perception bonus in all situations only in instances or areas that they have special expertise in like for say a gunslinger i can see one having a perception bonus in situations of a shhotout like this person he is watching has a tendancy to lean to the left when drawing or a gambler learning the "tells" of the people he is playing cards with. i could probably go on and on but im sure you get the idea and all it would take is to post an eratta on the cutting room floor not a rewrite of all the old books.

Randy

I do not see how Perception is based off anything, including IQ.

I know a very smart person who is not very perceptive.

Like I said, keep it as it is, and use the attributes as appropriate.

lather wrote:I do not see how Perception is based off anything, including IQ.

I know a very smart person who is not very perceptive.

Like I said, keep it as it is, and use the attributes as appropriate.

I'll put my vote in for Perception should be it's own attribute.

A lot of d20 games also suffer from this issue, trying to base perception rolls (like Listen, Spot, etc) off of Wisdom. Yeah, you can use that stat, but it doesn't make sense (Wisdom is the equivalent of M.E. in PB games).

As perception is an "add-on" for PB and D&D based games, these games are not adding a new stat to their CORE system... BUT. I think it makes way more sense to add a new core stat for it if you're going to add it to a game. It's not like it "breaks" the game or requires any re-writing.

Neither IQ, ME or MA are a fill-in for Perception. The only way to strike even ground would be to use IQ, ME and MA - each when related to Perception in their own right. I.E. IQ for Perception rolls involving math, literature, etc. ME perception rolls in stressful combat, MA perception rolls involving social situations (just to give examples).

lather wrote:I do not see how Perception is based off anything, including IQ.

I know a very smart person who is not very perceptive.

Like I said, keep it as it is, and use the attributes as appropriate.

I agree. It's not like any existing attribute.

Phadeout wrote:

lather wrote:I do not see how Perception is based off anything, including IQ.

I know a very smart person who is not very perceptive.

Like I said, keep it as it is, and use the attributes as appropriate.

I'll put my vote in for Perception should be it's own attribute.

A lot of d20 games also suffer from this issue, trying to base perception rolls (like Listen, Spot, etc) off of Wisdom. Yeah, you can use that stat, but it doesn't make sense (Wisdom is the equivalent of M.E. in PB games).

As perception is an "add-on" for PB and D&D based games, these games are not adding a new stat to their CORE system... BUT. I think it makes way more sense to add a new core stat for it if you're going to add it to a game. It's not like it "breaks" the game or requires any re-writing.

Neither IQ, ME or MA are a fill-in for Perception. The only way to strike even ground would be to use IQ, ME and MA - each when related to Perception in their own right. I.E. IQ for Perception rolls involving math, literature, etc. ME perception rolls in stressful combat, MA perception rolls involving social situations (just to give examples).

I've used Perception as an additional attribute for the Palladium Games I GM since '88. I include a bonus for initiative and a seperate ability called "Area Awareness" which is based off of a percentage roll. It has worked for me for the the past 19 years or so.

I think a hybrid stat would be most approrpiate.

Perhaps some forumla of PP(eye reflexes) IQ (reasoning) and MA (interpreting the signs from others). Maybe combine the three to give you a base percentage?

my two cents.

desepchun wrote:I think a hybrid stat would be most approrpiate.

Perhaps some forumla of PP(eye reflexes) IQ (reasoning) and MA (interpreting the signs from others). Maybe combine the three to give you a base percentage?

my two cents.

I don't think this would work as well, mainly for Animals and such (extremely low IQ and MA).

A separate stat would work better, with things like Wolves for example getting a stat such as: 2d6+10 or something.

Yea, just use it as a stat and as appropriate modify it with attributes and the situation.

That's how BtS-2 does it.

desepchun wrote:I think a hybrid stat would be most approrpiate.

Perhaps some forumla of PP(eye reflexes) IQ (reasoning) and MA (interpreting the signs from others). Maybe combine the three to give you a base percentage?

my two cents.

I do something similar. I have a skill called Perception and it's base is your characters IQ and PP averaged together. It gains a +2% per level of development and there can be positive and negative bonus depending on the situation. I use it as an opposed skill check again skills like Slight of Hand, Prowl, Palming, etc.

It has worked so far in the games I ran and the players seemed to like it.

Aren't the Perception rules in one of the Nightbane books?

I think it is newer than Nightbane. I played Nightspawn once and I do not remember Perception rules there.

Perception is not necessarily a combination of other attributes. It is an attribute by itself. You can be very dexterous and intelligent and not as much perceptive.

lather wrote:I think it is newer than Nightbane. I played Nightspawn once and I do not remember Perception rules there.

Perception is not necessarily a combination of other attributes. It is an attribute by itself. You can be very dexterous and intelligent and not as much perceptive.

Perception is from Nightbane originally.
The rules for Perception do appear in the Nightbane main book, however the rules that are presented are the source of the issue being discussed here.

According to the rules, a character gains a bonus to perception from his/her IQ attribute, by comparing the IQ attribute to the ME bonus progression chart. The only other way to have a bonus to perception is if your class/race/morphus specifically grants you a bonus. Perception was not formally introduced to the Rifts setting until R:UE. With the rewriting of the original classes many gained a bonus to Perception.

An argument can be made that someone who is smarter is quite likely to recognize the significance of something they see or hear, and as such grant a bonus to perception.
Another argument is that ME is more relevent than IQ because it is a measure of one's ability to think clearly, and therefore pick up on things.
Another argument (my own stance) is that MA is the most relevent, as MA reflect's a person's ability to deal with people in a personable nature which requires attentiveness to the little signals and subtle workings of people in social situations.
There is another argument that PP is relevent (this is the argument which makes the least amount of sense to me, personally) because of the 'dexterity of the eyes'.
The final argument I've seen so far is that it should be a stat completely unto itself.


What do people think of the idea that instead of having Perception tied to any one attribute or trying to make an average of attributes, what if a character gained +1 to Perception for each mental Attribute that was 16 or higher? That means that with an exceptional IQ, ME, and MA you would still only have a total of +3 to Perception, but considering how small so many of the other bonuses to perception are I don't think that this is out of scale at all.

If you use Perception as a stand-alone Attribute then do you only gain a bonus if the attribute is higher than 16? Do you use the PS scale to damage or the PP scale to strike/parry/dodge?

To be perfectly honest I am trying to find the best way to integrate perception into my Palladium games and so far nothing I've seen really suits me.

You could make it a 'flexible' tag, meaning if you decide the Perception bonus applies to whichever stat applies during the situation, then do so.

It's been more than 10 years since I played. Interesting.

Anyway, Perception is very flexible, in my opinion. I may be better at perceiving motion with my ears than subtle odours with my nose, for example.

Phadeout wrote:I don't think this would work as well, mainly for Animals and such (extremely low IQ and MA).

A separate stat would work better, with things like Wolves for example getting a stat such as: 2d6+10 or something.

You've got a good point here. Animals certainly should have good perception ratings, at least in certain circumstances, but this brings up another question...how many kinds of perception are there?

Certainly an animal could pick up an odor better than I could, but could they identify a torn lotto stub being releveant to a crime scene?

As I see it there should be several categories of perception with differant classes getting bonuses to differant ones.

sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing are the five basic senses but this being a fantasy game we have to account for other senses as well such as psychic and magic.

Just be careful not to let Perception give a character skills they do not have. Being perceptive is one thing, but recognising importance and relevance is another. Also, a big differnece could be reaction time.