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Except that some would argue Energy Expulsion characters should be able to do that anyways.

Posted by Stone GargoyleI really liked these skills you've posted as well but, I myself was wondering if Soak should have some kinda mention as to what classes of power are and are not applicable to use this.
And secondly, would you 'consider' (only consider... Im not trying to sound disliking of what you wrote I'm really not, it's great the way it is) dropping the 20 point absorbtion to something smaller but something that also Grows with you per level?

The reason I ask is cuz once you take a skill in PB you can't take it again when next you've got a skill slot as per the rules against doubling up on skill. I like that flexability (and NOT fer power gaming, just fer the fact that it's there if you want it and PB doesn't want it) so if you did this you at least see some growth over time... Even if it was just a little...


Again, not trying tobe a pushy guy and I Do like the ability/skill... I what I wrote is Real something you can ignore... Please do not take my comment as being in disagreement with what you wrote, as I'm not, it's really really is just a question only I had and nothing important.

It is intended for energy powers primarily, to allow the character to absorb other energy expulsion attacks.



It could be reduced to 5 points and grow by that amount per level.



Yeah, I get it. I was just basing it off Resistance powerswhich typically use 20 points.



I did not take it that way.

So, if I rework it, it can read as follows:

Soaking: The superbeing can cause his energy expulsion powers to soak up the first 5 points of similar energy damage at level one, plus 5 points per level, from an energy expulsion attack. This is useful for characters with no immunity or resistance to energy expulsion attacks. The type of energy must be the same or similar to the characters own (so no light expulsion characters can absorb darkness attacks or cold, but could absorb fire, electricity,or lasers). A failed roll means the character takes normal damage from the attack. Base Skill: 20%, plus 4% per each additional level.

I must say that I prefer the revised version of Soaking. Nice work, boys.

Gosh dang you're fast at responding...
Thank you fer not getting mad at me , I just didn't wanna come off as a critiquer' (Or however one spells that)... I save that stuff fer movies and comic books... Not fer friends.

This is a nice skill and thank you fer answereing the other question as well, but one last thing, could one combine this with Matter Expulsion powers as well???
Actually don't answere that, it's most likely and therefor overly redundant thing of me to ask...
FIY my key/computer is not letting me see what is is that I'm typing anymore so, now I'm posting blind and have No idea what errors & typos i maty be making...
Sorrry about that

It really isn't designed to do that. These were specifically designed for ENERGY expulsion.

Save-Breaker (Superpower Skill)

A superbeing with a power that requires a saving throw can take this skill to increase the number needed to save against it by one point. Cannot be taken as a secondary skill.

That sound alright?

No, you want to decrease the number since you have to roll over it to save.

i was trying to say it makes it harder for others to save against it... did i not write it properly?

No, I just read it wrong. I thought it allowed them to get better saving throws.

Saving Throw: The character gets better at protecting against attacks, and so gets an additional +1 to saving throws at levels 1, 5, 9 and 13.

alright then.

Comprehension: The character can negate penalties to another skill roll by rolling a comprehension roll. A successful roll will reduce the penalty to a skill roll by 10%. Base Skill: 45%, plus 5% per level of experience.

i like the skill... seems like we need it by now. my only question is, what skill category would comprehension be in?

We can probably just toss it in Technical.

it seems like a lot of skills just get tossed in technical. oh well.

That is because they are heavily book related.

Book Learning: This skill reflects an interest in books and study. Adds +5% to all Technical, Science and Medical skills.

I like these. I might have to work up a library studies skill program.

I had programs to write up as well. Hopefully I will get some up soon.

This magic skills thread started up in the Guild of Magic & Psionics:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=108164

Added to: Heroes Unlimited Creations By The Fans!!! - Redux

Macksting swote this for N&SS:

I will be adding some of these I have permission to into the Black Vault wiki.

cool.

One of these days I will have to get the skill programs I had planned together.

*Surveying/Map Making(Technical)---This is the art of making the maps and charts that everybody else uses. Practitioners become familiar with surveying techniques, calculating distances, and the instruments of surveying(transects, theodolites, rangefinders, compasses, etc.) The skill percentage is in both producing accurate readings of positioning and in producing accurate and readable maps.
The general skill is in land surveying, but specialization can be taken in oceanic survey and aerial navigation map/chart-making.
Prerequisites: Math Basic and Navigation(area of specialization)
Skill Percentage: 35%+5% per level of experience, +5% if they have Read Sensory Instruments, +5% if an art/drafting/technical drawing skill is taken.

WP Stein: The character can attack with a drinking stein as a blunt attack or splash contents into the eyes of an attacker. Bonuses to strike and parry of +1 at levels 1, 4, 8 and 13, bonuses to splash as called strike +1 at levels 3, 6, 9 and 14.

Dragonriding: This includes all winged mounts and includes the basic principles of riding, the care and feeding of the animal, recognizing breed and quality, and diving, charging and jumps. The percentile is used for special maneuvers, and when determining breed and quality. 30%, plus 4% per level. Adds +30% to horsemanship.

Bump.

No interest in this thread lately.

Body Sculptor
Note: must be part of a skill program (can not be a secondary skill) and must include Dieting.

This character spends a lot of time doing very specific exercises designed to make the physical body more pleasurable to look at, with carefully sculpted musculature and good symmetry in the characters body. Similar to body building, but without adding a lot of mass, it involves focusing on muscles with very specific weights and reps, to achieve a natural but beautiful look. It has some additional benefits beside the obvious attractiveness ones.

Character Bonuses:
+1D4+1 to P.B.
+1 to P.S.
+1 to P.P.
+1D4 to Hit Points
+1D4 to S.D.C. at levels one, seven and 12.
+2 to Feats of Strength and Feats of Agility at levels 3, 6, 11 and 14.
+15% to Seduction

Physical Training Note: This is designed more for Agility and Speed characters than Strength and Endurance characters. Consequently, Strength and Endurance characters get a penalty of P.S. being reduced to Extraordinary Strength instead (but the strength score doesn't change; the character is simply less massive than before, but is super ripped and is still pretty hard-hitting). Agility and Speed characters are unaffected.

Further Edit for Strongman: Likewise, this skill is designed for Strength and Endurance characters. Agility and Speed characters get a penalty of -6 to Spd. to account for the characters extra mass and reduced mobility.

On another note, I'm working on special skill sets for Physical Training characters to replace the Special Combat Abilities, in order to make the characters more "athletic" and less purely combat machines.

ZEN posted these to an older thread:



The entire thread can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23002

Some of those seem better as power modifiers and not skills per say. Good find, though.

This is great for Lolz! A mountain man character immediately popped into mind with the skills of Play instrument: Banjo/Mandolin/Dobro/Jug Sing: Bluegrass and HTH: Butt Whuppin'

No disrespect intended

None taken.

Glassworking(Technical)---The art of working glass, for both industrial and artistic purposes. Trainees of this science learn the fundamentals of glass; the chemistry, different types, and production methods of. Basics of glass-blowing, shaping, and manufacture are also taught. Low-level practitioners can produce basic glass vessels and simple artifacts, while more advanced glassworkers can hand-make high-quality goods and even laboratory-quality glass instruments. In the world of Rifts, glassworking is a highly valued skill outside the industrialized cities, as glassworkers can produce products of great utility and beauty, from drinking vessels and widow panes, to medical pipettes and lightbulbs.
Base Skill: 60 % + 3% per level of experience for basic creation; -20% in the creation of precise(laboratory-quality) or exotic forms.

Lense Making(Technical)----The art of shaping and polishing glass for the manipulation/amplification/focusing of light. Covers lens-grinding, polishing, and mounting for such items as telescopes, reading glasses, magnifying glasses, and microscopes.
Base Skill: 50 % + 3% per level of experience; +5% if Glassworking is also taken. +2% to Communications: Optics if attempting repairs on optical systems.

Sexual Techniques-Advanced(Domestic/Rogue)----This is the study and practice of the arts of sexual pleasure. Practitioners of thiis skill will have extensive knowledge of errogenous zones, sensual massage, aromatherapy, and methods of arousal . More to the point, this skill trains a CONSCIOUS awareness of the process. Successful use of this skill on a person adds a +1d6 to M.A. when dealing with that person again. This skill may be taken multiple times for each humanoid species(so a knowledge of how to turn on a Wulfen accounts as one skill selection, while Vanguard Brawler sex techniques counts as another).
Base Skill: 20% + 2% per level of experience. Adds a +5% to Seduction skill

Nice ones!

Thanks.....

I'd like to find a skiing skill but don't know enough about skiing to write it myself. Anyone want to try it?

There isn't a skiing skill in Rifts: Canada??

I will have to check with my friend who has that book. I was not aware there was one.

Regarding that WP Claws, that was actually Mantisking. Confuses the hell out of me when I see our handles side by side, but there's buggerall to do about it.
The bonuses seem to fit N&SS form, which differs from (for example) TMNT & Other Strangeness form. Por exemplo:

In Ninjas & Superspies (by Erick Wucjik), at level 5, 10 and 15 in WP Chain a character will have the following bonuses:



Whereas in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Evidence that I'm Old (also by Erick Wujcik):




If I had an HU2 book on hand (and why the heck am I posting here then?) I could tell you which one's closer to HU2's weapon system. Suffice to say, though, that N&SS skill percentages and weapon proficiencies are going to be potentially a touch different.

Edit: *clears throat* Uh, anyway, believe it or not if I'd been designing WP Claws for N&SS, I'd've assumed first off that Claws count as Forked weapons, which have a WP already, and my main gripe woulda been the lack of damage dice. If it strikes anybody as weird that WP Claws should have a bonus to Throw them, well... that's N&SS for you. All the WPs have a throw bonus. It's how I knew I didn't write that one. Breaching system standards, even unstated ones, is sort of a anathema to me. A bit pathological about it, really.

My apologies, macksting. The entry has been corrected.
Thank you for your thoughts and clarification of the skill and the differences between settings. I appreciate your addressing of the issue, since many people may not be aware of it. There are significant differences in the material for skills from setting to setting, and sometimes multiple versions of skills in the same setting which cover basically the same thing.

I was gonna do a "makeup" skill but GC covered it quite nicely!

It also inspired this:
Makeup Artist - This is the ability to make other people look completely different. Carefull use of latex prostetics, wigs, makeup, contact lenses, costuming, ect., the artist can make the subject appear older, or even change their racial appearence! This process usually takes hours to complete, requiring the subject to remain mostly still for the duration. These changes are typicaly uncomfortable, and don't stand up well to prolonged or vigorus use. For a more permanent change this skill may add +10% to any applicabe medical skill (such as plastic surgery) at GMs discretion. However each skill must still be rolled seperately (once to create the prostetics, and once to do the surgery). Standard surgical recovery times apply.
The user may also apply this process to themselves, but at half proficiency. However a bonus is added for any assistance they may have. +10% for trained assistance, +5% for untrained assistance.
A successfull skill will add +20% to disguise & acting.
Base skill 40% +5% per level.


Also, just a simple skill list, name only, plus what book it is in, should be made. As long as you don't give away any substantial info (like percentages) it should be fine. Just an index so those looking for a particular skill can easily see if its already included in Palladiums vast collection.

And another thing, Why has this topic not been stickied yet?!?!

A skill list appears in the Rifter #0, available for purchase and download.
This thread has been added to the "By The Fans" thread, but too many topics that could be stickied exist for Nimmy to sticky them all.

Nothing to worry about, really. If anything, I imagine Mantisking would be more concerned about the misattribution than I would. As stated, the numbers he used added up to a reasonable analogue to other WPs in the setting, so I have to assume omitting Throw was a conscious decision; in short, he put some work into that skill. We just have different styles, it seems!
Of course, sometimes the differences in a skill go well beyond the differences between two Palladium games. If you happen to have the After the Bomb books Mutants in Avalon and Mutants Down Under, check out the differences between their versions of WP Axe. Crazy. Worse yet, both versions serve a purpose, so you can't just throw one away, can ya.

While I'd diverted the topic:

I tried to read through the 5-page thread about this, but couldn't get through. There's a few skills in Transdimensional TMNT which might be helpful, you see, but I can't be sure it hasn't been mentioned here between page 2 or 3 and now.

Horse: Teamster/Wagoner would be useful until it was entirely outcompeted by other forms of shipping.
Horse: Blacksmith would be useful even up to modern day. There's always demand for a ferrier. Seems to confer broad ironworking capabilities, thank goodness.
Language: Latin. Oft a language of the educated since the fall of the Roman Empire. Only recently has fallen out of favor.
WPs for any number of black powder weapons. This period of history, between medieval and modern, covers the development of the gun almost in its entirety.* As such, the guns represented in this swath of time vary greatly from one to the next, and the skills of using one may not be the same as the skills of using another.
Note: Wujcik's version of "WP Black Powder" as a general skill provided no bonuses; it simply removed all penalties and conferred a very basic proficiency with all the myriad black powder weapons. However, this differs from the version he wrote in Ninjas & Superspies, which may be more appropriate to a superhero setting, so I recommend that one.

Mutants in Avalon covers an interesting set of skills, some of them quite medieval, but some of them more recent. Mostly, I offer:
Heraldry and Protocol. Beyond etiquette, this skills is all about identifying somebody by a coat of arms. Useful until communication improved.
Steam Mechanics. Bam. There ya go.

Older games may feature older settings and scenarios. More of the world was "primitive" in this time period, and more of the "primitive" world was running into more of the civilizations which were expanding their empires with the cunning use of flags. Mutants of the Yucatan covers some of the weapons and problems oldskool explorers would run into. Bear in mind, the Age of Exploration mostly is beyond the medieval period, so it'll cover a good many of these encounters. (Before that, it was all about the Moors and all that jazz.)
Jungle Survival. Not just a Wilderness Survival for the jungle, this skill also confers the ability to know where the hell you're going. Expect to hire a guide if you don't have it. It's hard to get lost if you can't get more than five feet in.
Prepare Jungle Poison covers the crafting and power of a given jungle poison, though bear in mind this is in a post-Apocalyptic game full of minor superheroes. Take the numbers or leave them as you please. It does mean it should be properly balanced for HU, though.
Snake Doctor Medicine. An oldskool medical skill, admittedly one which only seems to cover tropical diseases and poisons. Niche, but it's a skill you'd find in the time period among the right people.
WPs for Yucatan-style bows, poison dart blowpipes (just another blowgun, as far as I can tell) and WP Machete, which specifically confers a percentage-based skill at hacking your way through dense jungle. Probably the first skill a newcomer's gonna pick up.

For at least sixty years, the difference between Computer Programming and Mechanical Engineering was probably a blurry line. Oldskool programming would differ from modern programming; you may well have been stuck in binary, for all I know, since punch card based computers (thank you, Ada Lovelace) and gear-shifting-based computers (thank you, Vannaver Bush) were state of the art for part of this time. Useful machines, especially in banking and calculus apparently.
Ninjas & Superspies covers a few skills useful in unusual places.
Cryptography gives rules for cyphers and codebook based codes. The latter? Until WWII, you're pretty hosed, but it's good plot points.
Gardening. The skill of growing food.
Botany. Okay, this is everywhere else, too. Hard to find a Palladium book which doesn't cover botany. Even so, quite handy in the right places.
Calligraphy. Like "Language: Latin" above, I mention it just because if you're the right social class, you can't afford not to have it.
Radio: Basic. Just pointing out that it'd be handy post-Morse.

Here's an odd one. Heliographs. Military signalling devices which are a hinged mirror assembly. H. G. Wells describes one carried between horses in War of the Worlds. I imagine there's a knack to it, but I'm again bringing it up just for atmosphere.

Well, that's all I've got just now.

* This is not coincidence. Gary Gygax brought up interesting points about a certain incompatibility of guns and old medieval sensibilities in one of his later, non-D&D books.

*grumbles as he finds Mutants Down Under finally*
Pilot Lighter-Than-Air Vehicles. Before we had airplanes, we had these.
Aboriginal Medicine. If your characters will be visiting settler-days Australia, these may be some of the best doctors you'll find. Given western medicine at the time, they may be some of the best doctors you'll find anywhere.
Australian Nature Lore. Useless anywhere else. I've never visited the Outback proper, though I may on my next trip just to say I've done it. Apparently, estimating the distances between objects is very difficult in that land.
As long as I've included that, I may as well throw in Songlines. Bring a tape recorder.

Wikipedia holds that most of our Australian words are from the Eora language group, native around what would become Sydney. How handy is that?

W.P. Tongs---Skill in the combat use of hinged, twin-pronged/tined utensils and tools, such as salad tongs, fireplace pincers, and blacksmithing tongs. Practice emphasizes using the shafts to parry, the hinged function to entangle and pin an opponent’s limbs or weapons, and in sharp quick pincing movements with the prongs. Typically does 1d4 damage on a ‘snap nip’, 1d6 on a side-slap/bludgeon for heavy metal tongs, 1 point damage/1d4 respectively for plastic salad tongs. +1 to strike at levels 1, 4, and 12, +1 to parry at levels 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12, +1 to disarm/entangle at levels 2, 4, 8, 10, and 12, +1 snap-nip attack at levels 3, 6, and 9.

For that matter we need Sledding-related skills...Bobsled, Luge(snow and road), and Toboggan...
After all, it would be painful to be a high-level commando who figures it would be a good idea to get all his men and equipment to the bottom of a mountain/glacier by sending them down on sleds...only to break every bone in his body sledding into a tree....

Nicely done.

We need a W.P. Chainsaws now...Any ideas?
I figure we can slip WeedWhackers and power hedge-trimmers in there as well...less damage, but easier to maneuver/handle...

It would be a modern WP with melee aspects, and much harder to control than a sword.

To know bonuses for this would have been great back in the day when I played TMNT. I once had a mutant kangaroo who after a time traveling trip brought back 2 black and decker plasma bladed fusion powered hypersonic hedge trimmers. It was the craziest paired weapon I could think of. Oh the corpses of unlucky npc's that followed is the stuff of legend.