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Hello! I'm still pretty new to the Heroes Unlimited (and Palladium in general) ruleset and I'm running into a couple issues with character creation, namely Initiative bonuses (if there are any?) and how to deal with perception mechanically.

For Initiative, I know individual powers or certain levels of combat styles will give you bonuses, but P.P. mentions you get bonuses after 30 but doesn't mention anything between 16 and 30.
Let's say my 1st level character has a P.P. of 20, Hand-to-Hand: Expert, and no Initiative bonuses from powers, magic, or psionics. It seems I have no bonus to initiative. Is that accurate?

For perception, I can't find a single thing in all my browsing through the rulebook about how to notice hidden or stealthy things! Even my group's more experienced players are defaulting to Research skill rolls, but that feels very clunky and wrong.
Where are these mechanics in the books? ARE they in the book?

Thanks!

Hello.

You are correct, you only get an initiative bonus from your PP if its say 33, 36, 39 ... and depending on the book you look in it can be 34...38...42...45. PP Maxes at 45. MOST heroes won't even come close to that and if they do it's still a bit difficult. Some HTH's like in Rifter #7 or Ninjas & Superspies do add Initiative bonus. Otherwise it's d20 and the highest number goes first.

As for perception I have a home metric for perception bonus. If you look at the attribute chart, say the PP bonus chart but instead you substitute IQ for that then you can easily have perception bonuses.

IQ Bonus
16-17 +1
18-19 +2
20-21 +3
22-23 +4
24-25 +5
26-27 +6
28-29 +7
30+ +8

Try that and let me know.

most of the time initiative comes from martial art powers or mutant abilities, otherwise it will come with levels of experience.

I would be interested in how this works also or at least a page number where it is discussed.

Thank you.

lol! oh yes I've worked on that a LOT, but what this means is that we require the game mechanics to change slightly.

Perception Rolls are mentioned in Nightbane, and not much else.

I can elaborate if you wish on what needs to be, but its not considered canon.

Thanks! I have Nightbane and found it on page 66.

it doesn't help much in the way of helping vs prowl, but its something.

Eh, they were added in RUE to Rifts and are basically everywhere over there now. To the point that it replaced entire skills. I ignore it completely.

my main problem with Perception as written is that it is a d20 roll and not percentile

Well the rule in nightbane says to take the percentile and divide by 15 and then rounddown. This will give you your + for the d20 roll.

yeaaah but why convert to a d20 roll when all the other skills are d100? it needs to be contested percentile skills like Eclipse Phase, but I digress

Would it not be more logical to have all the skills represented in the d20 format?

Example: If Prowl starts at say 45% that's a +9. Also as each level adds +5% so then that would be +1. So instead of this:

Prowl: 45%

Then you'd have ...

Prowl +9

Then all the skill could be direct combat rolls and percentages would go out the window completely.

Thoughts?

If I wanted to be playing d20, then I would be playing d20.

I think Perception was first introduced in BtS-2 (Not sure about that, though). On page 170, there's quite a bit of discussion about it. It almost mirrors what's printed in RUE on page 368. In both books, there are also rules about Perception rolls vs. Prowl, Concealment and some other skills. Interesting stuff.

I, too, like using percentile dice as opposed to a D20 for skills. A D20 is one-fifth as precise, which strikes me as being clunky. How do you represent a skill of 43% or 71% with a roll of a D20? I don't believe you can. Using only a D20 limits skills to increments of 5% for both base and bonuses when leveling up. I also like the fact that some difficult or highly specialized skills only offer a 3% or 4% bonus when advancing levels. Sometimes those few percentage points can make or break an attempt at a skill and makes for some seriously dramatic storytelling! Plus, I get to ROLL MORE DICE!

My 2 cents...

indeed, Kev's always used percentile, and when d20 hit, always wanted to avoid d20, so yeah percentile is the way to go.

I've actually written about adding Perception and Intuition as skills everyone has, the idea for me is that anyone can use these two, but if you have a professional skill like detect ambush, surveillance, or psychology then you use that, because it has a higher percentage. Of course that also means that those professional skills shouldn't be starting at 25%.

When you have contested skills you don't need everything starting so low because even at 100%, there's still room for failure.

Just my thoughts here.
I use perception for general "noticing things if nothing else applies"
But your perception skill is never going to be as good as the narrower skills like Spot Hidden, Detect Secret Doors, Detect Ambush et multiple cetera.

I am toying with doing a reverse conversion and turning perception from a d20 roll into a d100 roll... so that I can award more finely graduated bonuses and make it easier to add in bonuses and penalties.

exactly how I'm playing it, eliakon. Check my rifter articles for rules about it. Or I suppose I can post that snippet here sometime