Skills Variant

Palladium is definitely a skills based game and it provides one of the most straightforward depictions of how likely you are to succeed at a given skill that I've seen - your skill is expressed as a straight percentage chance.

However, for all that, skills are static once chosen. The only differences between your skill and the skill of that other guy are when the skill was chosen, any OCC / RCC bonuses, and any bonus from a high IQ. This is boring to me, so I decided to make a house rule (a common occurrence, in Palladium games).

At each level, as written, you advance every current skill you have by its per-level amount. 

My house rule is simply that you may forgo advancing one skill to "double" advance another skill. For example, let's say that I have Climb and Forensics. I want my character to be something of a legend when it comes to Forensics, so when I gain a level I might advance Forensics twice and let Climb sit at whatever percentage it's already at.

This begs the question of how to track all of this - after all, we want to minimize the complexity of any house rule so that it is easy to implement and does not overly complicate the game. With the traditional skills system you may have tracked when a skill was learned for easy reference and re-computing should something go awry. The easiest way to implement this house rule is to instead track what level a skill is at. Picked up a skill at 2nd level and you're now 3rd? That skill is level 2. 

Due to the nature of some skills, this approach only works for skills with actual per-level percentages or level based progression. For example, this will not work with Body Building or Boxing, but will work with most Weapon Proficiencies. Additionally, you may only do this swap once per skill per level. In other words, you can't add two extra levels to a single skill by not advancing two other skills - it's a strict 1:1 scenario.

Let's look at a more cohesive example. I have a Veritech Pilot (Robotech RPG, 2nd Edition). Let's say he's 1st level, fresh out of the academy. He has the following skills of note at level 1 (NB: This is not comprehensive in the least - if you want details on the Veritech OCC, please support Palladium and by the book linked at the beginning of this paragraph):

[1] Computer Operation

[-] Forced March

[1] Language: English

[1] Military Etiquette

[1] WP Handgun

[1] WP Rifle

[1] Mecha Pilot: Veritechs

[1] Wilderness Survival

The number between [ and ] denotes what level the skill is at. [-] indicates a skill that does not level.

Now, let's say the pilot levels up and reaches 2nd level. He decides that he wants to be something of an ace in his VT and somewhat of a crack shot with a pistol. He looks at his skills and decides he doesn't much care about etiquette or computers. Truth be told, he doesn't much care about forced marching, either, but that skill isn't a candidate for the house rule. So, rather than adding a level to Computer Operation or Military Etiquette, he instead adds those levels to WP Handgun and Mecha Pilot; Veritechs, respectively. Now his skills look like this:

[1] Computer Operation

[-] Forced March

[2] Language: English

[1] Military Etiquette

[3] WP Handgun

[2] WP Riflee

[3] Mecha Pilot: Veritechs

[2] Wilderness Survival

Astute readers may notice that skills have the potential to cap pretty quickly. The mathematical among you may even see that a skill will reach level 15 by character level 8 if that skill has an extra level added to it at each level past the first. How do you handle that? How do you handle the potential for skills well above the 98% soft-cap?

There's a couple of ways. The first is to simply disallow any more levels to be added to a level 15 skill. This is the easiest way, but also brings us back to everyone looking the same at max level. The other way, the way that I handle it, is to let the skills get high. At worst a skill will be level 29 at character level 15. Is that alot? Sure. However, remember the soft cap - no matter how huge that skill gets, the character will always have a 2% chance to fail. That huge skill of, say, 144%, simply provides a buffer against penalties. He can suck up 46% worth of penalties without worrying about his performance - and it's depressingly easy to get -46% or worse on a skill check.