UNLIMITED HOUSE RULES (very limited, as limited as I can manage)

I'm not fond of houserules, in general. And Palladium is such a leaky boat that trying to bail it out is an exercise in frustration.

The below is mostly a series of attempts to make game play faster and more fluid.

1. Alternate Attribute Bonuses. Any Skill that you think should get a bonus due to an attribute other than IQ, you can go ahead and add a percentile bonus as though that attribute were your IQ. For example, 20 IQ gives a +6% bonus. So if you had 20 PP, you could use that instead to add +6% to your Gymnastics rolls. I'm happy to interpret this very widely and won't police it too hard. Just make sure you put what attribute you're using next to the Skill on your sheet.

2. Automatic Skill Success. When calling for a Skill roll, I may give the roll a Difficulty. If I do, and your total skill percentage is high enough, you can declare success without rolling.

• Very Easy - 45
• Easy - 60
• Average - 75
• Hard - 90
• Very Hard - 105
• Naynays - 120

3. Scaled down Actions per Melee. I'll need to see the completed sheets before I finalize this, but I'll be applying a system for equally and fairly scaling down everyone's attacks per melee in way that keeps combat sane, but still maintains the benefits for players who devote resources to them.

4. Everyone has an Automatic Knock-Out on a Natural 20 (assuming it makes sense at the time in the fiction).

5. The Boxing skill no longer grants an extra Attack per Melee. The Boxing skill can now be taken as a Secondary Skill.

6. Heroes no longer start the game with 2 Attacks per Melee and then 2 more for Hand-to-Hand. Heroes start with 1 Attack per Melee, and Hand-to-Hand Basic/Expert/Martial Arts gives +1 (Assassin gives +1 at first level and +1 at second).

7. Cool Points. We won't be tracking experience for this game. So when you do cool things, I'll give you Cool Points instead. Players are also encouraged to give other players Cool Points when they do things that make the game more dramatic, more interesting, and just plain better for everyone. There's no rule on how many you can have or store or get. But I do want you all to use them rather than hoard them.

What can you do with a Cool Point? You can:

• succeed at one dice roll
• turn a successful roll into a critical (which means that 2 Cool Points can give you an auto crit against anyone)
• do something really fast that should take you a long time
• do something an extra time that you can only do a limited number of times (Magic or Psionics, for example)
• do something lateral with one of your abilities, something that the rules don't say they can do, but that you can convince me they could do (like Power Stunts, for those that know the MSH/FASERIP system)
• make a declaration about the game world. Maybe the mayor owes you a favour. Maybe a friend of yours lives just around the corner. Maybe you binged a bunch of bomb defusing videos on Youtube. Maybe you had some time yesterday to string a trap here in case the villain came by. The more in line these are with your concept and abilities, the more leeway you get to have (plus the cooler it is, obvs).

How do you get a Cool Point?

• by using in-character role-playing to make a scene more fun, interesting, or dramatic
• by acting in a way that's consistent with your character's values or ethics or principles, even if causes problems (especially if it causes problems)
• by voluntarily bringing your Liability(ies) into play
• cool ideas that complicate or resolve encounters in fun and interesting ways
• accepting a bargain offered by the GM (I may say something like: I'll give you a Cool Point if the Police Chief can be angry at you for wrecking his car last year. And you can accept or reject the offer).

Plus whatever else we think up as we go along.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:56, Thu 04 Mar 2021.