Ninjas & Superspies: Education Bonus?

Since I have been creating secret agents under the Operative Agent OCC, the Education Level for these characters has always been "Special Training," which is nebulous enough for me to ignore.

But let's say I want to create a Private Eye OCC, and right there under Educational Level, there is this:

Educational Level: Two Years of College or equivalent, +15 % Education Bonus.

What is that? What is an Education Bonus? It does not say anywhere in the book!

Well, sometimes to play Palladium Games, you need other Palladium Games. Page 44 of Heroes Unlimited 2E has an excellent section on Education and Skills that describes this concept. Basically, the Education Bonus is the skill percentage modifier for all skills chosen in a Skill Program (college learning), NOT for a character's secondary skills (on your own learning).

So let's look at our Private Eye:

Available Skill Programs: Character can take any two (2) from among General Skill Programs and two (2) from Espionage Programs, plus any two (2) from among Military Skill Programs or Gizmoteer Skill Programs.

Secondary Skills: Select any eight (8).

So every skill taken under "available skill programs" gets the +15% bonus, and every skill chosen under "secondary skills" does not. Also note that some players like saving their secondary skill pick choices for weapon proficiencies since they want to maximize the impact of that educational skill bonus on their percentage-rated skills. On another note, for some skills, you take a percentage penalty when selected as a secondary skill, so check these when you pick them.

Also, since my Operative Agent's education level is "special training," that education bonus is applied to all skill programs.

Heroes Unlimited Character Creation

Now, Heroes Unlimited is way different than Ninjas and Superspies. In Heroes Unlimited, they assume almost a "generic" OCC and create characters based on random tables to determine education level, and from that, you pick skill programs. Only specific backgrounds can pick military and espionage skills, so you don't have that many characters who can play with military hardware and do cool spy stuff as their Ninjas & Superspies counterparts.

In spy school, you can play with a lot of cool hardware and learn all sorts of nasty skills, so those OCCs give you a lot of great skill choices. While you can generate military and espionage characters with Heroes Unlimited, I feel they are more generic "comic book" style soldiers and spies suitable for superhero backgrounds.

Also note that the Heroes Unlimited GM Guide has a wonderful summary page for skills on pages 49-50, worth printing out on its own for character creation, that lists all the skills, percentages, per-level adds, specialty choices, and skills with special rules. This is what I want for Ninjas & Superspies, and I know that I could use this chart, but there are differences between the skill lists, and I would like one more suitable for this game.

Dead Reign

Dead Reign is also notable for listing a bunch of jobs and giving them skill picks and mini-OCCs under the Survivor OCC, such as Builder/House Construction Contractor. Note that in Dead Reign, Military and Espionage skills are disallowed as Secondary Skills. In Ninjas & Superspies, Military skills are not allowed as secondaries, but some espionage skills are, as a "thief"- type background.

Dead Reign also lists skill percentages with the skill lists, so this looks like a sorely needed improvement they are rolling forward. Heroes Unlimited GM Guide does it one better by asterisking skills with special considerations and putting an (s) on skills that can be secondaries.

Dead Reign is sort of becoming a universal Palladium resource for "job OCCs" under that survivor OCC, so if you ever wanted to play a house contractor pulled into Rifts, this is where you start. And then you start dreaming of a tool belt with an excellent selection of MDC damage-handling hand tools and an MDC nail gun, just for splurgoth tentacles.

Unified SDC Cinematic Universe Rules

What would I love? One 300-page book of all the modern-day SDC world skills and character creation rules, unified in one book along with combat, insanity, vehicles, and all the other standard rules. Even the civilian, military, police, spy, science, medical, and other common OCCs are in here for "generic world" play. Call it the Palladium World RPG.

Next, sourcebooks for eras of equipment, world info, weapons, and gear. So I can play Dead Reign in the 1950s. Or the 1920s. Or the 2020s. Or the cowboy era. Or sci-fi. This way, the games never go out of date, and your historical support never goes bad. If technology changes in the 2030s, release a new sourcebook in 10 years and let the 2020 guide stay in print.

And finally, sourcebooks for the worlds with none of the standard rules in them. You could do way more background, OCC, creature, and world data in the base book without the rules taking up space.

I know this is sooooo not how Palladium works. You buy one book, and you get a complete game. And this sounds like how GURPS organizes things. You lose a lot of the specialized rules for each game, too, so this would not work for some settings - but enough of them are similar enough that I wish we had a unified modern ruleset.

Some out there are probably saying, "Just use Heroes Unlimited for this!" I agree, since the support is there and many of the improvements, playability, and attention seem focused there.

Part of me likes how things are, but I can see the point of a better-organized game.

The One Book Magic

And I suppose having a unified central rulebook would increase system bloat and eliminate that "one book magic" Palladium is famous for. If we could have two sets of rules, a shorter "basic rules" common modern subset included in all of the modern games that were cut down and focused on the setting (put at the end of the book), we could ignore that section if we had the main rulebook. There were NO differences between the subset rules and main rules.

Palladium Fantasy? I like that game and how it is in one book. Just release a generic book and make Fantasy a sourcebook! No, I like it the way it is. Even GURPS did a Dungeon Fantasy game, splitting the fantasy rules out and simplifying the system, and that feels like a better-focused, more playable game.

But a part of me wonders if the Palladium base system needs a complete rewrite and reorganization, with the core rules put in a base book and all the repeated rules and minor differences finally eliminated. It feels like heresy, but it may be an evolution toward a Palladium Core System that makes the game easier to manage, play, and learn.

And I would love to have more room in the base books for each setting and to lose the pages of repeated rules. Just having OCCs, world info, monsters, gear, unique powers, and other setting fluff in one book would be cool.

I stumbled into a divisive topic here, but one needs to be discussed. The work I need to put into making Ninjas & Superspies more playable is the work that will need to be done anyway in a complete system cleanup, and parts of this have been done in later games.

Originally published 4/7/22 on the SBRPG blog.