Spaceship based telescopes

[Anthony]

A lot of the problem with perception rolls is that realistically, a lot of the modifiers are too small, but tracking everything that applies is unplayable. Under controlled conditions, the difference between never recognize and always recognize is something like a factor of 3 in size (compare 12 point text to 4 point text), corresponding to a modifier of 3 on the range/speed chart, and skill makes very little difference. On the other hand, under actual 'adventuring' situations the variance is much larger (due in large part to modifiers that would be a pain to track), and the skill of knowing where to look is pretty important.