Perception involves skill relating to how observant a character is as well as using those observations to make important judgments regarding what might happen next or the string of events that followed the one currently being observed. Although many of these skill can be performed by a non-proficient person, proficient people often are able to use these skills with limited success without even consciously being aware that they are doing so.

Insight involves the power of seeing into a situation. It also involves sensing the emotions in a crowd or from a single person with whom a character is speaking. It even drills down into the understanding of the quirks of a person, their “tells” in a poker game, their mannerisms, the way they speak, perhaps even the way they see the world.

Generally insight is limited to humanoids that a character has been around enough or has studied, but a character with the Animals skill would have the ability of insight with animals as well, within reason.

A character with insight can sometimes notice things without even using this skill, rolling a Skill Check with two dice as if non-proficient.

Discernment involves the ability to see obscure things that aren’t immediately obvious to most, things that aren't the way they should be and thus clue the character in that something might be amiss and bears additional care or additional investigation. Finding traps, secret doors, pressure plates, footprints (though not necessarily the ability to track them), secret writing, etc can also be noticed by someone with discernment. Like insight, a character with discernment can sometimes notice things without even using this skill, rolling a Skill Check with two dice as if non-proficient.

Discernment can be used to hinder skills like Ambush.

Detecting magic or whatever is appropriate for the genre (the general rules of touch, point-to-point, area of effect, apply to the detection). At third degree, the character can detect the general type of the skill involved. At fifth degree, the character can detect the specific type of the skill involved. At seventh degree, the character can detect the degree of the skill involved.

At fourth degree, the character has become so sensitive as to detect when magic (or the genre-appropriate equivalent) is present with the area of effect surrounding the character (see general rules for the distance appropriate to the level) without the use of mana as a type of sixth sense, though detecting any specifics would require the proper use of the skill and the mana required.

Although tracking could be considered a subset of discernment, there is so much more to tracking than simply seeing a set of footprints or the clues that someone might have been there. This is the following of that clue to find another similar clue and to string a set of footprints or events together to follow a person or a story to its conclusion.

Tracking involves both the abilities of tracking others as well as the ability to prevent one from being tracked using the same methods, making it appear as if nobody has been there.

Skilled trackers can judge one set of footprints from another and often have a good knowledge of the footprints of races and animals they have come across before or are common knowledge in the tracking community. Characters that also have the Animals skill would have the ability to identify the tracks of any animal, within reason.

This skill can also be used (and often is used) to create false trails to lead anyone following down a wrong path, given that there is enough time for the person to do so. The hiding of the trail and the creating of one or more false trails each take their own successful skill check.

Insight and discernment skill dice both can be added to the tracking skill, as appropriate. (Insight would only add if following a person. Discernment would only add if environmental clues can be used in the tracking.)

When someone thinks of tracking or covering ones tracks, generally a person would think of doing so outdoors in an environment with trees, grass, rocks, and streams. Tracking and hiding one's tracks in these environments is as much a skill of perception as it is a skill of stealth, recognizing what the woodlands, wastelands, or marshlands might have looked like previous to passage and how it might look after passage. When leading a party, a proficient tracker would choose to lead over terrain like rock and hard dirt where few footprints are left, and then moving along afterward to hide those footprints. For each character in a party without the Tracking skill, the success of the skill check requires an additional success up to a maximum of five successes.

Tracking and hiding one's tracks isn't just limited to wilderness settings. In the city, this could simply be moving through the area undetected or tracking someone trying to do so. More often, however, it is finding clues left behind at a house or a business, evidence of the person tracked having been there and then leaving the scene much the way it was before the investigation.