The golem is immune most likely, because it's a golem.
Ok, so we had a really weird interaction come up in a recent game session. We were facing off against a golem and our Sorceror cast Glitterdust on the creature, which of course failed it's save horribly. So, now the question, does glitterdist blind a Golem? And does blinding a Golem actually have any effect. Since it was a really cool idea and, there is nothing that says anything about Golems' senses, it was blinded as per the rules. I just wanted to see if others concurred with this.
Hmm do not quote me (at work atm so no access to my books) but are not golems immune to all magic that allows a saving throw?
The golem is immune most likely, because it's a golem.That's the kicker, golems are immune to any spell that allows spell resistance. Glitterdust does not allow SR
You have a good question and I'll hit FAQ for the RAW interpretation.
That being said Golem's don't actually need a head or eyes to functin. They're eyes are superficial at best. I'd say they're not blinded becausing having particles of crap in their eye doesn't bother them. They're mindless.
Hmm do not quote me (at work atm so no access to my books) but are not golems immune to all magic that allows a saving throw?
No, they are immune to everything that allows spell resistance. But as constructs, they are immune to anything that has a fortitude save (unless that effect also works on objects, or is harmless.)
Glitterdust + grease. Golem fall down. Hehehe
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It's not an exploit. Trying to give golems or undead or something else better "vision" than the rules allow is a "narritive exploit." You know what, why waste my time arguing about it, when Sean K. Reynolds himself already vigorously described why you shouldn't be giving freebie immunities and abilities out just because you can't comprehend how some [creature have never and can never possibly encounter, ever, in real life] could be affected by X.
Premise #2: Many undead don't have eyes.
True, and it's obvious by observation, at least as much as we can't in the real world: a skeleton doesn't have eyes, and a rotting corpse's eyes are usually in no shape to be used for vision. While we have no incorporeal creatures in the real world, it's not much of a leap to say that creatures that don't have physical bodies don't have physical eyes.
Conclusion #2: Since they don't have eyes to receive light, they must be sensing things in other ways,
This conclusion is somewhat shaky. Nothing in the descriptions of the undead presented in the Monster Manual say anything about them sensing things any differently than living creatures.* In fact, Sage Advice in Dragon Magazine clarified** that unless otherwise stated, all creatures have the normal five senses of humans (sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste). None of their descriptions say they have any unusual sense (unless they have something like blindsense or blindsight listed). In fact, no creature in the MM that lacks eyes (like elementals) is listed as having any special form of sight ... why is it that only undead get this "other ways" sense?
D&D is written for humans. It's written by humans from the perspective of humans, and when comparisons are made, they're made to a baseline human. Things that aren't outright stated in the D&D should be assumed to be human-normal. Huge parts of the game are built around the human as the standard, from armor class (the default AC of 10 is the AC of your average unarmored human) to attack rolls (your average unarmed human with no special training has about a 50% chance -- 10+ on a d20 -- of hitting another average unarmored human with a punch) to saving throws (default DCs are set according to what your average human could resist, dodge, or survive) to skill checks (DC 10 is something your average unskilled guy could succeed at about 50% of the time). With this humanocentric view, it should be clear that if there is no listed answer to a question, the answer almost certainly is the same as asking the question about a human.
How do bugbears poop? Just like a human.
Where do gnomes have body hair? In the same places humans do.
How good is an aboleth's sense of smell? About as good as a human.
How spicy is too spicy to an aasimar? About as much as a human would consider too spicy.Of course, this comparison doesn't hold up to creatures that obviously resemble nonhuman real-world creatures. If asked about the sense of smell or taste preferences of a pegasus, I'd compare it to a horse. If asked what sort of meat owlbears prefer, fish or chicken, I'd find out what real bears like. But for undead, the closest comparison is to humans, since most undead are made from humans (or other humanoids, which bring the comparison back to humans again).
This is really an aspect of Occam's Razor:
"The simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known." - Dictionary.comSo, in this case, if one explanation is "undead senses default to the human norm through some process that mimics human senses" and the other is "undead have some strange method of sensing their environment, even though no part of the rulebooks says that undead have this ability", clearly the first explanation is the simpler one and is probably correct. When backed up by Sage Advice's statement that creatures have normal human senses unless otherwise stated, the evidence is strongly in favor of the familiar human senses rather than the kooky they-have-it-but-it's-not-mentioned-and-only-described-under-one-undead-cre ature sense.
One more comment on this point: Of course, all undead do have a special sense that humans don't have--darkvision. You know this not only because the undead type entry says they have it, but all undead in the MM do (or at least should) have darkvision listed. But the rules also say that darkvision is "black and white only, but is otherwise like normal sight." "Normal," of course, means "like a human's" in D&D. And if undead have a special sense, why would they need darkvision which works like human sight? If they have senses that aren't like human senses and yet have another sense that is like human sight, isn't that strange? Again, the simplest answer is that their senses work like human senses and darkvision is a supplement to that, just like dwarves have humanlike senses with darkvision as a supplement.
Definitely an exploit to allow dust to blind anything without actual soft irritable eyes, but that exploit HAS been in the game for a long time, so the devs have been cool with it for awhile. Also, Pathfinder already did nerf the hell out of the spell with the crippling "Each round at the end of their turn blinded creatures may attempt new saving throws to end the blindness effect."
Personally i think they should have the victim have a 20% or 40% miss chance without new saves, rather than full blind with the save every round stipulation they have been ruining spells that were too good in 3.5 with.
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For those of you who are saying that the golem cannot be blinded because it does not have eyes for the dust to get into:
If glitterdust blinded by getting in your eyes and irritating them, would it not be a fort save instead of a will save?
I think that it works by making the glitter the only thing they can see. The will save represents the ability to peer through the glitter and see what his beyond it.
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Unless a creature, undead construct or otherwise, is listed as being specifically or generally immune to a spell type. that spell effects them.
Letting the fluff of a spell block it, when the stat block and combat information otherwise allows it to be effected, is just nerfing spells and creating a scenario where the PC's are blindly guessing on whether or not a given spell might work depending on whether or not the DM decides to tweak the fluff vs creature description to make a spell work.
Glitterdust:
School conjuration (creation); Level bard 2, sorcerer/wizard 2
Save: Yes.(Will) SR: No
Effect: Causes Blindness
Construct:
No listed immunity that brings it into conflict with the above.
Golems. (checked all on PRD Bestiary I)
No listed immunity that brings it into conflict with the above.
Result:
Glitterdust works normally on Golems.
Getting bogged down in "it doesn't have eyes" and "that doesn't make sense!" equals "But the DM didn't want it to work so he .. err said it didn't work.. and now we have no idea what our stuff will work on and what it won't work on because he's moved on from the rules to DM Arbitrary Spellcasting Solutions"
Just say no to DM Arbitrary Spellcasting Solutions!
*forms picket*
;p
Follow the rules, not arbitrary rules alterations. The information you need is in there. Just give it a look.
-S
*Note, there are places where the rules contradict each other or really don't give you an answer. I'm not against the DM fixing these issues. They should be such times though- not times when the rules just don't do what they like. Those are called "house rules' and should be discussd with the Players *before* inflicting said rules on the Players's.*
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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*shrug* The conclusion is not "shaky" AT ALL. 1)Undead have some kind of vision. 2)Undead do not (all) have physical eyes (as the word is normally used). It is iron-clad simple logic that "ergo, undead visionis not dependent on eyes (as the word is normally used.)" It could not be ANY less shaky.What one cares to handwave with a rules philosophy is of course fine, but one shouldn't pretend logic is not on the other side of the question. Though the "why only undead" rhetorical question is spurious and irrelevant.
What's shaky about the conclusion is the idea that skeletons need eyes to 'receive light', and not having eyes means that they don't depend on light to see.
A skeleton's vision is obviously affected by light. The skeleton can see farther in normal light (unlimited range) than it can in darkness (60 ft.). It still suffers miss chance when firing into dim light 60 ft. away. Magical darkness, fog, and other similar effects still hamper it's vision.
Giving a creature some kind of non light-based visual sense negates a whole host of environmental effects, in addition to several spells (like glitterdust). The designers don't give creatures that sort of thing without explicitly spelling it out in the stat block, and skeletons don't have any such thing.
Edited for clarity.
Giving a creature some kind of non light-based visual sense negates a whole host of environmental effects, in addition to several spells (like glitterdust). The designers don't give creatures that sort of thing without explicitly spelling it out in the stat block, and skeletons don't have any such thing.
In fact, it's such an awesome power they have a name for it already: blindsight.
It's also worth mentioning that the "glitterdust doesn't work because undead/golems/etc may or may not have eyes of some form or another" argument is based on an assumption about how the spell causes blindness. The spell doesn't say that particles get in creatures' eyes, or that the bright light blinds them in a flash, or any other specific mechanism for blinding that you could come up with. Thus, any argument based on an assumption of a particular (pun intended) mechanism of blinding is tough to support.
More generally: golems especially are immune to a huge spread of the things that characters typically use to overcome their enemies. Having DR/adamantite, immunity to almost all spells and conditions, and being physically very strong is what makes them difficult to deal with, and this leads some people to think that they should simply be immune to anything other than being pummeled until dead, but it's a mistake to assume that any weakness in a golem's considerable defenses is an oversight that needs to be houseruled on the fly so that it doesn't work.
A wizard who knows enough to prepare spells that circumvent SR when he suspects he may encounter golems is being smart, not exploiting -- assuming it's character knowledge that golems are immune to most magic; a simple knowledge (arcana) check will determine this -- summon monster is useful against golems for the same reason. People may get hung up on glitterdust because most spells that induce blindness are mind-affecting or otherwise ineffective against golems. Glitterdust is hardly the only thing that gets past a golem's defenses, though. Alchemist bombs of the right energy type, such as fire bombs against a flesh golem, or even the flaming magic weapon property, are ideal. They are supernatural -- as opposed to spell-like -- and thus not subject to spell resistance, which means that golems are affected by them, and by any secondary effects which apply (such as being knocked down by a force bomb).
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Giving a creature some kind of non light-based visual sense negates a whole host of environmental effects, in addition to several spells (like glitterdust). The designers don't give creatures that sort of thing without explicitly spelling it out in the stat block, and skeletons don't have any such thing.In fact, it's such an awesome power they have a name for it already: blindsight.
That would be the most common form, yes :)