| 2 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Hi!
I'm wondering what people think should happen in the following situation (or if there's any RAW way to handle this).
A Clouded vision cursed oracle (lets have her at level 1) looks into a mirror.
What does she see?
Everything reflected back normally?
Everything reflected back but only out to 30 ft?
Something else?
Its a magical curse so I can sortof buy that it'd magically cut off your sight outside of 30 ft...I think its still kinda interesting though =D
I have a Oracle player in my group and it just occurred to me that she might be able to rig somekind of headgear with slanted mirrors to extend her sight range.
This is not about flavor nor player min-max or anything, I'd just like your thoughts on this ^____^
"Clouded Vision: Your eyes are obscured, making it difficult for you to see. You cannot see anything beyond 30 feet, but you can see as if you had darkvision. At 5th level, this distance increases to 60 feet. At 10th level, you gain blindsense out to a range of 30 feet. At 15th level, you gain blindsight out to a range of 15 feet."
Well, that makes it pretty easy. Is it farther than 30 feet from you? If yes, you cannot see it. At level 5 that changes to 60'.
So you could see the mirror, and things reflected in it from up to 30' from you at level 1.
Its a curse. It wouldn't be much of a curse if you could just buy a mirror (or glasses) and avoid it.
You can see 30 feet. You can see 30 feet with a mirror, telescope, binoculars, or whatever. You can see 30 feet. (or 60, later on).
When you think you figured out a super easy way to avoid your curse.. just remember- its a curse. Whatever you just figured out isn't going to work. (otherwise you are getting benefit for no penalty which clearly isn't the intent behind the Oracle curses.)
-S
A mirror reflects light. Your eyes only see 30' of light. If you looked into a mirror that's 15' away, you'd see 15' into the mirror and 15' out, so you'd see yourself. Stand 30' from the mirror and you won't see anything reflected in it.
The sun suggestion above is absurd because the light extends from the sun--you don't need to see the light source to see the light coming from it. Otherwise, nobody could see the light from a torch around the corner.
It says your eyes are clouded, not 'everything at 30' is clouded.'
mplindustries: I used the sun example because objects - all non-luminous objects - are only visible because of reflected light. Mirrors just have a very high fidelity of reflection - they're otherwise just like any other object. If the curse on an oracle's eyes prevented light that came from more than 30' away from registering, nothing illuminated by natural light would be visible. Since this is not so, I infer that a Clouded Vision oracle can see light reflected off any object within 30' of him/her. A mirror is an object; ergo, the oracle can see reflections.
Is it a cheesy way around the curse? Absolutely! Should the rules mechanics be changed so it no longer applies? I think so.
(Incidentally, an oracular curse that did make daylight invisible would be kind of cool for a vampire/Underdark-themed curse.)
I'll use a real life example for why this is flawed.
Have you ever taken an eye test? You know the poster with the big "E" on top? The test typically has those at 20' away from you. Have you ever gone to a small optometrist office? They have a little exam room, maybe 5' or 10' on a side and that's it. They still use the eye chart. How? They use a mirror. They project it on the wall, and you look at a mirror at the chart. The light from the chart travels 10' across the room, hits the mirror and travels another 10' to hit your eyes. Giving you the 20' for the chart to accurately measure your vision the way it was designed to.
mplindustries got this correct. If your vision was so terrible (cataracts) that you could not make out anything past 30'. Looking into a mirror 15' away, you would be able to barely make out yourself, as the light would be traveling 15' to the mirror, and 15' back to your eyes, putting the total view distance at 30'.
Lastly, from the game rules perspective. It states: "You cannot see anything beyond 30 feet, but you can see as if you had darkvision." It does not say "unless you look into a mirror". Therefore, looking in a mirror has no effect on how far you can see and the limit of 30' from the curse applies.
Come on, this is a case where the RAI is blindingly obvious. If the author of that curse wanted the oracle to be unable to see natural light, he would have said so. He didn't. Therefore, the oracle can see natural light. If the author wanted the oracle to be limited to 30' unless he uses mirrors, he would have said so. He didn't. Therefore mirrors don't help.
Is it real world physics? Heck if I know, I don't have any "curse" victims to study how a curse works.
There is a reason why things look smaller when they are farther away. Right now I'm looking at a mountain, but it's smaller than my hand. Perspective. It's a matter of how the curvature of the cornea of our eyes focuses distant points (reflected light from distant objects) onto our retina.
Perhaps clouded vision (the curse, not the real-world cataracts) impairs this process, making light that has traveled more than 30' focus badly inside the curse victim's eyes. In which case, neither the curse nor the light would care if the light were never reflected, or reflected a hundred times, as long as it traveled 30 total feet it would not work inside the clouded eyes.
Which is all irrelevant. The author said that you can only see 30' with this curse, no exceptions, no additional limitations. I'm pretty sure that's how he meant it to work.
Of course the oracle can see a mirror that is only 5' away, by RAW. You're making all kinds of "physics" assumptions about what is reflected in that mirror. There is nothing in the RAW that says the light from reflected objects can ignore the 30' limit of the clouded vision.
No matter how you look at it (I got away with my pun in the previous post so I had to try again), this thread started on a non-RAW assumption, that reflected light can come from outside the 30' limit and ignore the curse. Heck, depending on how the curse actually works, that could very well be true.
But it's not RAW.
It's also not RAW to say that reflected light does not ignore the curse.
Either way, RAW doesn't have the answer, so we turn to RAI, hence my previous post.
this forum is for 'rules as written', and by RaW a mirror 5' away is well within the oracle's 30' range of vision.
Yes, RAW a mirror 5' away is visible. RAW doesn't give a crap about stuff reflected in the mirror. Is the thing you are trying to see >30'? If yes, you can't see it. If no, you can see it. The RAW is distance measured from the oracle's position. >30', you can't see it.
It doesn't address "if you look through a mirror" therefore looking there a mirror does not affect whether you can see it or not. Omission is proof that that item does not change the condition of clouded vision. In fact, mirrors do nothing as far as game rules are concerned, other than they have a cost and a weight. The only other place a mirror might be used is in trying to avert your eyes from a gaze attack and that is GM call as to whether a mirror is a "reflective surface" as the RAW does not state it to be so.
I will not FAQ this as it is as obvious as "can a dead character still take actions."
I disagree, but I think we've both said our piece on the topic. It does raise a related question that might be more fruitfully discussed: which rules take priority when an oracle with Clouded Vision uses clairvoyance or scrying?
When viewing via a sensor, you see things from the point of view of the sensor, so a Oracle could only see 30' from the sensor.
From the magic section:
Scrying: A scrying spell creates an invisible magical sensor that sends you information. Unless noted otherwise, the sensor has the same powers of sensory acuity that you possess. This level of acuity includes any spells or effects that target you, but not spells or effects that emanate from you. The sensor, however, is treated as a separate, independent sensory organ of yours, and thus functions normally even if you have been blinded or deafened, or otherwise suffered sensory impairment.
Neither clairvoyance and scrying state you get any additional senses, and scrying specifically states it has your same visual acuity. So they would be both limited to the 30' distance.
The problem with this is that real vision does not cut off after a certain point. Sure everything gets progressively darker and more blurry the further away the image is but its not like a computer game where images are not rendered until they are within x feet.
Technically you could make the argument that if you can't see beyond 30ft with clouded vision then 30ft is the point at which the images are so dark and blurred they might as well be a black wall. This would then mean at 15-20ft assuming a linear falloff you vision is half as good as it is at 5ft.
but of course that's a little hard to model mechanically without getting too complicated ;)
The problem with this is that real vision does not cut off after a certain point. Sure everything gets progressively darker and more blurry the further away the image is but its not like a computer game where images are not rendered until they are within x feet.
Technically you could make the argument that if you can't see beyond 30ft with clouded vision then 30ft is the point at which the images are so dark and blurred they might as well be a black wall. This would then mean at 15-20ft assuming a linear falloff you vision is half as good as it is at 5ft.
but of course that's a little hard to model mechanically without getting too complicated ;)
I treat it the same as darkvision in a dark area. You get 60', and after that absolutely nothing. No gradual shutoff.
Just a reiteration.
This is not an attempt by my player nor me to 'cheat' or 'min max my way' past the curse.
Its just an interesting proposition. (I'm GMing this game. If the intent was an easy work-around the curse I'd just remove it ;D)
Other than that some really fun thoughts on this so far. =D
Edit:
I'm thinking of allowing the use of a mirror with some penalties. A more dedicated mirroring rig might reduce them further, and if they really want to sink their gold into it they might even allow her to see the sunrise once more.