A blinded creature has a 50% miss chance in combat (all opponents have total concealment), loses any Dexterity bonus to AC, takes a –2 penalty to AC, and takes a –4 penalty on Perception checks that rely on sight and most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks.
Can anyone clarify what "most" strength and dexterity based skill checks. With perhaps a list of the skills that would be affected?
I think the easiest answer would be to apply the text "that rely on sight" to the Strength and Dex based skills:
Acrobatics: Definitely relies on sight.
Climb: It depends. Climbing a rope doesn't require sight, but climbing a wall would (because you need to see the handholds).
Disable Device: Definitely relies on sight.
Escape Artist: It depends. Squeezing through a tunnel or escaping a grapple would probably be OK, but trying to avoid obstacles while doing so would be problematic. (And note that even if you can use Escape Artist to escape a grapple without penalty, you are still flat-footed and -2 to CMD, so the grappler will prbably just re-grapple you next round.)
Swim: It depends. Treading water would be no problem, but swimming across a body of water to the other side would be tricky.
Does that help?
It does thank you Gwen.
The answer is, unless the GM says a particular use of a DEX or STR skill doesn't take the penalty, it does.
Personally, I think the list above is in error. All of those examples would have the penalty (for some, the DC is low enough that success would be likely even with the penalty.)
Where I might not include the penalty would be for something where the DC included not being able to see, for example I might consider that beyond a very simple lock, sight isn't going to help you open one (they are too small to see into etc.) and so you wouldn't take a penalty for being blinded, because not being able to see what you are doing is included in the normal DC. There isn't a list of this sort of thing though, and each GM would have to make their own interpretation.
The answer is, unless the GM says a particular use of a DEX or STR skill doesn't take the penalty, it does.
Personally, I think the list above is in error. All of those examples would have the penalty (for some, the DC is low enough that success would be likely even with the penalty.)
Where I might not include the penalty would be for something where the DC included not being able to see, for example I might consider that beyond a very simple lock, sight isn't going to help you open one (they are too small to see into etc.) and so you wouldn't take a penalty for being blinded, because not being able to see what you are doing is included in the normal DC. There isn't a list of this sort of thing though, and each GM would have to make their own interpretation.
You think treading water is harder with your eyes closed?
Or that moving up a rope hand over hand (with no "feet on wall" or anything) requires sight? Granted, once you get to the grappling hook/top of the rope, the climb check to get off of the rope and onto the surface would probably take the penalty.For Escape Artist, I was picturing a straight tunnel with no protrusions (say, like an air vent) for no penalty. Any protrusions would be "obstacles". I didn't make that very clear at all.
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This is not RAW.
Limiting it to only Str and Dex skills seems wrong considering eye-contact is so very important when talking (over 75% of what you communicate is through your body-language).
Being blind shouldn't effect if you have knowledge about a thing but not having the stimulus (sight) will reduce the chance that you'll find the knowledge, since all memories are tied to a 'key' that unlocks them - typically sight.
They should include a -2penalty to all skill checks to the 'blinded condition'.
But I assume there are mechanical reasons for why it is what it is.
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Just to make a side note here:
A blinded creature has a 50% miss chance in combat (all opponents have total concealment), loses any Dexterity bonus to AC, takes a –2 penalty to AC, and takes a –4 penalty on Perception checks that rely on sight and most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks.
This is not correct. You take a —4 penalty on opposed Perception checks (not restricted to just those based on sight), and any Perception checks that ARE based on sight automatically fail.
I'd agree that climbing up a rope hand over hand, while not impossible, would be more difficult if I couldn't see it.
I mean think about it, trying to climb up a rope with your eyes open, then think about it again, closing your eyes and doing the same thing.
I am thinking about it. In my head, I put hand 1 on the rope. I then put hand 2 above hand 1 and slide it up the rope until I hit the knot. (Knots in rope are huge. You can easily feel them.) The few times I've seen people climb ropes, they don't stare at the rope itself: they're looking down or up to judge their progress.
Oh, wait: When I close my eyes, I always know exactly where my extremities are and always touch hand to hand, hand to foot, etc. Is that not true for everybody? (Come to think of, I suppose I do have a lot of practice doing fine manipulation behind my own back...)
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With my eyes closed, I can retrieve my wallet from my back-left pocket, open it, remove my debit card, put the card back in, close my wallet, and put it back in the same pocket. I will never ever accidentally reach into a different pocket and grab my keys instead, or fumble around figuring out which way my wallet opens, or accidentally take out my driver's licence, or drop my card on the ground when trying to put it back in my wallet, or put my wallet into the wrong pocket.
Ever.
The idea that climbing a rope hand-over-hand becomes meaningfully more difficult while blinded is nothing short of ridiculous.
If you aren't good a climbing a rope, not being able to see might be the difference between success and failure. If you are good at climbing a rope, you succeed on a 'take 10' even with the penalty, so in a way it isn't meaningfully more difficult, but it is easier if you can see what you are grabbing, have visual clues to your balance, etc.
Remember also, we are discussing climbing fast, for a standard human you can climb 30' up a rope in six seconds by the game rules. Something I expect most of us couldn't do (certainly including myself) whether blinded or not.
Treading water is similar. In a still pool it might not matter that much, because it is so easy most people can manage it even blinded with a take 10. If you are in a storm tossed pool or rapids though, where the DC is meaningful, being able to see can make quite a difference.
As for the wallet, removing a wallet from a pocket would probably be done without eyes anytime. Picking the correct card though, if you have more than one, would be more difficult. But when you give examples that are probably DC 0, and then show that they shouldn't have a penalty because you can do them routinely (take 10) it doesn't really help your case anyway, since both 6 (with the penalty) and 10 (without it) are successes.
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If you aren't good a climbing a rope, not being able to see might be the difference between success and failure.
No, it won't. Unless you have some kind of nerve disorder, you don't need to see in order to know which way is up, know where your hands are in relation to each other, or know whether your hand is wrapping around a rope or thin air.
...it is easier if you can see what you are grabbing, have visual clues to your balance, etc.
If you can't tell whether you've grabbed a rope or something that is not a rope, you have bigger problems. And what the hell are you even balancing when you're dangling from a dang rope? There is no such thing as balance in that situation. What are you even talking about?
Remember also, we are discussing climbing fast, for a standard human you can climb 30' up a rope in six seconds by the game rules.
Climbing is 1/4 speed (unless you take an extra –5 for accelerated climbing, in which case it's 1/2 speed), and outside of combat you don't double-move. So no, normal climbing is 5ft per 6 seconds, or 15ft per 6 seconds if accelerated.
Something I expect most of us couldn't do (certainly including myself) whether blinded or not.
Only because the modern average STR score is not 10. :/
But that still has nothing to do with visibility.If you are in a storm tossed pool or rapids though, where the DC is meaningful, being able to see can make quite a difference.
How? What do you need to see in order to tread water? Heck, people swim with little to no visibility all the time. That's pretty normal, actually.
As for the wallet, removing a wallet from a pocket would probably be done without eyes anytime.
Indeed. Yet I've encountered GMs who would ask players to roll randomly to see what item they retrieved when they wanted to pull out their potions of remove blindness. :/
Picking the correct card though, if you have more than one, would be more difficult.
No, it wouldn't. I know this because I pull it out without looking all the time (talking to the cashier, looking over and asking my wife to pick up the grocery bag, looking up at a clock to check the time, etc). I never have to look to get that card out.
Same thing with my keys: when I pull them out of my pocket, I only have to look because my apartment key and the key to my building's pool are the same shape. But by the time I've raised my keychain into my field of vision, I've already got my grip on those two keys and no others: even without looking, I never accidentally grab my car key, work locker key, mailbox key, etc. Never. I always have it down to the two identical keys before I even see the keychain. If I took off the pool key, I wouldn't need my eyes until I was trying to get the key into the lock.
But when you give examples that are probably DC 0, and then show that they shouldn't have a penalty because you can do them routinely (take 10) it doesn't really help your case anyway, since both 6 (with the penalty) and 10 (without it) are successes.
You would have a point if all I was claiming was that I still succeed. But I'm not: I'm saying there's little (if any) difference in difficulty at all. It doesn't take me longer to pull out my debit card or get the right key when I don't look. Seeing these objects doesn't make the task easier.
You are correct, I was think the 1/2 speed of swim, not the 1/4 speed of climb. And you certainly can, although usually don't bother, take double moves outside of combat. A round is a round whether combat is happening or not. I would wager to guess that most people would climb better when blindfolded than not. I would rule that it is effected by sight.
Perhaps you have never treaded water in waves in the dark. One obvious difficulty is closing your mouth so you don't breath water when a wave hits your face. And once again, the question isn't whether it is possible, or even easy when blinded, the question is whether it is easier or harder to do with or without sight.
Without having noted differences in flasks or ways of labeling potions besides writing on them or noting specific places to keep a certain potion, I would expect that a blinded person would not be able to tell one potion from another easily. I have always assumed that potion vials are pretty much identical. If you have a dozen or so in your backpack, grabbing the correct one when you can't see the labels would, I think be random. Perhaps you have a different mental image of potions than I do.
I guess you only have one credit/debit card or are much more organized than I am when it come to keeping cards in certain slots in your wallet. I would never be able to identify which card I pulled without looking at it.
It doesn't take me longer to pull out my debit card or get the right key when I don't look. Seeing these objects doesn't make the task easier.
In game terms, both would be a move equivalent action with or without the penalty. Depending on the DC, both might well be an automatic success, with or without the penalty. That doesn't mean the penalty is inappropriate.
In any event, I think we have quite well illustrated that this is a GM call, and different people will interpret it differently. That isn't a bad thing, and I wouldn't blame any GM for interpreting specific situations different than I would.
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I have always assumed that potion vials are pretty much identical. If you have a dozen or so in your backpack, grabbing the correct one when you can't see the labels would, I think be random. Perhaps you have a different mental image of potions than I do.
O_O
Are... are you serious? You imagine life-risking adventurers' inventories as being loose piles of junk in a backpack? So, when YOU use a backpack, do you take your wallet, keys, lunch, water bottle, books, compass, etc and just dump them all in together? Iomedae's tits, man, you need to turn in your roleplay card. Cripes.
Are... are you serious? You imagine life-risking adventurers' inventories as being loose piles of junk in a backpack? So, when YOU use a backpack, do you take your wallet, keys, lunch, water bottle, books, compass, etc and just dump them all in together? Iomedae's t$*+, man, you need to turn in your roleplay card. Cripes.
Well, if I grab several kinds of soda, I probably just put them in the pack, and would rely on my eyes to tell me which flavor when I wanted to grab them. Same with a book. Some things might be in a certain pouch, but a lot would require visual identification to tell the difference.
Now If there was something special that I might need to get to quickly, I would make preparations for that. In the case of a potion of remove blindness for an adventurer, that would be a good idea. I would expect that whatever special effort I made to make it easily to grab would indeed by noted on my character sheet.
Perhaps your roleplay card includes assuming things that aren't said or written down. Mine says, if you want something special you better note it on your sheet.
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Perhaps your roleplay card includes assuming things that aren't said or written down. Mine says, if you want something special you better note it on your sheet.
Yes, my idea of roleplaying includes unwritten, unspoken assumptions that a fantasy hero has at least as much common sense as the modern desk-jockey who's playing him. It assumes that doing utterly stupid things like dumping life-saving emergency solutions into an unusable pile is NOT the default, and that knowing which pocket contains my don't-die-yet potion is NOT something "special" that I'd "better note on my sheet".
If you're roleplaying a character who isn't a "village idiot" or somesuch, then an assumption that he won't know where his life-saving potion is unless the player explicitly notes it on his sheet is absolutely a failure to roleplay.
"Roleplaying" is when the "playing" is based on the "role".
Are... are you serious? You imagine life-risking adventurers' inventories as being loose piles of junk in a backpack? So, when YOU use a backpack, do you take your wallet, keys, lunch, water bottle, books, compass, etc and just dump them all in together? Iomedae's t$*+, man, you need to turn in your roleplay card. Cripes.Well, if I grab several kinds of soda, I probably just put them in the pack, and would rely on my eyes to tell me which flavor when I wanted to grab them. Same with a book. Some things might be in a certain pouch, but a lot would require visual identification to tell the difference.
Now If there was something special that I might need to get to quickly, I would make preparations for that. In the case of a potion of remove blindness for an adventurer, that would be a good idea. I would expect that whatever special effort I made to make it easily to grab would indeed by noted on my character sheet.
Perhaps your roleplay card includes assuming things that aren't said or written down. Mine says, if you want something special you better note it on your sheet.
Ever seen pictures of troops with pouches fastened to their body armor? They know exactly what is in each pouch and can pull out exactly what they need while blindfolded. They can do that because they have practiced it because they know their lives might very well depend on it. Any adventurer who has made it to 1st level has received enough training to do the same.
Ever seen pictures of troops with pouches fastened to their body armor? They know exactly what is in each pouch and can pull out exactly what they need while blindfolded. They can do that because they have practiced it because they know their lives might very well depend on it. Any adventurer who has made it to 1st level has received enough training to do the same.
Depends a lot on the adventurer I would say. Regardless, any gamer who has played more than one module, should know that if you want everything in specific pouches in easy to reach locations, you need to write that on your sheet.
Any adventurer should bring enough food, enough arrow reload, a whole bunch of useful basic supplies. These also need to be written down, and most GMs would say if you didn't a piece of equipment on your sheet, you don't have it, whether or not 'any adventurer' should know to bring it. Same thing here.
That is all I am saying. Unless you have something that can organize your potions, and it is noted that your potions are organized with that somethine (a bandoleer is ideal) than you don't have it.
It's "D&D", people. A game of imagination. The rules don't predict every possible imaginable scenario, and it's hard to say exactly how much the lack of light would impact in every specific situation.
The answer for situations like this MUST be "Talk things over with your friends and the ST. (Storyteller, the term "Game Master" implies an unreal sense of authority)
Anther thought: mass production is not a fantasy thing beyond arrows and such. Even arrows aren't produced is large quantity.
Every potion bottle is different from the next. Partly to show who the maker is, but also because it is quite difficult to make duplicates. Just go check out the local wine outlet: do the bottles all look the same or do some (most) look different to each other? Add to that, some are clay, some wood, some glass, and so on. You have variety.
Given how important such things are to a character, I think they would pack them in a way they know what is where, and can tell by feel.
/cevah
Ever seen pictures of troops with pouches fastened to their body armor? They know exactly what is in each pouch and can pull out exactly what they need while blindfolded. They can do that because they have practiced it because they know their lives might very well depend on it. Any adventurer who has made it to 1st level has received enough training to do the same.
Depends a lot on the adventurer I would say. Regardless, any gamer who has played more than one module, should know that if you want everything in specific pouches in easy to reach locations, you need to write that on your sheet.
Any adventurer should bring enough food, enough arrow reload, a whole bunch of useful basic supplies. These also need to be written down, and most GMs would say if you didn't a piece of equipment on your sheet, you don't have it, whether or not 'any adventurer' should know to bring it. Same thing here.
That is all I am saying. Unless you have something that can organize your potions, and it is noted that your potions are organized with that somethine (a bandoleer is ideal) than you don't have it.
We know that every caster except sorcerers can find something small on their person in the middle of combat without looking. These items are called spell components. We know that alchemists do this with their reagents for bombs and extracts too. Gunslingers can find the right bullets for their gun with no additional mechanics listed. So that leaves Fighters, Barbarians, Rogues, Cavaliers, Monks, Brawlers, Swashbucklers, Sorcerers, and Slayers who might no be able to default organize their gear for combat.
Unless you have something that can organize your potions, and it is noted that your potions are organized with that somethine (a bandoleer is ideal) than you don't have it.
I think potions being arranged by default in an careful, logical manner is strongly implied by the fact that RAW you can retrieve one as a move action. If I had six different bottles randomly shoved into a backpack full of coins and torches, it would probably take me a couple of minutes to find the one I wanted.