Blindness can be dealt with. Stubborn ignorance? Not so much.
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One way that could go a long way to helping GMs feel ready to run games with blind players and characters might be to have a free digital supplement to the GMG that talks about how to describe encounters and hazards with more than one sense, and to have some examples of both encounters and hazards that might be easier to navigate if characters are more used to relying on sense other than sight, including characters who might have improved scent or hearing or another sense due to some kind of power or ability.
This is a great idea, and frankly would be helpful to everyone, as the more senses you use the more evocative a description is. If it isn't something that Paizo has the staff to do, it is probably something we as fans could make-- they have put good fan content up on the website before.
This is a great idea, and frankly would be helpful to everyone, as the more senses you use the more evocative a description is. If it isn't something that Paizo has the staff to do, it is probably something we as fans could make-- they have put good fan content up on the website before.One way that could go a long way to helping GMs feel ready to run games with blind players and characters might be to have a free digital supplement to the GMG that talks about how to describe encounters and hazards with more than one sense, and to have some examples of both encounters and hazards that might be easier to navigate if characters are more used to relying on sense other than sight, including characters who might have improved scent or hearing or another sense due to some kind of power or ability.
I third that. More descriptors has never hurt an adventure. And you can only describe a, "dark stone hallway with... darkness," so many times before your players become bored. Adventure Paths tend to have some decent descriptions of the various locations, depending on the authors, but something a bit more hard coded from Paizo wouldn't be unappreciated.
This is a great idea, and frankly would be helpful to everyone, as the more senses you use the more evocative a description is. If it isn't something that Paizo has the staff to do, it is probably something we as fans could make-- they have put good fan content up on the website before.One way that could go a long way to helping GMs feel ready to run games with blind players and characters might be to have a free digital supplement to the GMG that talks about how to describe encounters and hazards with more than one sense, and to have some examples of both encounters and hazards that might be easier to navigate if characters are more used to relying on sense other than sight, including characters who might have improved scent or hearing or another sense due to some kind of power or ability.
This is an excellent point. This is something we can work to do as well. I will think about it as well, but it would be awesome if people started posting short encounters that provided opportunities for parties and players with different abilities. Even if our ideas are sloppy or off base, we can all help each other think of ways to improve them and dial it in to something even better.
This is a great idea, and frankly would be helpful to everyone, as the more senses you use the more evocative a description is. If it isn't something that Paizo has the staff to do, it is probably something we as fans could make-- they have put good fan content up on the website before.One way that could go a long way to helping GMs feel ready to run games with blind players and characters might be to have a free digital supplement to the GMG that talks about how to describe encounters and hazards with more than one sense, and to have some examples of both encounters and hazards that might be easier to navigate if characters are more used to relying on sense other than sight, including characters who might have improved scent or hearing or another sense due to some kind of power or ability.
I third that. More descriptors has never hurt an adventure. And you can only describe a, "dark stone hallway with... darkness," so many times before your players become bored. Adventure Paths tend to have some decent descriptions of the various locations, depending on the authors, but something a bit more hard coded from Paizo wouldn't be unappreciated.
This is an excellent point. This is something we can work to do as well. I will think about it as well, but it would be awesome if people started posting short encounters that provided opportunities for parties and players with different abilities. Even if our ideas are sloppy or off base, we can all help each other think of ways to improve them and dial it in to something even better.
I feel like that already exists somewhere. I know I saw something like that online years ago. Sorry, but I don't recall enough to say anything more helpful than that.
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So the basic framework for making a blind character is to give them the penalties described on page 487 and then the blind fight feat for free. An 8th level class feat (that isn't available until like 18th level for many classes) is a pretty sweet boon, and it simulates most of the "finding the target without using sight" idea pretty well.
The big problem is that without it leaves you without a precise sense. So you'd know the square of any enemy not successfully Sneaking, but you would have a 20% miss chance against any enemy as well. Not unworkable, especially if you use AoE or bombs, and in exchange you never have the 50% miss chance most characters occasionally suffer. But making those extra rolls to possibly miss for your entire career seems like it would become unfun.
Using the playtest Oracle can help us find a solution. At higher levels of their curse, Flame Mystery Oracles treat all enemies within 30 feet as concealed and all enemies outside of it as hidden. But they ignore the concealed condition inside 30 feet when targeting an enemy with a fire spell. That last bit doesn't fit thematically, so we would probably need to axe it. But the basic idea of "can observe any creature, including invisible ones, within 30 feet" has legs. I'd say giving creatures outside of that range the concealed or hidden conditions seems fairly balanced and fits with my understanding of the trade offs with relying on your other senses to replace sight. Whether you use concealed or hidden would mostly just come down to whether or not you have blind fight on top of the Oracle like ability. Many of the best spells have a 30 foot range anyway, so you'd be pretty darn viable.
If you used this approach, then you'd want your supplement to discuss distance in encounter design and how that will impact the blind PC. Relying on too many "snipers on the other side of a gorge" encounters would probably get frustrating, for example.
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I'll explain. You're discussing the "deafened condition" and, according to the CRB, Deaf characters can't have the "deafened condition".... Why is that? Now, I'm going to ask the development team this because, clearly, this wasn't thought through.... If they are basing this on the physical condition of "deafened" (which, since they don't make a distinction between the impairment and the mechanical condition -- in fact, they expressly link them within this text by saying that "deaf characters can't have the deafened condition" (thus making the "deafened condition" the same as the impairment/disability in the minds of the developers)
"The rules say this character is immune to this condition and therefore this character has this condition" is a reeeeeeally big stretch.
Deaf people can never lose their balance....
No, they aren't. The Deafened condition has no impact on how well you can balance.
Now, that's a neat trick considering that one's balance relies upon the workings of the inner ear and, if it's attacked (via sound, sound waves - ex. Sound Burst, or a spell like Deafness....), one's equilibrium would be impacted and, thus, Deaf character's would be impacted.
The rulebook makes this distinction already. Spells with the sonic trait, like Sound Burst, deal sonic damage to deaf people just fine. Page 636"An effect with the sonic trait functions only if it makes sound, meaning it has no effect in an area of silence or in a vacuum. This is different from an auditory spell, which is effective only if the target can hear it. A sonic effect might deal sonic damage."
If a deaf character fails a save against Sound Burst they take 2d10 sonic damage, same as anyone else. They don't gain the deafened condition because they are immune to it. If they critically fail their save, they take double damage and are stunned 1, just like anyone else, but still aren't deafened.
Okay I am starting to get this, a bit.
The game uses the condition "blinded" to represent a character who can see suddenly not being able to, which does result in said character having trouble unless they have training or some reference. However, a person who has grown used to not seeing while not affected by lack of sight can still be affected depending on what was damaged.
The problem is that the game doesnt consider the organs used to have sight and treats the "blinded" more like a blindfold. Similarly, the game doesnt consider the organs used to hear and treats "deafened" like getting a noice cancelling headphone. In which case a person who can't see cant become "blinded", and a person who cant hear can't become "deafened".
But this is not necesarily the case IRL where things work more in a spectrum, and different people have different levels of adjustments.
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So I ask, how would you name the condition of not being able to see/hear? Because realistically both conditions must be in the game.
Again, that's not how Deafened works. The game makes the distinction between Sonic and Auditory effects.
There's probably not as realistic distinction between visual effects, but this is also a game where a fireball going off in a dark room doesn't do anything to mess up your vision, so.
I am just taking a stab at this and would be happy to see someone do better, but:
If there was a spell called "remove vision," and its effect was to remove a characters sense of vision, then that would not be dealing in the ableist and confusing language of having blind, blinded and blinding as 3 separate things?
It would probably be more interesting and nuanced for remove vision to be a lower level spell and have the un-heightened effects just nock vision down to an imprecise sense, with a heightened version reducing it even further. If senses were things that characters actually payed attention to, then we wouldn't need conditions to represent modifications to them, but they could be tracked like other abilities in the game, and it would be a lot easier to establish what a balanced level of senses is for a default character, as well as how boosting that would balance with other things.
Like a character could just have
Senses:
Vision:
Hearing:
Scent/taste:
touch:
and other: (psychic, blood sense, silver sense, etc).
With three levels, precise, imprecise, and ancillary. I guess a 4th level, non-existent.
This would also allow players to consider playing characters with a wider array of sensory abilities than just: characters must be assumed to have perfect vision or else not be "functional," which is definitely how a lot of folks in the gaming community perceive characters with sensory differences now.
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Inclusiveness is suggesting different interpretations, giving options, making things so that basically everyone can find a way to play the game; it's not complicating the rules (and their language) tenfold to accurately handle every single possible disability and to hardcode how each possible effect interacts with each of them.
Inclusiveness is suggesting different interpretations, giving options, making things so that basically everyone can find a way to play the game; it's not complicating the rules (and their language) tenfold to accurately handle every single possible disability and to hardcode how each possible effect interacts with each of them.
The base of my suggestion was changing the name of the spell blindness, to something akin to remove vision, because that is what the spell is doing, it is taking away one sense for a period of time.
Going off of Laarafel’s comment above, many of the effects that create blindness in PF2 (sand in the face), might be better off having some other condition that still can effect characters that don’t rely on vision for perception.
The second part of my post was intended more as a thought toward an optional rule that would give the senses more interesting space to work around. Much like how the GMG does offer alternative stat options.
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Inclusiveness is suggesting different interpretations, giving options, making things so that basically everyone can find a way to play the game; it's not complicating the rules (and their language) tenfold to accurately handle every single possible disability and to hardcode how each possible effect interacts with each of them.The base of my suggestion was changing the name of the spell blindness, to something akin to remove vision, because that is what the spell is doing, it is taking away one sense for a period of time.
Going off of Laarafel’s comment above, many of the effects that create blindness in PF2 (sand in the face), might be better off having some other condition that still can effect characters that don’t rely on vision for perception.
The second part of my post was intended more as a thought toward an optional rule that would give the senses more interesting space to work around. Much like how the GMG does offer alternative stat options.
I wasn't replying to you specifically, Unicore. Your suggestion could work.
I'm just saying that if you complicate the base rules too much trying to catch all possible cases, you are only making the game harder to learn and to play, while always still leaving some people out.I'd rather keep simple rules that work easily in most cases and let tables handle exceptions, possibly giving suggestions for the most common ones like Paizo did.
I'm just saying that if you complicate the base rules too much trying to catch all possible cases, you are only making the game harder to learn and to play, while always still leaving some people out.
I'd rather keep simple rules that work easily in most cases and let tables handle exceptions, possibly giving suggestions for the most common ones like Paizo did.
Megistone, I think we all agree that the best solution is one that is direct and as accessible to players as possible, which means using as simple and direct language as possible.
The question is whether or not the usage of blindness, blinding, and blind fits that bill or not. If some people are telling us that this usage is more confusing AND exclusionary than the developers or some of the users of the game might have originally thought, and it can be reworded to be clearer and less exclusionary, it is in all of our interests to do so.
It is perfectly fair and reasonable for people who feel excluded by the wording of rules to explain why and how those rules could be written more clearly.
Steering away from blinded and deafened as conditions, replacing them with words that focus more on what is actually happening (like the painful distraction of having sand kicked into one's face, or of a magic temporarily impairing a sense), feels like an overall improvement for everyone.