Tremorsense and no vision


Rules Discussion


Am I correct that something with tremorsense and no vision must make a DC11 flat check to succeed at every attack ?

And if that is the case and I fail the first flat check do I still apply MAP?

I am looking at violet fungus and for level 3 monster this significantly weakens it compared to others . Is this partially offset by DC20 being quite a high fort save?

Because it’s attacks and AC aren’t on the high end. Has lower AC but higher HP which will keep it around.

I am intrigued by it. It didn’t have vision issues in 1E so this is a big change it would seem


That is correct. Tremorsense is by default an imprecise sense, so the most you can "detect" someone with it is "hidden", meaning you have to pass a DC 11 flat check to effect them.

As to the creature itself, it has slightly higher than average HP for a 3rd level creature, average-ish AC, and average to low saves, but it has quite a number of immunities to common attack vectors like Bleed.

DC 20 on it's Poison is a "Hard" DC for level 3. All in all it looks about right to me, if a bit pillow fisted.

Really just having a special sense like tremorsense is a sort of boon to the Violet Fungus. While you can still attempt to sneak by it by stepping lightly, it automatically detects anything moving or making vibrations in the ground within 60 feet of it, making them hidden. Hard to sneak up on it.


I would say any creature without vision naturally and with only one other imprecise sense (esp if it is limited in range) I make it precise. This allows Violet Fungi to do their thing within their listed range and it's not like it makes them broken or too powerful.

Grand Lodge

Sorry to Necro this thread, but another thread on this topic stated that they had contacted Mark Seifter, one of the Lead Designers about this. He indicated that all creatures are assumed to have normal sight unless specifically noted otherwise. {Black Pudding is mentioned as an example: Perception +9; motion sense 60 feet, no vision}

I guess giving the creatures Tremorsense allows them to do their thing even in a zone of absolute darkness.

Thoughts?

Nifty


Well the Violet Fungus is specifically listed as having no vision.

But I agree with Timeshadow that we simply shouldn't have monsters like this that have no precise sense.

I agree with their process of making the Violet Fungus' natural tremorsense to be precise within it's range.

Horizon Hunters

Is there really a problem with a creature that doesn't have a presice sense? It could be a useful tool to make a creature more balanced. Like, sure it hits like a truck, but if it's hard for it to hit, it could make for a tense combat. It also rewards players who figure out ways around it, like if someone realizes it has tremor sense you could fly to counter it.


Cordell Kintner wrote:
Is there really a problem with a creature that doesn't have a presice sense? It could be a useful tool to make a creature more balanced. Like, sure it hits like a truck, but if it's hard for it to hit, it could make for a tense combat. It also rewards players who figure out ways around it, like if someone realizes it has tremor sense you could fly to counter it.

If the creature's mechanics account for it, there's nothing wrong.

But the Violet Fungus has standard stats (despite what some posted months ago). And if its tremor sense is what's precise, PCs could still fly to bypass it.
I'm not sure a simple "more damage" route works since that'd make battles really swingy, especially with crits on the table. So the adjustment would need to work toward smoothing out such major variance (if one were going to fall into the standard PF2 paradigm.)


Anyway, all these senses are completely messy. Having just tremorsense means that a violet fungus is unable to perceive a wall or a hole... They are a joke to natural selection.

Also, most monsters with imprecise tremorsense have it spelled Tremorsense (Imprecise). I think they made a mistake on the Violet Fungus by forgetting that in the case of Tremorsense you have to say it's precise when for most other senses the base version is the precise one.


Cordell Kintner wrote:
Is there really a problem with a creature that doesn't have a presice sense? It could be a useful tool to make a creature more balanced. Like, sure it hits like a truck, but if it's hard for it to hit, it could make for a tense combat. It also rewards players who figure out ways around it, like if someone realizes it has tremor sense you could fly to counter it.

Yeah, it's a really bad way to balance things. As noted below, in the event that you do have the attack and damage bonuses upped to increase for the fact that you're going to miss half the time due to concealment, then when someone gets crit they're much more likely to go down from that single hit (at least at level 3 for the Violet Fungus). And as also already mentioned, the stats of the Violet Fungus don't even really compensate for it, they're basically just the standard stats for a level 3 creature.


Castilliano wrote:
But the Violet Fungus has standard stats (despite what some posted months ago).

Hah, this sounds very much like a claim I made in a thread about oozes, which I later recanted. Suffice to say, the violet fungus simply doesn't have any reason to believe that it was made with the assumption of a 50% chance of landing a hit even after the attack roll was successful.

Super Bidi wrote:
Having just tremorsense means that a violet fungus is unable to perceive a wall or a hole... They are a joke to natural selection.

I feel moved to point out that a substantial number of real-world plants and animals manage to get by without the ability to see walls. Sea sponges (which despite the sedentary lifestyle are indeed animals) come to mind. It turns out, natural selection often jokes, but doesn't seem to mind allowing creatures to live without vision anyway. This is even if we ignore the probability of a sense of touch, which as of yet no creature is confirmed to have or not have, presumably since it isn't incredibly relevant for our purposes.

Claxon wrote:
Yeah, it's a really bad way to balance things. As noted below, in the event that you do have the attack and damage bonuses upped to increase for the fact that you're going to miss half the time due to concealment, then when someone gets crit they're much more likely to go down from that single hit (at least at level 3 for the Violet Fungus). And as also already mentioned, the stats of the Violet Fungus don't even really compensate for it, they're basically just the standard stats for a level 3 creature.

Personally I think I would simply have such a creature deal about double the expected damage on a hit (perhaps a bit less) and leave the attack roll the same. Still crits on the same numbers as another creature of its level, but because it misses about half the time when it would have rolled a hit, each hit needs to account for 2 normal hits. This doesn't feel like it would necessarily be too much to handle, I don't think most monsters are designed to drop a PC in 2 hits anyway (depending what level they encounter it...), though there's always the issue of the chance of rolling either two successful hits in a row, or unleashing a lucky crit for a whopping 4x damage... though again, such a monster would be basically rolling twice and taking the worst result to see if it hits so even such terrifying damage is not terribly likely to be followed up on before allies can come to the aid... I like the idea even as much as I weigh the flaws

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