[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Colorblindness

[johndallman]

Colorblindness [-10] is a mundane physical disadvantage, giving you true monochromatic vision. It dates back to GURPS 1e, and hasn’t changed much since then. The penalties are situational, but you have at least -1 to most rolls against skills that use colours, including Artist, Chemistry, Driving, Merchant, Piloting and Tracking. More restricted versions, such as red-green or yellow-blue deficits are valid physical quirks.

Humans are naturally colour-blind at very low light levels; presumably enough Night Vision removes the problem. However, TL7-8 technological devices that give Night Vision or Infravision also give Colorblindness; the corresponding devices in Ultra-Tech indicate that this goes away at TL9. The disadvantage is an occasional option on published character templates, but many normal animals are Colourblind, even when upgraded, as are the aggressive mutant plants of AtE. Bio-Tech reckons the disadvantage should be preventable with genefixing by the end of TL8, along with eye upgrades to fix it. DF14 psisight is Colorblind, and Lands Out of Time gives Pharmacy (Herbal) a penalty for this disadvantage. Several animal forms that can be used with Magic’s Partial Shapeshifting spell suffer from Colorblindness, and Space includes it in the alien-design system.

Since this disadvantage is caused by an inherited defect of the eyes, it’s impossible to buy off without extraordinary means: high-grade bioengineering, ultra-tech replacement eyes, or magic that’s rather more specialised than Magic provides.

Colorblindness may occasionally be advantageous in seeing through camouflage, but mostly it’s a nuisance. Someone I know with color problems close to this disadvantage has the quirk "Always dresses in black, white or grey," which does save him a lot of mistakes.

I’ve taken this disadvantage on a couple of characters, both specialist fencers as it happens. It wasn’t disastrous, but wasn’t all that interesting either. Has it caused chaos for you?

[RogerBW]

It's probably more of a problem at higher TLs than lower ones - particularly when coloured indicator lights become common, if the society hasn't realised that this is the case and taken secondary measures to make things usable with limited colour vision.

(I don't think GURPS directly represents any of the more usual forms of colour-blindness; they're probably Quirks for the most part. I know at least two people who have distinctly non-standard colour vision; both of them also have fairly bad sight in other respects too.)

Apparently some forms of total colour blindness can be acquired in later life, and so could be healed with brain regeneration rather than post-facto genetic manipulation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_achromatopsia

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Has it caused chaos for you?

No, because as you mentioned it's not very interesting as a flaw, so the only people who ever take it are those looking for Disads that won't particularly encumber them.

As such, I've occasionally reduced it's value to -5 to reflect the fact that though occasionally a severe problem ("Cut the red wire"), it's a seldom encountered problem.

I did once make an EOD specialist for a Twilight 2K GURPS game that had Colorblind [-1] as a Quirk. It never came up in game.

[Anthony]

My experience is that colorblindness is mostly a point crock -- it doesn't represent anything commonly found on anything particularly likely to be a PC, its penalties are hard to adjudicate (and thus likely to be forgotten or ignored) and the automatic penalties are for things a lot of PCs don't care about.

[ericthered]

I generally treat human level Colorblindness as a quirk. The full disad describes black and white vision, which isn't the common medical condition.

[RyanW]

In my steampunk setting, automata (and prosthetic eyes) invariably have Colorblindness.

[Maz]

A PC in my game has it, and it is worth the points. It mostly function as comic relief though.


First off, the player plays into it. So when he had the opportunity to buy a really cheap but good powerarmour, he went for it. The Player knew that it was so cheap because it was bright pink, but the PC didn't. It gives him penalties to stealth and makes him the occasionally target of jokes.
The PC prefers redheads, but do not always know exactly who that is, and sometimes insist someone is a redhead if he fancies them.

He is part of a high-lander like subculture. (Scottish, not the head-cut-offers). He has his own clan tartan's, but often have trouble distinguishing other clan tartans, which has already lead to trouble at least once.

The other PC's like to prank him about it. Like getting him to wear things with the colours clashing. For instance one bought him a nice tie for a formal dinner, with the tie being a very bright off colour, telling him it was just "light blue".

He is also the teams demolitions "expert". I say "expert" because he is the only one that actually have any skill at it and it's not terrible. But he has more than one gotten a penalty to a EOD check because of his colorblindness. Although we are all still waiting for the "no, cut the red wire!"-situation.



All in all I think he gets his points worth, but a large part of it is himself playing into it. But really, I think that goes for a most disadvantages.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by RyanW

In my steampunk setting, automata (and prosthetic eyes) invariably have Colorblindness.

Special Effect: Sepia Tone.

[talonthehand]

I had a counterfeiter with colorblindness once - the GM wanted us all to have a reason that we were in prison, and I wanted a unique one.

[Bruno]

My father was profoundly colourblind, as a result of a bad combination of regular old red-green colourblindness and some neurological problems.

The 80s were rough, because he couldn't perceive fluorescent colours consciously (they didn't seem "bright" or "intense" or "colourful" or anything) but given a choice between a fluorescent item and a normal one, he'd pick the fluorescent one almost every time (particularly fluorescent pink). He also liked paisley patterns, they were just visually interesting to him. This is a very dangerous combo.

Colourblindness is easily justification for the occasional -1 (or even -2) reaction penalty for being a fashion disaster. Fortunately he mostly stuck to solid colour dark suits but he kept buying ties...