Question about Armor Divisor & Colorblindness Disadvantage

[foxanik]

Hello there!
It's me again with new questions to be answered.

1. Armor Divisor
How does AD (2) works on DR 1? Is DR put down to 0 or is it still 1? What I ask is: do I round it up or down?

2. Colorblindness Disadvantage
My players take it because most of them see it as "free 10 points". My question is: how do I use colorblindness against them? I mean every disadvantage is there for GM to use it against player, but it seems that I can't find any methods.

Little info: Setting is fantasy.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by foxanik

Hello there!
It's me again with new questions to be answered.

1. Armor Divisor
How does AD (2) works on DR 1? Is DR put down to 0 or is it still 1? What I ask is: do I round it up or down?

2. Colorblindness Disadvantage
My players take it because most of them see it as "free 10 points". My question is: how do I use colorblindness against them? I mean every disadvantage is there for GM to use it against player, but it seems that I can't find any methods.

Little info: Setting is fantasy.

With color blindness it will be more difficult to spot camouflaged things.

Their fashion sense might be off.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

With color blindness it will be more difficult to spot camouflaged things.

Actually, colorblind people have generally been found to be better at spotting camouflaged objects, though this is mostly based on studies simple red-green colorblindness. Not sure if the same would be true of the "total" colorblindness of the GURPS disadvantage.

They would, however, have a harder time applying camouflage to an object or themselves, as they can't detect a color contrast.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Actually, colorblind people have generally been found to be better at spotting camouflaged objects, though this is mostly based on studies simple red-green colorblindness. Not sure if the same would be true of the "total" colorblindness of the GURPS disadvantage.

I wouldn't think so, all you see is gradation from black to white. Just running pictures of people in camo through a b/w filter nothing seems to pop. With total colorblindness its harder to write secret messages, too.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by lexington

I wouldn't think so, all you see is gradation from black to white. Just running pictures of people in camo through a b/w filter nothing seems to pop.

My understanding of it is that it comes from a lifetime of things having poor color contrast enhancing one's awareness of brightness and texture contrasts to compensate.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by RyanW

My understanding of it is that it comes from a lifetime of things having poor color contrast enhancing one's awareness of brightness and texture contrasts to compensate.

Any non-standard color perception is going to have an advantage when dealing with camouflage designed to defeat one specific type of color perception, but what you're describing is basically someone buying Acute Vision along with colorblindness.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by RyanW

My understanding of it is that it comes from a lifetime of things having poor color contrast enhancing one's awareness of brightness and texture contrasts to compensate.

That's too close to the myth that when one sense fades, the others become more acute. Some people can adapt remarkably, but most just pay more attention without increasing raw acuity.
My legally blind best friend thinks she has acute hearing as compensation. None of us have the heart to tell her the truth.

[mlangsdorf]

Colorblindness in fantasy seems fairly punishing, actually.

You can't tell if that guy in armor over there is Sir Percy, the man you're supposed to be protecting from those assassins who are attacking him, or Sir Warwick, traitor to the realm. Perhaps if you could tell the difference between Sir Percy's yellow lion rampant on a field of blue heraldry and Sir Warwick's white lion rampant on a field of black heraldry, but you can't.

Remember that setting green mold on fire kills it, and setting yellow mold on fire causes the stuff to explode, and setting brown mold on fire causes it to grow.

Touching the red fields in the archmage's tower causes 4d bu damage. Touching the yellow fields while holding the passkey is the only way to disrupt them. The rare green fields heal 1 point of injury per second for 3d seconds, until they start to overload by turning brown and then they turn red. People who can tell colors have plenty of time to move their hands out of a green field as it overloads, but Colorblind people are out of luck.

Green orcs aren't particularly dangerous. Black orcs are practically unkillable.

In the civil war following the Emperor's death, your ally Vorkosigan's forces wear Imperial livery and a brown and silver armband for identification. Your enemy Vordarian's forces wear Imperial livery and a blue and yellow armband. You're delivering a payroll for Vorkosigan when you're surrounded by Imperial guardsmen with armbands, weapons drawn. What do you do?

tl;dr: If the only way to choose between a wise course of action and suicide is to be able to distinguish colors, don't be Colorblind.

[SCAR]

The text in Basic covers the basics: -1 to most Merchant and Tracking rolls will come up in a Fantasy game, as might Artist.
Penalties (minimum -1, almost certainly more) to any roll where color identification is a component - Gems, Livery (Heraldry), Buttons, Doors - which covers lots of Perception(Vision) or Identification rolls.

If Red doors in a dungeon are trapped/poisoned and everyone has Colorblindness, that's going to be trouble.

If the city guards where Blue Coats, and the League of Evil wears Red Coats, and the characters are involved in a battle where both sets of people are present, and the primary identification is the color of their coats - that's going to end badly!

Foraging for food - a particular type of Red mushroom is Very Toxic, where as the Brown ones are highly nutrious and have healing properties.

Or even, 2 unlabeled potions - the Green one turns the drinker into a Gelatinous Cube, the Yellow one turns them into a Dragon!

[PseudoFenton]

Originally Posted by foxanik

Colorblindness Disadvantage
My players take it because most of them see it as "free 10 points". My question is: how do I use colorblindness against them?

Use:

• Colour-coded dragons, knowledge of an attack before it happens is useful.
• Traps which require the pressing/avoidance of certain coloured things, more so in areas where other PCs can't easily ID things for them.
• Roaming Knights from different (sometimes hostile) regions, who all bear their heraldic symbols on banners and shields etc... but are most easily IDed via the colour of those symbols - meaning they'll need to be a lot closer for your colourblind PCs to ID them.
• Labeless potions which are IDed primarily by their colour (also consistency/ temperament, so colourblind PCs may be able to tell a few apart, but not easily).
• Magical text has a small but vital colour based syntax to it, making the reading of magical scrolls dependant on being able to distinguish between colours.
• Flowers/berries, bugs and reptiles are often naturally colour-coded to warn predators off from eating them (along with poisons or other harmful substances) - if they otherwise look very similar to common edible/harmless versions then you will get ill very quickly whilst living off the land.

Or, if you really can't work in any reasonable drawbacks, then smack your PCs around the back of the head and ban it (or make it a quirk/feature for a little character depth that's mostly irrelevant to the campaign).