[Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bad Sight, Blindness and Night Blindness

[johndallman]

Bad Sight, Blindness and Night Blindness are all mundane physical disadvantages. The first two appeared at GURPS 1e, and have not fundamentally changed since. Night Blindness appeared in Bunnies & Burrows for 3e.

Bad Sight is [-25], but if you're from a TL that has optics, a -60% mitigator for glasses, contact lenses, or whatever's appropriate is normally required, reducing it to [-10] -- they can still be lost or damaged. This is definitely a playable simplification, since there are vision defects that can't be entirely mitigated at TL8, from personal experience. Being farsighted makes reading very slow, imposes -6 to Per at close range, and gives -3 DX for close manual tasks, including close combat. Being nearsighted makes it impossible to read at a distance, imposes -6 to Per except at close range, gives -2 to melee attacks and doubles all distances for calculating range penalties. Either is a major handicap for an adventurer.

Blindness is [-50] and is very simple: you have no vision at all, and can't buy visual abilities that would offset it, although there are other ranged senses that are permitted. Many things are impossible, and you have to travel slowly and carefully, or be led. You are at -6 on melee combat skills, and can't use ranged combat skills unless you guess at where enemies are, or can hear them. This is a substantial improvement on someone who isn't used to being blind, who uses melee skills at -10. On the upside, you suffer no darkness penalties, and if you are a cinematic martial artist, the points for Blindness will buy Trained by a Master and a lot of Blind Fighting skill.

Night Blindness is [10]. You suffer double penalties for poor lighting, with a minimum of -3, and are effectively blind if your doubled penalty is -10 or worse. This is mutually exclusive with Night Vision and Dark Vision. You can have Acute Vision, but it only works if there is no penalty for poor lighting. There's a quirk level version of this in Power-Ups 6: Quirks.

Bad Sight is a common disadvantage option on published characters and templates, and quite a few animals have it. Blindness and Night Blindness are much rarer, although Blindness is an example for Afflictions and curses, can be a side-effect of attacks with acid, or explosive decompression, and can be inflicted using Pressure Points skill. Banestorm has a very skilled blind bard, matching the archetype in Fantasy. Bio-Tech has genefixing to prevent Bad Sight and Night Blindness, diseases that can cause any of these disadvantages, genetic therapy to cure them, and Blindness as a critical failure result on eye surgery. DF has spectacles, nageteppo flash-bombs and monsters that cause blindness. High-Tech has lights powerful enough to cause temporary blindness, flash from bombs that can cause lasting Bad Sight or Blindness, laser treatments for Bad Sight, and more detail on eyeglasses, while Horror has brains in jars without eyes, and hysterical blindness.

Infinite Words has a species that have Bad Sight for neurological, rather than optical, reasons, and can't mitigate it with simple optics. Low-Tech has more detail on early eyeglasses and eye surgery; Magic has spells that won't work on the blind, and Dungeon Magic has a style that requires vision. Martial Arts has critical hit results that cause sight problems, and Powers has advantages and disadvantages that go with these ones. Enhanced Senses defines Bad Sight in more detail, and The Weird makes use of those rules, to define surgical upgrades for animals. Psi-Tech has a way of forcing people to develop psi powers by removing mundane senses (eww), and Psionic Powers has psi attacks on the senses, astral vision and sensory effects of crippled psi powers.

Several Reign of Steel robots have limited vision, or none at all, and Space has vision guidelines for alien species, reminding us that human vision is really good. Ultra-Tech has blinding lasers, strobe warheads, and bionic eyes. Underground Adventures has blind cave-dwellers, and Zombies emphasises the difficulties of losing your glasses during an apocalypse.

I've never used any of these disadvantages on a PC, since I have really rotten sight and like to escape from its limitations. Has it been interesting or funny in your games?