Does Detect only detect the nearest source?

[whswhs]

What I normally use (see some designs in GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses) to make a Detect function more like a normal sense in Reflexive. I figure that keeps it on all the time and/or turns it on when something significant is in range; so if you have it on, you spot the nearest significant source, but you go on sweeping the environment for other sources.

[Bruno]

There's an interesting side effect to the "significant" source wording - take Detect (Life), for example. A single wandering ant probably isn't significant [1]. If someone has shrunk down to the size of an ant, are they significant?

Are they significant if they totally don't care about the person using Detect and their affairs, they just happen to be a tiny superhero on the way to a superheroing award ceremony?

Are they significant if they're a tiny superhero about to thwart your plans?

Without Analyzing, I suspect Detect (Life) considers "significant" to be mass or volume based, not intelligence, and definitely not motive.
If you're a life-detecting blob monster who eats life, you're probably mildly interested in the ant, and in Ant-Man (everything's on the menu!), but you definitely care about a big dog, as it's a big meal. And you probably don't analyze your results much because you're stupid, and you really only have simple interests anyways.

If you're a life-draining undead monster that preys on "the living", Ant-Man might actually be of more interest... but you'll need to analyze the results to realize that actually that tiny thing is a sapient being that would be satisfying to suck the life out of, rather than a tiny bug.

[1] At least outside. Inside it can signify the start of an ant problem, and makes me freak the eff out and buy a million ant traps and tape them to everything.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Bruno

There's an interesting side effect to the "significant" source wording - take Detect (Life), for example. A single wandering ant probably isn't significant [1]. If someone has shrunk down to the size of an ant, are they significant?.

Depends on what the Detect (Life) is actually detecting. The real thing this wording is trying to get at is that senses have a threshold - you can't generally smell one molecule, or even hear one blade of grass vibrating, but there's a concentration of them at which you can.

If it detects something like concentrations of enough biomolecules to scatter a sensor beam back, then no probably not, that's straight up mass dependent. If it detects a magical aura, quite possibly.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The real thing this wording is trying to get at is that senses have a threshold - you can't generally smell one molecule, or even hear one blade of grass vibrating, but there's a concentration of them at which you can.

Would it be fair to apply the SSR table?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Would it be fair to apply the SSR table?

I always have, its a sense so takes normal sense modifiers. Well most of them, as different things may or may not block it