[Basic] Advantage of the Week (#40): Discriminatory Senses, Sensitive Touch

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

/shrug

I can smell salt and sugar when they are in sufficient quantities (couple of tablespoons or more and not in a solution (ie, I can smell the salt from a salt shaker and sugar upon opening the sugar bin).

Both salt and sugar are prone to powdering, and if the powder becomes airborne you can smell it.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Powers does treat the Discriminatory Senses (less Sensitive Touch) as a unit like Acute Senses and points out that Hyperspectral Vision and Sensitive Touch are the equivalents for those two senses on page 47.

Profiling Vision seems like the Discriminatory vision trait.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Both salt and sugar are prone to powdering, and if the powder becomes airborne you can smell it.

I think many such particles are mildly charged so that wet nosed animals get a boost to detection ability totally aside from internal acuity.

But I also believe that we've all encountered foods that taste radically different than how they smell.

OT: but I actually took too big of a whiff of someone's powdered sugar and discovered that it was just enough to raise my blood sugar. Since that obviously shouldn't be possible for tiny amounts of scent molecules, I too think that most such sweet odors are probably more about bulk if microscopic "powder".

[Icelander]

If a character has Telekinesis and Sensitive Touch, does he enjoy the advantage of Sensitive Touch when using Telekinesis to work by touch?

If so, but the character is meant to only have Sensitive Touch on his actual manipulators, not the de facto ones that Telekinesis grants, what would be the value of the limitation?

What about if he only wanted to have Sensitive Touch for Telekinesis, not his actual skin?

If the two Advantages do not work together by default, what would be the value of an Enhancement which allowed them to do so?

Or a version of Sensitive Touch that only worked for Telekinesis?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

If a character has Telekinesis and Sensitive Touch, does he enjoy the advantage of Sensitive Touch when using Telekinesis to work by touch?

If so, but the character is meant to only have Sensitive Touch on his actual manipulators, not the de facto ones that Telekinesis grants, what would be the value of the limitation?

What about if he only wanted to have Sensitive Touch for Telekinesis, not his actual skin?

If the two Advantages do not work together by default, what would be the value of an Enhancement which allowed them to do so?

Or a version of Sensitive Touch that only worked for Telekinesis?

Is there any indication that Telekinesis includes a sense of touch at all?

Fictionally, there are occasional incidents of telekinesis providing this; I remember a scene involving Gil Hamilton in one of Larry Niven's stories, for example. But a lot of psychokinetics seem not to work this way; their manipulations are guided by what they can see. And a number of things that GURPS subsumes under Telekinesis don't seem to provide tactile feedback at all.

But in any case, Telekinesis and ordinary strength are different enough so I think you would need a separate trait. Discriminatory senses that work at range cost 15 points and Telekinesis works at range, ergo. . . .

[vicky_molokh]

How about adding the Ranged enhancement?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Is there any indication that Telekinesis includes a sense of touch at all?

It's stated to work like a pair of hands and you can use it for tasks that are difficult if not impossible without a sense of touch, such as lockpicking and fine carving. If it provided invisible hands with the Numb Disadvantage, it would be much less effective.

Originally Posted by whswhs

But in any case, Telekinesis and ordinary strength are different enough so I think you would need a separate trait. Discriminatory senses that work at range cost 15 points and Telekinesis works at range, ergo. . . .

OTOH, you've already spent points on a trait that allows you to touch things at a range, i.e. Telekinesis.

I suppose Sensitive Touch and High Manual Dexterity work the same and I should use a ruling on the latter as my guideline whether the former works with Telekinesis or not. Can't recall if it's specified in Powers, don't have my books with me here.

In any case, as the benefit of Sensitive Touch seems primarily to be skill bonuses and the reduction of a skill penalty, I'd think that the traits are similar enough so that whatever rule applies to High Manual Dexterity should also apply for it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

It's stated to work like a pair of hands and you can use it for tasks that are difficult if not impossible without a sense of touch, such as lockpicking and fine carving. If it provided invisible hands with the Numb Disadvantage, it would be much less effective.

I wasn't thinking of Numb; I was thinking of "no sense of touch at all."

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Profiling Vision seems like the Discriminatory vision trait.

No, it's not. Profiling is an enhancement added on top of Discriminatory, and it functions not so much to enhance sensory bandwidth as to enhance memory for what is sensed.

The mechanics of applying Profiling to Vision directly only makes sense because Vision as such as already inherently Discriminatory, free for nothing. You divide the +50% by 5% and you get 10 points as the cost of Profiling Vision. And since Vision is free, you are buying Profiling Vision directly as an advantage, the same way you would buy Long directly as an advantage for your basic two human arms that you get free.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I wasn't thinking of Numb; I was thinking of "no sense of touch at all."

Well, that's even worse.

How do you pick pockets or locks, massage people or carve scrimshaw without a sense of touch?

If Telekinesis can perform all the same tasks as a pair of hands, it needs some equivalent sense to the sense of touch to do it.