03-18-2018, 11:54 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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How good is infravision
On the one hand, it says “eliminates vision penalties”, but on the other hand it says stuff about themperature differences.
The way I understand this: Infravision is as good as daylight, for the purposes of combat and scouting and finding traps and tracking. Air is a different temperature from walls and ceilings and skeletons and weapons and plants. The only downsides are: a) you can’t read; b) you can’t tell colors; c) you can’t see some stuff such as Simple Illusion; d) you *might not* see an earth elemental hidden against a rock wall. On the other hand, there are no real bonus upsides (examples): a) you don’t get to see invisible stuff; b) it won’t help defeat stealth beyond the darkness penalty; c) it won’t tell you whether something is alive or dead; d) it won’t help with tracking. It *would* tell you which of three stoves was recently on, because that’s just super obvious. Is this the intended effect?
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Per-based Stealth isn’t remotely as awkward as DX-based Observation. |
03-19-2018, 12:59 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: How good is infravision
I would say that DF prefers to make abilities straightforward to deal with, so the default treatment is just those effects, but a GM who wants to go to the effort can apply more effects (both positive and negative).
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03-19-2018, 02:42 PM | #3 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: How good is infravision
Yep. The only thing that officially matters is "Eliminates darkness penalties completely when dealing with things that aren't thermalized – or that are, but that are also within two yards of a heat source." It's really just a way of saying that you'll ignore darkness in a fight unless the GM feels like saying you can't. Whereas Dark Vision is really just a way of saying that you'll ignore darkness, period.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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