Weak infravision for half-orcs and such

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Obviously, Infravision is hosed against the occasional rare foe like a golem or skeleton ranged combatant that has been sitting around the same spot in the dungeon forever. But that's a small weakness next to Night Vision's total inability to cope with total darkness, which is a downright common issue in the dungeon.

This makes sense, though the traits don't seem to be priced that way—Night Vision 9 only costs one point less than Infravision. My assumption is that these traits were priced on the basis that while total darkness might be common in a sense, light sources are fairly easy to come by—whether you have some fancy hands-free gadget, a henchthing carrying a torch, or use magic (from the obvious Light and Darkness spells to continuously-maintained 1 FP fire spells).

And to be clear, the problem I'm trying to solve is just that it seems unintuitive that a human / Infravision-haver half-breed would have Night Vision 5 as written. I assume this was done to avoid too much complexity, which is fine, what I want to know is what a good solution would be if you're tolerating a bit of complexity.

[Kromm]

Shrug.

At some point, it might just be simpler to say "Strong dungeon-sight is what GURPS calls Dark Vision [25], which eliminates the full -10 for total darkness. Weak dungeon-sight is Night Vision 5 [5], which eliminates half the penalty but always requires at least some light." Then notice that these should cost 10 and 5 points for the penalty eliminated, but that the 25-point version has a 15-point premium for "works even without any light" which is priced on a par with See Invisible [15], because it changes "can't see" to "can see" under certain circumstances.

I wouldn't call it more complicated. I'd just call it expensive if PCs will ever have Dark Vision. If they won't, you don't really care.

[Anthony]

You can make it closer by changing the pricing of night vision to [2]. Low levels of night vision are actually amazingly powerful, so it's a reasonable deal even at [2].