GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Diagnostic Scan uses a variety of senses - sight, hearing, smell, and touch - to analyze the target; if any of them are blocked, it's at a penalty (-2 per blocked sense), and if all are blocked, it's unusable.

Laser Microphone uses a single sense, LADAR (requiring the appropriate advantage), to detect vibrations (and thus "hear" sounds using the LADAR). Laser Spectrometry also uses LADAR, this time to serve as a spectrometer to analyze the target's chemical composition. Cutaneous Chemical Sense lets you taste things with your sense of touch, rather than needing to put the object in your mouth. Blood Taste lets you analyze blood using your sense of taste. Immune Spectrum Detection lets you notice if someone is having an immune response to something (that is, their body is attempting to fight off an infection or similar) from the way they smell. In all cases, there's only one sense (beyond the Detect itself) involved, meaning if it gets blocked the ability is rendered unusable... but because only one sense is involved, you only need that one sense (someone tied up, blindfolded, and with earplugs is at -6 to use Diagnostic Scan, but can use Immune Spectrum Detection without issue). Does that justify the former having a -40% Limitation and the latter having only a -20%? I'm not certain.

I'm also not entirely clear on what the "blocking one sense blocks the ability" version works as. Is this something where the character has multiple senses involved and blocking any one of them blocks the ability, or something where you choose one specific sense - say, Sight - and the ability becomes unusable if that sense is blocked? If it's the latter, I agree with awesomenessofme1 that it doesn't makes sense for that to be -80% while Sight-Based, Reversed is only -20%, as they seem indistinguishable. Or is it meant to be that - as is implied by the -80% being justified as similar to an alternative ability - that when you are using an ability that has Hypersensory, you lose the associated sense(s)? That is, if you're using Diagnostic Scan, you will fail to see, hear, smell, or feel anything unrelated to the scan (that would certainly justify the higher Limitation value!).

That wouldn't make sense, though, at least not the way you've phrased it. If "you fail to see, here, smell, or feel anything unrelated to the scan", it being through more senses would be more limiting, not less.