What combat penalities for Bad Sight (Low Resolution) or Detect Light (Precise)?

[Sam Baughn]

Template Toolkit 2 says that a lot of animals have either Bad Sight (Low Resolution) (most mammals and reptiles) or Blindness and Detect Light (Precise) (most arthropods).

Bad Sight (Low Resolution) gives a flat -4 to 'spot objects' at any range. It doesn't list a specific penalty for attacks or defences, but the Basic Set says both melee and ranged attacks take a penalty for 'partial darkness, smoke, fog, etc.' which implies that any penalty to vision might also reduce effective skill for attacks (but, oddly, not for defences, as far as I can tell). Does Bad Sight (Low Resolution) give any penalty for attacks (assuming it is the only sense used)? Does it give any for defences?

Detect (Light) 'provides the ability to sense light sources, reflective patches, or spots of specific colors, and to tell the direction to them'. It isn't at all clear to me if that is meant to be enough to attack or defend with. From the description, it seems unlikely that you could recognize objects in the way that a human could, but it may allow you to judge roughly how big something is and how it is moving, which may be enough to attack and defend. Certainly many creatures with compound eyes seem to be able to attack or dodge using only vision (e.g. dragonflies and mantises attacking, flies dodging). If so, should there be a penalty? I guess that Detect (Light) at least suffers the usual penalties that vision would (darkness, fog, etc.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Sam Baughn

Bad Sight (Low Resolution) gives a flat -4 to 'spot objects' at any range. It doesn't list a specific penalty for attacks or defences, but the Basic Set says both melee and ranged attacks take a penalty for 'partial darkness, smoke, fog, etc.' which implies that any penalty to vision might also reduce effective skill for attacks (but, oddly, not for defences, as far as I can tell). Does Bad Sight (Low Resolution) give any penalty for attacks (assuming it is the only sense used)? Does it give any for defences?

I'm not sure how well that disadvantage was thought out. Mechanically in GURPS it should give a -4 to attacks. Realistically, it should probably just be Acute Vision -4 [-8] and have no combat penalties.