GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

I know this is an old thread, but it's still the best place to ask this. What exactly is the difference between Hypersensory and Sense-Based, Reversed? I've been going around in circles in a conversation over this and gotten nowhere. Hypersensory is worth so much more points for seemingly a fairly similar limitation, and the book includes both of them on Detect in different abilities.

The way I see it is that Hypersensory is a modifier for what might be called a parasensory ability: Danger Sense, Empathy, Dark Vision, all that sort of thing. It can be something that the added sense depends on, when it normally wouldn't, which makes it a limitation; or it can be a source of added sensory channels that you can fall back on if the main one is blocked, which makes it an advantage.

On the other hand, Sense-Based, Reversed is a modifier for attack abilities. It says that you can attack by perceiving things. For example, back in the 1950s, Superman (and Superboy) used to use his X-ray vision at high intensity to heat up things he was looking at (later this was renamed "heat vision" and defined as a separate power); that was sort of like an attack power as an AA of a sensory power.

Those are two different cases.