01-12-2013, 12:30 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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What's the point of parabolic hearing?
I've been studying up on the senses rolls for a tactical stealth system I've been putting together, and something has come up.
Hearing works thus: You roll perception to notice something. If you need to know the specifics of it (ie, listen in on a conversation) you might need to make an IQ roll in addition to that. Everything has a given distance you can hear it at not penalty. A quiet conversation is one yard away, for example. For every doubling of distance, you suffer a -1, and for every halving, you get a +1. So if you're 4 yards away from a quiet conversation, you have a -2. If you're 16 yards away, you have a -4, and so on. Acute Hearing adds +1, of course. This means that someone with acute hearing 1 can detect a quiet conversation at 2 yards away as well as someone who has acute hearing 0 (and he can detect a quiet conversation at 1 yard away at +1 when compared to someone with acute hearing 0). Acute Hearing costs 2 points. Every level of Parabolic Hearing allows you to double the distance you can hear something clearly. Thus, someone with parabolic hearing of 1 can hear a quiet conversation at 2 yards away at no penalty (and, I presume, at 1 yard away at no penalty). This costs 4 points per level. It seems to me that Acute Hearing does pretty much everything Parabolic hearing does, and more, for half the cost. There's some suggestions that parabolic hearing also filters out background noise and might give a bonus to the IQ roll for actually listening in on the conversation, but given that Acute Hearing is also beneficial when distances aren't involved, what's the benefit of it? What am I missing?
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01-12-2013, 12:39 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
Nothing. The hearing rules are broken. Parabolic hearing is supposed to be the equivalent of telescopic vision, but between hearing not using the range/speed chart and it not having the aiming bonus, it's grossly overpriced. I would drop it to 3p/level and give it the same rules as telescopic vision: +1 to hearing, +2 if you take an Aim maneuver. Or else drop it to 1p/level and it's +1 per level with an Aim maneuver. I'd also use the range/speed chart for hearing; something like:
Hearing: the hearing bonus to hear something at short range is (dB/5 - 5). Apply range/speed normally. In addition, subtract 1/10 of the background noise level (in dB) from all hearing rolls. Last edited by Anthony; 01-12-2013 at 04:06 PM. |
01-12-2013, 01:22 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
I house rule it so that Parabolic filters out background noise away from where your focusing. Makes it more useful.
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01-13-2013, 09:54 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
You've forgotten the other factor in hearing checks - competing noise.
Parabolic hearing most definitely should let you also reduce background noise penalties - but even then if it also lets you ignore -1/level in background penalties, it's still the same price to buy two levels of Acute Hearing, and you potentially get more benefit.
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01-13-2013, 10:01 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Chelyabinsk, Russia
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
I think it should be worth to write some Pyramid article about Senses (unless there is one already). Especially in regard of non-usual senses: Hearing, Smell, non-visible spectra, ESP, Detect as well as Obscure and other artificial or natural handicaps in sensing.
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01-13-2013, 10:25 AM | #6 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
From Basic Set:
Quote:
According to the tables in Mysteries: Quote:
Alternatively you could double the bonus from Acoustic or Background Signature Values (Mysteries, p. 48). This would possibly have a much larger overall effect than halving the range for determining range penalties, though. It would help to negate many of the other penalties for baffling and interposing barriers, like walls and such. I'm not sure which of these options best represents the intent of Parabolic Hearing, but using the more detailed hearing rules from Mysteries, it seems that Parabolic Hearing does become more useful than what Basic Set alone would suggest.
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01-14-2013, 12:55 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
This is a damn handy suggestion. I didn't know GURPS Mysteries had expanded hearing rules! Thanks.
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01-14-2013, 01:28 AM | #8 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
Quote:
The intent of parabolic hearing is pretty clearly to replicate the effects of real-world parabolic microphones. |
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01-14-2013, 04:07 AM | #9 | ||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
Quote:
Quote:
-------------------------------------------------- In fact, Hearing in GURPS gets no love at all. There are at least three systems for resolving hearing, zig-zagging between various resolutions. Neither of them gives a clear answer when and how frequently to roll and at what modifiers when someone tries to quietly sneak upon a target using Stealth vs. Hearing. There's the system in Basic Set, where each ×2 distance is a -1 to rolls. And a conversation is a Hearing+0 roll at 1 yard away. Decibels are not listed, and there's been some talk on the forum that use of decibels is not suitable for a roleplaying book. There's Mysteries, where SRT is used, plus -1 per 100 yards. There, a conversation has a base loudness of +6, thus heard on Hearing +0 at 20 yards. Then High-Tech came out, returned Conversation to +0 at 1 yard, and published Decibel values of various sounds. |
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01-14-2013, 07:43 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Provo, UT
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Re: What's the point of parabolic hearing?
That hearing chart is just silly I think. It makes hearing things way too easy. Someone with an 18 hearing has supernatural levels of hearing according to that chart.
What's missing is some idea of what penalties background noise should give. The only examples are listed under the Blind Fighting skill, which gives us -2 for rain; -3 for a crowded, noisy room; -4 for a full football stadium; and -5 for an artillery barrage. These numbers might be low for straight hearing though, because Blind Fighting relies on more than just hearing. (You're only at -7 if you can't hear at all). Using these rules a guy with an 18 hearing could hear the coach talking to his team (loud conversation) from the other side of the field (4 steps on the chart, -4) at a crowded football stadium (-4 for background noise), on a 10 or less. He could hear a whispered conversation from the other side of the field at an empty stadium on a 11 or less. With an 18 Hearing you could hear a normal conversation over 500 yards away on a 9 or less. Personally, I think in the future I'll just use the Size/Speed range chart when figuring out penalties for hearing rolls, modified by background noise and volume of the source. |
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