GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Honestly, balance, proprioception, and eye-hand coordination should all be DX rolls, for all that they're forms of perception.

Well, really, I think they normally are. Perfect Balance is mostly a bonus to DX and DX-based skills, isn't it? And I don't think there's anything but DX to represent proprioception.

[Irioth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

And my view of the matter is that if we're going to talk about "biologically realistic abilities," we have to look at what actual living organisms can do, not at what we might like to imagine living organisms could do.

In my opinion this view is far too restrictive. We ought to look at what actual living organisms can do, and what it is scientifically plausible living organisms could do, in order to avoid the hasty generalization fallacy of taking what Earthly evolution did or did not produce as the ultimate potential of living organisms, since sheer chance has had a significant influence in shaping its output. E.g. even if cephalopods did not exist, it would be easy to recognize vertebrate eyes carry a serious design flaw that genetic engineering could remedy.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Irioth

In my opinion this view is far too restrictive. We ought to look at what actual living organisms can do, and what it is scientifically plausible living organisms could do, in order to avoid the hasty generalization fallacy of taking what Earthly evolution did or did not produce as the ultimate potential of living organisms, since sheer chance has had a significant influence in shaping its output. E.g. even if cephalopods did not exist, it would be easy to recognize vertebrate eyes carry a serious design flaw that genetic engineering could remedy.

That looks to me to be a justification that could simply wipe out the difference between (biologically realistic) Enhanced Senses and Supersenses. To my mind, it's already pushing at restrictions to suppose that various animal senses can be emulated in a more or less human body and processed by a more or less human brain. But "we know this ability is scientifically plausible because we know that such-and-such organism actually has it" draws a clear line; "we don't see any reason that an organism couldn't have this ability" seems to me not to, because different people have quite different senses of realism and possibility.

Of course, if you're the GM, you're free to decide that an ability Enhanced Senses classes as a supersense is "biologically plausible" and make it available through genetic engineering or the like. But to me, that's playing tennis without the net; it's not a sport that appeals to me. And in any case, the range of real, scientifically described animal senses is so astonishing that it provides plenty of cool abilities in a campaign I would consider biologically plausible and thus hard sf rather than space opera or supers.

[Irioth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That looks to me to be a justification that could simply wipe out the difference between (biologically realistic) Enhanced Senses and Supersenses. To my mind, it's already pushing at restrictions to suppose that various animal senses can be emulated in a more or less human body and processed by a more or less human brain. But "we know this ability is scientifically plausible because we know that such-and-such organism actually has it" draws a clear line; "we don't see any reason that an organism couldn't have this ability" seems to me not to, because different people have quite different senses of realism and possibility.

Of course, if you're the GM, you're free to decide that an ability Enhanced Senses classes as a supersense is "biologically plausible" and make it available through genetic engineering or the like. But to me, that's playing tennis without the net; it's not a sport that appeals to me. And in any case, the range of real, scientifically described animal senses is so astonishing that it provides plenty of cool abilities in a campaign I would consider biologically plausible and thus hard sf rather than space opera or supers.

We shall have to agree to disagree on the main point, though, which is fine by me. I agree however to adapt the full range of animal senses is more than enough to cover the vast majority of what would be needed to optimize senses for genegineered humans. Otherwise, I'd assume neurological adjustments would also allow to enable most Hypercognition abilities. By the way, which animal sense Blood Taste and Immune Spectrum Detection are supposed to duplicate ?

As it concerns the topic of which animal senses would be feasible to emulate in a human body and process by a human brain, I tend to assume the main realistic tradeoff/drawback would be certain animal-like features that may be necessary for the sense to work properly, such as larger-than-usual and oddly-shaped eyes and ears, cat-like whiskers (unless human hair gets adjusted in a mohawk-like style to work the same way), eyes that gleam in dim light, cat-like pupils, and the like. Certain senses enhancements however may probably be acquired without need of any major cosmetic changes.

As it concerns the ability of human brain to process enhanced senses, neuroplasticity can likely take care of a good deal of it, and for the rest, anyone that is doing this kind of genetic engineering to improve human senses in all likelihood is also doing the same kind of work to boost physical and mental abilities at the same time. The sophisticated redesign of the human brain that would be necessary to substantially improve mental capabilities may also take care of seamless integration of boosted senses' processing. The final necessary tradeoff may be increased brain and skull size. Even so, sensory overload might get to be a serious problem at times unless countermeasures are specifically designed to block it if necessary.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

...

Of course, if you're the GM, you're free to decide that an ability Enhanced Senses classes as a supersense is "biologically plausible" and make it available through genetic engineering or the like. But to me, that's playing tennis without the net; it's not a sport that appeals to me. And in any case, the range of real, scientifically described animal senses is so astonishing that it provides plenty of cool abilities in a campaign I would consider biologically plausible and thus hard sf rather than space opera or supers.

It is more fun for me too to learn of strange earth life to use as alien features for extraterrestrial life.

Extant life already has the ever popular mantis shrimp for vision, sharks for electroperception and taste, bats/cetaceans for echolocation, moths for pheromonal sensitivity, bears and bloodhounds for smell, starnosed mole for touch, etc.

Strange specializations of those like hearing being a form of touch as well as fish's lateral line and whiskers.

[vicky_molokh]

Speaking of Bad Sight (Low Resolution) and (No Fovea). I'm somewhat confused. Are these forms of Bad Sight meant to be priced the same as Basic Set variants of Bad Sight?

It just seems that they're way worse than normal Bad Sights.
Low Resolution gives -4 on spotting things, which logically translates into a penalty on attack rolls (it's essentially like a fog/fuzziness that's caused by your eyes instead of the environment). If it doesn't affect attack rolls, I don't get how/why, because it's like having foggy/pixellated vision all the time.
No Fovea makes everything a Wild Swing (-5, cap of 9), -2 to defence, -3 to DX rolls in Close Combat and other stuff, plus lots of noncombat bad stuff.

Seems notably worse than one of Near- or Far-Sightedness overall.

[Celti]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Low Resolution gives -4 on spotting things, which logically translates into a penalty on attack rolls (it's essentially like a fog/fuzziness that's caused by your eyes instead of the environment). If it doesn't affect attack rolls, I don't get how/why, because it's like having foggy/pixellated vision all the time.

If that were the case, then Vibration Sense, Imaging Radar, and other low-resolution senses should get the same penalty on attacks, and they don't.

Don't think of it like 'fog', think of it like the difference between the graphics in Doom and Doom 3 — the latter has a lot more detail, but that doesn't make it any easier to hit the creatures.

Overall, I feel Low Resolution is fairly priced.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

No Fovea makes everything a Wild Swing (-5, cap of 9), -2 to defence, -3 to DX rolls in Close Combat and other stuff, plus lots of noncombat bad stuff.

Seems notably worse than one of Near- or Far-Sightedness overall.

No Fovea should be more expensive than Near or Farsightedness, yes. However, Nearsightedness or Farsightedness are almost exclusively correctable, reducing their real value to [-10]. If we ignore uncorrectable Near/Farsightedness, [-25] for No Fovea isn't terrible in comparison to [-50] for Blindness and [-10] for "traditional" Bad Sight. Would [-40] be better? Probably, but it's in print now and without much room to change it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Speaking of Bad Sight (Low Resolution) and (No Fovea). I'm somewhat confused. Are these forms of Bad Sight meant to be priced the same as Basic Set variants of Bad Sight?

Well, cats are kind of the poster children for Low Resolution; a cat's eye has slightly under 1/7 the resolution of the human fovea, which ought to be about -5 to Vision rolls. Do you notice cats having trouble spotting and pouncing on a moving target? A laser pointer dot, for example?

Human high visual acuity is used partly to spot small objects at considerable range—for example, ripe fruit on a tree some yards away—and partly to read facial expressions, which involve tiny muscles. It's not for nothing that we talk of "reading faces"; the ability to read is a useful secondary adaptation of that high visual acuity. But you don't need it just to get around the environment. There were those studies decades ago of blind people who had arrays of vibrators on their backs linked to video cameras; the resolution was much lower than a typical mammalian eye, but they could still navigate much better.

Targeting isn't a question of spotting things; it's a question of tracking them once you've spotted them.

As to loss of foveal vision, we have an upper limit set by Blindness being only -50; lacking foveal vision can't be that bad. I note that Tunnel Vision is -30, and lack of foveal vision is sort of the inverse of Tunnel Vision—it denies you exactly the things that Tunnel Vision limits you to. So it's not implausible that the cost is comparable. Or, for a different comparison, human vision is effectively Analyzing, a +100% enhancement, that is, one that doubles the base cost; so a sense that's normally analyzing, but lacks that enhancement, ought to be half as much, or -50%. That would be only -10 as a Vision trait!

In the end, I decided to keep it simple and not specify alternate costs. Of course, neither of these forms of Bad Sight is correctible with lenses, which makes them more severe.

[Anthony]

I would have both forms of bad sight interfere with Aim actions, but not melee combat.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Celti

If that were the case, then Vibration Sense, Imaging Radar, and other low-resolution senses should get the same penalty on attacks, and they don't.

Don't think of it like 'fog', think of it like the difference between the graphics in Doom and Doom 3 — the latter has a lot more detail, but that doesn't make it any easier to hit the creatures.

Overall, I feel Low Resolution is fairly priced.

This is a very interesting example. In the original Doom series, a given sprite had a low number of pixels, but it was usually rather clear whether a given pixel belonged to the monster or to the background/environment, and that was all that mattered. Also, the artists deliberately used the edges of pixels in such a way as to make edges of the depicted objects recognisable. In a way, lack of antialiasing makes things easier to see.