[Basic] Advantage of the Week (#40): Discriminatory Senses, Sensitive Touch

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by (E)

Thermoception is the real world name for the sense that detects heat, in some animals it may be more of a vision type in gurps terms than a touch sense.

In pit vipers and possibly vampire bats. But the resolution of its visual type makes the noise to signal ratio garbage beyond 2 yards.

[simply Nathan]

I put Discriminatory Smell on most of my beast-man templates because I love my canines.

Being at +4 for Tracking most of the time and following based on a sense the target is less likely to try, much less succeed at, disguising is also great.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by whswhs

My view is that Hyperspectral Vision isn't actually comparable to the others, and that there isn't a place for a visual sense that is, because human sight is already discriminatory.

This is going to be one of those crazy threads where I completely agree with you (which is quite the relief). Do you have any thoughts on what Disadvantages could be taken to emulate "non-discriminatory vision", whether for humans or non-humans?

Originally Posted by Refplace

I have used Discrim Touch for some Supers in Detectives.

Just checking, so there is a "Discriminatory Touch" Advantage? What supplement does it appear in? How does it compare with "Sensitive Touch"?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Otaku

This is going to be one of those crazy threads where I completely agree with you (which is quite the relief). Do you have any thoughts on what Disadvantages could be taken to emulate "non-discriminatory vision", whether for humans or non-humans?

I made a new one up for Enhanced Senses: A new form of Bad Sight called Low Resolution. It gives -4 to spot objects at any range, and -8 to see fine details. It's really not a perfect representation—it's about right for an average mammal, but it seriously understates how poorly insects see. (An average mammal has around 20/200 vision, or 6/60 in European terms, which is about one-tenth human, and a factor of 10 is -6. Dragonflies, the insects with the best eyes, I think, are probably down around -10. Maybe something could be done with Detect to emulate typical invertebrate vision.)

Just checking, so there is a "Discriminatory Touch" Advantage? What supplement does it appear in? How does it compare with "Sensitive Touch"?

I haven't seen one in the books I looked at doing Enhanced Senses. As far as I can tell, "Sensitive Touch" is the GURPS equivalent.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Just checking, so there is a "Discriminatory Touch" Advantage? What supplement does it appear in? How does it compare with "Sensitive Touch"?

This was for GURPS Third Edition, I dont recall what the actual name was or if it was a House Rule thing. I haven't rebuilt them for Fourth Edition yet, mostly because the magic systems have evolved.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

My view is that Hyperspectral Vision isn't actually comparable to the others, and that there isn't a place for a visual sense that is, because human sight is already discriminatory.

Well, enhanced color perception is a thing (and reasonably describes real-world hyperspectral imaging, though that's not the same thing as GURPS hyperspectral vision). In general, though, I'm not sure that any discriminatory senses should exist, and instead they should be split into a combination of acute senses and something like:
Detect (based on another sense): your detect is based on another sense. You cannot roll the detect directly; instead, when you detect something with the other sense, you also know whether it contains the specified substance and may analyze it.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Detect (based on another sense): your detect is based on another sense. You cannot roll the detect directly; instead, when you detect something with the other sense, you also know whether it contains the specified substance and may analyze it.

Too much overhead.
Discriminatory Sense or Analyzing on Detect do the job well enough IMHO.
Powers: Enhanced Senses helped with clarity here by defining and clarifying some of the enhancements and base senses.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Too much overhead.
Discriminatory Sense or Analyzing on Detect do the job well enough IMHO.

The problem is that you should really indicate what information you can get that cannot be gotten by just rolling well on the normal sense. A lot of examples of 'discriminatory' don't seem to be anything but a large amount of acute sense.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The problem is that you should really indicate what information you can get that cannot be gotten by just rolling well on the normal sense. A lot of examples of 'discriminatory' don't seem to be anything but a large amount of acute sense.

To me the best part of the book is Defining Senses and the MK 1 Eyeball box.
Dont get me wrong, I liked the book overall but those were in my opinion the most widely useful.
Word Count is a harsh mistress and I am not sure how much more could have been said on the issue of Discriminatory Senses than what was on page 6

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Word Count is a harsh mistress and I am not sure how much more could have been said on the issue of Discriminatory Senses than what was on page 6

The problem with the definition of discriminatory page 6 is that it human hearing, smell, taste, and touch all match it; we just have fairly poor perception rolls.