Moving while blind.

[Otterscrubber]

4e is a very tactical game, and there are several powers which cause blindness. However there don't seem to be any rules on how blindness affects movement and a lot of my players don't want to allow a blind creature to still be able to move effectively, know which square to go to, etc. with perfect precision and the only penalty being -5 to attack rolls.

I DO NOT want to burden down my fight with random direction rolls, or making acrobatics checks every square moved, but I'd like to see how others have ruled on this.

I've thought about just making all movement considered as if you were moving in difficult terrain to represent you can't move as well while blind, but you are not immobilized. Other than that I'm not sure how to rule it so that it does not slow down my game sessions.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

4e is a very tactical game, and there are several powers which cause blindness. However there don't seem to be any rules on how blindness affects movement and a lot of my players don't want to allow a blind creature to still be able to move effectively, know which square to go to, etc. with perfect precision and the only penalty being -5 to attack rolls.

I DO NOT want to burden down my fight with random direction rolls, or making acrobatics checks every square moved, but I'd like to see how others have ruled on this.

I've thought about just making all movement considered as if you were moving in difficult terrain to represent you can't move as well while blind, but you are not immobilized. Other than that I'm not sure how to rule it so that it does not slow down my game sessions.

I treat it as difficult terrain. If a player attempts to double move, or run as a part of a move, they must roll a saving throw or else fall prone on the ground at the end of their movement.

 

[fissionessence]

Last night my players fought a bunch of zombies in a completely dark room. Their only light sources was a 5-by-5 area where the will-o'-wisp was illuminating, but it kept luring PCs away from the big zombie melee and stranding the remaining PCs in the dark again.

They asked the same thing, about how their movement was affected in the darkness. I told them they can move at full speed, as long as they're confident in the way they're going I think the -5 penalty was frustrating enough. (Plus the ghoul that kept immobilizing and stunning the barbarian.)

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[Otterscrubber]

Do you ever limit their options on knowing where to move even though they can't really see?

 

[fissionessence]

Do you ever limit their options on knowing where to move even though they can't really see?

We started on a blank battlemap. As the wisp came into view, I drew the walls of the room that it illuminated. Monster miniatures were not placed on the map unless they were currently within the wisp's illumination. The player miniatures were placed on the map, so everyone knew where everyone else was. However, I forced them to make DC 10 (level 3 PCs) Perception checks to 'pinpoint' their allies' locations in character.

The artificer basically just threw blasts at areas where he could hear his friends fighting, and the melee characters just attacked the zombies that they could obviously tell were right in front of them. The player getting dragged off by the wisp had an obvious 'advantage'

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[Lakoda]

I just let them move, with the understanding that they have to RP as best they can. If they try to enter a square occupied by anything (ally, enemy, object) they have to make a save or fall prone. If they succeed they spend the movement point but don't enter that square, if they fail their movement ends and they are pone in the previous square. I like the idea of making everything difficult terrain, but I think it would be too much to add to what I already do.

 

[Mengu]

We ran into this same issue recently. Since we didn't see anything against it, we went with regular movement. But a house rule to say blinded creatures move at half rate would be fairly reasonable.

By the way a DC 10 perception check to pinpoint allies for 3rd level characters can be pretty difficult, considering blinded creatures take a -10 penalty to perception. DC 6 or so may be more appropriate. You could require a similar check to pinpoint non-adjacent enemies.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I think the lack of rules for it is mostly a reflection of the fact that it is pretty hard to make any kind of sensible rulings on blind characters. The -5 to-hit at least gives a serious debuff that gives you SOME sense of "I can't do things very well now." Half speed movement would be good too.

We use maptool and I experimented with a fight in total darkness where the players just basically couldn't see the map at all and just described everything they did as best they could understand what was going on. It was pretty funny, but totally crippling and I wouldn't want to try it in anything but a pretty easy encounter.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

There was a thread a while back where someone mentioned that they had a table rule that players who had blind characters had to sit under the table and tell the GM which direction they moved {with facing} and how far.

I think that would work very well with the right players... and not so well if the entire party was blinded.

For my table, my players have never asked to move while blind...

 

[Nytmare]

There was a thread a while back where someone mentioned that they had a table rule that players who had blind characters had to sit under the table and tell the GM which direction they moved {with facing} and how far.

That is freaking hillarious. My table has a new houserule.