D&D 5E Do GRICKS have eyes?

[Quartz]

as a semi-good DM, i responded with "i dont know."...which i dont.

They have eyes if you want them to have eyes.

 

[DEFCON 1]

A grick has one I right in the middle.

Gee, our eyes seek hay?

 

[jgsugden]

A quick trip to Candlekeep and 40 hours of research indicates that there are over 700 subspecies of gricks, each one slightly different. The answer will depend upon which supspecies you've found, and thus you'll need to ask the DM, or if you are a DM, decide on what answer you want.

 

[Deset Gled]

I would be inclined to say that a grick's entire skin surface is photosensitive, and its brain assembles an image out of the light hitting its skin.

My rule with aberrations is that any time there is a question about their physiology or biology, the answer is weird and unnatural. (5E changed gricks to "monstrosities" for no reason I can see, but as far as I'm concerned they're always going to be aberrations.)

From a simulationist standpoint, that explanation doesn't work very well. You need something to focus the light in order to generate an image. Without it, the skin would know "bright" or "dark" similar to the way your skin knows "hot" and "cold", but would be limited in the same way that you can't "see" a fire with your hands.

Of course, from a narrative standpoint you can easily justify this as "magic" or "aberration", but if you do that there's no need for the scientific reasoning.

 

[el-remmen]

THE GRICKS HAVE EYES!

The less successful sequel to THE HILLS HAVE EYES!

 

[Richards]

For those who might be interested, I wrote "The Ecology of the Grick" and submitted it to Dragon right before the editorial reins changed and the new editor did away with the "fiction and footnote" style of the "Ecology" articles. As a result, it was never published. It's a Monster Hunters story and can be found HERE.

Johnathan