How do you handle being blinded?

[DracoSuave]

Wait wait... I'm confused here. If the creature isn't actively trying to not let you hear it (say, it's fighting your allies) then you don't have to roll the perception check and can freely move and attack it, albeit with the hefty penalty? My DM has always ruled the check happened automatically and if you failed you had no idea where the creature was, and therefore couldn't act.

IMO a creature that's actively engaged in combat is not going to be worrying about being stealthy. If that's the case then my DM has just been playing it wrong.

Check out 'Targetting what you cannot see' from the PHBII. If the creature is not hidden, then you can still make out where it is. You being blind doesn't make the creature hidden. The creature has to be actively hidden (i.e. made a Stealth check against your Passive Perception) in order for you to be unable to find it without spending a minor action to make a Perception check against the creature's already rolled Stealth check result.

If the creature has not made a Stealth check to become hidden, then there's no number for you to compare your own Perception check against, so you couldn't execute that action anyways. The minor action to Perception is always used against the original Stealth roll. The Stealth is not rerolled each time someone attempts to perceive.

 

[Flipguarder]

For the record, I believe its absolutely idiotic that a lvl 1 pc with an 8 in wisdom and no special training can immediately tell without sight which 5 X 5 square an enemy is in from 100 feet away.

There, I've said my peace.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think the blindness, stealth, and targeting what cannot be seen rules try to be too simulationist in an abstract game. The rules are needless wonky and complex. We can accept HP as a measure of willingness to fight rather than wounds but refuse to let stealth/ lack of sight go with a simple penalty and move on.

 

[Flipguarder]

I think the blindness, stealth, and targeting what cannot be seen rules try to be too simulationist in an abstract game. The rules are needless wonky and complex. We can accept HP as a measure of willingness to fight rather than wounds but refuse to let stealth/ lack of sight go with a simple penalty and move on.

Using hp as a willingness to fight is logical though, it relatively follows rules we observe in reality. Since we have no real version of hp, we can determine what the fantasy statistic means in a fantasy world.

the example I posted earlier is not logical and doesn't follow in any way rules we observe in reality. We have a version of blindness in the real world, and it completely fails to match up to the 4e version of it

"If you cant see, then you can't immediately determine the precise location of someone 100 feet away without any sort of special training" doesn't seem overly simulationist to me.

 

[wayne62682]

I think the blindness, stealth, and targeting what cannot be seen rules try to be too simulationist in an abstract game. The rules are needless wonky and complex. We can accept HP as a measure of willingness to fight rather than wounds but refuse to let stealth/ lack of sight go with a simple penalty and move on.

This is honestly my theory - the penalties are bad enough if the target has total concealment, moreso if you are blinded as well. Why add needless complexity with this make a perception check, choose a square to target nonsense? IMO it's woefully out of place with the overall idea of 4e. Being forced to not take any meaningful action because you fail a Perception check (that you take a HUGE penalty to, so much it might as well be auto-failure) isn't fun in the least.

I did not realize that the Stealth check on the creature's part was something it actively had to do; I thought it was passive and happened automatically - that makes blindness easier to deal with since 95% of the time the blinded PC can still hear and target the creature.

 

[Nytmare]

Drifting out of rules as written and into house rules, here's what has evolved at our table regarding blinded characters:

Barring the clever use of a bluff check or two, a blind character knows where their team mates are.

They can move around. Every square is considered one movement point "rougher" for the blinded character. Clear terrain would cost two movement to move into, rough terrain would be three.

They can try to figure out where bad guys are with a perception check. As a minor action a character can make an active perception check against the passive stealths of everyone within 10 squares. If they beat a passive stealth, they know the rough direction (though not necessarily the number) of the enemy or enemies beaten. If they beat a passive stealth by more than 10, they know the exact location of that enemy.

They can wander around and try to find a single enemy by getting opportunity attacked when they accidentally bump into them.

=============

In general, we assume that even though the enemies aren't actively trying to hide from the blinded person, there's a LOT of background noise that they have to sort through.

On top of that, we assume that everyone helpfully shouting out "Ok, left, no right, no the OTHER right. No MY right!" works out to about an even trade.

I really don't like the idea of treating blinded things as though they basically have tremorsense.

I know, I know, I know that dragging real life examples into an RPG discussion is pretty much its death knell, but I have to agree with what Hereticus said before about the cat. Spend a couple of minutes running around your house in the dark, trying to complete a handful of simple tasks.

I want the in-game version of running an obstacle course in the dark, even one that a character has had a good 30 seconds to memorize, to have more of a mechanical impact than "it's harder to hit things."

PS - The house rule I heard on here a couple weeks ago that I've been dying to try is "blinded characters sit under the game table and describe what they're doing from down there."

 

[Thundershield]

While the way 4E handles the Blinded condition is relatively simple, it's also easy and straightforward, allowing for the game to continue without too much complexity, but it also isn't so severe it makes whatever actions the blinded character wants to perform impossible.

If you want it to be really difficult for a blinded character to do anything, make sure it just becomes really difficult (such as imposing a -5 penalty to attack rolls) and not impossible. If it becomes impossible, there's no reason to have all that complexity, and you could simple have the Blinded condition say "you cannot hit with attacks" or "you cannot target anything" instead as that would basically be the same.

I like how Blinded is a distinct condition that's about as severe as Dazed, but still different. It still allows for the player to actually play, but also makes the player feel that he's at a severe disadvantage, which is what being blinded should feel like. I don't need it more complex than that, thankyouverymuch.

 

[FrozenChrono]

Blinded the condition isn't the same as actually being blinded. I have a friend who is legally blind but can still make out a person from more than 10 ft. away and can tell who that person is once within a few feet.

Blinded in the rules is a game term used to describe seriously impaired vision. That may be from having sand tossed in your eyes, or magical darkness imposed on your mind. It doesn't mean you literally can't see at all, just that something is impairing it enough to give you the penalty.

If you fail your perception check you could role play it as being completely blinded if that's how your party wants to role. But remember guys, it's just a game term.

 

[wayne62682]

That's how I would rule it works - the penalty you already take is IMO more than sufficient. My group tends to play it as... if you don't make the initial Perception check with the -10 penalty, you basically cannot act because it's metagaming if you still move towards the creature or try to attack it without some kind of random guess/roll.

 

[Pale Jackal]

Blinded in the rules is a game term used to describe seriously impaired vision. That may be from having sand tossed in your eyes, or magical darkness imposed on your mind. It doesn't mean you literally can't see at all, just that something is impairing it enough to give you the penalty.

If you fail your perception check you could role play it as being completely blinded if that's how your party wants to role. But remember guys, it's just a game term.

This is how we play it. A -5 to hit isn't severe enough to really count as being completely blind, especially if you've had perfect vision all your life until NOW. Also, if you take a look at the Blinding Barrage rogue daily, how does it work? I've described it as blood in the eyes. Powers are abstract, of course, but all in all, treating blindness as impaired vision rather than actual blindness gets rid of a whole mess of complications.