How do you handle being blinded?

[Flipguarder]

So you think that the determent of the situation should be put on the person who initiated it rather than the person hindered by it?

Its either a minor action spent by the blinded or a move action spent by the blinder. Honestly the former just makes more sense to me. I don't think -5 to attack rolls is enough in and of itself.

 

[Caliber]

So you think that the determent of the situation should be put on the person who initiated it rather than the person hindered by it?

Its either a minor action spent by the blinded or a move action spent by the blinder. Honestly the former just makes more sense to me. I don't think -5 to attack rolls is enough in and of itself.

Well, the Move action spent to Stealth can be combined with other actions; the enemy could Shift, Run, or Walk somewhere and Stealth perfectly fine. They'll only need to spend a Move action solely to Stealth if they don't have anything else to use one with. Whereas the Blind guy could certainly have lots of uses for his Minor actions.

Another plus to having the opposition making the checks is that at the start of the Blinded characters turn he knows precisely which creatures he is/isn't aware of. If the roles were reversed, it would be highly ambiguous what precisely he knew.

One thing I do dislike is the penalty doesn't apply to Area Attacks, making Blinding useless to AE focused characters. That part doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Flipguarder]

Whereas the Blind guy could certainly have lots of uses for his Minor actions.

Which would be highly needed (imo) addition to the hindrance of this condition.

Another plus to having the opposition making the checks is that at the start of the Blinded characters turn he knows precisely which creatures he is/isn't aware of. If the roles were reversed, it would be highly ambiguous what precisely he knew.

It's not ambiguous at all. He would know nothing, until he made his check (also Id let him make his check against all the enemies in one perception check as a minor action)

One thing I do dislike is the penalty doesn't apply to Area Attacks, making Blinding useless to AE focused characters. That part doesn't make sense to me.

Thats just plain idiocy and everyone knows it.

 

[chitzk0i]

Which is my exact problem. A level 1 pc with an 8 in wisdom, perception untrained and no special training on the subject can immediately determine exactly what 5 X 5 square an enemy is in from 100 feet away after the enemy has been invisible for 2 minutes.

That's just okay with everyone else?

Invisibility is not "you completely fade from view and leave no visual traces whatsoever". It's more like good adaptive camouflage (aka "Predator ripples") that makes you mostly unseeable. Really, it's almost exactly like the invisibility effect from the Predator movies. When he wanted to, the Predator could stay still or move carefully and remain entirely out of sight, but moving quickly meant that it was pretty obvious where he was.

 

[Flipguarder]

Invisibility is not "you completely fade from view and leave no visual traces whatsoever". It's more like good adaptive camouflage (aka "Predator ripples") that makes you mostly unseeable. Really, it's almost exactly like the invisibility effect from the Predator movies. When he wanted to, the Predator could stay still or move carefully and remain entirely out of sight, but moving quickly meant that it was pretty obvious where he was.

Not trying to be a jerk here but: source?

It seems that this is a convenient flavor paragraph to cover the poor effects surrounding the invisible state. And if this is the case is all blindness the same thing? And if so what happens if I just put my hands over my eyes? Or what if its complete and utter dark and I cant see. Or what happens if Im blind AND the opponent is invisible.

 

[Nytmare]

Another plus to having the opposition making the checks is that at the start of the Blinded characters turn he knows precisely which creatures he is/isn't aware of. If the roles were reversed, it would be highly ambiguous what precisely he knew.

If the enemies make the checks, the blinded character has to keep track of that information over the course of all of the other players' turns. If the blinded character makes a check against all of the other creature's passive stealths on his turn, he only has to keep track of the information on that turn, until he acts on it.

That's X rolls and X bits of information to be tracked over X rounds as opposed to one roll and X bits of information contained within one round?

 

[cmbarona]

Yeah, I can see it making more sense if it didn't affect close powers, but did affect area powers. Granted, this still has a strange bearing on martial burst/blast powers, but at some point things get too complicated.

Flipguarder, I think you might be trying to fit the game into reality, which might be your hangup. Given that battle is usually quite noisy, I think it makes a fair amount of sense that a blinded character can struggle their way through the fight and find the general location of a foe. 5' by 5' is a larger area than it might seem when close quarters are involved. You're right that it starts sounding absurd the farther away you get. But this is yet another instance where the simplicity of the system won out over simulation of real life effects.

 

[Caliber]

Not trying to be a jerk here but: source?

It seems that this is a convenient flavor paragraph to cover the poor effects surrounding the invisible state. And if this is the case is all blindness the same thing? And if so what happens if I just put my hands over my eyes? Or what if its complete and utter dark and I cant see. Or what happens if Im blind AND the opponent is invisible.

Well, I think complete and utter dark/blindness/all invisible opponents sum to essentially the same thing. The blind guy doesn't care if he is fighting invisible foes in the dark; they're just as hard to "see" to him. I'd say that was a fairly good example of fitting the flavor to the mechanics; if you try to use flavor that obviously disagrees with the mechanics you will always end up with nonsensical situations. See countless "how does a Halfling push a Tarrasque" threads.

You are correct re: the ambiguity with either RAW or your proposal however, I hadn't considered setting the default as "not aware". By RAW, Blind just isn't as bad of a condition as you would seem to like it to be. Did you post your ideal version of Blind up thread that I missed?

 

[Prism]

As a move action an enemy can make a Stealth check vs a Blinded foe; if they beat his Passive Perception they can't be seen. Remember he gets a -10 to this check ... it should be easy to beat, even for untrained Stealthers.

There is no -10 any more. This was changed in the PHB errata and also PHB2

 

[lukelightning]

I allow for a certain amount of "cinematic luck" to keep blindness from being as crippling as it really would be. Yeah, the hero is blind, but can at least generally attack in the right direction, albeit inaccurately. I don't want blindness effect to be the ultimate debuffs.

(Now I'm picturing the Beatrix Kiddo vs. Elle Driver showdown)