Loss of an Eye

[Dandu]

That's only really true for modern bullets which have relatively high velocities. Traditional bows and crossbows have such low velocities that you have to angle the weapon upwards ("arching") in order to be accurate at distances. Being able to judge the distance accurately is far more important for bows and crossbows than it is for modern guns.

Fortunately, in the world of DnD, arrows do not follow a parabolic flight path. They also travel from point A to point B instantaneously.

 

[Ashtagon]

Fortunately, in the world of DnD, arrows do not follow a parabolic flight path. They also travel from point A to point B instantaneously.

 

[Dandu]

Seriously, you can shoot at something 5 miles away in a narrow 5x5 corridor in DnD and you'll hit it just fine assuming you can get your attack bonus up high enough.

And the arrow will reach it in 3 seconds.

 

[Ashtagon]

Seriously, you can shoot at something 5 miles away in a narrow 5x5 corridor in DnD and you'll hit it just fine assuming you can get your attack bonus up high enough.

And the arrow will reach it in 3 seconds.

Nope, max 10 range increments, no matter what. That's 1100 feet for a "composite longbow" - slightly more than a quarter of what can be achieved with traditional archery equipment. The range limits using RAW are pretty acceptable if you assume no significant arching (within the space of a "standard" 10-foot high dungeon corridor) takes place. Even within those limits, you'd still be aiming high and still need to judge distances to determine exactly how high you'd be aiming.

 

[Dandu]

Nope, max 10 range increments, no matter what.

I don't think so, Tim.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

1) Depth perception generally only matters out to about 20 feet. After that, objects are effectively infinitely far, due to the structure of the human eye. Among other things, this is why eye exams only need to measure how well you see at 20 feet.
2) The loss of peripheral vision is much more troublesome.

I'm with ValhallaGH on the distance shooting thing: lack of depth perception is only really an issue for close distances. Farther out and you're really judging distance by apparent size, haze, shadow direction and the like-- not parallax. So IMHO a flat -1 on ranged attacks is a sufficient average penalty, and it really shouldn't get worse the farther the target is.

The much bigger problem is that a good chunk of your field of view is gone, for which penalties to Spot (maybe Search) seem appropriate. More pressingly, in combat this ought to manifest as some sort of penalty; I figured to knock to AC when flanked, though Ashtagon's suggestion to effectively broaden the definition of flanked for a half-blind combatant is an interesting idea.

 

[Ashtagon]

I don't think so, Tim.

Ashtagon's Law of Real World Comparisons: All comparisons fail when considering characters above 6th level.

 

[Dandu]

Ashtagon's Law of Real World Comparisons: All comparisons fail when considering characters above 6th level.

Solo's Law of Real World Comparisons: All comparisons fail at level one because that's when you start casting magic spells.

 

[Chronologist]

Honestly, ranged attack should not be thought of in too much depth. The character is primarily melee, and he only used a crossbow occasionally. The penalty is more fluff than crunch for him.

Concerning flanking issues, the DM is thinking of imposing an AC penalty against attacks from the character's blind side. We use minis, so the direction the character faces is pretty easy to find. The AC penalty seems to be in the -2 range currently. When using the magic eye, the penalty will go away.

So, altogether the penalties seem to be
-4 on Spot checks
-2 on ranged attack rolls
-2 to AC from attacks on left side (removed when eye activates)

 

[Ugulu the Barbarian]

-2 to Charisma? I mean, wearing a patch might help w/ that. But the penalyt shouldn't apply to Initimidate, maybe even a +2 to Initimidate? But if the charcter has the magic eye in, it shouldn't apply.