Ridley's Cohort said:
The Spot and Listen issue is particularly bad. Blindsense "usually" does not require a roll. That is useless guidance. Do we seriously believe a bat can see a rogue hiding behind a bush or a curtain better than a human relying on normal sight? How more vanilla do we get than that?
Yes, the bat will "see" the hiding rogue better than a human could, using their Mod/1 Mark/1 eyeballs. How or why, you ask? Simple: to the bat, that bush is a nonsolid; it's translucent to their sonar, and produces a lot of scatter. The rogue hiding BEHIND it, however, does not; he's a nice, solid object.
So the bat "Sees" a nice, solid-object creature, surounded by the sonar scatter of what is, to it, a nonsolid obstruction. Rather like modern thermal-imaging systems can see people walking around on the other side of a wall; blindsight won'tlet you know if the Rogue is wearing shorts or long pants, but, it WILL let you know he's there.
sithramir said:
Whoever doesn't think this is insane when comparing it to the price of something that grants mere darkvision has no clue of balance.
Arms and Equipment predates 3.5E, for one.
And the blindfold isn't mimicking the spell ... or at least, it doesn't HAVE to work that way. It's probably based on the
feat "blindsight", from MotW. And roughly 10K-ish for a single feat isn't too far off.