What is the deal with MotW Feat Blindsight?

[green slime]

The way I see scent is as follows:

Suppose you were in a campaign where everyone was blind. Suppose only one character could make spot checks at all to notice people coming towards her. Everyone else had to make Listen checks. In this world, anyone who wanted to be stealthy would max out Move Silently, but since everyone is blind, no one has defense against spot. In addition, no matter how silently or stealthily the opponent moves, nor how inexperienced the one person with the spot check is, the spotter ALWAYS notices the foe, even if they didn't know exactly where they were.

Don't you think that ability to make a spot check is a little powerful?

Blindsight is the same, except change "notices" the foe with knows exactly where the foe is.

I've just found Scent and Blindsight, in my experience, to be very powerful abilities. Especially with Faerie Fire.

Hong, your point is very true, too. But, correct me if I'm wrong, only magical invisibilities were weakened in 3.5. Good old Hide and Move Silently were only weakened in that one more class, the Druid, got Spot and Listen as class skills.

I think that's a fairer replacement for Scent.

Except most campaigns do not limit these abilities to a single individual.

And it would not have been too much of a stretch to devise spells and abilities that mask a scent, remove a scent, or displace a scent, rendering it somewhat less efficient.

Blindsight is powerful, except that it too exists mostly as a player foil, used by dragons and the like. Note there is less to fear as well, given the present nerf of darkness.

 

[youspoonybard]

Scent is an optional feat, with a DMG warning, even.

3.0 MotW Druids got it for free at level 5.

 

[green slime]

I'm generally of the opinion that too many abilities are thrown into this game without consideration for what would surely follow: the creation of effective countermeasures.

This is true in the natural world as it is in the world of human conflict.

 

[hong]

Hong, your point is very true, too. But, correct me if I'm wrong, only magical invisibilities were weakened in 3.5. Good old Hide and Move Silently were only weakened in that one more class, the Druid, got Spot and Listen as class skills.

Oops, I should mention that I was talking about blindsight the generic special ability, not Blindsight the feat. The feat is certainly powerful to the point of being broken; 120 ft range is further than most creatures even have darkvision. Setting up undetectable ambushes becomes almost too easy this way.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I wouldn't say blindsight is overpowered either. I'd say that it shows up how _invisibility_ is often a game-breaking ability, especially in its greater or improved form. Hence, any ability that negates invisibility also has a major influence on the game, in an indirect fashion. If you nerf invisibility, then the influence of blindsight is similarly reduced.

If you nerf invisibility, then blindsight can simply be removed from the game entirely. That seems simpler still.

I do partially agree... Blindsight is a direct spiritual descendant of the old 1e DMG rule that gave all powerful or intelligent monsters a chance to detect invisible creatures (See Invisible in today's terminology). It justified the rule by asserting that PCs using invisibility successfully against a dragon would somehow not be cricket, even making allusions to Bilbo's encounter with Smaug while conveniently forgetting that Bilbo successfully used invisibility to adequately evade Smaug.

Today, we still use the mystique of dragons to rationalize the existence of a form of supervision. It has never made sense to me.

Personally, I think Scent is the perfect model for a more reasonable supervision. FREX: notice general direction of creatures within 60', exact location within 10'. You get the drift.

 

[hong]

If you nerf invisibility, then blindsight can simply be removed from the game entirely. That seems simpler still.

"Nerf" != "eliminate"

Today, we still use the mystique of dragons to rationalize the existence of a form of supervision. It has never made sense to me.

Who cares about dragons? I'm thinking blind archers and blind swordsmen, a la Zatoichi.

"Your senses can fool you. Reach out with your feelings", etc.

 

[green slime]

"Nerf" != "eliminate"


Who cares about dragons? I'm thinking blind archers and blind swordsmen, a la Zatoichi.

"Your senses can fool you. Reach out with your feelings", etc.

Interesting. Perhaps it should have retained its tough requirements (Wis 19, I believe) but been radically smaller range: 30 ft.

Then you take it multiple times, adding thirty feet each time (Max 90 ft. and raising the Wisdom requirement each time, I suppose). Perhaps then it could even be somewhat lower in its Stat-requirements, but require Alertness and Blind-Fighting? Charisma requirement? Any other ideas?

I'm all for including more fighting feats requiring stats other than Str/Dex.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

"Nerf" != "eliminate"


Who cares about dragons? I'm thinking blind archers and blind swordsmen, a la Zatoichi.

"Your senses can fool you. Reach out with your feelings", etc.

Blindsight as a general ability and as a feat is overpowered - according to my reading/DMG , it makes Spot checks completely irrelevant. You always see the creatures. I don`t like this ability, and why do dragons bother with taking spot then? It seems, most designers did forget how this ablity actually works. (with the new distinctin blindsense/blindsight it makes sense).
It might be better if Blindsight/Blindsense/Tremorsense just allowed for changing the skill used for spot (and ignoring any visiblity based penalties like the spell invisiblity) - maybe listen for sonicbased, survival for scent- and tremorsense-based and, if dragons are really that special, still use spot for it...

For Scent:
Currently, there is no skill for this ability. It is usually a wisdom check, and it sometimes helps survival checks. Two possible options come to my mind:
a)
Make scent a skill. Disadvantage: even if it is cross class for all player classes, it sounds unusual that humans can try their senses in such a strong way. But you could take the Scent feat(similar to Track) and make it a prerequisite to make scent checks against DCs above 10.

b)
The Scent feat (can only be taken by certain races and creatures - maybe gnomes and half-orcs) allows to make survival checks to smell, identify and locate odors.

 

[hong]

Interesting. Perhaps it should have retained its tough requirements (Wis 19, I believe) but been radically smaller range: 30 ft.

Then you take it multiple times, adding thirty feet each time (Max 90 ft. and raising the Wisdom requirement each time, I suppose). Perhaps then it could even be somewhat lower in its Stat-requirements, but require Alertness and Blind-Fighting? Charisma requirement? Any other ideas?

I'm all for including more fighting feats requiring stats other than Str/Dex.

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/ma_feats.htm#blindsight

Heh.

 

[hong]

Blindsight as a general ability and as a feat is overpowered - according to my reading/DMG , it makes Spot checks completely irrelevant.

It's an interesting world you're in, if the horizon is 30 feet away.