Blindness, Mass Blindness and Astral Perception, Do the spells effect the ability? Options

[Darkest Angel]

Do the spells Blindness and Mass Blindness effect characters who are astrally perceiving?

I'm not sure which way to go on this one; on the one hand I can see a very good argument for 'No', since a) the spell effects the visual sense, and b) characters with the blind flaw can still astrally perceive.

However astral perception provides blind characters with the ability to see, thus a spell that inhibits their vision could be argued to inhibit astral perception also, since they are 'seeing' with that sense.

My first thoughts are 'no to do that needs a seperate spell', but then I can see an imbalance in that astral perception already goes a long way to removing the necessity for low light/thermographic vision, so to allow it to negate a spells effects as well puts those with the ability on an even higher level over mundanes.

Opinions please. :)

[RedmondLarry]

Blindness will not prevent the character from Astrally Perceiving, but does cut out their physical vision of the physical world. Such a character would no longer be able to read the text on a computer monitor or piece of paper.

Yes, Astral Perception is commonly used to get around darkness-related visibility modifiers for locating or fighting living things, but doesn't help at all in attempting to read a map by the light of the moon.

[Kagetenshi]

I'd personally say that blinding astral perception requires a seperate spell. Astral perception has a lot of weaknesses as compared to low-light/thermographic (comparatively low ability to notice objects as compared to living beings, negligible detail visible, inability to determine differences in light level from astral perception, so on and so forth), so it's hardly overpowered.

~J

[John Campbell]

Astral perception is not sight, therefore blindness spells do not affect it.

[Nikoli]

And, if you want to block astral sight, put up a ward.

[Lilt]

It says that the spell interferes with the brain's ability to process visual information, so I'd say it would work on an astrally percieving character.

You could not, however, cast this at an astrally percieving character from the astral as it's a physical spell. You could quite easily make a manna version of blindness which would work on the astral and on living beings but not cameras.

[Nikoli]

If you had one like that, could it be used to stop the various organisms that flouresce when an astral body passes near or through them?

[Lilt]

I doubt it. AFAIK the flourecing is caused by the bacteria dieing from too much manna near them... Nothing to do with vision.

[Nikoli]

I thought it was they sensed the astral presence. Man, what does Saeder Krup run up for a bill each month for teh stuff. I'd imagine a great dragno has tyo be pumping out a good bit of mana by his very nature.

[Lilt]

Well: Firstly, IIRC it's bacteria and it can breed itself if fed.
Secondly, I doubt they put that stuff around Lofwyr. As the abundance of bacteria in water gives a perception penalty to astral sight, I'd assume that applies to abundances of bacteria in air too, and you can guess how happy/hungry Lofwyr would be if that happened.

[The White Dwarf]

Bottom line, they are both Physical spells, and thus unable to affect anything on the Astral, including Astral Perception. However, the usual +2 modifier for using Astral Perception in conjunction with Mundane interaction would probably be applicable most of the time, if you were to use Astral Perception to circumvent the spell.

[John Campbell]

[Lilt]

The astral senses bit in SR3 says that your astral form has normal human senses of sight and hearng. The wording "normal human", for one, implies that it's not some completely seperate sense.

[John Campbell]

The description of the Blindness flaw in SRC indicates that the full 6-point version is produced by a disorder in the visual centers of the brain. This prevents simsense from generating artificial visual stimuli, but explicitly does not prevent astral perception - thus the reason that Blindness always has a reduced cost for the Awakened. This means that astral perception is not processed by the visual centers of the brain, which means that spells that interfere with those centers do not prevent astral perception.

[TheScamp]

[John Campbell]

That paragraph also differentiates between the "normal human" senses of sight and hearing, and assensing, which is the "sixth" sense normally indicated by "astral perception".

[Lilt]

Meh... You've pursuaded me. There are a coupple of other examples I was keeping back about other illusions (albeit indirect ones) affecting people on the astral, but I'll accept your version. If I could still point-out that Assensing (the 6th sense) is not synonimous with astral perception though.

I'd still suggest that a manna spell could be created that could affect both forms of sight.

[Kagetenshi]

Probably, and if you wanted to you could make a spell to kill multiple "mundane" senses as well. Drain'd be higher, though.

~J

[Lilt]

Hmm. It strikes me that, as cameras aren't willful and thus can't take actions to make perception tests, they can't see anything if they are affected by the blindness spell at-all.

[Kagetenshi]

Yep. Automatic devices get screwed up something fierce by magic.

~J

[Lilt]

I suppose you could add some form of limited automation (drone-cams) that actively percieved automatically every so often... But that would be silly.