Just had a game the other night, and I was wondering...

I know most vision enhancements can be either optical or digital; but can Thermographic vision seriously be optical? I thought tossing down a smoke grenade and going to thermo was a great way to avoid being in LOS for a mage unless they paid for thermo-enabled eyes with essence (or were a troll / dwarf). Is this not the case if someone specifies their thermo goggles are optical? How do you make OPTICAL heat sensors?

Infrared radiation has less energy per photon than visible light or UV, so to get it to visible light, you would have to add energy.

And that's simply not possible optically.

Be a troll.

spend essence.... or use a spell or adept power.

I'd say most of the enhancements people use can't be optical. Vision magnification, yes, but lo-lite uses photomultipliers or CCDs which are inherently electronic. Vision Enhancement won't work with magic sight, but it's not a targetting sense... I'd allow you to target something you spotted with Vision Enhancement in the meatworld, because it draws a nice neon line around it if you like, but it won't help in Astral perception.

Contact lenses are too small for even magnification to be optical, IMO: you need separation of the lens elements.

Flare Compensation is optical by default unless your vision is entirely electronics-mediated already. Even if it's LCD shutters, you're only using it to stop bad light getting in your eyes; while you're observing to target it's effectively *off* or you couldn't see jack anyway.

By RAW all of the vision enhancements with the exception of radar/ultravision can be optical devices. Do I disagree with with the Low Light and Thermographic yes, *shrugs*.

As for what can go into the various devices, there a many threads discussing this subject here that go back several years, there is no official answer, so yes contacts can have as many enhancements as binoculars/helmets/goggles. There are some balanced "house rules" in those threads too.

As for thermal smoke grenades, they merely provide negative dice to being "Seen", thermal smoke by itself is not a totally effective means of not being targeted by a mage and his/her LOS. Flash Paks provide a greater negative dice for perception than thermal smoke. And yes they can be combined.

WMS

"Yay!" for the rules being Guidelines...


My gut feeling is that capping capacity at "availability 12" works reasonably for external eyegear...


Just to clarify... negatives to be "seen" also apply to being targetted by spells or guns, so you sortof have a two layer protection: they might not spot you if you're sneaky, and they might miss you with the spell if they *do* target you. Combats tend to be smoky places: whichever side thinks they might be outgunned should be laying smoke and often that'll be *both* sides...