Do cybereyes repair a ghoul's vision? The descriptive text and the Blind flaw would seem to contradict each other (both in the SR companion).

I'm pretty sure they do restore a ghoul's vision. I'd ignore the text in the blind flaw and go with the descriptive text in the ghoul entry for this.

In fact here you go, p33 SR Comp, near the top-left:

"Many of the more socially adapted ghouls use cybereyes to overcome this problem, provided they can find a street doc willing to implant cyberware in a ghoul."

It also says, in the same paragraph:

"All ghouls suffer from a degree of physical blindness"

So you could even take that to mean that not all ghouls are completely blind, and in any case I wouldn't make it as harsh as the blindness conferred by the flaw.


Edit: Just missed a word out.

Add to that that NPC-Ghouls suffer from reducced senses (blind, or nearly so) which in terms of rules express with Int/2 (rounded down) d6 for optical perception tests rather than what the discription of the "Blind" flaw in SR Comp says ...

When I played a ghoul character I took it to mean full blindness and the only reason for the ghouls seeking social acceptance to get a pair was to look more normal to everyone else. My GM and I just took the flavor text as a psychological need on those ghouls' parts for acceptance by the rest of society. ::shrugs:: But if your GM says it's only partial blindness then run with it I suppose.

I agree with Raptor. We treet Ghoul blindness like the Blind flaw (Cybereyes cannot rapair it). The only reason for the mod is for social acceptance. But its no big deal really, Ghouls are Dual-Natured...

Look in the Ghoul Char. Table, p. 34, SRC. It gives Ghouls the Blind Flaw...

M&M, p.76: Skin Pigmentation.
Presto, instant human looking ghoul

Ghouls PCs are quite simply(IMO) one of the worst characters to GM during character creation. All you need is one guy taking a Cyclops with Blind Flaw(a perfectly legal PC) and then ghouling him and then you'll have chaos. Honestly I rarely use GM fiat and this is one area I'm very tempted to go against the rules.

So can you get around the "Blind" flaw? I read ultrasound sight and that won't help, either. The best thing I could come up with is a combination of an Internal GPS, Orientation System, a chipjack and mapsofts.

Speaking of which, would the Orientation system even work? Page 18 of Man & Machine says that

I'm not so sure a Cyclops can become a ghoul, I'm not totally sure on this but I think only humans can become ghouls. Trolls infected with it become dzo-no-quas (sp), dwarves become goblins, and i forget what elves turn into. Or is that one of the other strains of the virus and the Krieger strain can turn any metahuman into a ghoul? The other races' mutations I saw in the critters book.

Edit
And on the blind peple using image link, I think it depends on how you describe the flaw. If it's a brain disorder then no, if it's something wrong with your eye nerve then maybe. If you decide it's a brain disorder wreaking havoc then I bet you could get someone to program the hardware to give the character impressions about where he is rather than images, probably cost a load more though. "I'm under the sewer pipe and I'm about to trip over a power cord," perhaps.

Any metatype can become a ghoul, it's the other strain of HMHVV that turns you into vampires etc depending on race. Well, there are more than two strains I think, but anyway it's not the kreiger strain that does that.

There are actually two versions of the Blind flaw for mundanes according to the text, one that's considered nerve damage (so you can still "see" in the matrix and when rigged in, -2 points), and the other is considered a brain disorder (so you can't see anything, -6 points). Neither can be fixed with cybereyes (hmm...), so I'd guess an Image Link can't help either.

Maybe if you have the milder version of it you could get round it with some other thing such as ultrasound. I suppose thermosense organs would also help you out a bit in either case.