Rae ArdGaoth
Explorer
CREATING A BLIND FROM BIRTH CREATURE
"Blind from Birth" is an inherited template that can be added to any humanoid that normally uses eyes as its major method of sensory perception (referred to hereafter as the base creature). This template assumes that the creature has never had the ability to use its eyes and that it has spent its entire life honing its other senses to compensate.
A blind from birth creature uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here. Do not recalculate the creature’s Hit Dice, base attack bonus, saves, or skill points if its type changes.
Size and Type: Same as base creature.
Special Attacks: A blind from birth creature loses any gaze attacks it might have. Otherwise, it retains all the special attacks of the base creature.
Special Qualities: A blind from birth creature loses any low-light vision, darkvision, or similar abilities it might have. Otherwise, it retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.
Permanent Blindness (Ex): The creature is unable to see, it cannot see any distance in any type of lighting. It cannot distinguish color or visual contrast. It cannot read. It is immune to gaze attacks, visual effects, illusions, and other attack forms that rely on sight.
Ignorant of Sight (Ex): Because the creature has never been able to perceive the world using its eyes, any effects that remove blindness or otherwise allow it to see render the creature dazed and disoriented for the duration of the spell, unless it can somehow stop the effect of the spell, for example, by closing its eyes (see below for exceptions). While disoriented, the creature loses its dexterity bonus to AC and the benefits and penalties of Permanent Blindness, Heightened Senses, and any potential feats it might have gained through this template. If the creature does manage to stop the effect of the spell, it still takes it one full-action to regain its composure. Once it has done so, it regains the benefits and penalties from all of the above mentioned abilities.
If the spell does not actually affect the eyes of the creature (like Synesthete which allows a creature to “feel” light), rather than become dazed, the blind from birth creature becomes distracted, effectively removing the benefits from the above mentioned abilities, but still allowing it to use the spell to “see” normally. If the spell has an instantaneous or permanent duration (like Remove Blindness), the blind from birth creature may either resist the spell with the appropriate save (the creature receives a +5 to its roll) or accept the spell and be healed (see below).
Heightened Senses (Ex): Lacking sight, the creature has honed its other senses of sound, smell, and touch in order to observe its environment. The creature gains blindsense out to 15 feet. It also gains a +2 bonus to listen checks. If the creature is deafened, it temporarily loses this listen bonus, and its blindsense radius is lessened to 5 feet while it is deafened.
Potential Feats: A blind from birth creature has the option to select from the following feats when choosing feats at character creation and at every three levels.
Scent: The creature gains the benefits of scent.
Blindsense 30' (Ex): Requirements: Scent. Experience with the world has taught the creature more about locating things using senses other than sight. Its blindsense range increases to 30’. Its listen bonus increases to +4. If the creature is deafened, it temporarily loses this listen bonus, and its blindsense radius is lessened to 5 feet while it is deafened.
Blindsight 5' (Ex): Requirements: Scent, Blindsense 30'. The creature gains blindsight out to 5 feet. If the creature is deafened, it temporarily loses this blindsight while the creature is deafened.
Extraordinary Senses (Ex): Requirements: Scent, Blindsense 30', Blindsight 5', Wisdom 17. The blind from birth creature has honed its senses of sound, smell, and touch to incredible levels. The ranges of its scent, blindsense, and blindsight increase by 30 feet, 10 feet, and 5 feet, respectively.
If the base creature already has one or more of these special qualities, it may use that ability instead of the Potential Feats when determining whether requirements for a Potential Feat have been met. Also, Extraordinary Senses grants its range bonus to these natural abilities. (i.e. If a bugbear were to take use this template, it could substitute its natural scent ability for the Potential Feat: Scent granted by this template. It's natural scent would be augmented by Extraordinary Senses, as that feat improves all abilities of that description, regardless of whether they were gained from the blind from birth template or not).
Abilities: Same as the base creature.
Environment: Same as base creature.
Challenge Rating: Same as base creature.
Alignment: Same as base creature.
Level Adjustment: Same as the base creature.
HEALING THE BLINDNESS
If a blind from birth creature is ever permanently healed of its affliction (via a Remove Blindness spell or otherwise) it instantly becomes dazed for 1 hour and disoriented for one day (see Ignorant of Sight). After that day, the creature cannot effectively use its new sense of sight and must adapt itself. Adaptation takes one week. Until one week is up, the creature only has blindsense out to 30’. After the week, the creature’s sight is normal for another creature of its race. Due to the extreme distraction of having a new primary sense, it loses all benefits and penalties from this template. If at any time the creature loses its sight again, either temporarily or permanently, it takes one day of perpetual blindness to regain the benefits of Heightened Senses and one week to regain the benefits of any Potential Feats it might have taken. If the creature is voluntarily blinding itself (by closing its eyes, covering its eyes with a blindfold, etc.) it can only gain the benefits of Heightened Senses (after one day of perpetual blindness) and nothing more. A creature that never had the blind from birth template cannot gain the benefits of Heightened Senses by voluntarily blinding itself for any length of time.
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I've included the appropriate abilities below, cited from the core books and the SRD, of course.
[sblock]Blindsense (Ex): Using nonvisual senses, such as acute smell or hearing, a creature with blindsense notices things it cannot see. The creature usually does not need to make Spot or Listen checks to pinpoint the location of a creature within range of its blindsense ability, provided that it has line of effect to that creature. Any opponent the creature cannot see still has total concealment against the creature with blindsense, and the creature still has the normal miss chance when attacking foes that have concealment. Visibility still affects the movement of a creature with blindsense. A creature with blindsense is still denied its Dexterity bonus to Armor Class against attacks from creatures it cannot see.
Blindsight (Ex): This ability is similar to blindsense, but is far more discerning. Using nonvisual senses, such as sensitivity to vibrations, keen smell, acute hearing, or echolocation, a creature with blindsight maneuvers and fights as well as a sighted creature. Invisibility, darkness, and most kinds of concealment are irrelevant, though the creature must have line of effect to a creature or object to discern that creature or object. The ability’s range is specified in the creature’s descriptive text. The creature usually does not need to make Spot or Listen checks to notice creatures within range of its blindsight ability. Unless noted otherwise, blindsight is continuous, and the creature need do nothing to use it. Some forms of blindsight, however, must be triggered as a free action. If so, this is noted in the creature’s description. If a creature must trigger its blindsight ability, the creature gains the benefits of blindsight only during its turn.
Scent (Ex): A creature with scent can detect opponents by scent within 30 feet. If the opponent is upwind, the range increases to 60 feet; if downwind, it drops to 15 feet. Strong scents, such as smoke or rotting garbage, can be detected at twice the ranges noted above. Overpowering scents, such as skunk musk or troglodyte stench, can be detected at triple normal range. When a creature detects a scent, the exact location of the source is not revealed-only its presence somewhere within range. The creature can take a move action to note the direction of the scent. Whenever the creature comes within 5 feet of the source, the creature pinpoints the source’s location.
Dazed: Unable to act normally. A dazed character can take no actions, but has no penalty to AC.[/sblock]
"Blind from Birth" is an inherited template that can be added to any humanoid that normally uses eyes as its major method of sensory perception (referred to hereafter as the base creature). This template assumes that the creature has never had the ability to use its eyes and that it has spent its entire life honing its other senses to compensate.
A blind from birth creature uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here. Do not recalculate the creature’s Hit Dice, base attack bonus, saves, or skill points if its type changes.
Size and Type: Same as base creature.
Special Attacks: A blind from birth creature loses any gaze attacks it might have. Otherwise, it retains all the special attacks of the base creature.
Special Qualities: A blind from birth creature loses any low-light vision, darkvision, or similar abilities it might have. Otherwise, it retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.
Permanent Blindness (Ex): The creature is unable to see, it cannot see any distance in any type of lighting. It cannot distinguish color or visual contrast. It cannot read. It is immune to gaze attacks, visual effects, illusions, and other attack forms that rely on sight.
Ignorant of Sight (Ex): Because the creature has never been able to perceive the world using its eyes, any effects that remove blindness or otherwise allow it to see render the creature dazed and disoriented for the duration of the spell, unless it can somehow stop the effect of the spell, for example, by closing its eyes (see below for exceptions). While disoriented, the creature loses its dexterity bonus to AC and the benefits and penalties of Permanent Blindness, Heightened Senses, and any potential feats it might have gained through this template. If the creature does manage to stop the effect of the spell, it still takes it one full-action to regain its composure. Once it has done so, it regains the benefits and penalties from all of the above mentioned abilities.
If the spell does not actually affect the eyes of the creature (like Synesthete which allows a creature to “feel” light), rather than become dazed, the blind from birth creature becomes distracted, effectively removing the benefits from the above mentioned abilities, but still allowing it to use the spell to “see” normally. If the spell has an instantaneous or permanent duration (like Remove Blindness), the blind from birth creature may either resist the spell with the appropriate save (the creature receives a +5 to its roll) or accept the spell and be healed (see below).
Heightened Senses (Ex): Lacking sight, the creature has honed its other senses of sound, smell, and touch in order to observe its environment. The creature gains blindsense out to 15 feet. It also gains a +2 bonus to listen checks. If the creature is deafened, it temporarily loses this listen bonus, and its blindsense radius is lessened to 5 feet while it is deafened.
Potential Feats: A blind from birth creature has the option to select from the following feats when choosing feats at character creation and at every three levels.
Scent: The creature gains the benefits of scent.
Blindsense 30' (Ex): Requirements: Scent. Experience with the world has taught the creature more about locating things using senses other than sight. Its blindsense range increases to 30’. Its listen bonus increases to +4. If the creature is deafened, it temporarily loses this listen bonus, and its blindsense radius is lessened to 5 feet while it is deafened.
Blindsight 5' (Ex): Requirements: Scent, Blindsense 30'. The creature gains blindsight out to 5 feet. If the creature is deafened, it temporarily loses this blindsight while the creature is deafened.
Extraordinary Senses (Ex): Requirements: Scent, Blindsense 30', Blindsight 5', Wisdom 17. The blind from birth creature has honed its senses of sound, smell, and touch to incredible levels. The ranges of its scent, blindsense, and blindsight increase by 30 feet, 10 feet, and 5 feet, respectively.
If the base creature already has one or more of these special qualities, it may use that ability instead of the Potential Feats when determining whether requirements for a Potential Feat have been met. Also, Extraordinary Senses grants its range bonus to these natural abilities. (i.e. If a bugbear were to take use this template, it could substitute its natural scent ability for the Potential Feat: Scent granted by this template. It's natural scent would be augmented by Extraordinary Senses, as that feat improves all abilities of that description, regardless of whether they were gained from the blind from birth template or not).
Abilities: Same as the base creature.
Environment: Same as base creature.
Challenge Rating: Same as base creature.
Alignment: Same as base creature.
Level Adjustment: Same as the base creature.
HEALING THE BLINDNESS
If a blind from birth creature is ever permanently healed of its affliction (via a Remove Blindness spell or otherwise) it instantly becomes dazed for 1 hour and disoriented for one day (see Ignorant of Sight). After that day, the creature cannot effectively use its new sense of sight and must adapt itself. Adaptation takes one week. Until one week is up, the creature only has blindsense out to 30’. After the week, the creature’s sight is normal for another creature of its race. Due to the extreme distraction of having a new primary sense, it loses all benefits and penalties from this template. If at any time the creature loses its sight again, either temporarily or permanently, it takes one day of perpetual blindness to regain the benefits of Heightened Senses and one week to regain the benefits of any Potential Feats it might have taken. If the creature is voluntarily blinding itself (by closing its eyes, covering its eyes with a blindfold, etc.) it can only gain the benefits of Heightened Senses (after one day of perpetual blindness) and nothing more. A creature that never had the blind from birth template cannot gain the benefits of Heightened Senses by voluntarily blinding itself for any length of time.
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I've included the appropriate abilities below, cited from the core books and the SRD, of course.
[sblock]Blindsense (Ex): Using nonvisual senses, such as acute smell or hearing, a creature with blindsense notices things it cannot see. The creature usually does not need to make Spot or Listen checks to pinpoint the location of a creature within range of its blindsense ability, provided that it has line of effect to that creature. Any opponent the creature cannot see still has total concealment against the creature with blindsense, and the creature still has the normal miss chance when attacking foes that have concealment. Visibility still affects the movement of a creature with blindsense. A creature with blindsense is still denied its Dexterity bonus to Armor Class against attacks from creatures it cannot see.
Blindsight (Ex): This ability is similar to blindsense, but is far more discerning. Using nonvisual senses, such as sensitivity to vibrations, keen smell, acute hearing, or echolocation, a creature with blindsight maneuvers and fights as well as a sighted creature. Invisibility, darkness, and most kinds of concealment are irrelevant, though the creature must have line of effect to a creature or object to discern that creature or object. The ability’s range is specified in the creature’s descriptive text. The creature usually does not need to make Spot or Listen checks to notice creatures within range of its blindsight ability. Unless noted otherwise, blindsight is continuous, and the creature need do nothing to use it. Some forms of blindsight, however, must be triggered as a free action. If so, this is noted in the creature’s description. If a creature must trigger its blindsight ability, the creature gains the benefits of blindsight only during its turn.
Scent (Ex): A creature with scent can detect opponents by scent within 30 feet. If the opponent is upwind, the range increases to 60 feet; if downwind, it drops to 15 feet. Strong scents, such as smoke or rotting garbage, can be detected at twice the ranges noted above. Overpowering scents, such as skunk musk or troglodyte stench, can be detected at triple normal range. When a creature detects a scent, the exact location of the source is not revealed-only its presence somewhere within range. The creature can take a move action to note the direction of the scent. Whenever the creature comes within 5 feet of the source, the creature pinpoints the source’s location.
Dazed: Unable to act normally. A dazed character can take no actions, but has no penalty to AC.[/sblock]
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