Defel & Blind-fighting

[awfulalex]

Blind Fighting: Time to use: one round. Defel can use this skill instead of their brawling or melee combat skills when deprived of their sight visors or otherwise rendered blind. Blind fighting teaches the Defel to use its senses of smell and hearing to overcome any blindness penalties.

Now what is interesting is that they can brawl and melee with this Dex skill, but what about brawl & melee parry? My feeling from the description is that it should be a yes.
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[Gry Sarth]

Humm, not really sure. Perhaps they really meant it to be offensive only. Smell and hearing might be enough to locate an enemy and deal a blow accordingly, but it might not have the accuracy to detect precisely when, where and how an attack is coming for him to be able to parry it.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Tupteq]

In my games I removed any "... parry" skills long time ago. But about your question - I think you're right. But now this skill is too powerful (it can replace 4 other skills), I've never had a defel in my games as a PC, but my idea to solve this problem is to not use this skill, but just let defel to learn "Blindfighting" maneuver (Rebel SpecForce Handbook p.116) and allow to use it for both brawl and melee.

[awfulalex]

yes i agree it can be a bit powerful, but i get the idea they are powerful look at their story line. Also I would say even so they would still have penalties - one or two level higher difficulties becuase of being blind. Yes they can blindfight, but it is just not as easy as with your goggles on man
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[Esoomian]

It's the same as lightsaber combat being used for attack and defence.

I think the reason for that is a lot of races can have very high strength and if Brawling poarry fell under brawl it'd be too easy for them (Case and point Esoomians 7D strength).

I feel blindfighting should only work offensively as otherwise why not just put all your points in that and just close your eyes every combat?
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[Gry Sarth]

Ditto. It's already plenty powerful without us reading more into it.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[vong]

yes, if they "see" by smell, they will know where the center of mass is of different smells, they would not be able to smell a fist moving fast at them.
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[Esoomian]

Although if they also use sound then they should be able to figure out where a lightsabrer is pretty easily. They make distinctive sounds as they move through the air.

Of course parrying a lightsaber is not easy even if you know exactly where it is.
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[OtterJethro]

[Esoomian]

In theory it's possible you'd just have to grab the hilt or the arm of the person who's swinging it at you but there is no way I'd try it blind!
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Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.

[Matthias777]

I'm about to start up (GMing) a bounty hunter group campaign, and one of my players is playing a Defel...so this has been on my mind lately. Honestly I don't think that the Blind Fighting skill (the one outlined in the Defel species stats, not the SpecForces "blindfighting") was thought out very well by WEG and needs to be reworked. I think that its purpose should be to work towards negating the penalties imposed by darkness, fog, blindness, etc.; not replace your other fighting skills. But obviously you can't have the player simply add it to his roll---if he has Blind Fighting raised much at all he'll be like a ninja on crack.

If we did that, here's the problem: Complete darkness is only a +4D modifier to the difficulty of any attacks/parries, and most Defel PCs are going to have a decent Dexterity attribute to begin with (3D or higher). So if he has just 1D put into Blind Fighting, the bonus matches or beats the difficulty modifier. That's clearly just too powerful.

For my house rules I'd like to keep it as a skill intended to partially (at lower levels) or potentially fully (at a skill level of say, 6D+) negate darkness (or similar) penalties. Since making the skill a direct bonus is out, what ideas come to mind? I was thinking possibly have the player roll their Blind Fighting skill in addition to their, say, Melee Combat skill, but make each roll count as an action, and halving the Blind Fighting roll total afterwards. This means that they're rolling at -1D to both Blind Fighting and to Melee Combat (because of multiple action penalties, reflecting the fact that they're attempting to both determine where their opponent is as well as attack them). This also means that a Blind Fighting skill of 6D will only give a benefit of about 3D, since you're halving the total (although I admit this seems very trite).

Any other ideas for this, keeping in mind the spirit of the skill (at least in my games)? Also, based on how I'm defining the skill, wouldn't it make sense for me to make it a Perception-based skill rather than a Dexterity skill?
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Arek | Kage

[OtterJethro]

I would just not use the blindfighting skill and change the difficulty for him in the dark(much less).
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[Matthias777]

Hmm...I really like that. Simpler is better. Maybe make Blind Fighting a Defel Special Ability instead of a skill, one which may be improved (starting at +1D with a cap at say +4D). That makes a ton more sense than jumping through eighteen hoops to get it to work as a skill.
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Arek | Kage

[Esoomian]

Still too useful in my mind as it can be used for melee weapons and brawling. Also possibly for defense as well.

Perhaps make it work like an advanced skill so that you get no benifit from having a high dex skill so you can either uses Dex + the appropriate skill with penalties or blindfighting alone with no penalties.
_________________
Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.

[vong]