Probably a pretty simple question but thought I'd clarify to be sure. During my group's last session, we got in a bad fight, and during this fight, my Psyker had his eye torn out. The rulebook states that a character that has lost one eye permanently reduces their Ballistic skill by ten.

Am I correct in assuming that if my Psyker either gets a bionic replacement for his eye that penalty goes away, and everything is restored?

Mostly asking because the way the rulebook seems to word it, it sounds like "standard" permanent stat loss, and just wanting to make sure that getting a new eye can indeed fix this.

If he gets a common quality replacement then yes the "permanent" penalty is gone, until he gets himself in a haywire field. It's essentially losing their depth perception and peripheral vision.

At least that's the way I've run it.

Other minor query that links to the first post, over a small disagreement between my GM and I.

The rules for losing one eye states that the character suffers a -10 to BS and a -20 to all sight based tests.

Would attacking or defending be considered tests? My GM seems to be of the opinion that the -20 would also apply to any shooting or melee attack, as in his words: "You still need to see your opponent to be able to hit them, and you still need to see their attack to block it" ergo according to him most combat tests would indeed qualify as sight based tests.

I am somewhat opposed to this view, as it seems to be the -10 to Ballistics Skill is intended to represent the loss of accuracy through losing the eye, and as melee combat isn't listed I would argue that it is at least intended by RAW that such a character can fight unimpeded in melee combat. Plus having a -30 to all shooting tests seems extraordinarily harsh (though I suppose not entirely out of line with the severity of the other lost limbs).

Sight based tests are for anything based on Perception, not during combat.

In my opinion.

Yep, I agree with ThenDoctor : the penalty is for Perception Tests only .

I respectfully disagree with the above. Losing an eye will make it hard to be effective in combat. Unless you are attempting to hit a target you are not looking at you are using sight to attack them. The -20 is also in line with other sight blocking affects, such as darkness (-20 for melee and -30 for ballistic) and fog/mist/shadow which put all ballistic tests as (-20). Yes it is a little bit on the harsh side, but on the other hand, having only a -10 to shooting and no penalty what so every to melee makes little to no sense IMO. Now you could make an argument that "well, as long as you are looking at it it would count as using sight" meaning things such as tech use, medicae, gamble, so on would take the -20, but those things are not really affected by lack of some sight. Losing an eye will mess up your depth perception, and make it a lot harder to notice things. Close one eye and see how much of your vision you lose, its about a third, and now imagine you have to try and parry an attack that someone is making with only 2/3rds sight and little depth perception.

Another example would be flying a plane. The pilot is not a perception base test, but im pretty sure you would be at a disadvantage trying to fly with only one eye.

The most common place for sight based things would be perception (obviously), BS and WS, and agility based things (although a fair number of agility based things would count or be case by case. For example trying to use acrobatics to jump and land on a tiny ledge would probably be affected, but just simply doing a back flip onto solid ground would not).

Of course all of the above is just my opinion.

I respectfully disagree with the above. Losing an eye will make it hard to be effective in combat. Unless you are attempting to hit a target you are not looking at you are using sight to attack them. The -20 is also in line with other sight blocking affects, such as darkness (-20 for melee and -30 for ballistic) and fog/mist/shadow which put all ballistic tests as (-20). Yes it is a little bit on the harsh side, but on the other hand, having only a -10 to shooting and no penalty what so every to melee makes little to no sense IMO.

I would make a counter-argument to that, in that characters that are blind (missing both eyes) can still attempt melee combat, while it is explicitly stated that all attempts at Ballistic Skill tests automatically fail. So it's quite clear (imo) that losing your eyes impacts shooting-based characters significantly more than melee characters. So it would seem that based on the rules for actual blindness there is an implied leeway that melee combat isn't notably affected.

But hey, I actually train with swords and melee weapons. Perhaps in my next class, I'll close one eye during sparring and see how it affects my performance

I would assume that is why you receive the additional -10 to BS, also while you can attempt to make an attack when blind in melee, it is on a (-30). Honestly Its hard to say which way is the right way. the rules IMO do not accuratly describe what would happen under ether interpretation, as it would affect a large amount of situations, but not by the same amount.

Personally if I ever felt inclined to house rule them (its not happened a whole lot, so its never been an issue) I would probably make it something like a -10 to BS, then -10 to all tests that involve sight(melee, shooting, dodging, some acrobatics, flying a plane etc) and another -10 (-20) to perception tests that DIRECTLY use sight (A visual search tests, awareness to see something).