It's often crossed my mind how the primary senses are something that's rarely addressed in RPG's. I don't mean line of sight, infared, or x-ray vision. I'm talking about plain old eyesight, hearing, smell, and possible others.

In a Grim and Perilous world where things like insanity, disease, stress and fatigue are covered in depth, why isn't vision, hearing, or smell?

Now I know you can call it the skill "Observation", but don't you think that being Observant shouldn't be dependant on your inate sensory abilities?

So, I suggest that a Die Pool be created at character generation that helps remedy this shortcoming. Of course, as in any 3e die roll, there should be banes and boons, and crits that are both positive and negative. I know that many of you might fear that this would hinder your own player, but there should be an equal chance of a more positive outcome to happen as well.

What better way to assist in the whole "roleplay" aspect of the game, than do add a few random characteristics that would actually add a bit of flavor to the game.

So, even though your PC might be clinically blind, as in the real world, he/she would have extra-sensory perception in his hearing or smell. A PC who rolls for highly exceptional sight, may find themselves virtually deaf. This addition would an additional bit of flavor to your player group...maybe even a gameplan as they work to overcome one of the players' handicaps.

Good idea or bad...or somewhere in-between?

The good old 2300AD had something like that, giving players

Eyesight, Hearing and Appearance on a "poor-average-good-excellent" scale, using a D10 to randomize and making

1 - poor

2-6 - average

7-8 good

9-0 excellent or something like it.

Note that VirginGames' old James Bond RPG had good appearance as a disadvantage (getting recognized easily as an agent etc.), I liked that.

As an aside: I think it's unwise to have sensory crippled characters in an RPG unless the "magic" somehow compensates the absent characteristic and it really is just fluff. Sure it's realistic to have a myopic wizard, but getting your glasses smashed in a dungeon in Arabia with no where near a qualified optician kinda sucks in the real world, and maybe it's not the kind of heroic RPG we're looking for, eh ?

Are you proposing that these would always be done in pairs, so that a character had one sense better than average while another worse? So a character with Keen Eyesight could get an extra Fortune die on all Observation tests where sight was involved, but might also have Poor Hearing and get an extra Misfortune die on Observation tests that involved listening? It could work, but if the players get to choose, they will probably go for having better eyesight since that is the most frequently used sense in an RPG, followed by hearing, and they would pick smell or taste for their hindrance, since those are the least likely to be used. If you made it random and a PC got stuck with poor eyesight, but improved sense of taste, you as GM then have to come up with a lot more instances where the PCs sense of taste comes into play, because the player's not going to enjoy the game as much if you're still calling for sight based Observation checks all the time, assuming that is his deficit, without equal opportunities to use his strength. And I don't know about you, but I'm not a good enough GM to have exceptional taste or sense of smell come up that often compared to hearing or sight.

Also note that a PC can already take a specialization in Observation to get a bonus Fortune die. In your game they may be tempted to specialize in the sense they have the hindrance in just to offset the Misfortune die, unless you disallow that as well.