Blindness

Note that for many creatures the effects of blindness are reduced or negated, as they can use senses such as hearing (bats), heat detection (pit vipers), electrical detection (platypuses), or smell (innumerable examples). Of course, a blindness plus a silence (or deafness) spell would effectively blind a bat, for example, and spells like stinking cloud or wall of fire, used in conjunction with blindness, could certainly confound other creatures. In the absence of a booster spell, though, blindness would have anywhere from a –2 to a negligible effect on creatures; our guide will in the main be the manual’s description of a monster’s senses. Note that things like long-range missile fire cannot be accomplished with a sense of smell, no matter how good it is; although it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the shamans of the bat people (say) would not need line of sight, but rather line of hearing or some such, to cast spells.