Sup, /tg/. I made an alien creation for a tabletop game (best suited for Pathfinder and/or D&D 3.5). However, the DM seems to think my creation has extra powers and skills based on the number of eyes it has. This is not the case, as when I made this species of aliens, I simply gave them three eyes, no nose (but it has nose slits), three toes, and three fingers. Pretty much an aberration with no darkvision and nothing else (it might as well be a mutated human).
The DM said it feels like they'd have a bonus to Perception (or Spot in D&D), but I told him they're identical to humans without the extra feat and skill point; the eyes (as well as the three toes and three fingers and slit nose) are just ascetic.
Am I missing something? Do creatures with more than two eyes get a bonus? Or am I in the right?
Pic related (original content by the way, I made it earlier this year)
>>44104912
By default, a third eye wouldn't give much of a bonus. Two eyes give you depth perception by letting you see things from more than one point of reference; a third wouldn't do much that the first two couldn't.
That said, if the only differences are aesthetic, then there's not much point in making an alien race, is there? Besides, why would it evolve three eyes in the first place if they didn't give it any advantage?
>>44104955
>why would it evolve three eyes in the first place if they didn't give it any advantage?
For the same reason plenty of things happen evolutionary.
All vertebrates on Earth have two eyes, four limbs, and at most seven natural digits on each limb.
This is because our earliest common ancestor was built this way, and not enough change has yet resulted to have alternatives crop up.
>>44104955
Maybe they used to peek from underneath water with it or something like that in the past? Maybe it's a sexual selection thing like a peacock's tail.
>>44104955
The same question could be asked of cyclopses (cyclopsi?). They only have one eye, and they exist despite one eyed creatures not making sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
But you see my point: there's no reason a three-eyed creature would have any advantages. Evolutionarily, yes, there's a reason they have three eyes (I haven't decided why yet), but then again, they're also aliens; no one questions why aliens have (for example) forehead ridges, or tentacles for legs, or genitals in their knees.
>>44104981
Actually our common ancestor had three eyes. Kind of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parietal_eye
>>44105029
There's nothing to say our common ancestor has that.
Though interestingly, it might actually be one of the few times we see that kind of thing, diverging that steeply from a common ancestor.
Who knows, give it another couple hundred million years and we might see a vertebrate with six limbs.
>>44105029
>no anon, you are the aliens.
So what's the consensus? How many eyes must one have before they have a bonus to a skill?
>>44105109
It's not about the number of eyes but where they are put on. Eye on your forehead won't do anything you would need to put a bonus on. Eye on the back of your head? That will give some bonuses.
>>44105167
That's what I thought. Thanks, anon!
