What are the game-mechanical effects of being effectively blinded? E.g. your vision is completely obscured by darkness, pea-soup fog, or a flurry of smothering raven feathers (yes, this is about Corvus of Trianoma).
HoH: Soc p32-33 mentions rules for fighting when invisible. If an attacker is not blinded by whatever obscures the vision of the opponent, this sounds like kind of the same.
These rules say the attacker gets +3 Atk for the first round only, due to the surprise effect.
And then the table on p33 lists bonus for being completely as "+9 melee attack".
Initially I had thought the blinded characters would get no Defense at all, so no roll and Dfn stat not dded, just a flat 0. But with the above rules the defender is not penalized, he rolls normally, but the attacker gets +9 (or +12 the first round).
If you were going to give them a 0 defense total then you shouldn't bother rolling. They die. Done.
But to be clear, you are comparing totals. A +9 attack and a -9 defense are the same thing.
Lords of Men has a lot of expanded combat rules. But I am very unfamiliar with that book.
LoM agrees on +9 for total concealment. That would go in both directions: 9 bonus on attacks from the invisible, and 9 harder to attack the invisible. It does somewhat matter if this goes to the attacker or the defender since botches will set one to 0 and not the other. For example, an attack with -9 against a defender who botches is far less dangerous than an attack against a defender with +9 who botches. LoM does say, "These bonuses and penalties apply to both the attacker and the defender." So it sounds like the blinded person would have a 9-point penalty on the attack, and the defender would also get a 9-point bonus to defense. That's an 18-point difference, which seems like it may be extreme. My personal preference would be to apply the 9 points as penalties to the blinded, so -9 attack and -9 defense; it makes more sense to me to weaken the blind than strengthen the one who can sense normally.
LoM adds this comments as well, differentiating between just not being able to see the attacker and not being able to see the environment:
Incantation of the Milky Eyes (ArM5 133) indicates that the cataracts created through that spell heal as if they were Heavy Wounds. Perhaps using that same penalty is applicable for a blinded person?
That is pretty close to what we are looking at. "Heals as" is pretty weak evidence for "penalizes as" but if we didn't have a canon ruling from other books it would work out.
Is there anything saying you can't use ranged attacks. While blind? Ah, the blind flaw says it is futile, which I would say implies you always miss or it is a...
shot in the dark 8) YEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
LoM says you cannot attack at all unless you can somehow roughly identify their location. That 9-point penalty is assuming you've figured out approximately where they are and are able to attack the small region in which they are located.
Even though a +9 to the attacker seems to be the same as a -9 to the defender, there is the situation where a defensive botch gives you a flat 0. For fighters with poor skill and dex the -9 might actually have set them below 0 before the due roll, so the flat 0 is not worse.
I don’t see what the point about Incantation of the Milky Eyes is. The question is not about actual blindness or recovering from it, but how you fight if you can’t see.
But it sounds like the +9 to the attacker’s Atk is right. Plus +9 to the attacker’s Dfn if the victim fights back, provided the attacker isn’t affected by the blinding effect.
That is probably why they wrote it as a bonus to attack, the point was that it seems counter-intuitive that they don't get a penalty, but they sort of do because of the way the numbers have to shake out.
I think we have the RAW answer in any case.
I would not fight the top swordsman in my covenant even if he were blind under these rules. Good to know.