What are all the ways for a player character to obtain blindsight?

[Kevingway]

I've had a build in mind for a while now, but I still can't find any published means of gaining blindsight as a player character. There's blindsense, but it isn't the same thing. I know that some unearthed arcana listings and the like allow blindsight, but I'm looking for ways that are currently published in official books, supplements, and errata.

Any ideas?

[MaxWilson]

I've had a build in mind for a while now, but I still can't find any published means of gaining blindsight as a player character. There's blindsense, but it isn't the same thing. I know that some unearthed arcana listings and the like allow blindsight, but I'm looking for ways that are currently published in official books, supplements, and errata.

Any ideas?

Moon Druid: wildshape into a Giant Constrictor Snake. (Or into an Earth Elemental for tremorsense.)

[Desamir]

Wildshape, Polymorph (4th), and True Polymorph (9th) open you up to many creatures with blindsight.

True Seeing (6th) grants a target truesight for 1 hour, which is superior to blindsight.

What you need to accomplish with it specifically?

[MaxWilson]

True Seeing (6th) grants a target truesight for 1 hour, which is superior to blindsight.

It's not actually superior to blindsight, just different. Truesight won't let you see through heavy obscurement such as bushes or fog, but blindsight will.

[Desamir]

It's not actually superior to blindsight, just different. Truesight won't let you see through heavy obscurement such as bushes or fog, but blindsight will.

Good call.

[Kevingway]

Wildshape, Polymorph (4th), and True Polymorph (9th) open you up to many creatures with blindsight.

True Seeing (6th) grants a target truesight for 1 hour, which is superior to blindsight.

What you need to accomplish with it specifically?


It's not actually superior to blindsight, just different. Truesight won't let you see through heavy obscurement such as bushes or fog, but blindsight will.

Exactly this, actually. I need to see through fog smoke. I'm designing a build that replicates the Devil's Sight + Darkness combo, only... without either of those things. Trying to actively employ a creative use of the gnomish firestarter and the pyrotechnics spell from the Elemental Evils supplement.

So, of course, being able to use a spell with a somatic component and hold a firestarter in my hand is ideal. Opposable thumbs and all.

[MaxWilson]

Exactly this, actually. I need to see through fog smoke. I'm designing a build that replicates the Devil's Sight + Darkness combo, only... without either of those things. Trying to actively employ a creative use of the gnomish firestarter and the pyrotechnics spell from the Elemental Evils supplement.

So, of course, being able to use a spell with a somatic component and hold a firestarter in my hand is ideal. Opposable thumbs and all.

I'm afraid you're out of luck then. To my knowledge, there is no way to gain blindsight in (demi)human form using published (non-Unearthed Arcana) material. Edit: although, you can see through your familiar's eyes, and some familiars (bats) have blindsight. But IIRC that chews up your action, plus trying to control your actions from a third-party perspective is probably (IMO) enough to grant you disadvantage on whatever you're attempting anyway.

The closest you can come is to take both the Alert feat and Rogue 2, and then hang out on the fringes of the smoke cloud. Alert will prevent your enemies from gaining advantage to attack you while they're hidden from you (while not preventing them from gaining disadvantage to attack you while you're hidden from them, ergo net disadvantage for them), while Cunning Action: Hide in the smoke will allow you to probably attack at advantage every turn, in addition to the obvious defensive benefits of enemies not knowing your location.

[Dimers]

Exactly this, actually. I need to see through fog smoke. I'm designing a build that replicates the Devil's Sight + Darkness combo, only... without either of those things. Trying to actively employ a creative use of the gnomish firestarter and the pyrotechnics spell from the Elemental Evils supplement.

So, of course, being able to use a spell with a somatic component and hold a firestarter in my hand is ideal. Opposable thumbs and all.

Contingency + Polymorph? I don't have Elemental Evils but I assume Careful Spell metamagic wouldn't help in this situation. I wish you luck -- making frequent combat-significant use of the tinker trait is a brave and noble quest.

[Kevingway]

Edit: although, you can see through your familiar's eyes, and some familiars (bats) have blindsight. But IIRC that chews up your action, plus trying to control your actions from a third-party perspective is probably (IMO) enough to grant you disadvantage on whatever you're attempting anyway.

I think this is about as close as I got a few months ago before having given up. Being limited to bonus actions while using my action merely to see is... frustrating.

Curious what all useful bonus actions I'd have, though. Could be worth exploring.

[MaxWilson]

I think this is about as close as I got a few months ago before having given up. Being limited to bonus actions while using my action merely to see is... frustrating.

Curious what all useful bonus actions I'd have, though. Could be worth exploring.

The most useful bonus action I can think of in this scenario is the Berserker's ability to attack as a bonus action while Frenzying. Not useful enough though, and the price is too high.

Are you sure you wouldn't just rather Animate a swarm of objects with 30' blindsight instead?

[Kevingway]

The most useful bonus action I can think of in this scenario is the Berserker's ability to attack as a bonus action while Frenzying. Not useful enough though, and the price is too high.

Are you sure you wouldn't just rather Animate a swarm of objects with 30' blindsight instead?

The goal is to optimize the rock gnome's racial traits, since they really don't get any love in any other way that I can determine.

But I think I've exhausted this idea until they publish psionics, assuming they continue to allow access to blindsight from unearthed arcana.

Unless someone wants to point me in the right direction.

[ImSAMazing]

You could just summon an Earth Elemental or somethign.

[RulesJD]

Detect Thoughts.

Lowish level spell so you can access it early on AND it's even better than blindsight. Works through everything, can even detect invisible/stealthed characters that aren't moving. You wont get Int 1-2 creatures, but small price to pay.

[Dalebert]

Detect Thoughts.

Lowish level spell so you can access it early on AND it's even better than blindsight. Works through everything, can even detect invisible/stealthed characters that aren't moving. You wont get Int 1-2 creatures, but small price to pay.

No. From the desc--

"...as your action on each turn until the spell ends, you can focus your mind on any one creatures that you can see..."

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think this is about as close as I got a few months ago before having given up. Being limited to bonus actions while using my action merely to see is... frustrating.

Curious what all useful bonus actions I'd have, though. Could be worth exploring.

Could you use the extra action you gain from Haste to see through your familiar's eyes? If so, that solves the problem somewhat: the action cost is eaten by the extra action gained, for a net zero. If not, you can use your extra action from Haste to do (most of) the things you would normally do with such an action. If you are an Attack-based character, that single weapon attack will at least let you trigger certain bonus action attacks, like the ones from Great Weapon Master (conditionally) and Polearm Master (unconditionally).

[SharkForce]

Could you use the extra action you gain from Haste to see through your familiar's eyes? If so, that solves the problem somewhat: the action cost is eaten by the extra action gained, for a net zero. If not, you can use your extra action from Haste to do (most of) the things you would normally do with such an action. If you are an Attack-based character, that single weapon attack will at least let you trigger certain bonus action attacks, like the ones from Great Weapon Master (conditionally) and Polearm Master (unconditionally).

all of the possible actions you can take from your haste action are listed in the spell. looking through your familiar's eyes is not one of them (though as far as it goes, i wouldn't consider it a broken use of the spell).

but if you're looking to leverage the gnomish abilities, i would suggest you talk to your DM about the possibilities of combining your gnomish contraptions with the animate object spell to see what kind of interesting things you can do.

[RulesJD]

No. From the desc--

"...as your action on each turn until the spell ends, you can focus your mind on any one creatures that you can see..."

Yeah, reading comprehension. Sorry but you literally failed to read the entire spell. Just three small paragraphs below the one you quoted is:

"You can also use this spell to detect the presence of thinking creatures you can't see. When you cast the spell or as your action during the duration, you can search for thoughts within 30 feet of you. The spell can penetrate barriers, but 2 feet of rock, 2 inches of any metal other than lead, or a thin sheet of lead blocks you. You can't detect a creature with an Intelligence of 3 or lower or one that doesn't speak any language. Once you detect the presence of a creature in this way, you can read its thoughts for the rest of the duration as described above, even if you can't see it, but it must still be within range.

[Dimers]

Detect Thoughts allows you to detect presence of creatures within range, which some tables might run as locating them precisely (mindsight, if you will) and others merely as a binary yes/no. Even if you do know the correct place to target, though, the creature is still not visible to you, so I don't think Detect Thoughts has any bearing on this question -- it doesn't remove disadvantage for attacking a creature you can't see.

[Lonely Tylenol]

all of the possible actions you can take from your haste action are listed in the spell. looking through your familiar's eyes is not one of them (though as far as it goes, i wouldn't consider it a broken use of the spell).

Thanks, I was away from all my books, left my PHB at a friend's. I was hoping seeing through a familiar's eyes was equivalent to "Use an Object" or something of that sort.

In that case, the latter applies.

Now that I am home, and have my MM on hand, I see that the Half-Dragon Template has blindsight 10 ft. With that in mind, at least one player option exists for having blindsight as a PC: "beg your DM to let you be a half-dragon X".

[Rusvul]

"You can communicate telepathically with your familiar and perceive through your familiar’s senses as long as you are on the same plane of existence."

Voice of the Chain master, PHB p111

No mention of using your actions. Take 3 levels of Warlock, grab a Bat familiar. Perceive through your familiar's senses at all times, wear a blindfold for extra coolness. It's the only way I know of to make your (interesting) concept work.

[RulesJD]

Detect Thoughts allows you to detect presence of creatures within range, which some tables might run as locating them precisely (mindsight, if you will) and others merely as a binary yes/no. Even if you do know the correct place to target, though, the creature is still not visible to you, so I don't think Detect Thoughts has any bearing on this question -- it doesn't remove disadvantage for attacking a creature you can't see.

Use your action to force it to make a Wisdom save. If it fails, you get everything, such as "oh man I hope they don't see me hiding behind this rock."

Is it perfect? No, but it's a super low level spell and gets you 90% of where you're trying go.

[SharkForce]

"You can communicate telepathically with your familiar and perceive through your familiar’s senses as long as you are on the same plane of existence."

Voice of the Chain master, PHB p111

No mention of using your actions. Take 3 levels of Warlock, grab a Bat familiar. Perceive through your familiar's senses at all times, wear a blindfold for extra coolness. It's the only way I know of to make your (interesting) concept work.

it doesn't need to say it uses your action. the rules for familiars already tell you it does. that invocation removes the range limitation, but says absolutely nothing about other limitations, which presumably remain the same... just like eldritch spear does not allow you to arbitrarily change the damage type of eldritch blast to whatever you like, because not making changes means that you use the unchanged rules, not that you get to change the rules to be whatever you like.

[Kevingway]

Thanks, I was away from all my books, left my PHB at a friend's. I was hoping seeing through a familiar's eyes was equivalent to "Use an Object" or something of that sort.

In that case, the latter applies.

Now that I am home, and have my MM on hand, I see that the Half-Dragon Template has blindsight 10 ft. With that in mind, at least one player option exists for having blindsight as a PC: "beg your DM to let you be a half-dragon X".

Oh, wow. This might actually be the only option without multiclassing to obtain what I need. Not sure how I feel about half-dragon gnome, though... hnnnnngh.

[tieren]

Went to look at rogue ability "blindsense" to try to figure out why it wouldn't suffice.

Am i to understand that if you were in a smoke cloud with an enemy that blindsense would only reveal their position if they take the hide action but not if they are behaving normally?

I presume this ability is insufficient because even if you know where they are if they are "unseen" you'll still get disadvantage on the attack?

[Kevingway]

Went to look at rogue ability "blindsense" to try to figure out why it wouldn't suffice.

Am i to understand that if you were in a smoke cloud with an enemy that blindsense would only reveal their position if they take the hide action but not if they are behaving normally?

I presume this ability is insufficient because even if you know where they are if they are "unseen" you'll still get disadvantage on the attack?

That's precisely it, unfortunately. That ability is one of the key reasons why even an invisible target's location is known if they aren't using the Hide action.

Some disagree with me on that point, but abilities like that wouldn't exist if it didn't have a reason.

I wish it worked like blindsight.

[Rusvul]

it doesn't need to say it uses your action. the rules for familiars already tell you it does. that invocation removes the range limitation, but says absolutely nothing about other limitations, which presumably remain the same... just like eldritch spear does not allow you to arbitrarily change the damage type of eldritch blast to whatever you like, because not making changes means that you use the unchanged rules, not that you get to change the rules to be whatever you like.

Your analogy isn't a very good one, since Eldritch Spear specifies that it applies "When you cast Eldritch Blast." Voice of the Chain Master, on the other hand, says no such thing.
If Voice of the Chain Master required an action, I would assume (based on precedent) that it would read "When you perceive through your familiar's senses, you may ignore the range limitation. You must still be on the same plane as the familiar. In addition...", or at least make some mention of the perception ability included in Find Familiar.
Based on that, it seems reasonable to take the perception ability granted by Voice of the Chain Master as a separate ability entirely.

It does seem considerably less ironclad than I initially thought, however. Probably ask about this one first.