"Blind" status effect on particular enemy types

Do you think undead enemies (skeletons, zombies, ghosts) should be able to be blinded? Are they actually using physical vision to sense and attack other beings, or is it more of a life energy sense that brings them toward their targets? What about slimes?

What types of enemies do you make immune to the "Blind" effect in your games and why?

This is a good question. I recall that D&D lore states that the undead are immune to almost everything that affects the living: Can't poison a skeleton since they have no organs or flesh that would fail on exposure to it. for example.

However, when it comes to blindness, I guess it depends on the type of the undead, and how the blindness is induced: Ghouls or zombies still use their eyes to see, so it would apply in their case (maybe a specter, too). Also, does the blindness directly affect the organs (eyeball, retina, optical nerve, visual cortex) or is it more something that prevents the light from reaching them at all? In the first example, that would only affect enemies with regular eyes, while the second could cripple any light-sensing organ (supposing that slimes use light to sense shape and size, kind of how starfish do)

In my case, I wouldn't make an enemy such as a trent, fungus or will o' wisp weak to blindness, since they sense their targets through other means (vibrations, body heat, air pressure, magic perception), and there may be other means to cripple them.

EDIT: I mistakenly listed ghouls in the example thinking they are undead.

That would be based on your definition of what zombies etc actually do. TBH we dont know how real zombie bodies work and I dont know if people also asked ghosts how their "bodies" work.. If we go via most movies though, zombies seem to use sound more than sight so blindness shouldnt affect those effectively

On the one hand, varying up your enemies with types immune to certain statuses might give you more variety, and on the other it might confuse your players as to what can and can't be affected by various ailments, so you'll need to clearly inform them as to what is and isn't affected so they can make informed decisions and not have to use trial and error every time. On a third hand, status ailments are usually the prime offenders when it comes to what TV Tropes called Useless Useful Spells, in that in RPGs most of the enemies you'd want to blind (ie bosses and mini-bosses) are usually immune to status effects so the bosses that are supposed to test your skills don't become trivially easy. Pretty much the only games I've ever seen avert this are the Final Fantasy Tactics series, and strategy RPGs are a whole different ball game from standard RPG conventions. Personally I'd keep it consistent, you can always handwave it by saying it's affecting the magic that enemy uses to perceive the world but honestly I don't think most people are going to think about it that deeply. I know I wouldn't do a double take if I blinded a skeleton, I'd just be like "yeah that seems legit" if I even thought about it at all. So it's up to you bit I would keep it in line with what RPGs have already done, personally

Usually, I feel like the "blind" status is caused by things that do not directly affect the eyes themselves, but indirectly - through effects placed in the air around the target which obscures vision. darkness, fog, mist, a bright flash of light - stuff like that.

i guess for zombies and skeletons the main question is - do you think they actually "see" the humans they are attacking, or do they merely "sense" them. This is obviously dependent on how you design your game, the lore of your world, etc. - curious how other people interpret it.

I know that functional considerations are important, but i'm definitely someone who gets bothered when playing games if i'm able to inflict "bleed" on a skeleton or i can "poison" a ghost. i understand there's a suspension of realism that's unavoidable in jrpgs to some extent, but i try to avoid it when possible!

If my memory serves, one example would be the skeleton enemy (Forbidden) from FFVIII that is the one and only non-boss undead enemy in the entire game with complete immunity against like 90% of the status effects in the game, including blindness.
How they see their prey is up to interpretation - from my point of view malicious apparitions and undead spirits are instinctively drawn towards the living that had an active life force just like how vengeful ghosts haunt the living and theoretically, it is safe to assume that they should not be able to be affected by any sort of physical disabilities that affects the living because they don't have any biological process (thats why they are called "Undead" in the first place) - especially those without corporeal form like ghosts.

Zombies on the other hand (assuming they are the traditional human corpse reanimated type), are more situational as they can technically "Bleed" but "Poison" shouldn't have any effect on them even if they are still technically vulnerable to the effect itself - they can still be affected by blindness if your interpretation of zombies relying on eyesight (which is usually true).

I think this is largely up to the developer. Just think about how you perceive these monsters to be, as well as whether or not they have eyes and whether or not they actually work. Here's how I'd handle all of your example monsters, with reasoning:

• Zombie: Possibly blindable, but as decomposition sets in, its vision is sure to diminish (cataracts or just plain old rot) and thus, not be as useful for detecting the environment. Of course, this same argument could be made for hearing as well.
• Skeleton: I'd make this immune to blind because it doesn't have eyeballs (or it can I suppose, but that would look silly) so its probably detecting its foe by some other means. What that is would be up to you, though.
• Ghost: Also immune to blind, as such a thing is most likely detecting its prey's life force if you're going the pure fantasy route. For a more scientifically-explained setting, you could even say it's out of phase and thus, sees things differently and in ways that its "vision" is based on something blind-based effects (a handful of sand, a cloud of darkness, a poked eyeball, etc) are ineffective against.
• Slime: Does it even have eyes? If yes, then yeah, blind away. If not, then it surely detects prey using other means, such as sensing vibrations, smell, etc.

My general rule with status ailments is "does it make sense for this type of ailment to affect this type of foe?" If not, then it gets immunity.

I don't think logic should have so much weight in game design. If you make em immune to blind, it should be to make the game more interesting. Say, they have good attack and blind doesn't affect them, so you gotta think of a new way to tackle them.

I really don't think much about this. While the obvious reply would be things like - "Humanoid, Creatures with Eyes", The more Logical way of looking at this is - "How would the Game balance work out if Enemy is blinded", "Will the enemy be a Challenge after it is blinded". That's how i look at it.

The way I see it, applying logic to things like this actually is good design, and here's why: Unless you plan on giving the players access to an ability that shows whether or not the target is immune to effects like blind, it's going to be all guesswork on their part. By assuring them that things with eyes can generally be blinded, or that things with blood can be poisoned, you're providing them with consistency. After all, they don't know which enemies you made blind immune and which you didn't, right? Why not balance around this, so that blinding a giant makes you less likely to be obliterated by his potentially 1-shotting attacks?

Also, just because an enemy with eyes can be blinded, that doesn't mean that same enemy can't also have abilities capable of curing blindness and/or granting outright immunity to blindness. In fact, this is what I plan on doing with many bosses and tougher enemies: Status effects like blind, silence, etc work on them, but only once per battle and only until they use something that both removes the effect and grants immunity to it.

Those are actually some really good examples of how to do it right. There's thinking and strategy involved, which would make for a fun game.

My beef is when real life logic is used in a game without considering whether that would make the game more fun or interesting, because usually it doesn't. That's what I meant to get across, but my first post didn't so such a good job of that.