Berder wrote:I think flavor matters a lot and is half the draw of any fantasy game. You want to imagine yourself as a protagonist with special powers, rising in ability and status as the game progresses, and you want to be able to immerse yourself in the world of the protagonist. The more flavorful/interesting and "real"-seeming that world is, the easier and more desirable it is to immerse yourself in it. Mechanics matter too, but they aren't the only thing.
Also, if you ask me, the response to a new idea should be to work on ways to improve it. Focus on what might be good in the idea instead of dismissing the whole thing because there's one aspect you don't like.
I do like the idea of a race that can see through walls. It's a unique race concept. Yes, it encroaches on Ash's territory, but then so does deep dwarf dungeon sense. The main problem with OP's idea is that too much of the game is based around scrolls for a race not to be able to read them. Therefore, they can simply be a race with Blurry Vision 3.
And while I agree that immersion and flavor are important, I think they aren't *game design* points. You can reflavor virtually any mechanic to fit into nearly any story telling scenario given a far enough stretch, but a bad mechanic remains bad no matter how flawlessly it fits into your story.
The problem comes when a new mechanic is *enslaved* to it's story, when the mechanic's entire point is to tell the story, and it doesn't contribute to game play in the slightest (or even detracts from it). That isn't to say that new ideas shouldn't be explored when they're medeocre or bad, they may have enough promise that they can become a good mechanic, the problem is that when you confine yourself to the story telling elements that you're designing from to start with, you can artificially road block yourself into not improving or fixing something because it doesn't make sense for the story you want to tell.
So talking strictly from a design standpoint:
Seeing through walls is very powerful (if you've used scry in any significant measure, you'll recognize this as a true statement) giving a race this ability permanantly is significantly *more* powerful than Ash's ability (and completely supercedes it)
When looking at "a race that can always see through walls" from a design standpoint I want to ask:
First: Does this contribute a new thing to the game, would it measurably impact gameplay in a positive fashion, if you disregard the problems (I think the answer is yes)
Second: Do the costs and benefits feel equal in measure? If not maybe we would need more costs, perhaps to the point where the race would get either too weird/complicated or not fun to play. The OP's proposed costs might be proportional, but they'd also make the game un-fun (no scrolls requires a lot of additional work, and it's been explored several times with no positive resolution), Berer's suggestion of replacement with blurry vision 3 don't feel strong enough (to me) but adding more additional already-existing costs added to blurry vision to get to the point where the costs and benefits are proportional seem like they'd start to encroach into the "this is a giant hodgepodge mess of complicated un-fun-ness" so we'd likely need a new drawback invented.
Third: Would the existence of this race obviate some portion of exisiting gameplay, and if so, would it be worth it? I think 'permascry' while interesting, obviates a several more limited forms of information gathering (DD's wall sense, Formacid's antennae, and Gnoll's item sense, as well as Ash's limited-use scry) as to whether the cost is worth the benefit, probably I'd need to see a balanced proposal to get a sense of how interesting it was to play before I decided if it was worth superceding the more limited forms of information gathering.
So a race with permascry gets a ridiculously excessively large benefit when paired with passwall and stabbing, and a merely excessively large benefit without passwall, and a measly very large benefit without stabbing. So one way to impose a cost to such an ability to more quickly bring the costs and benefits into line, is to combine it with something that's not only a cost, but also a nerf to the ability itself, for example "No earth magic" or "No short blades" or "All critters immediately wake up if they are within your sight range" (or to use an existing thing, we could use Ru's sacrifice stealth) might be examples (I don't know that I like or dislike those as costs, but it's a possible exploration route, of the three the last is newish, and seems at least vaguely tied to the ability itself)