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In Labyrinth Lord the light spell is one of a few causes of blindness. Blind characters take a -4 to hit penalty on attacks, but do not seem to take a hit to their AC. However, in the monster description for the giant shrew, when it is deafened (and therefore blinded), its AC drops from 4 to 8.

My question is to determine if the AC penalty really is supposed to be restricted to a single monster in this way or if there should be a -4 penalty to AC for being blind applied across the board? The second option seems to be the more realistic because it is harder to dodge something you cannot see.

For simplicity, the –4 signifies the difficulty in targeting. You could make the argument that the blind person/thing is still armored and moving about, trying their best to avoid getting smacked. If you wanted to make it more detailed, maybe disallow any DEX bonus to AC?

That could work as a house rule but I'm interested in clarifying the rulebook position a bit.

The way I read it is: by-the-book, there is no AC penalty for blindness. The Giant Shrew is therefore a special case for that monster only. In B/X blindness means no attacks are allowed at all (and still no mention of an AC penalty).

Thanks Kipper.