Had this conversation with someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC
Had this conversation with someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC
Another player who was at the table during the incident sent me this meme after the problem player in question (they had a history) left the group chat.
Felt like sharing it here because I'm sure more people should keep this kind of thing in mind.
Why would that even be a problem? Plenty of blind people in ancient stories, myths and legends. Probably better off without this person.
I mean on one side you'd have the magic to heal many if not all disabilities.
On the other hand in reality we have wheel chairs and stuff to heal and prevent many diseases, too, but still not everyone can get those...
Something that struck me as so obvious only after losing faith was when one of the "new atheists" pointed out that of all the miraculous healings people claim their gods do even today, they never seem to heal amputees.
The Blind Swordsman is a massive trope in fantasy literature. Take a look at David Carradine’s character in Circle of Iron for an archetypal example. It’s a staple in many kung fu movies - the Master uses their hyper developed senses for sounds and for movements in the air to sense and react to their enemies. Or take Luke Skywalker fighting the drone with his eyes covered by using the Force. Hodr was the blind son of Odin.
Blindness also occurs throughout mythic traditions, sometimes as punishment by the gods. It occurs in Greek and Jewish myths. The witch-woman in Hawk the Slayer was blind (played by the great Patricia Quinn, who also starred as Magenta in Rocky Horror).
I think it makes perfect thematic sense to include blindness in characters. A blind beggar, a blind prophet, or a blind samurai are all staples of the fantasy tradition. I’d actually love it if we had to work out a player character who is blind, but that would take a fair amount of effort. I think the payoff would be remarkable and memorable, though.
There's also the common modern fantasy trope of blind heroes - Daredevil, blind swordmasters, demon hunters from Warcraft, etc. I wouldn't count these characters as "disability representation" because they can perceive their environment as well as a sighted character could, but they certainly set a precedent for meeting a blind NPC in an RPG.
Those are from our world where magic is no more than a suggestion. In dungeons and dragons magic is tangible and can very easily cure blindness or any other ailment
I'll echo the words of my friend, who is a permanent wheelchair user:
"Yes, I identify with my disability as part of who I am, but I would still take a cure without hesitation"
Yes, people with disabilities identify with their disability, so even in a fantasy setting I can see how their disability would be part of their character.
But every disabled person I know would figuratively leap at the opportunity to reverse their disability with magic. It is also basically impossible to use a wheelchair while holding something like a wand or a staff or a fireball in one hand, so if there's enough magic around to push a wheelchair, there's probably enough to make your legs work. That's why somebody has a good reason not to expect a wheelchair in a fantasy world. I can see how somebody who doesn't really know any disabled people would panic at the idea of a wheelchair being part of the narrative or something like that, and I can sympathize with it.
It's a bit of a double-edged sword. Representation is great, because it makes us feel less like a shame to be ignored or scorned - but also, being disabled fucking sucks, kind of by definition, and it's hard to take seriously people who peddle the 'handicapable' stuff. I don't need any toxic positivity in my life, thanks.
The only people I have ever seen claim that disabilities aren't so bad and you can live completely normal etc. are people with no disabilities at all. I'm not disabled, my eyesight is just shit and I don't know what I'd be willing to do to get normal eyesight. Just to get rid of a pair of glasses. I can't imagine the lengths someone actually disabled would go to in order to get a cure.
"I’m not disabled, my eyesight is just shit and I don’t know what I’d be willing to do to get normal eyesight. Just to get rid of a pair of glasses."
I apparently would pay someone a large sum of money to zap my eyes with a laser using a giant machine with only the vague promise that after the laser burns heal, your vision will be better.
I’m in the same boat, and I’ve learned that the answer is I don’t want the smell of burning eyeball lingering in my mind no matter how well I see afterwards.
In our world we do have the magic to push a wheelchair around, and it's not even hard to do this. Tinkerers can cast the spell of self-propelling wheelchair in their garages.
But magicing someone's legs to work is still a far way off.
(Remember, when magic is well explained and documented, and people get used to it, they tend to call it technology.)
(Remember, when magic is well explained and documented, and people get used to it, they tend to call it technology.)
Depends on the kind of magic. Magic machines that do wondrous things? Sure, technology. Magic where you manipulate energies with the power of thought and will alone? I'ma stick with magic, thank you.
It is also basically impossible to use a wheelchair while holding something in one hand, so if there's enough magic around to push a wheelchair, there's probably enough to make your legs work.
First, off the top, you can stop your wheelchair, use your hand(s) for something else, and then start moving again.
Second, you're making a lot of assumptions about the magic system. Every magic system has limitations. What if healing is a clerical spell, not a magic spell, and there are no clerics around? Maybe the nearest cleric who can heal is many miles away, perhaps over dangerous terrain inhabited by bandits, monsters, etc. Maybe the spell requires some very specific and difficult-to-obtain materials. Or maybe the spell is very high-level, requiring many years to learn, so clerics or mages charge a very high fee for this service. Any of these, or a combination, could be a reason why a disabled person (or a family member on their behalf) is questing.
Maybe the knowledge of the healing magic was held by some ancient civilization and it was lost when that civilization fell, but the disabled character has found a clue to where some ancient ruins could be unearthed where the secret might be found.
Or maybe the GM just says "Yeah, spells can't do that in this setting."
What I won't accept is that for some reason, all the illustrations that depict this use the hospital wheelchair design. If you are an adventurer who goes into dungeons, you should be getting something that can handle that terrain better than a squeaky shopping cart. Go for the fantasy version of Professor X' flying chair. Or at least get something with all-terrain wheels, and have them angled like the ones in the wheelchairs athletes use.
Tenser's Floating Disk could be used as well, if you want to abide by D&D magic. A magic disk that hovers 3ft - 90cm over the ground, but can't overcome obstacles taller than 10ft - 3 meters. It only lasts 1 hour and only follows the wizard, so you can't command it from atop, but it doesn't need concentration. I'd haggle with the DM to make some allowance on movement while atop it, like having to cast a cantrip (using a valuable action if during combat) or having it last 8 hours if cast as a level 2 spell.
This looks to be a wizard being ambushed along a well paved path. I don't think they needed an all terrain wheelchair. They were just going about their day.
I'm picturing something that walks like a spider.
Maybe they're making a run from a hospital invaded by goblins.
Right? If I were a disabled adventurer I'd be driving a tank.
I fucking love it when settings have the magic to cure any disability or ailment. I also fucken love it when inequality is so bad most of the population can't afford to cast it. I once had my players blow nearly everything they earned to heal a child with a terminal illness. Why would I make such a cruel world? Because tears taste good and memories are nothing more than a heartstring pulled.
Sadly, it's easier to imagine a world with literal magic than one without brutal inequality.
Not really, most worldbuilding is shit and barely takes a second step after "it's the middle ages, but some people can do magic".
Because it wouldn't be the middle ages. It would be a massively different society in every single way. But that's really hard to do, even harder to properly communicate and often it simply takes a backseat to telling the story.
The world without inequality would be just hard to make properly as the world with magic. It's just that the world with magic doesn't shake apart quite as quickly if you build it poorly..
I mean, you're correct but that meme's vision of what a disabled character should look like in a fantasy setting is probably the most boring I've ever seen.
A manual wheelchair? In worlds where levitation, flight, telekinesis, etc exist?
Fuck, even the X-Men have a hovering chair.
Not only that, if you could afford a wheelchair or glasses in a medieval setting you can probably afford healing magic
Unless they want to pretend they don't have magic to seem harmless for a moment
In nearly every RPG or fantasy story I have ever encountered, performing any magic costs and flight or hover magic cost a fuck load. Why would anyone waste mana on floating around like a fucking diva when they could save their mana and use it to kick ass?
Not to mention that badass moment when you drop your cane(hello Yoda) or get up from your wheelchair using your well stored magic, or force or whatever power, and beat the fuck out of your enemies with all that stored up potential.
Gimme a fucking break. What kind of namby pamby players are you?? Bitching about how it looks to use regular disabled people's equipment? Fuck right off. Only 12 year olds and fucking hipster posers give a fuck how things look.
Not to mention that badass moment when you drop your cane(hello Yoda) or get up from your wheelchair using your well stored magic, or force or whatever power, and beat the fuck out of your enemies with all that stored up potential.
Only 12 year olds and fucking hipster posers give a fuck how things look.
Yeah, correct, and you seem to qualify.
I never mentioned looking cool, I said it's a boring interpretation.
The idea that in a fantasy world you're gonna go to the most mundane implementation of the most mundane option to live with a disability makes it boring, not the fact that it doesn't look cool.
There are more advanced wheelchairs than that in the real world.
For example: Tenser's flying disk, it's level 1, lasts hours, is free, and is an all-terrain vehicle by every definition, so much for magic being expensive.
Why would anyone waste mana on floating around like a fucking diva when they could save their mana and use it to kick ass?
I've seen plenty of dudes with big trucks that have never gone off road.
I mean... You live in a world where magic healing exists. Why would anyone be blind when you can find a sorcerer, wizard or cleric (or even a spoony bard like Volo) and restore your sight in at least 20 different ways? 🤔
This was a bit of weird shit in Star Trek with Geordi, too. They can literally grow him new eyes (and do eventually) but the visor is also cool, and the rule of cool wins.
It's not so much that a disabled person being realistic is unfun; it's that it doesn't seem to fit the world itself which kills suspension of disbelief if you understand how the game world works. You'd have to work extra hard at giving a believable reason for this person to be disabled and not have gotten healed through magical means.
Hi. I have a mild physical disability, and this point comes up quite a lot in different settings, including fantasy fiction. "If such and such is a fantasy setting, why does character simply not be disabled?" Is something many able bodied people like to assume.
Without going into how hurtful it is to assume that what all of us want is to be "able bodied", you're basically taking away a person's agency to tell a story about themselves as they are. And there are many stories to be told!
So instead of trying to use logic to negate these kinds of characters from stories and fantasy settings, I challenge you to expand your own definition of what's possible. There's plenty of room for all of us.
I have a disabled character in my world (I'm a writer, not an rpg player. My schedule sucks for it). She has a partially paralyzed lip that gives her a lisp and a scar to match. Healing could have fixed it, if she could have been healed in time. But she wasn't.
I also have a Deaf character who plays a major role in the story. I think we need more representation in fantasy. And as a black guy, I don't really want to read the trials and tribulations of being black, as I'm sure other minority groups don't. I want to read about black folk swinging swords and fighting monsters ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry for the tangent, but yeah, I hard agree with you (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
People with curable disabilities exist all around us in the real world.
I mean if it's a matter of accessibility then that's different. I can't get help for my disabilities because of accessibility. We don't have the facilities or experts so I just deal with them as they can be worked with. Someone who lives in an area without magic or resources then would definitely have to suffer the lack of proper health care.
Or just have house rules about how magical healing works. Maybe it can only bring them back to their natural state, so someone who is born blind can't be cured. Or it's some kind of curse, and you house rule that Dispel Curse doesn't work on plot curses. Or you just don't have Lesser Restoration.
Does disease exist in a fantasy world? Why would anyone be sick when you can find a sorcerer, wizard or cleric (or even a spoony bard like Volo) and restore your health in at least 20 different ways?
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You need to be able to find someone with the skill to do so.
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I need to be able to pay them to do so.
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There's usually both a time and severity limit to what magic can heal. It works differently depending on the system, but generally the longer it's been since the injury or the worse the injury was, the more advanced magic required to fix it. You can't just dump more magic on it either, it's gonna take more talented spellcasters with specific skills, e.g. the difference between someone with first aid knowledge and a trained neurosurgeon. Bad enough and you're getting into "there is literally one person in the entire world who can do this and they're busy" territory.
That's assuming it's a simple injury and not a curse or the like. That's also assuming it's not a disability from birth; regeneration isn't going to do a damn thing if the body's natural state is lacking a sense or an appendage.
Murder + last breath + cure light wounds gives them a whole new body, with only a 3% chance of being a half orc
It makes sense if you consider that magic is rare. Finding a level 1 wizard would be like finding a rocket scientist. It takes the brightest of the brightest. A 1st level spell is an entire textbook that they gotta memorize. How many real life people are afraid of trigonometry? If 10 intelligence is average, and it takes 13 int to multiclass to wizard, then being a wizard requires an IQ of like 130 just to be an amateur.
And not everyone who believes in a god gets to be a cleric. You gotta be specially hand picked by God to channel his power. Maybe one in ten churches has a 1st level priest healing people. To be a paladin you gotta be a zealot. It takes John Brown level dedication to your cause. Magic is rare.
While this is a fair point, it isn't the decisive argument. Do people ever starve to death in a fantasy world? Well many classes can cast goodberry so no one should have to starve in a fantasy world.
The answer is really simple: "most people prefer a good story over a logical world", combined with the fact that worldbuilding is pretty hard.
This seems to treat "magical healing" as if it's just bespoke body modification. So, by the same logic, why would anyone ever have a STR score that was less than fucking Hercules'?
So, by the same logic, why would anyone ever have a STR score that was less than fucking Hercules'?
I'm sure if the rules allowed them to, they would.
The spells that can cure blindness, deafness or fix paralysis and other things are very clearly in the rules as well as how they are integrated into the world itself within the DM handbook.
And yes, there are even spells that are basically body modification. Fuckin' Wild Shape. Becoming a lich. Etc.
Instead of taking this to mean you shouldn't play a disabled character, work around it and answer the questions that will inevitably pop up as to why. Being born that way and not wanting to erase your identify is still a good reason for most of those. But if you're like the able-bodied edgelords I've seen who want to play as a fighter who was blinded in battle... Well.
Just because there's magic doesn't mean it's evenly distributed. And finding someone capable of casting higher level magics isn't an easy feat.
I play in a slightly modified DnD 5e Forgotten Realms (some years in the future with a new Mystra)
Basically Regenerate would bring you back to your normal state or the state you perceive as your normal state.
Some examples:
You're born without an arm, if someone cast Regenerate on you you wouldn't grow a new arm. That arm was never there. To get that arm would take a True Polymorph. Which is not only a very high level spell, it's really not easy to find someone who could cast it.
In the case of the blind man the party met, they were blind for decades after losing his eyesight saving his family. He had fully accepted it about himself. He had no use for sight in his mind after living so long without it, it was a part of him. He perceived his normal self as blind. So if someone cast Regeneration to save his life he’d still be blind. (And someone had years before the party met him, but that's a story for another time)
Basically: learning magic is hard, the components are typically expensive, and finding someone who is already skilled in magic enough to cast it is hard. Not to mention the costs associated with it.
"Go to the nearest big city, there's bound to be someone who can." Yes but would they be willing to? How much would they charge? How long would you have to travel to get there? Is that feasible?
"What about Lesser Restoration, a second level spell? That one's easy to get to." Maybe in a big city, but out in a rural area that would likely still be tough as someone has to have the necessary prerequisites to get to that. You have to hone that craft and learn it from somewhere.
Also there's being disabled and having a wheelchair. I don't think a wheelchair really fits into the world.
Why would anyone be blind when you can find a sorcerer, wizard or cleric
Maybe is blind due to powerful curse and does not have enough coin to have the curse lifted?
In 5E, Lesser Restoration is free, so no one should really be blind, deaf, paralyzed, or poisoned. If they're missing a limb, though, Regenerate needs a vial of Holy Water that costs 25gp. For a commoner who makes 1sp a day, that's a lot.
Lesser Restoration is free
If you've got someone willing to cast it for you for free, perhaps. But according to the PHB, most NPCs will charge far more than a typical peasant or low level adventurer could afford.
Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as Cure Wounds or Identify, is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gp (plus the cost of any expensive material components).
And that's if you decide a spell that primarily exists to cure fairly rare conditions is common enough to fit in that category.
Lesser restoration isn't free, it costs a 2nd level spell slot. Between you with the blindness that you've lived with your whole life, or this guy with dysentery who's about to die horribly and spread the disease to everyone nearby, I'm spending that spell slot on him
Lesser restoration doesn't cure permanent blindness, deafness, or paralysis. And it doesn't work on all forms of poison.
Lesser restoration specifically ends one condition that can be blindness, deafness, paralysis, or poisoned. Permanent traits of your character aren't conditions, and not every poison inflicts the poisoned condition.
Also, depending on your setting, finding someone that can cast Regenerate may be an order of magnitude or 2 more difficult than finding someone that can cast Lesser Restoration
A world where disability exists has more options for interesting characters than if nobody was disabled.
Or does not a single pirate in your world have an eye patch or peg leg?
Geordi actually was addressed at one point, basically he found the extra sensory abilities the visor gave him to feel natural, and removing those extra senses would be like removing a limb for him
Exactly this. I wish OP would respond to this because I can't even comprehend an argument so I'd love to see how that pans out.
Ok but a wheelchair would be dumb when you could just get some enchanted armor.
This is my issue.
Its a fantasy world. Dont copy paste non magic human solutions to disability. Create fantasy ones.
Enchanted pants that give you mild telekenesis while wearing them, but only on the pants. You can walk with your mind now, but you need the pants to do so.
Youre still disabled, but now your disability is more akin to glasses. An aide that is required, but in most cases completely masks your disability and lets you go about your day to day mostly unhindered, all while maintaining the worlds flavor without the weird clash of having a piece of tech that doesnt match the world around it.
Dont want your disability fully masked? Give them a familiar to ride. Or keep the telekenesis, but make it a chair whose legs can walk.
Its fantasy so we can ignore reality for a lil while. You dont need real solutions to problems, you need fantasy solutions.
Gnome paraplegic? Be a gnome in a mech!
The benefit of homebrew. None of these need to be considered an actual restriction by the PC. Where X is the disability
- Paladin: Oath of Restriction: You lose X in favour of your patrons
- Warlock: Any pact: Patron takes X and wishes to see how you fair in life
- Sorcerer: Any: Born with X but also born with innate magic powers
All of these have a reason to have a special Counter Remove Curse item.
A more general idea, cursed heart causes X but if curse is removed host dies.
I guess a fucker could still steal the homebrew item but if you're doing that much to negate it that's a player problem. No reason an enemy would attempt to remove a PC curse unless the knew the affects of the last one.
The other obvious choice is to play it like real life and refuse the help because its part of your identity
Spider legs on the chair for rough terrain would be badass.
Similar idea re: magic
Guild Wars 2 hit the trans issue with one of their Npcs in Lion's Arch. Different toon after season 2 rebuild, same name. Talk to her after the event (him, before the world event) and she says something like "well, it's a magical world... I figured: new Lion's Arch... time for a new me."
Also Yao in New Kaineng, self describes as "agendered".
There's a line of dialog something like "... and he had a husband!" in part of the story.
Nice to see diversity represented, sometimes feels a little clumsy but I'll put that down to writers that are learning how to do it.
One of the PCs (new guy brought in after the other guy left) at the table literally has prosthetic legs as an artificer because his character was born without them.
Magical legs work better for an adventuring party for sure IMO but a wheelchair bound NPC in a city is fine.
Hell the artificer has made it a personal goal to no matter the cost allow people to walk again with their prosthetic legs. (A generous patron gave them their first set) He's going to encounter one soon (I'm the DM, it's going to happen) and the player will (likely) have the gold for a set. But they're not free to make and the components aren't free.
It's interesting to me to put problems in front of my players for them to solve in inventive ways. They never fail to surprise me.
That sounds like a very high level magic item which would absolutely not be available to a character at level 1 (let alone a lowly NPC or pre-adventuring PC). And by the time it does become available, the PC might be so comfortable with their wheelchair that it wouldn't feel right to them to change.
Odd because blindness is very commonly represented in mythology and fantasy.
A wheelchair is a tough sell in a questing/adventuring party, but in the right context we have seen paraplegics manage, in a popular fantasy setting ( GoT, bran), but it required someone to move them around
And then there's bloodborne.
First guy you meet in bloodborne is in a wheelchair.
The old man who helps you is in a wheelchair.
You get shot at by tricked out wheelchair tanks.
One of the PCs (new guy brought in after the other guy left) at the table literally has prosthetic legs as an artificer because his character was born without them.
Magical legs work better for an adventuring party for sure IMO but a wheelchair bound NPC in a city is fine.
Hell the artificer has made it a personal goal to no matter the cost allow people to walk again with their prosthetic legs. (A generous patron gave them their first set) He's going to encounter one soon (I'm the DM, it's going to happen) and the player will (likely) have the gold for a set. But they're not free to make and the components aren't free.
It's interesting to me to put problems in front of my players for them to solve in inventive ways. They never fail to surprise me.
I mean that really depends on the world you are set in: if magic is everywhere/can heal anything someone who is blind could break immersion IF there is no good reason (he doesn't want to see for personal reasons, it's a curse and can't be removed etc.)
However if magic treatment is rare/expensive of course there would be lots of disabled people (monster attacks, accidents, diseases, etc.)
Obviously thats not the problem here(the guys just a dick) but it's something i run into a lot when designing worlds/characters: a lot of our real world problems fall apart if introduced into a magical setting.
it could lead to really cool story/character stuff though like jjk: people born with broken bodies but incredible magical powers
Never miss an opportunity for unique challenges/stories.
It could be a hook like fullmetal alchemist or a realization for characters later: they are fine the way they are they don't need to be fixed kind of stuff. simply discounting disabilities takes so much potential out of worlds/stories.
If I were a DM, I'd consider magic to be another human sense. It can't fix the body more than the body existed before injury, and still doesn't fix all injuries. So like a blind monk that trains can extend magic to act like an echolocation, but they were born blind so can't be unblinded. Or someone broke their back and it healed incorrectly causing paralysis, only highly specialized magic has a chance of fixing it.
Which is actually how it works in the real world too!
Except it's called medicine instead of magic. Trolololol.
Doctors have specialisations, some are very very specialised: e.g. specific types of neurosurgeon.
Also, accidents happen. Sometimes the doctor/magic-user gets it catastrophically wrong.
In most magic systems (RPG and books/films) using magic costs the magic user something (decades of studying, exhaustion, life force, mana potions/crystals, ...). So it would be natural that they want to be compensated for their work.
So depending on how difficult regrowing an eye is for the magic user that could be quite pricey.
Some magic systems also require the magic user to exactly picture what they want to cast. Not sure if anyone can actually picture all the connections of an optical nerve.
In the United States, millions and millions of people walk around with conditions we can treat with our own kind of magic: modern medicine. So why don't they get that prosthetic arm, treat that chronic pain, get that surgery, or take those pills? They can't afford it. Why don't they get that vaccine? They don't believe in it. If magic exists to eliminate all disabilities, then there should be no smart, rich people with disabilities in your world building, certainly. Plenty to go around otherwise though.
There could be magic, but not magic capable of curing diseases. If the extent to which your mages are capable of manipulating the elements is spewing fireballs or perhaps summoning a storm, treating an infection might be beyond their capabilities. You might also have a setting where disabilities are the result of curses that only mages of exceptional capabilities are able to treat.
Also could be a warhammer fantasy/40k situation where magic is kinda unstable and a good chunk of mages are batshit or kinda weak. Sure nobody would complain if Teclis or Malcador offer you healing but neither are insane or weak. Also the reason for that comparison is that I suspect the two are roughly comparible to eachother in their respective settings.
Also the Emperor is the 40k equivelent of Nagash. I will take no questions.
Thank you!
Likewise, if fantasy magic did exist in our world that could cure illness we would have a large percentage of our population calling it fake and saying it doesn't work.
It is easier and cheaper to pretend it doesn't exist and they want that to extend to fantasy as well. They don't want to think about real problems.
There is also another dimension to this; millions are still direly ill because they can't afford treatment.
And even in our modern world, with all our magic, there are some diseases and conditions we haven't been able to cure. There is more than one problem that has the same output (blindness) so maybe in the fantasy world they have magic to fix someones macular degeneration but not their optic nerves
I mean, some people literally just don't view their conditions as disabilities. We don't even need to talk about ability to afford something.
I don't see why anyone would take issue with it, but one of the coolest things about powerful magic is that nobody needs to be disabled. You can heal them with magic! I know I'd love to get a fantasy healer to heal some of my old wounds. But even in D&D magic comes with a price, and more powerful spells consume very expensive reagents. So it's understandable that there would still be injured and crippled people.
Ive played a one armed barbarian before. He touched a cursed item that was slowly Turning him into a demon, so he chopped off his arm.
The DM said I lost Ambidexterity for that, Which I accepted. I later found out that I derailed part of his plan to make my character evil & work as a minion for the Big Bad.
I think you made up your mind about losing ambidexterity well before the DM told you you wouldn't have it anymore lol
It also means that people may have disabilities but won't be held back by them without removing that aspect of their life. And it could be ruled that the differently-abled aspect is something not even magic can take away because it's so intrinsic to the character
I can absolutely see magic not being able to correct genetic or congenital conditions. It can make sense for developmental delays aswell. But something like missing a limb from a traumatic injurie or blindness due to macular degeneration... There is no reason a mid level adventurer or powerfull character would not just use magic to heal or fix it.
Maybe an injurie by a powerful lich, or since kinda of cursed weapon that makes it impossible to fully heal with anything short of a wish spell...
Poor people on the other hand, should absolutely have debilitating injuries and disabilities that will never be fully fixed due to magic being expensive.
See Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson (although it has a lot of required reading to reach it, being a novella set between books 3 and 4 of the Stormlight Archive.
As a DM I would probably assume the player was fucking with me (because that's the mood in my friend groups)
But my response would be something like 'fine, but realize not every adventure will be wheelchair accessible, you could hardly take a wheelchair into a goblin cave. The world is not naturally kind to disabled people and this world will not be adjusted for you character'
Wrong idea of magic in my opinion. I like Tolkien's one more.
We don't play games to imagine some heavenly world where we don't need to be stronger IMHO. That'd be boring and depressing.
We play games for a world where we are stronger or know our goals in life better. IMHO again.
This wheel chair looks out of place for the setting. I love what Psychonauts 2 did: there is a disabled character that uses psychic levitation for his "wheel" chair.
Another reason the chair looks out of place is because it's a transfer chair, not a self propel chair. These chairs are designed to push someone, they aren't designed for independent mobility.
These chairs are commonly represented in media because they are cheap and often the "first chair" a disabled person will get because of their affordability and needing something quick. But they are bog standard and you can't really get around by yourself in one without more pain or fatigue. You'll then start the process of getting a measured for a chair that will fit your needs.
Some people only have a transfer chair because they are semi-ambulant/part time chair user, so that's all they need. But most people who use a wheelchair will not use a transfer chair long term. It's temporary because it's shit.
So it doesn't make sense that someone with an active lifestyle, like a DnD character, would use this style chair as their main aid. Unless there's something in the campaign, like their main chair was damaged, or the disability is recently acquired, the character is poor, etc.
Possible but unlikely way around this: cast unseen servant and make it push the chair.
They busted out of the hospital and took what wasn't nailed down. Turns out, that was the only thing not nailed down. Twas an odd hospital
We see almost nothing about "the setting". Not everything is LOTR, Harry Potter or D&D.
This wheel chair looks out of place for the setting
dude....
It's literally a made up world.
I could definitely see like a gnome tinkerer coming up with something like a wheel chair that, after numerous iterations, looks pretty similar to a normal wheel chair.
Ok, start with a chair that literally just has 4 wheels on the feet. Gonna need a way to push it so put handles on the back.
Ok that's pretty unstable and the test subject fell off repeatedly, damaging several important pieces of equipment and also themselves. Ok so what if we moved the back wheels out a bit and made them a little bigger. Ok pretty stable, gonna need arm rests though the test subject keeps falling off.
Ok now they stay in, and it doesn't flop about, but it needs two people to move, what if... Hmmm... Ok we need some kind of drive mechanism that can be both powered AND steered with just the hands. Well this is wildly over budget with all the gears... What if we just push the wheels directly with the hands. Gotta make them a lot bigger and put a handle on...
The issue is that this toes the line on erasure. If a character is disabled but offsetting all of their disabilities with magic, they’re not disabled. The disability is just flavor text at that point, which feels a little bit like wearing an offensive caricature of a race as a Halloween costume.
If you want to include a disabled character in the party, that’s great. But disabilities come with drawbacks that real people with disabilities struggle with every day. If a person with a disability wants to erase their disability in a fantasy setting, that’s cool. At that point, it could simply be a power fantasy, the same way people want to play super powerful wizards and super strong barbarians.
But if an otherwise able bodied person wants to play a caricature of a disabled person without actually role playing the disabled part, it could become downright offensive to the people who actually struggle with those disabilities. Because at that point it’s not roleplaying a disabled person; It’s just leaning on stereotypes when it’s convenient, without actually roleplaying the real life struggles that accompany the disability.
Look at Toph from Avatar as a good example. She was blind and used her abilities to offset that when possible. But the important part is that she was still blind, and still regularly dealt with the drawbacks from being blind. She couldn’t read or write, because braille hadn’t been invented. And if she was ever away from solid ground, (like when flying or on sand) she wasn’t able to see anything. Because her sense of “sight” relied on her physical connection to the solid ground. So when she wasn’t touching solid earth, she was completely blind. And she also couldn’t see anything that was airborne, like when they were attacked by giant flying insects. She was blindly throwing rocks into the air, because she couldn’t see where the enemies were.
So what you're saying is that if she shits her diapers in the game, it's ok? Weird kink, but w/e floats your boat, I guess...
dear disabled mages
just enable it in the settings
ability TRUE
A lot of this has probably been said already, but I want to point out that restrictions breed creativity.
This is a magic fantasty world, how would your character deal with their differences? What coping mechanisms would they develop? Would a blind character develop some alternative to vision? Would a physically disabled character find some other way to navigate the world?
I see people asking "why would disability exist in a world with magical healing" as a way to dismiss the entire concept. I feel that engaging with the question, and trying to answer, it leads to more interesting characters.
Toph from Avatar is an example of following these restrictions. Would her character and abilities even exist if the writers didn't sit down and wonder how a blind character would work in their universe?
I was thinking Toph while reading your comment lol. And in case anyone feels like Toph is “fixing” disabilities with convenient magic, ATLA also addressed disability in non-magic people as well too with Teo, the inventors son who is in what is effectively a wheel chair, who even takes part in a naval invasion.
How about the deaf general in the Dragon Prince?
She can silently issue complex commands in stealth situations with sign language. It’s pretty dope.
My setting has a lot of nautical aspects to it, including lots of drowned and sea creatures. One of my players in a captain of a ship (they're all level 15+ now, so he's worked his way up there). I'd have the blind character have a parrot that narrates the world to them, much like a DM.
There's also a water bender with no arms in legends of Korra who uses water being as arms
For the sake of roleplay and being friends, the idea of disabled people in fantasy settings should not be difficult to accept, but that doesn't mean that all fantasy IPs should have all sorts of modern disabilities. Like in a ttrpg you are creating a collaborative story using the ttrpg systems and in that sense heck yeah you can have magic chairs to transport otherwise disabled people. BG3 straight up cures blindness by use of a magical prosthetic eye, so there is even precedent for it in the popular dnd video game.
But what I totally want is some more creative and magical ways to handle disabilities, or maybe just whimsical. What about a druid that wildshapes into a snake to move around, and just slithers on the ground. straight up never uses a wheelchair cuz snek. Or magical leg armor. Prosthetic eyes? why not just have a large crystal ball that balances on your head that does the seeing for you.
And, those are awesome solutions, my thought is, that a random peasant could get disabled and not afford magical solutions. Or maybe they're superstitious of magic. Maybe they're part of a blood cult that worships some demon that values the sacrifice of limbs. There are legitimate reasons to have some npcs with disabilities.
Holy shit these are some amazing ideas. Got anymore I can
stealuse?
Wait wait I know how this one went: “You purchase this media to ESCAPE the real world and they FORCE their WOKE AGENDA down your throat!!!”
Fucking pissy crybabies, let em cope
The unspoken part of that argument being they deep down desire a world that has no non-white, disabled, queer people in it at all and don't understand others don't think that way.
I can only speak for myself but the slight issue I take with "woke" aspects in games is more down to the fact that it takes me out of the experience and forcibly makes me recall the very real discussion around it. That alone wouldn't be a problem because quite frankly every game is political in some way but the "woke" discussion has been extremely loud and, at least for me, exhausting in both directions. So if I stumble upon an issue of it in a game it immediately pulls me back to reality, ruining my moment of escapism.
And I don't think your conclusion of people's actual desires is accurate. There is wanting all characters to be white, having a problem with 50% of a supposedly medieval european population being black and a lot of nuance in between those two extremes. Again, I can't speak for anyone except myself but the vast majority of complaints I've met are from people who do not take issue with represantation itself but with the degree it is pushed with.
Disclaimer: please excuse the typos, I'll maybe fix them later
I can easily accept a blind npc or pc, and also a wheelchair npc, but a wheelchair pc is a bit convoluted in a fantasy setting. Like this was literally a subplot in doctor strange. There is just too much power in player parties to not knock this out in the first few adventures.
Whether through healing or artifacts or levitation. Just makes no sense unless you want the tactical “guy in a chair” trope, or want to have navigation be a major part of each story.
If I want to play Steven Seagal, then I will damn do so.
There's a webcomic I read where the cleric became a cleric and started adventuring so he could be powerful enough to help regrow his mother's lost arm. When she had the option to regrow her arm, she refused. She didn't need it. With her extended family, she had all the hands she could ever want.
That sounds incredibly sweet. Do you remember the name of the webcomic?
Order of the Stick. She shows up pretty late on, but she's an amazing character.
I feel like having family who would cast a spell to regrow your arm is part of having family who will help you, but it wasn't exactly trivial at that point. Regrowing an arm is much more costly than curing blindness or paralysis.
I couldn't care less if there is a disabled character in a fantasy game. But it does beg the question: why would there be a magic character who relies on a real-world wheelchair when they presumably have magical abilities that would eliminate their disability, and why would that be someone's fantasy?
That being said, it's fantasy. You're allowed to do virtually anything you want. It's up to the DM to accommodate their players.
It may simply not be a disability in their eyes. If you can use magic your ability isn't as grounded in your own physical ability. A fighter sure, but there are other classes that may not have a desire to "fix" what we would consider to be disabling!
This would almost certainly be similar to how people on the autism spectrum feel vs how people who don't, expect them to feel.
I play a poorly optimized fighter and I swear I either almost die or sometimes even die and resurrected like every other session
Along with what everyone else said - in some universes using magic has a cost to the user. So one could be exhausted just getting around by constantly needing to be floated along.
We have it set up in our campaign where it's often seen as hella rare for someone with that level of magic
More specifically out campaign turned into a space campaign amount lv 15 cause our planet exploded cause lore lmao
But there's like planets where there's nothing but the most basic of cantrips so we end up being gods to them
so far only one has attempted to exploit this and it was the cleric lmao Mainly because they are now the last embodiment of their God and are sort of designed to become them or something lol
why would there be a magic character who relies on a real-world wheelchair when they presumably have magical abilities that would eliminate their disability,
Even moreso in something like a typical medium-high magic D&D setting, where most medium size towns have at least one person around that can fix those sorts of problems for people several times a day.
and why would that be someone's fantasy?
Because to some people the most important thing of all is representation of specific groups and everything else is secondary.
Because to some people the most important thing of all is representation of specific groups and everything else is secondary.
This but unironically. Any TTRPG game is about the players first and foremost, a good DM can take a few minutes to work out any inconsistencies with the world building if it makes a player happy.
It is like saying a Wizard isn't allowed to have glasses.
That's what the crystal balls are for.
Huh I always thought they were for pondering.
I've seen them somewhat often in RPGs and related material. There's those who are blind, frail, deaf, weak or lacking a skill to do something necessary. Even Basic D&D had notable penalties for rolling INT 3-5, being illiterate to start with.
NPCs in fantasy settings still have hinderances, and they're expected. Maybe they can be neutralized by healing magic in D&D, or there may be equipment that works around them. The wrong part is shutting down the concept, as that's contempt for the weak (technically a symptom of fascism.)
While Nazi-Germany was infamous for 'euthananizing' disabled people, it is sadly not a principle reserved for the right extreme.
Luckily most don't go as far as right out killing the weak. But sadly there is almost always a splinter group in any political or ideological orientation that shows contempt for the weak.
I don't have a problem with having disabled people in a TTRPG setting, but I hate the "it's fantasy, stop whining about realism" argument.
Versimilitude is one of the most valuable, and hard to maintain, things at the table.
You hate it but it's still true, it's a genre set entirely in fictional worlds.
Something being fiction is no reason to throw expectations and consistency out the window.
It’s not that there is a wheelchair in a fantasy setting. It’s that the setting is typical high fantasy that may have magic but is otherwise very low tech. But then you have this out of place modern wheelchair made from a steel tube frame.
It’s like if the bard and the paladin disagree any some fact, then the paladin put down his shield and mace just to pull out his fucking iPhone to show that he was right all along.
Once you establish a baseline for how that fictional world functions, any deviation from it causes issues with the suspension of disbelief.
Your argument is the same one people have been using for years to deflect any and all criticisms when writers fail to keep up with their own world building or are just too damn lazy to care.
The amount of people in this thread who assume everyone with any type of disability or difference in ability would even want to have their condition corrected is shocking. Why is it impossible to imagine a blind person who doesn't want their vision fixed for no other reason than they believe they're fine as is? Why is that such a difficult thing to grasp? Just because free magical heal exists doesn't mean everyone automatically wants it. You don't need to turn to other explanations about why it might not be trusted or affordable when you can just say "this person is blind and doesn't particularly care to be able to see."
I would guess that the vast amount of people with serious disabilities, paraplegic, blind, deaf, would jump at the opportunity to correct their issues.
That would go doubley so for someone who lives in a d&d style world with far greater dangers and less accomodations than our own.
Yes, but not everyone would. There are deaf people in our world today who don't want to be able to hear.
https://www.insider.com/why-deaf-people-turn-down-cochlear-implants-2016-12
Yeah but this is a game for characters who are played by people who exist in a world where that is not the case, so maybe a little sensitivity is called for.
It’s a big case of “I don’t like myself as I am and this person with a disability accepts themself so there must me something wrong with me; I’ll take it out on them!” Style projection
It's fine, provided it's not a plot hole - i.e. your fantasy setting needs to not have abolished blindness as a realistic malady, which some settings do. E.g. LOTR 100% has blind people, while the Harry Potter universe only has very poor blind people, since solving blindness is as trivial as a polyjuice potion, even if nothing else works (and something more effective is bound to work).
Why can't magic cure them though? In star trek, people don't cure Picards baldness because people don't care about it, they realise its nothing to mock. But that's just a "cosmetic" ailment.
Things like blindness, or being unable to walk should be curable by magic, right?
To continue with startrek: Geordie la forge.
He was added because they wanted to represent a blind person, and show how technology can help offset disabilities.Picard was bald because they didn't care, and Geordie was blind because they couldn't cure him.
The inclusion of a blind person lets them tell the story of how this future society deals with a disability like blindness.
So you can use magic to tell the story of a disabled person. Why are they disabled? Why can't magic help them? How has their society reacted to this?
Maybe it's as simple as simple healing magic can't cure an injury you were born with, so they only have use of their legs through an advanced transformation spell. They live with the worry that a passing dogooder will cast a healing spell that will "restore" their condition and leave them stranded far from the magic that can actually help them. This makes them come across as brusque to people who are "only trying to help".
It's a story, so the magic only does what you want. The point is that we often choose to tell the stories that leave people out because it's more convenient.
To speak more to the point - Geordi is asked by his doctor a few times (by different doctors) why he didn't upgrade to a more modern prosthetic. He preferred the visor.
Eventually, in the movies, he did switch - presumably his new implants finally had feature parity with the visor. Or he got tired of the visor popping off...
The argument could be made that they did cure Geordi La Forge's blindness using technology by means of his visor and later ocular implants. When I think about disability in fantasy settings I think of golem/automaton prosthetics replacing limbs and the like, and that most disabilities could be helped in one way or another. So to me the simple answer of why would there be disability in a world where magic should be able to cure everything is that not everyone has enough gold to pay for that magic or skill to wield it themselves. In that sense it feels very relatable to our real world, people unable to afford the technology and services that could help them
Magic medicine means magic ailments. Just like the introduction of antibiotics produced bacteria like MRSA, the use of magic to cure wounds could produce MRSA. That is, magic resistant staphylococcus aureus, as opposed to methicillin.
Curses and other such primarily magical ailments could also be much more difficult to deal with than simple infections/wounds.
Because magic is a tool to tell stories, and you want your group to meet a blind person. Maybe you invent a kind of blindness that can't be healed by ordinary healing magic, or a social rule that doesn't allow for it to be healed, or a severe negative side effect, or whatever makes sense to explain it.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted; it's a perfectly reasonable question.
Not everyone views their differences as disabilities.
Cochlear implants perpetuate the idea that deaf people need to be "fixed" — and a lot of deaf people take issue with that.
https://www.insider.com/why-deaf-people-turn-down-cochlear-implants-2016-12
consider a character where the one disability gives rise to a heightened ability in another form. For example, someone who is blind may have a heightened sense of hearing. That could would really well in a tabletop rpg in a scenario where the character could hear something before anyone else could sense it.
Daredevil.
We have a bat folk in our party and if they were blinded they can use use echo location
If they can't tolerate the idea of a blind NPC existing, good riddance to them. Yeah, sounds like you dodged a bullet.
Good thing the NPC wasn't trans or something... who knows how they would have reacted.
How did they even come to such a perspective? There are all kinds of physical handicaps in fiction.
Raistlin had a mysterious uncurable ailment imposed by Par-Salian.
Albrech has to forsake love to attain the Rheingold. Several gods and heroes are missing various limbs.And blindness? Daredevil. Tiresias. Any number of blind kung-fu masters.
Sometimes they're afflictions that are paid as a price for powers, sometimes their curses, sometimes their obstacles that heroes overcome. But disabled people have been all over fantasy literature for millenia.
Fucking hephaestus! A literal god, either born lame, or made so (depending on where and when the version is), says "fuck alla y'all, imma go make shit" and begins turning out items so fucking good they make gods more powerful. Stuff so good that other gods couldn't do their job without them.
Motherfucker created robots (automatons), mechanical animals.
And, when he was exiled, fucking Ares, the ultimate fighter, got scared off by him. It took Dionysus getting him shit faced to make him come back home, but he wouldn't budge for threat or bribe.
Now that's a god among gods. And motherfucker is even more crippled up than I am.
Couldn't a cleric heal partial paralysis tho?
There are plenty of reasons a disabled person could exist in a fantasy setting. A transaction, giving something up for power (e.g. Odin). A curse from an enchanter, that they do not have the power to remove. A religious superstition around those that have had accidents befall them (that it is the will of their god). Or even simply the fact that a number of common people may not be able to afford the services of a cleric (for a villager in the mountains, a journey to the city to have their paralysis cured may be beyond what they can manage).
I don't find a disabilty appearing in fantasy surprising, but the uncured ones do surprise me. Or remedied ig. Prettu sure that if your setting can have a wheelchair, then theoretically you could stick Warforged legs onto that someone. Obviously not ideal, but it'd probably be an improvent for the person (in universe ofc)
In addition to the list of explanations for why disabled people can exist in a fantasy setting that [email protected] provided, I'll also just say:
Using diegetic explanations for why a problematic aspect exists in a piece of fictional media does not address the substance of the problem. The problem is that disability is often not represented in fantasy stories. Pointing out that there's an in-universe explanation for why this may be the case doesn't solve the lack of representation. These stories are fiction, and you can add any explanation for why disabled people exist as easily as you can erase disability completely.
This video does a good job of explaining this some more: https://youtu.be/AxV8gAGmbtk?si=YRvXjpZv_YP9Z5sC
Compared to a high fantasy setting, everyone is disabled. I cannot fight a dragon any more than a blind man can be magically cured of blindness.
Dan Olsen, my beloved.
Absolutely a good point, answering the question 'why is it a problem?', to go alongside 'how can it be fixed?'. Thanks for the thought provocation
What if they're born with it?
Healing magic limitations differ from medium to medium. Maybe the only thing that matters in this case is the damage being still there. Depends on the setting ofc, and if you want to be represented then go ahead, just don't get angry at me for being surprised
What if the cleric isn't around when it happens? I mean if you take an ax to the spine and don't run into a cleric for 3 years can they do anything? I would probably say no.
Well, i'd say that it probably depends on the kind of damage, and how well it has healed. I could see a method similar to rebreaking bones that haven't healed correctly (IRL), where a group of medical professsionals, magical and not, just hit you with an axe in the same spot, to try and get the spine to to heal before the surrounding tissue. Maybe.
There is nothing in the rules as written that prevents it
Edit: forgot i am not in the dnd community
How do you know clerics exists in that world?
You'll get so much hate for stating the obvious
Perhaps. Ain't the first time, ain't the last time.
I'm gonna devil's advocate this for a second.
Unless you're very poor (which is fair in most fantasy settings there's always poor people) magic kinda negates disabilities.
Like is there no spell that can cure these disabilities?
With that said to have that big of an issue with it just makes you an ass
Modern medical aid negates many diseases and disabilities including some blindnesses. But we still have people with these problems.
This is an opportunity for worldbuilding and comments about society. You'd be a fool to look at any fantasy setting and think it's an equal society.
Here's a thought:
For someone with a congenital defect, maybe the healing spell 'heals' their body back to the way it was naturally-with the defect.
See that was the point of the shitpost I mentioned. The joke was that it was gonna regrow the victims foreskin.
But that's still a really neat idea
Regenerate is a 7th level spell. A cleric would need to be 13th level or higher to use this spell. They are not that common, and they likely have more important things to do.
Lesser restoration (5e 2nd lvl) can cure blindness, but I'm not sure if it can restore destroyed or removed eyes. So it would depend on the kind of blindness, and if it was at all magical in nature. That and from a few threads the estimate for its cost is around 40 gold. For a lot of "commoners" their income is anywhere from poor (60sp) to well off(1gp) per month. So I can easily see many mid tier peasants not having the money to have lesser restoration cast on them. Especially if they live in some tiny village where there isn't a temple in town, like you would have in a city.
Even in a city if the head priest is high level, and has say, 4 other actual clerics in the building not just priests, thats 18 casts of lesser restoration (wasting high lvl slots on a lvl 20 cleric) and maybe 5 per 5th level cleric. So 38 a day. In a city with tens of thousands of citizens with many myriad medical issues. Sure maybe there are 4 or 5 temples, but its still just a numbers issue at some point.
The dnd economy is a bit wonky and its magic system is difficult to match with the world sometimes, esp high magic settings, but I think the sheer scale of the population of commoners and non magic users sort of makes it pretty understandable that disabilities would still exist everywhere except the very wealthy or capable(adventurers themselves).
This of course all depends on what level of magic you have in your world. If it's very high magic then maybe there are a lot less disabilities, but those that exist are less "im blind from basic eye deterioriation" and more "goblins tore my eyes out as a child and it'll take a decently capable cleric to fix this, and also I'm blind so I make very little money so I'm SoL"
Another thing to consider here: the player characters are absolute heroes in most campaigns, not just the average rando peasant. So the stuff they have access to (magic skills, potions, money, ...) is not at all an indication of what the average person has access to. Maybe that bias causes some players to lose touch with ingame reality.
I'm no Dungeon Master but when a PC has their limb ripped off, isn't the magic that is required to restore the limb kept behind quite a high spellcasting level? And the cost of the materials might be out of reach to more like "Michigan poor" than just "Dharavi poor".
7th level spells, yes. Most people who get to a high enough level to use those spells are busy with politics or preventing world ending horrors.
Depends on the world, maybe some magic systems dont allow for healing or performing certain tasks?
A great example is the spell "Regenerate" in DnD
It's a 7th level spell so not many people will have access to it. And given the nature of wizards being super secretive about their spells it's no surprise it's not more common.
Also at my table I ruled that someone having such spells used on them can have the complexity of the idea of "self" play a role on what is healed. ie they may be willing but after a long time ones idea of self will play a role in what one sees as "complete" and what gets regenerated
See that would be the defining information.
To what extent to the healing spells heal?
But I'm reminded of that dnd shitpost about revivify and how it even regrows lost limbs and I feel like something like a spinal cord or ocular nerve would be fixed by that.
Hell you could make a hospital where they just kill you if your sick or wounded then revivify your ass back to full health lmao
In Pathfinder there is a whole subset of assistive items so that all gamers can feel welcome at the table.
I've always wanted to have a DND character that's an armless monk and all they do is kick bad guys to death.
i mean to some degree it's funnier if they just ardently refuse to use their hands, constantly keeping them behind their back
That's just Sanji from One Piece.
The thing I find difficult about disability in a TTRPG is that it's something that is either ignorable due to the character backstory (e.g. they have some mcguffin/ability that allows them to operate without difficulty); or it's going to be a repetitive complication that the party has to constantly work around (e.g. the barbarian carries the wheelchair up every set of stairs they encounter).
If it's just flavour, then it seems like less of a disability than a backstory. If it's a constant hassle, then it changes the nature of the game - it becomes more about a party helping each other through individual adversities. The latter sounds fine, but I'm not sure how I'd run it.
I feel like a lot of the time the best way to handle it would be similar to how the character of Toph is presented in the show Avatar: The Last Airbender. She's blind, but has incredibly good seismic sense through her feet. So most of the time, she can "see" just fine. However, it's still a disability, and there are times where it comes up.
If her feet are injured she can't use them to see. If she's on sand her "vision" will be very blurry and imprecise. If she's flying she becomes completely blind. And she can't read anything written on paper.
The disability is a part of her identity, and it absolutely still matters. But it's not so heavily crippling that it's coming up all the time at the table.
A party made up of a blind character, a deaf character, and a mute character. I'd play that.
three disabled halflings in a trenchcoat pretending to be one very perceptive elf
If the disability creates a hassle in some way, then it should give a boon in a different way.
Sure getting a wheelchair up the stairs in a hurry will be difficult, but going downhill will make them double their speed and they can carry a second person.
Realistically most adventure parties leave many disabled people (and beasts) in their wake...
I think the real problem is that magic in D&D is so mundane that any problem can be "magicked away", be it healing a wound, curing diseases or exploding an enemy. That makes some situations only really plausible when it's explained as some stronger magic or "weird power" interfering with common magic.
It's a magical fantasy setting, I get it, but magic being so common and consequence free makes it a deus ex of whatever flimsy explanation you can imagine. "Why do disabled people exist in typical D&D?" Cue that meme of the cartoon's Dungeon Master "It's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit".
You can do it with limits, like having bigger wounds heal wrong if you try to heal them too fast (which is how broken bones are handled IRL, sometimes they must be re-broken to correct the healing process)
Why would they complain when they could just have the party's healer offer to heal the NPC in exchange for something? That'd be especially great if they were a merchant.
Especially with the great number of good healers, you'd expect some charity greater restorations
I don't doubt their existence but the wheel chair doesn't look like fantasy.
Since they're a magic user, a conjurated floating chair would fix a lot of issues with the concept as well as look awesome
Maybe not your fantasy. But maybe someone elses fantasy world.
Fantasy is a genre and has been defined pretty clearly. Sure anyone is free to do their own thing just as I am free to critique their said thing.
Since fantasy is by definition not real, everything can be a fantasy aesthetic.
Fantasy is a genre and has been defined pretty clearly. Sure anyone is free to do their own thing just as I am free to critique their said thing.
It's an AI drawing, blame the prompt.
I really don't understand what's wrong with people not "curing all illness and disability with magic™" in a world where magic exists and is a thing.
See, in most such fantasy settings, magic not only exists but it has an attitude. Sometimes, a conscience, and not a very ethically nice one (if it allows for eg.: necromancy!). Sometimes, magic even is a god (or gods). Even if they aren't, the people who use magic are still ultimately humans (with leafy ears etc but still ultimately humans with costumes, at worst) driven by greed, envy or a weird righteous idea of how should a woman dress and behave when in public.
Would you trust some rando nutjob, who claims to speak for Evelok the Eternal Coffee Mug of Satisfaction, to up and magically conjure you new eyes, new arms, whatever? To alter your body to such a fundamental level? Normal people in such settings are already afraid to death of werewolves and those are quite normal things. Compare: even in our magicless, relatively normal world, we have the power and the money to cure most illness and to treat disabled people adequately yet Obamacare is not universal and we can not trust that the people who give people implants and prosthetics haven't backdoored them to force those disabled people into corporate servitude.
Your player party may be the goodest bois, but they're only one. The various guilds and churches around quite likely aren't such goodies on aggregate either, or else there would simply be no plot.
There are deaf people in the real world with treatable deafness that opt not to because they don't view their deafness as a disability. In addition, not all neurodivergent folks view their conditions as disabilities and wouldn't change even if there was a "cure" for it.
So, I don't see how disabilities in a fantasy setting would be different. It's not even necessarily about trusting the cure, many times it's about how folks view the condition and themselves.
I agree. It's just that I've seen that angle tackled already by people who can express it much better than I can, so I went for a vector that I saw unexplored. Like, what happens if in a fantasy world magic itself doesn't want to cure people?
Reminds me of my favourite Flamethrower
Source Tyrant of tower defence gameDepending on the magic it might not make sense because people could heal everything, although you could explain it away by saying that the character could not afford a skilled healer.
I looked it up and the first known wheelchair that you could move yourself in was invented in the 1600s, which was after firearms became relatively common.
Of course wheelchairs were after guns, after all how you fight in a wheelchair before that
Personally I think of guns as just being specifically missing in fantasy, rather than a marker of when it takes place. Like crossing an ocean in a sailboat doesn't feel out of place, even though the people who did it in real life had guns.
Yeah the typical D&D setting is not "mediaeval period but with magic". It's a weird hodgepodge of mediaeval, renaissance, early industrial, and classical technology, fashions, and cultural practices. If there's something from any time period from 3000 BCE to 1700 CE and you want to include it, you pretty much can, and it won't feel out of place in a typical D&D setting.
Yeah, there are some books I've read where their technology is clearly advanced enough for guns (ex: The Wheel of Time has advanced metalworking and fireworks, basically all you need to make a gun), but it would completely ruin all of the combat scenes and mess up the plot.
Im kind of ambivalent on this.
On one hand, ~medieval times, which are usually the general era and technology level the average fantasy setting plays in, have no concept of disability and people who have one are usually ostracized and/or begging in the streets. Blindness may be on the more tolerated side of things, but deformities or developmental abnormalities are definitely not accepted. Also, if there is magic why wouldn’t they use it to cure it?
On the other hand, it’s a fantasy roleplay setting and the primary function is to be fun. So if everyone agrees it shouldn’t be a problem to have a scenario with it, more power to you
I don't know where people like you get their ideas about medieval times, but even if you confine your view to a fairly narrow part of history and the world you're still wrong... Disability was a huge part of life as one would imagine of a relatively violent and hard world with little medical technology. Blindness, deafness, muteness, lameness, mental illness and physical deformity were all facts of life then as they are today even if the causes and treatments were not as understood. Varying degrees and types of what would now be called disabilities were very common among the peasantry and less common but much better cared for among the wealthy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_in_the_Middle_Ages
Heck, the Hapsburgs inbred themselves to extinction over several hundred years along with a host of physical deformities.
While of course there is a storied history of monasteries sheltering the sick and disabled and of leper colonies, most people with disabilities in medieval Europe lived within the community, working where they could and being supported and cared for by their community and families where they couldn't. Begging obviously was where some ended up but was not the default.
Could magic overcome, resolve or undo a disability?
.
someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC
Sounds ridiculous to me.
Anything in roleplaying is possible, why not this stuff then?.
I have a metal mini-titan in my chat text roleplay with friends. It got born 2 weeks ago (game lore time). It doesn't speak and understands pretty much nothing when other party members try to communicate.
Still they have been happy with my character and they have played normally.
(I have agreed that if it becomes too boring we can find machinery that helps communicating.)
I told about our game to an acquaintance and she seemed happy/intrigued of my character choice!Anything in roleplaying is possible, why not this stuff then?
Exactly, say it's a curse, or magic in nature. Or maybe just One of Those Things that we don't know how to change, but the character does their best, and kind people around that character support them and help them be as able as possible.
Fantasy and sci-fi are designed as alternate realities to this world and usually disabilities are expressed through metaphor rather than literal real world disability. A person can’t use magic so they become the worlds greatest artificer and the like.
I’m all for representation, but what is fantasy without being able to fantasize about not having a disability?
Conversely, why would a person want to fantasize about having a disability? I’m not saying there aren’t valid reasons, but I would imagine most people would be doing it in a performative manner.
Then let people make characters without disabilities if they want (which is already the case). But what if someone wants to play a character, or see characters, that face similar challenges to the ones they do? And then get to play them overcoming those challenges!
This is not exactly equivalent, and I'm not asserting that you meant this, but imagine in a different time someone saying, "I don't understand why anyone would want to play a non-white race, since it just opens them up to racism, when they could just fit in and be normal." I consider that to be along the same class of argument as the one we're discussing here.
why would a person want to fantasize about having a disability
To imagine a world where they are the same, but their disability is not an impediment. A more perfect world, rather than imagining themselves as other than they are.
One of the characters at my table was a blind monk who used blindsight to fight and move about the world a la Toph. It was an interesting thought exercise for us all, especially because he literally only had 30 feet of "sight." Another time we had a barbarian who decided not to fix a severed arm because he wanted to be constantly reminded not to take stupid risks and it would keep him humble. I had another guy who rolled up a low INT, high WIS character and played him like Forrest Gump. So yeah, there are people who will spice up their roleplay with some sort of disability.
It depends on the tone of the setting. Someone who gets their leg broken in a Forgotten Realms game can usually find a small-time priest to cast Cure Wounds on them, preventing most disabilities that aren't from birth. Someone who gets their leg broken in Warhammer Fantasy has to hope within their gimped traveling distance that there's a priest of the correct faith capable of appeasing the gods for the healing to happen, before their detriments become permanent. As such, having a disabled character in a game with more accessible healthcare requires an extra degree of explanation, on top of the PCs' and players' emotional response to someone being so downtrodden. The circumstances of their ailment, who or what was responsible, how they see their ailment and work around it, all are weights on the players' suspension of disbelief that a GM has to take into account that they generally otherwise wouldn't with John Miller, the able-bodied dude who runs the mill with a wife, three kids, and a problem with rats stealing the grain that he mills. It's like a Chekov's Gun in that sort of way, the GM as a storyteller surely wouldn't spend the effort to decide that an NPC has a trait that is notably separate from the default without it being somehow relevant to the plot. The mage asks the party to do a quest for their magical research, a general asks the party to do a quest for national security, and a person in a wheelchair... what desire do you give them that wouldn't be misconstrued as able-ist or a waste of that character trait? It's very difficult, often comes with an air of making some kind of a statement, either that they're a writer capable enough to wear disabled-face without it being offensive, or taking a preachy high-ground telling people a message about human sympathy, determination, and adaptability that they've already been made well aware of by the existence of popular culture.
I'm dreaming of a VR game with a disabled wizard who is confined to a chair and uses telekinesis or teleportation to move around. That would give the game a lore reason for VR locomotion.
Crippled mage load out
Reminds me of all the discourse about the chair
Do you have any idea how many fandoms have had their own The Chair incidents? Please specify.
Why are people in the comments arguing about what is or isn't possible in D&S or Star Trek or whatever? As far as I can see it, there is no description about what kind of universe this plays in.
It doesn't make sense to argue whether or not a wheelchair like that "makes sense" in a D&D universe?!
I mean, dwarves in wheelchairs is already a thing in 5e. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Banak_Brawnanvil
Conservative old men are so sensitive.
Fun fact the player in question was 21, the rest of the table is 30 - 40
Ahhh shoot. Looks like the kid got pipelined.
This would be cool to see! Lots of ways to represent historically unrepresented people in alternative settings.
The wheel chair is a bit of weird in the setting. GRRM was more creative and in a more massively magic world it should be easy to think of a more fitting solution.
Let's just pretend that Zatoichi wasn't a thing. NB he might be fiction but the blind swordsman kicked serious ass.
Rysn
Interesting point. In Dawnshard, we learn that she did :::ask the Radiants to heal her condition, but it was too late by then.:::
If you manage to get through a campaign of WFRP without anyone losing an eye you’re doing it wrong ;)
Maybe he really didn't like Hawk the Slayer.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/06/hawk-the-slayer-film-sequel-terry-marcel-jack-palance
If characters in a story have a disability the question should be "What is the DM/Author trying to say, and how does this character add to the world they are portraying?" The plague of diegetic essentialism etc.
That just enforces the idea that people with disabilities are not a normal part of the society. It's like asking to justify why a character is tall, blonde, old, a woman. People are just people and there's a huge variation on their shapes, sizes, colors and disability status.
I don't think it does unless you reach some odd answers. The answer could be "to create a world that feels real and inclusive." A big part of world building is describing places and characters so those descriptions do matter and are not just made for no reason. I don't need to justify some convoluted way that a healing spell doesn't work.
I think we agree though (?), because if a player asked me so bluntly it would probably require a pause to talk it out at the least, and tbh that's on me for trying to be pithy rather than adding a sentence to clarify.
Make magic that cures disabilities, then there’s no more disabled people. The only reason then would be if you want to be disabled.
There's magic that cures disease, there's still disease in the world.
There's magic the raises the dead, there's still dead people in the world.
Fair enough.
Decouple magic from gods & monsters.
Find freedom.
Well it is quite strange to be so offended of disabled people that you would leave the game But as a devil's advocate what the problem is actually a world building one. If you establish that the world has magic, magic is widespread and powerful then the fact that there are disabled people could be slightly immersion breaking. For example in DnD lesser restoration a 2nd lvl spell would cure most blindnesses (well except if the person has actually lost their eyes). Hard to say anything more because you gave so little details. Ultimately that person had a disproportionate response but I find your meme both pointless what aboutism and generalization. Hope you have a good day.
Game of Thrones. Bran Stark is literally crippled from the very first episode.
Was there a reason for them to be blind?
If you don't treat people as people because of a disability, you have both violated the social contract.
They probably shouldn't have left. If I was playing I would interrogate the blind person and find out why they don't try to cure it. Do they hate themselves? Do they like the pity parties people throw for them? Is there a neferious force preventing them from curing it? Or is the DM a fucking idiot?