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…
As a fun saying goes “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed”
The same could easily apply to magics of many kinds
Every time I see shit about cutting edge prosthetics with near-full motion capability, controllable via muscles and nerves or whatever they even use nowadays, I’m reminded of my friend from work who couldn’t even afford something beyond a simple plastic harness arm that essentially is just to make it look like he has an arm, with no utility value.
He would take it off during work because it just got in the way, but wore it out to avoid all the questions about it with randos.
Every time I see things about cancer treatments I’m reminded of a few people I knew from my parents social events that have died in the last 10 years simply because they couldn’t afford the treatments. A few even got divorced to keep their debt from ruining their spouse after they’re gone.
The future can be here all it wants, but until everyone has access to it, we may as well be considered a medieval society.
5e isn’t that bad. Even poor people make two silver a day, and if hiring someone to cast a second level spell to cure a family member of blindness was more than they could afford, you could get so rich casting for money. But those rules are just a suggestion, and I’d probably make it so at least some cases of blindness are a little harder to cure. And you could also make it so economic disparity is much worse.
We have the ability to make Tuberculosis not exist and have for half a century. At least 1.6 million unnecessary deaths occurred because of it in 2022. Anyone who can’t think further than the first point has the thought capabilities of a gnat.
We have the ability to make Tuberculosis not exist and have for half a century.
Please tell me more. My knowledge about this must be very outdated.
There are a lot of things that are really only failing for a lack of distributing ressources. But Tubercolosis (where our once widely used vaccine was mostly ineffective in eradicating it and the treatment is complicated and long requiring monitoring of each patient because of the possibility of secondary infection from the antibiotics or organ damage) is not what comes to my mind first, second or for quite a while.
In fact in both cases research is ongoing in search for more effective vaccines and easier treatments (primarily for shorter treatment periods as well as against the multiple antibiotic resistences), because our tools today are not actually up to the task.
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.
Critical Role had a guest playing a blind character. It was a wizard with folk hero background who used his bird familiar to see. He was awesome.
I could swear he was a cleric who somehow had the familiar spell. Yeah, cleric: https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Shakäste
Shakäste and his familiar the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna! Very awesome character.
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
Hmm, that doesn’t mean everyone is perfect and beautiful though. Maybe they can’t afford to pay a sorcerer. Oh, I know! Maybe they have a curse.
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.
laser burns
Technically not burning. Even though (and nobody warned me of this before my procedure) it sure af smells like something is burning while the laser shines down on your exposed retina, that’s actually the smell of vaporised cornea.
TL;DR: laser vaporisation, not laser burning. Much more metal.
Valid point, let’s work with it
Nitpick: “large sum of money” - at least here laser treatment is pretty cheap (less than 1k for both eyes)
1: My eyesight is too bad for laser treatment, by the time my eyesight would be corrected there would be nothing left of my cornea and likely retina as well.
1.5: I still have options available to me that, as you point out, just involve throwing more money at the problem
2: me having that option is beside the point. The point is that even just a minor nuisance like glasses is enough to seriously fuck with someone’s (perceived) quality of life, never mind something that actually severely impacts your daily life.
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.
If by “not even hard” you mean “costs as much as a car”, then sure. My friend also let me know just how costly power chairs are.
It’s expensive for sure, but that’s mostly because powered chairs are made by medical companies and in comparatively low numbers.
A mobility scooter has almost all components a powered chair has, and these can be had for as little as €1000.
The technology behind a powered chair isn’t hard.
And even if we use the high price of a power scooter: How much does it cost to make a paraplegic person walk?
“Not even hard” and “costs as much as a car” aren’t mutually exclusive when it comes to the field of medicine, especially in the US. Many drugs cost pharmaceutical companies pennies to manufacture, but they still sell them for hundreds per pill simply because they can. Medical equipment often employs similar price gouging for no other reason than to profit as much as possible from people who have little choice but to pay.
I went to a NTID school, the community there does not consider themselves to have a “disability” literally. To them, it’s just a language.
To them, it’s just a language.
What is? Being deaf isn’t a language. Sign language absolutely is a language, or to be more accurate, it’s a whole class of languages, because ASL is as different from AusLan or BSL as English is from Spanish or German.
And like any language, it’s more than just a set of definitions and rules of grammar. It carries culture.
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.
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.
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)☞
Yeah, I can understand how it’s easy to get burnt out having to give an explanation every time for why a character is the way they are, it’s exhausting. There are so many challenges to fantasy writing but that shouldn’t be one of them.
Hope you can keep writing awesome characters and stories!
We don’t need to shut down our ability to think critically to assuage the feelings of other people. That’s not something any of us have the right to ask regardless of our condition.
But by assuming everyone with a difference in ability would auto automatically want to be “cured” you are shutting down your ability to think critically already. Apart from trusting cures, apart from access to cures, many people today don’t seek them because they don’t believe they’re necessary.
you to expand your own definition of what’s possible.
The irony here is palpable. You’re telling me to expand my definition of what’s possible while simultaneously telling me to curb my imagination.
Make up your mind.
I’m not asking you to curb your imagination. I’m saying you don’t have the right to tell other people how they want to see themselves or disabled characters in fantasy settings, if you’re gonna be rude about it.
Feel free to read more if you like. https://electricliterature.com/writing-fantasy-lets-me-show-the-whole-truth-of-disability/
A) Get fucked
B) Stop pretending it’s ok to erase people’s experiences
C) You’ve clearly internally defined magical healing in a way that makes it somehow know in which ways a body deviates from the population median, even if it has never adhered to said median, without thinking about how it might know how to do that.
D) Get fucked
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.
Yeah, the existence of disabilities “fixable” by magic is easily explained when you realize that people who do magic are incredibly rare. Like, I’d like to say that if magic were real, I’d be a wizard, but I don’t even make an effort to learn real stuff in real life. Do I really think my 10 int ass is gonna read three textbooks about how to make a Magic Missile? Am I arrogant enough to think God likes me enough to let me channel His magic? Maybe one in ten churches has a cleric, and they’re busy treating the frequent cholera and dysentery that plagued the world prior to modern water treatment. They don’t have the spell slots to spare for someone who’s in a wheelchair and lives relatively normally with it
I wouldn’t have any arguments if the character had an intelligence score of 4.
I don’t know if you’re trolling, but the most obvious one to me is loss of hearing.
Cochlear implants restore hearing. The deaf community strongly argues against cochlear implants because many are pre-lingually deaf (they were deaf before they could talk, so they only know sign language) and see it as discrimination- taking away the thing that makes the culture work. Also, not everyone can afford them (though it’s getting better).
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.
Then you’ll run into the debate what is their natural state? Is it the physical form people identify with or literally what they’re born with?
So if a disabled person identifies as someone who should be able to walk when they get healed they should be able to heal.
It’s only a debate when it’s about RAW. Here the DM is making their own rules, and they can do whichever they want. They each have advantages and disadvantages. Maybe once you lose a phantom limb, you can no longer heal the limb. And transgender people can get the body they want with a simple healing spell. Though then you run into the question of if you can turn a scalie into a dragon with a healing spell, and that’s just OP.
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.
Lesser Restoration is free and usually offered by clerics at any good aligned God’s church. Which, in Faerun, are easy to find.
Beyond that, there are magical diseases that can’t be cured by normal restorative magics. This is used in the plot for Neverwinter Nights.
This is very specific to DnD while the meme itself could really be talking about any game, be that some other tabletop RPG or video game.
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.
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.
…wat? Why is restoring sight to blind eyes equivalent to “bespoke body modification”?
because some people are born blind? reasonably their “natural state” would then be a blind person, which means that healing can’t restore their sight, because it was never there. Unless that “healing” is just body modification based on an ideal, in which case, why wouldn’t it be able to turn someone into an adonis?
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.
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.
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.
“Restoration” is right there in the name. What’s it “restoring” something to if someone was born blind?
In my setting if someone was born blind, paralyzed, etc, Regeneration wouldn’t fix it. Regenerate brings you back to your normal state, which even your perceived self plays a role in.
For example the blind man mentioned in my post description) lost his eye sight decades prior. He has fully accepted his blindness to the point his perceived self is blind. A wandering adventurer tried to cast Regenerate on him to heal the old mans wounds he sustained helping the adventurer in a time of need years prior and when it failed to work on his eye sight the old man informed him that it’s who he was. “The helpful old blind man bring aid to those that need it.” And the old man continued on his way happier knowing he helped someone else that day.
Regenerate is also a 7th level spell - depending on the setting, the number of people capable of that kind of magic might not even exist outside of the confines of the party, or if they do, they’re more preoccupied with the stuff worthy of NPCs with at least thirteen class levels.
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.
5e “blindness” probably assumes blindness from a curse or spell on otherwise functional eyes since that’s how I’ve seen the condition being afflicted. As you mentioned, losing a limb is a different thing so if they lost their eyes, had their eyes physically destroyed in some way, or were born with non-functional eyes I would rule it as the latter case at my table in those instances.
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.
I just have to ask… How difficult is making holy water in D&D because making it IRL is easy. 25gp for holy water seems quite expensive. But to be fair, it actually works in the game.
Also there’s being disabled and having a wheelchair. I don’t think a wheelchair really fits into the world.
Plenty of examples of mechanical devices in the DND world that are at least on par with a basic wheelchair, not sure why that would break immersion
I believe the point was that it didn’t fit the setting for the main characters of a typical fantasy plot—not being well-suited to traveling significant distances in rough terrain, among other things—not that they wouldn’t have the basic tech. You don’t see many active-duty soldiers or mercenaries fighting in wheelchairs and it seems likely the same considerations would apply to adventurers. You can come up with settings where it isn’t totally implausible, but it will require some careful thought and ingenuity.
That’s one of my favorite things about Dnd. “The World” is the DM’s interpretation of a world or their own world. Even if they were running an otherwise stock Forgotten Realms setting they can add as much steampunk or magipunk elements as they please, including superpowered wheelchairs for adventurers. In your world there would probably be something different than wheelchairs if there’s anything because it really just comes down to preference.
