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.
I just found John Green‘s account.
On a serious note, it is really sickening to hear stuff like this. It’s not even that those drugs are crazy expensive or extremely difficult to distribute. It’s just greed and very bad distributed wealth
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.
Our tools today are absolutely up to the task. Of those deaths, how many of them do you think are in rich countries vs. the rest of the world.
Seventeen of the twenty-two countries that account for 80 percent of the world’s TB burden are classified as low income (GNP per capita of less than US$760, World Bank 2000). Within countries the prevalence of TB is higher among the poor, and other vulnerable groups such as the homeless. Studies in both high income and low-income countries (USA, United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Vietnam, Mexico and Philippines) reveal significantly higher rates of TB in poor populations (Davies et al. 1999; Grange 1999; Barnes 1998; Tupasi et al. 2000).
The costs for people in low income countries are so high that often they are unattainable
TB patients and households in sub-Saharan Africa often incurred high costs when utilizing TB treatment and care, both within and outside of Directly Observed Therapy Short-course (DOTS) programs. For many households, TB treatment and care-related costs were considered to be catastrophic because the patient costs incurred commonly amounted to 10% or more of per capita incomes in the countries where the primary studies included in this review were conducted.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3570447/
This helps the disease spread and fester in these countries. Whereas so called developed nations reap the benefit of something that does not need to be a problem for anyone.
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.
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.
Played by Khary Patyon, aka the voice of Cyborg for the last two decades.
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.
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.
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.
That somehow sounds even worse.
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.
at least here laser treatment is pretty cheap (less than 1k for both eyes)
I’m not sure where you are, but that’s exceptionally cheap. I got it done in Vietnam for about $2k for both eyes. Here in Australia it would be more like $4k per eye.
I suppose the health insurance covers a lot of it, but given the quotes my mother and I (well mine was more a “would cost this much but no can do with your eyes kiddo”) got respectively plus what the health insurance likely paid/pays the “normal” price would still be ~1.5k-2k for both eyes.
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.
“oh that’s just telekinesis”
“cool nickname, still magic!”
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.
My friend talked a lot about the forces at work. Not all of it was simple capitalism. Disabled people are notoriously hard to design for because each disabled person is different and has different needs. This kind of business is not scalable and disabled people are already a minority. Even proper hand wheelchairs are fucking expensive cuz only a couple companies make them.
That does make sense. But still, making a powered chair is not at all technologically difficult. You need the chair, two motors and an input system that works for the user.
Sure, if there’s a lot of bespoke parts and manual labour, coupled with basically no economy of scale, it’s going to be expensive. But it’s not difficult.
Cochlear implants are frowned upon by some in the Deaf community.
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.
There’s a lot of cultural stuff there that I’m certainly not qualified to comment on.
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.
Yeah exactly, for them it’s about the culture, in which language is a huge factor.
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.
Removed by mod
I’m picturing something that walks like a spider.
Maybe they’re making a run from a hospital invaded by goblins.
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.
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’m not trying to erase anything; I’m more encouraging these players to make their background fit the game world better because in the end, the game is just collaborative story-telling and you’re not the only writer. Just as it’s easy to fix the problem with magic, you could equally make it unfixable with magic too.
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.
Magic is literally capable of anything. It can grant wishes. It can raise the dead. It can cure disease. It can also cause death. Cause disease. Permanently maim and disfigure. It doesn’t need to know anything; the person performing the magic makes that determination. That’s part of what makes it magic.
Yup! Whenever I play in a high magic setting and want to incorporate disease, disability or death into a story, I always come up with a reason why it cannot be fixed with magic, or why the character didn’t want to/couldn’t fix it with magic.
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/
You’re so casually ableist and don’t even see it. They’re telling you not everyone wants to “fix” their “disability”, they’re not saying everyone refuses.
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.
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 think the thing that’s really getting to me (and probably a few other people too) is the image above. Taken at face value, someone in a wheelchair, seemingly in the role of an adventurer. Well-dressed and can afford a wheelchair, with magic, seems like they could probably have gotten that healed if it were just a normal injury. Healed or otherwise resolved in whatever other manner.
Not to mention, the context certainly does matter and can make inclusions come off as preachy.
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).
Not to mention, as I understand it, the implants are not 100% effective and can cause pain, fairly substantially on both
I’m no expert, but as I understand, culture and cost aren’t the only reasons to turn down the implants
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.
Obvious bait is obvious
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.
Even in D&D, they could be playing their own custom worlds. I’ve never actually played in an official setting unless I was DM’ing (because I love Forgotten Realms). Obviously if they are playing a low-fantasy setting with minimal magic or without magic it wouldn’t generate the questions of “why didn’t you just X?”
Personally I play DnD in a Forgotten Realms inspired (Mostly Forgotten Realms but like a number of years in the future with a new Mystra)
I’m the DM and one of the things I brought up was basically “Yeah there’s magic, but it sure as hell ain’t evenly distributed”
Wizards are a secretive bunch, and the higher level the spell the rarer it is to find let alone someone who can cast it
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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.
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?
Also a thing I have in my DnD setting is that someone’s personal image of themselves plays a role in regeneration
For example let’s say someone who is blind has fully accepted it about themselves and someone for some reason needs to cast regeneration on them. It wouldn’t restore their eye sight because they have embraced it as a part of themselves.
In the case of the blind man the party met they were blind for decades, they had fully accepted it about themselves. Not even bringing up the difficulty of getting to the point of knowing (or finding some who knows) Regeneration (a very very powerful spell) he had no use for sight in his mind. He lived his life as fully as anyone else. It was a part of him. So if someone cast Regeneration to save his life he’d still be blind.
Spells affecting willing creatures is a funny term in my eyes. Willing can be “willing to a point” is as valid as fully willing.
I can understand the argument that it’s a form of modification rather than simple “healing” or “regeneration”, but it’s still taking an organ that either evolved or was designed (depending on the world’s/race’s mythology) to see, and enabling it to do so; whereas “bespoke” modifications sound like they’d be entirely arbitrary.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Unless maybe it’s a steam-powered Gnomish wheelchair with tank treads, blunderbusses and magic missile launchers.
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.
“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.
Being blind isn’t natural though. You’re born blind because there was a DNA replication error or in vitro trauma. Humans didn’t evolve to be blind.
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 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.
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
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.
Yeah, the real kicker is the 25 gp worth of powdered silver.
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
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
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!
Fuck me thats funny, I love the idea of being a semi agoraphobic ironman
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.
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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.
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.
Reincarnation can cure all ills
*You may be reincarnated as a half orc. If unhappy with new body, consult with your local druid. Full price is charged for all reincarnations. Ensure your soul is happy to come back or permanent death may occur. No refunds
Why do you assume there is only one kind of magic?
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.
D&D’s leveling system is all about becoming stronger.
Well, I very rarely play DnD, but it very much depends on the DM and the quest.
EDIT: Hey, guys with downvotes, good stories are a thing, roleplaying is a thing. If your whole session consists of combat and preparation for it, or magic and preparation for it, then it’s your own particular regrettable situation.
And “rarely play DnD” means literally DnD itself, like third edition or Pathfinder. Tabletop RPGs - rather often.
How can any magic be wrong if magic does not exist?
A world in which magic can cure all ills has integrity problems. (I mean, it was funny in the W.I.T.C.H. series when Cornelia’s little sister was dreaming and her dreams were affecting the world around everybody else. I don’t accept critique for liking that series, be it comic books or animated.)
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.
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.
You’re overstating how common magic is. Aragorn is only 5th level, and you need to be a 13th level bard/cleric/druid to regrow limbs. Even then, you can only regrow one or two per day. It can be done, but it’s not common.
Is that enough to feed the party?
As always, the real issues are being discussed in the comments.
Create food and water is a 3rd level spell. Use your spell slots wisely.
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.
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.
As a Bright Wizard, I take offense to this. I am not weak. My flames purify entire hordes of filthy rat men. Now, if you can excuse me. There is a horde of Northmen at the gate and my tea is getting cold.
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
If magic exists to eliminate all disabilities, then there should be no smart, rich people with disabilities in your world
I disagree. I know plenty of smart people with disabilities who wouldn’t take a cure if it was possible. Most of them are autistic. Autism is a disability in a world that doesn’t accommodate it, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a disability politically, not intrinsically. And deafness is pretty undeniably a disability, but I’ve read about deaf people not wanting to join in on hearing society because they think the deaf community is better.
This might sound hard for you to understand if you’re fully abled, so I’ll put it in terms you can understand. Imagine if tomorrow scientists invented a cheap, painless procedure to install a third arm in your chest. Everyone’s getting them because they’re so useful, and clothing stores are quickly switching to shirts with three arm holes. It’s getting hard to find shirts with only two arm holes, in fact. Even if everyone you knew said they preferred having three arms, would you get one?
I am disabled. I would take a magic cure in a second, as would the vast majority of disabled people.
I’m disabled and I wouldn’t. I don’t think I’d be me if I wasn’t autistic.
I think if you do not want or need a cure, it’s not a disability. Doesn’t make sense to call it a disability then.
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.
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?
dear disabled mages
just enable it in the settings
ability TRUE
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.
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.
“Roll for dexterity” when you enter a city that’s not wheelchair accessible at every single stairway 💀
oh cool. Failed roll, roll for constitutional save. Roll for damage.
Nat1, just roll for damage, or if you are a fun DM, have another roll for dex for the objects at the bottom of the stairs.
Ironically unable to roll anywhere at all anymore.
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.
That is awesome, I’m not familiar with this one but I can use a good read. Thank you!!
Thank you for reminding me of the name of that webcomic
I followed it years ago and had quite forgotten when it was lost to a tab on a dead computer.
Selfish I think. She much prefer people do stuff for her. She wouldn’t get much help if she was more capable.
She is anything but selfish. Literally every member of that family is only there because of her selfless deeds (not hyperbole), and they have to talk her into taking their support as a form of thanks. She will never owe them anything by their insistence.
For reference...
She donated 25000 gp, received as compensation for losing her arm and her husband, in order to resurrect five strangers. Those strangers became her family. She still offers to pay for meals and gifts given to her because she doesn’t want to intrude on their generosity. Her arm is still holding her husband, and she doesn’t need another one.
She is selfish by choosing to not “pull her weight”. She became selfish by that choice.
I understand there are some communities that choose things like keeping their child deaf, but if you’re choosing to put more weight on me then that does go into my perception of you.
I’m not going to force anyone into “becoming healed”. But they are choosing. That choice is when it becomes selfish.
No, it isn’t as selfish as a billionaire putting children in mines to see their bank account grow.
Everyone makes selfish choices all the time.
Just because you made a selfish choice doesn’t make you a bad person, or even means you “hurt” someone. Doing good deeds before doesn’t make future acts not selfish.
When I first read “she has all the arms and feet she could ever want” all I did is put myself into the shoes of someone who is helping her. “Oh, all I am is a foot?” Is an easy thing to see someone feeling, especially after learning they’re choosing to keep you there.
Why did you put things in quotes that nobody said? When did you read “arms and feet”?
She is not selfish. She is selfless to a fault. She isn’t putting more work on others, she just doesn’t think it’s worth the hassle of magically healing her when that effort could go to helping others. She isn’t doing it just because she thinks she can make others work for her, and if you read what I wrote, you’d know that.
She does pull her weight, and she pulls it with one hand while everyone else is telling her to rest for a bit. Everyone offers their hands to her and she has learned, over many years, to accept their aid. They are not just hands. They are her fucking family.
Here’s an example of how incredibly wrong you’ve read the situation.
I’m not as great formatting in text. But you started this by saying arms and feet. The rest were mostly
along the lines of the text has multiple meanings and I’m using certain ones.I made no judgement on her overall character. I haven’t argued her whole is selfish. That one instance is her being selfish. I did read what you wrote? Your argument on that specific act not being selfish is “she’s done good things.” I don’t care. I don’t know her. That act is selfish, the choice is selfish.
I don’t care if they’re family. Am I not allowed to complain about acts that ‘harm’ me?
I’m sorry, is that supposed to make me not feel that she’s selfish. I have experience with people doing that “oh no, I cannot accept a gift” any every time I’ve seen someone do that it’s from past trauma. The reason why I’m going to push back against anyone saying “let them stay traumatized” is because helping people and giving gifts makes people like you more. If you do that you’re going to push people away, and make it harder to live/have friends/get help in the future/form bonds with people. No, that is bull shit behavior. You probably posted the one thing that would make me dislike her more.
I literally never said feet. I said arms, I said hands, I never said feet.
Your argument on that specific act not being selfish is “she’s done good things.”
That wasn’t my argument on that act. That was my argument on her. She has a pattern of selfless behaviour, so it’s weird to interpret this in a way that makes her selfish.
The argument I made on that specific act is that her having one hand is not a selfish thing. She says it’s not worth the hassle healing her, and she’s willing to do the work she’d need to by herself, even with the disadvantage. It only affects her. Nothing about that is selfish. I don’t even see how it COULD be.
I don’t care if they’re family.
I didn’t say they’re family like that excuses anything. I said they’re family because that is their reasoning, and how they treat each other. She treats them like family. They help her because they’re her family. You say she treats them like they’re just hands and feet, which is simply wrong.
Am I not allowed to complain about acts that ‘harm’ me?
This feels like a rather telling thing to say. Nothing in this situation harms anyone, including you. Nobody has been forced to do anything they aren’t immediately offering to do. Nobody is trying to leverage anyone to do things for them. Her disability is not a burden on anyone. It’s weird you interpret it in this way.
I have experience with people doing that…
You seem to have started arguing against a phantom in the middle there, and also implied that the only reason to do nice things is so other people like you? That’s not why she does nice things. She does them because she thought it was the proper thing to do, and that anyone else would do the same. There’s no trauma. She’s not pushing anyone away. And the comic directly shows someone demanding her to accept their generosity, which matches with her learning to accept their aid in the comic I showed earlier.
Oh I see, I misinterpreted, lol
Well I may not be right. The authors intention mayb be it was meant to heartfelt but I haven’t read the comics.
Understood, yeah it does appear to be heartfelt, after reading that one posted comic. No worries, imma still read it all
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.
