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Had this conversation with someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC
(files.catbox.moe)
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.
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? ๐ค
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 ยฏ\_(ใ)_/ยฏ
Sorry for the tangent, but yeah, I hard agree with you (โ๏พใฎ๏พ)โ
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!
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
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?
You need to be able to find someone with the skill to do so.
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
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.
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.
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'?
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.
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:
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.
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 plotโnot being well-suited to traveling significant distances in rough terrain, among other thingsโnot 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.
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.
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.
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.
And that's if you decide a spell that primarily exists to cure fairly rare conditions is common enough to fit in that category.
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.
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.
If someone is born without legs, it might take True Polymorph to add some.
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?
Maybe is blind due to powerful curse and does not have enough coin to have the curse lifted?
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