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.
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.
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I’m picturing something that walks like a spider.
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.
Maybe they’re making a run from a hospital invaded by goblins.
Right? If I were a disabled adventurer I’d be driving a tank.
I 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.
Unless they want to pretend they don’t have magic to seem harmless for a moment
Not only that, if you could afford a wheelchair or glasses in a medieval setting you can probably afford healing magic
In nearly every RPG or fantasy story I have ever encountered, performing any magic costs and flight or hover magic cost a fuck load. Why would anyone waste mana on floating around like a fucking diva when they could save their mana and use it to kick ass?
Not to mention that badass moment when you drop your cane(hello Yoda) or get up from your wheelchair using your well stored magic, or force or whatever power, and beat the fuck out of your enemies with all that stored up potential.
Gimme a fucking break. What kind of namby pamby players are you?? Bitching about how it looks to use regular disabled people’s equipment? Fuck right off. Only 12 year olds and fucking hipster posers give a fuck how things look.
Not to mention that badass moment when you drop your cane(hello Yoda) or get up from your wheelchair using your well stored magic, or force or whatever power, and beat the fuck out of your enemies with all that stored up potential.
Only 12 year olds and fucking hipster posers give a fuck how things look.
Yeah, correct, and you seem to qualify.
I never mentioned looking cool, I said it’s a boring interpretation.
The idea that in a fantasy world you’re gonna go to the most mundane implementation of the most mundane option to live with a disability makes it boring, not the fact that it doesn’t look cool.
There are more advanced wheelchairs than that in the real world.
For example: Tenser’s flying disk, it’s level 1, lasts hours, is free, and is an all-terrain vehicle by every definition, so much for magic being expensive.
My man Tenser, he’ll carry your stuff and help you get dramatically swole for short periods.
Why would anyone waste mana on floating around like a fucking diva when they could save their mana and use it to kick ass?
I’ve seen plenty of dudes with big trucks that have never gone off road.
I mean… You live in a world where magic healing exists. Why would anyone be blind when you can find a sorcerer, wizard or cleric (or even a spoony bard like Volo) and restore your sight in at least 20 different ways? 🤔
This was a bit of weird shit in Star Trek with Geordi, too. They can literally grow him new eyes (and do eventually) but the visor is also cool, and the rule of cool wins.
It’s not so much that a disabled person being realistic is unfun; it’s that it doesn’t seem to fit the world itself which kills suspension of disbelief if you understand how the game world works. You’d have to work extra hard at giving a believable reason for this person to be disabled and not have gotten healed through magical means.
Hi. I have a mild physical disability, and this point comes up quite a lot in different settings, including fantasy fiction. “If such and such is a fantasy setting, why does character simply not be disabled?” Is something many able bodied people like to assume.
Without going into how hurtful it is to assume that what all of us want is to be “able bodied”, you’re basically taking away a person’s agency to tell a story about themselves as they are. And there are many stories to be told!
So instead of trying to use logic to negate these kinds of characters from stories and fantasy settings, I challenge you to expand your own definition of what’s possible. There’s plenty of room for all of us.
I have a disabled character in my world (I’m a writer, not an rpg player. My schedule sucks for it). She has a partially paralyzed lip that gives her a lisp and a scar to match. Healing could have fixed it, if she could have been healed in time. But she wasn’t.
I also have a Deaf character who plays a major role in the story. I think we need more representation in fantasy. And as a black guy, I don’t really want to read the trials and tribulations of being black, as I’m sure other minority groups don’t. I want to read about black folk swinging swords and fighting monsters ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry for the tangent, but yeah, I hard agree with you (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
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’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.
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 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.
While this is a fair point, it isn’t the decisive argument. Do people ever starve to death in a fantasy world? Well many classes can cast goodberry so no one should have to starve in a fantasy world.
The answer is really simple: “most people prefer a good story over a logical world”, combined with the fact that worldbuilding is pretty hard.
This seems to treat “magical healing” as if it’s just bespoke body modification. So, by the same logic, why would anyone ever have a STR score that was less than fucking Hercules’?
…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.
So, by the same logic, why would anyone ever have a STR score that was less than fucking Hercules’?
I’m sure if the rules allowed them to, they would.
The spells that can cure blindness, deafness or fix paralysis and other things are very clearly in the rules as well as how they are integrated into the world itself within the DM handbook.
And yes, there are even spells that are basically body modification. Fuckin’ Wild Shape. Becoming a lich. Etc.
Instead of taking this to mean you shouldn’t play a disabled character, work around it and answer the questions that will inevitably pop up as to why. Being born that way and not wanting to erase your identify is still a good reason for most of those. But if you’re like the able-bodied edgelords I’ve seen who want to play as a fighter who was blinded in battle… Well.
Just because there’s magic doesn’t mean it’s evenly distributed. And finding someone capable of casting higher level magics isn’t an easy feat.
I play in a slightly modified DnD 5e Forgotten Realms (some years in the future with a new Mystra)
Basically Regenerate would bring you back to your normal state or the state you perceive as your normal state.
Some examples:
You’re born without an arm, if someone cast Regenerate on you you wouldn’t grow a new arm. That arm was never there. To get that arm would take a True Polymorph. Which is not only a very high level spell, it’s really not easy to find someone who could cast it.
In the case of the blind man the party met, they were blind for decades after losing his eyesight saving his family. He had fully accepted it about himself. He had no use for sight in his mind after living so long without it, it was a part of him. He perceived his normal self as blind. So if someone cast Regeneration to save his life he’d still be blind. (And someone had years before the party met him, but that’s a story for another time)
Basically: learning magic is hard, the components are typically expensive, and finding someone who is already skilled in magic enough to cast it is hard. Not to mention the costs associated with it.
“Go to the nearest big city, there’s bound to be someone who can.” Yes but would they be willing to? How much would they charge? How long would you have to travel to get there? Is that feasible?
“What about Lesser Restoration, a second level spell? That one’s easy to get to.” Maybe in a big city, but out in a rural area that would likely still be tough as someone has to have the necessary prerequisites to get to that. You have to hone that craft and learn it from somewhere.
Also there’s being disabled and having a wheelchair. I don’t think a wheelchair really fits into the world.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
Geordi actually was addressed at one point, basically he found the extra sensory abilities the visor gave him to feel natural, and removing those extra senses would be like removing a limb for him
Exactly this. I wish OP would respond to this because I can’t even comprehend an argument so I’d love to see how that pans out.
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.
Autism is a disability mostly for social reasons, not for intrinsic reasons. I guess you could say that I do want a cure, if the cure is society becoming more tolerant. But I don’t want a cure that changes my intrinsic nature, because there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being autistic.
I mean, some people literally just don’t view their conditions as disabilities. We don’t even need to talk about ability to afford something.
I don’t see why anyone would take issue with it, but one of the coolest things about powerful magic is that nobody needs to be disabled. You can heal them with magic! I know I’d love to get a fantasy healer to heal some of my old wounds. But even in D&D magic comes with a price, and more powerful spells consume very expensive reagents. So it’s understandable that there would still be injured and crippled people.
Ive played a one armed barbarian before. He touched a cursed item that was slowly Turning him into a demon, so he chopped off his arm.
The DM said I lost Ambidexterity for that, Which I accepted. I later found out that I derailed part of his plan to make my character evil & work as a minion for the Big Bad.
I think you made up your mind about losing ambidexterity well before the DM told you you wouldn’t have it anymore lol
It also means that people may have disabilities but won’t be held back by them without removing that aspect of their life. And it could be ruled that the differently-abled aspect is something not even magic can take away because it’s so intrinsic to the character
I can absolutely see magic not being able to correct genetic or congenital conditions. It can make sense for developmental delays aswell. But something like missing a limb from a traumatic injurie or blindness due to macular degeneration… There is no reason a mid level adventurer or powerfull character would not just use magic to heal or fix it.
Maybe an injurie by a powerful lich, or since kinda of cursed weapon that makes it impossible to fully heal with anything short of a wish spell…
Poor people on the other hand, should absolutely have debilitating injuries and disabilities that will never be fully fixed due to magic being expensive.
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.)
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Why would anyone want to be crippled? I’m all for accepting things as they are, but I’ve never met anyone who would rather have less ability as opposed to more. I’m hard of hearing, and I’d do an awful lot to get my normal hearing back.
It’s not just about being crippled. The spell „Resurrection“ closes all mortal wounds and restores missing body parts. It will also uncircumcise the Jewish priest, removing all his powers.
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I never implied that people shouldn’t play what they want and even said in my first post that I don’t see why someone would have issues with it. In my last response I thought you were talking about real life, since the conversation has been going back and forth between games and real life. Do whatever the fuck you want with your character. Why would I care?
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Way too harsh there.
What if someone wants to be a cripple? Wouldn’t healing them ruin their self esteem?
Your earlier comment was not “what if someone wants to role-play a cripple?” If it was meant to mean that, I don’t understand the relevance of healing hurting their self esteem. Whose self-esteem? The player’s, or the character’s?
The response made sense by querying why would a character want to be crippled, not why a player would find it interesting to do so.
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K
You can literally resurrect people in D&D.
Which is a high level spell if you want it to regenerate lost limbs.
The average peasant does not have access to this.
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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.
dear disabled mages
just enable it in the settings
ability TRUE
Odd because blindness is very commonly represented in mythology and fantasy.
A wheelchair is a tough sell in a questing/adventuring party, but in the right context we have seen paraplegics manage, in a popular fantasy setting ( GoT, bran), but it required someone to move them around
And then there’s bloodborne.
First guy you meet in bloodborne is in a wheelchair.
The old man who helps you is in a wheelchair.
You get shot at by tricked out wheelchair tanks.
One of the PCs (new guy brought in after the other guy left) at the table literally has prosthetic legs as an artificer because his character was born without them.
Magical legs work better for an adventuring party for sure IMO but a wheelchair bound NPC in a city is fine.
Hell the artificer has made it a personal goal to no matter the cost allow people to walk again with their prosthetic legs. (A generous patron gave them their first set) He’s going to encounter one soon (I’m the DM, it’s going to happen) and the player will (likely) have the gold for a set. But they’re not free to make and the components aren’t free.
It’s interesting to me to put problems in front of my players for them to solve in inventive ways. They never fail to surprise me.
A lot of this has probably been said already, but I want to point out that restrictions breed creativity.
This is a magic fantasty world, how would your character deal with their differences? What coping mechanisms would they develop? Would a blind character develop some alternative to vision? Would a physically disabled character find some other way to navigate the world?
I see people asking “why would disability exist in a world with magical healing” as a way to dismiss the entire concept. I feel that engaging with the question, and trying to answer, it leads to more interesting characters.
Toph from Avatar is an example of following these restrictions. Would her character and abilities even exist if the writers didn’t sit down and wonder how a blind character would work in their universe?
I was thinking Toph while reading your comment lol. And in case anyone feels like Toph is “fixing” disabilities with convenient magic, ATLA also addressed disability in non-magic people as well too with Teo, the inventors son who is in what is effectively a wheel chair, who even takes part in a naval invasion.
My setting has a lot of nautical aspects to it, including lots of drowned and sea creatures. One of my players in a captain of a ship (they’re all level 15+ now, so he’s worked his way up there). I’d have the blind character have a parrot that narrates the world to them, much like a DM.
How about the deaf general in the Dragon Prince?
She can silently issue complex commands in stealth situations with sign language. It’s pretty dope.
There’s also a water bender with no arms in legends of Korra who uses water being as arms
Wait wait I know how this one went: “You purchase this media to ESCAPE the real world and they FORCE their WOKE AGENDA down your throat!!!”
Fucking pissy crybabies, let em cope
The unspoken part of that argument being they deep down desire a world that has no non-white, disabled, queer people in it at all and don’t understand others don’t think that way.
I would love a world with no disabled people in it in the same way that I would love a world without refugees.
Which is very much not the way the people who generally list those thing together mean it.
Yeah, I suppose in a way both sides want a world without marginalized people.
I can only speak for myself but the slight issue I take with “woke” aspects in games is more down to the fact that it takes me out of the experience and forcibly makes me recall the very real discussion around it. That alone wouldn’t be a problem because quite frankly every game is political in some way but the “woke” discussion has been extremely loud and, at least for me, exhausting in both directions. So if I stumble upon an issue of it in a game it immediately pulls me back to reality, ruining my moment of escapism.
And I don’t think your conclusion of people’s actual desires is accurate. There is wanting all characters to be white, having a problem with 50% of a supposedly medieval european population being black and a lot of nuance in between those two extremes. Again, I can’t speak for anyone except myself but the vast majority of complaints I’ve met are from people who do not take issue with represantation itself but with the degree it is pushed with.
Disclaimer: please excuse the typos, I’ll maybe fix them later
If you’re so annoyed with just having to hear about it, imagine how shitty it must be to walk out into the world and deal with discrimination. Not just, like, people asking you to think about someone else, but people treating you like you’re not even human.
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.
For the sake of roleplay and being friends, the idea of disabled people in fantasy settings should not be difficult to accept, but that doesn’t mean that all fantasy IPs should have all sorts of modern disabilities. Like in a ttrpg you are creating a collaborative story using the ttrpg systems and in that sense heck yeah you can have magic chairs to transport otherwise disabled people. BG3 straight up cures blindness by use of a magical prosthetic eye, so there is even precedent for it in the popular dnd video game.
But what I totally want is some more creative and magical ways to handle disabilities, or maybe just whimsical. What about a druid that wildshapes into a snake to move around, and just slithers on the ground. straight up never uses a wheelchair cuz snek. Or magical leg armor. Prosthetic eyes? why not just have a large crystal ball that balances on your head that does the seeing for you.
And, those are awesome solutions, my thought is, that a random peasant could get disabled and not afford magical solutions. Or maybe they’re superstitious of magic. Maybe they’re part of a blood cult that worships some demon that values the sacrifice of limbs. There are legitimate reasons to have some npcs with disabilities.
Holy shit these are some amazing ideas. Got anymore I can
stealuse?
I couldn’t care less if there is a disabled character in a fantasy game. But it does beg the question: why would there be a magic character who relies on a real-world wheelchair when they presumably have magical abilities that would eliminate their disability, and why would that be someone’s fantasy?
That being said, it’s fantasy. You’re allowed to do virtually anything you want. It’s up to the DM to accommodate their players.
It is like saying a Wizard isn’t allowed to have glasses.
That’s what the crystal balls are for.
Huh I always thought they were for pondering.
I’ve seen them somewhat often in RPGs and related material. There’s those who are blind, frail, deaf, weak or lacking a skill to do something necessary. Even Basic D&D had notable penalties for rolling INT 3-5, being illiterate to start with.
NPCs in fantasy settings still have hinderances, and they’re expected. Maybe they can be neutralized by healing magic in D&D, or there may be equipment that works around them. The wrong part is shutting down the concept, as that’s contempt for the weak (technically a symptom of fascism.)
While Nazi-Germany was infamous for ‘euthananizing’ disabled people, it is sadly not a principle reserved for the right extreme.
Luckily most don’t go as far as right out killing the weak. But sadly there is almost always a splinter group in any political or ideological orientation that shows contempt for the weak.
Why people downvote you I don’t know.
I just got here, but I’d guess it’s because their comment reads like they are saying “no, facists aren’t the bad guys, both sides show contempt for the weak sometimes!” It’s a false balance fallacy.
I’m not sure if that was the intention, or it was just unfortunately worded.
It is - in your strawman argument. Because they’ve just said that evil is not limited to fascists and described how.
I agree with every word and the tone too. There are plenty of people with “contempt for the weak” who for whatever reason disagree that they are dirt.
It’s an attack at dishonorable people, and if you have the need to resort to strawman arguments, then maybe it has something to do with you.
You asked why the comment was getting downvoted. I responded with how the comment could be interpreted in a way that warrants downvotes.
You seem to have taken that proposed explanation very personally for some reason.
How would you have worded the comment?
I took it personally because you’ve put that “implying Nazis were not as bad” part as if it’s normal thought process. It’s really not, I only see such when the one expressing it has already made up their mind and is just trying to silence\condemn the initial commenter. I haven’t ever seen that IRL being expressed sincerely. It’s always “burn the witch”.
While I personally haven’t downvoted it, I did have a nice eye roll at it.
Nothing stated is false, but there’s a massive gulf between contempt and euthanization. Both are wrong, but one involves stuff like murder and forced sterilization. The other may involve terrible treatment if the bigot is given the opportunity. Scale/magnitude is important.
As a personal thing, whenever people start tossing around nazi and fascism I find it a bit harder to take their statements seriously. The terms are becoming significantly less impactful through modern overuse. Nazis and fascists absolutely still exist, but it feels as though the terms are becoming shorthand catch-all labels for general reprehensible behavior/beliefs for people too lazy to explain further or to use more specific terminology. Not saying that’s ocurring here, but in general.
Like are we talking about people who believe that all the world’s issues are caused by meddling and scheming of the genetically inferior and rule of the world is the birthright of some genetically pure ubermenschs, or is it somebody unable to handle a blind character in a TTRPG? Someone going to a protest to shoot people, or some couch potato who has stewed too long with right wing media? All are bad, but it’s a matter of scale which is significant.
Much like how issues of unconcious biases or microaggressions should probably be solved with attempts at education rather than shouting someone down like they’re calling for eugenics. There has to be a better solution than just dismissing large swaths of people for the wrong beliefs, or in a lot of online discourse, calling for physical violence against them.
That’s not happening here, but I’ve seen so much of it that it shades how I interact with online discourse.
Like are we talking about people who believe that all the world’s issues are caused by meddling and scheming of the genetically inferior and rule of the world is the birthright of some genetically pure ubermenschs
Strictly speaking, they believed that grouping of people by race makes sense in respect to their personality, and thus some common racial interests, and then that thus races compete fight each other, and then that thus they should make their own race “win”. Genetic “purity” was in their opinion needed to preserve “their” personality traits, or something like that.
That’s still bullshit, but with my description I hope you can see that it’s more similar to class theory in Marxism than Marxists would like to admit.
That’s not happening here, but I’ve seen so much of it that it shades how I interact with online discourse.
Well, for me any kind of contempt for the weak (in any respect - appearances, sicknesses, hard childhood, trauma, unpleasant personality, anything) is reminiscent of people who dismiss anybody with a problem with no objections from their conscience, also thinking that such behavior makes them stronger. And I know that maybe they’ll regret that in the old age, and that those they dismiss will later praise the universe that they’ve been dismissed by such people, but still.
And fighting that contempt for the weak I don’t see as potentially harmful, while attacking somebody who’s doing it is in my opinion and indicator of being the bigot in question.
