Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JulesCARV 12-09-05, 04:42 PM	How do paraplegics get around in Eberron? I'm guessing that in the Sharn area, people might be able to use the manifest zone to create some kind of "hovering chair" item, or suspensors like those used by the obese Harkonnen lord (I forgot his name) in Dune, more easily than in areas of Eberron outside the manifest zone. I suspect, though, that this is limited to the wealthy. What are the options in Sharn? Outside of Sharn? For the wealthy? For the poor? For middling classes? For those schooled in the arcane, like artificers or magewrights? For those in more mundane professions? How does the "wide magic" of Eberron work for a paraplegic? Do wheel-chairs exist, for instance? How rich would someone have to be to be able to afford a magical item that casts permanent Unseen Servant to push their wheelchair around? Or are there no wheel-chairs yet, and those who can afford it have to be carried on litters? Could a magic item cast Levitate on a litter, allowing it to be pushed around by a person or unseen servant, rather than being carried by maybe four people like ordinary litters? The specific case I'm thinking of is a young elf in Aundair with a broken spine, who comes from a noble feudal family that's fairly well-to-do materially (i.e., they have two or three servants, and loosely rule over a burgh with maybe about 3,000 people), but not really rich like Dragonmarked houses or anything like that. Don't feel bound by that specific case, though: if you have thoughts on other possible cases, share them.
makeshiftwings 12-10-05, 05:36 AM	Well, one problem with the basic d&d rules is that if you had the money to afford a floating wheelchair, you could probably just afford to pay for a Heal or Regeneration spell, which should cure just about anything. Arguably, a bunch of Cure Light Wounds should be able to fix most injuries as well. Eberron even has House Jorasco to heal anything that could go wrong for a reasonable price. So, ruleswise, I'd think in Eberron, the rich never stay sick for long, so there would be little reason to invent things like wheelchairs, especially magic ones. However, that's a little boring, so you could either come up with a big roundabout excuse for why certain injuries can't be healed (it's an Antimagic crooked spine), or you can just kindof say something like that healing spells only work when the target is "fated" to fight on, ie, they're mostly there for PCs, and maybe they don't work as well on the NPCs you want to portray.
MarkB 12-10-05, 07:13 AM	makeshiftwings has covered the main answer, that there are spells in D&D that can heal most ailments. However, here's a lower-level spell I came up with recently for a character who's partially disabled. It might see some use as an interim measure for people who can't afford Heal or Regenerate. Londar's Phantom Limb Evocation [Force] Level: Bard 3, Sor/Wiz 3 Components: V, S, F Casting Time: 1 round Range: Personal or touch Target: Creature touched Duration: 1 hour /level (D) Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless) Spell Resistance: Yes This spell creates an invisible limb which is attached to the target creature in place of a missing limb and moves as the target creature directs. Only creatures who are missing a body part may be subject to this spell - if cast on a creature with no lost extremities, the spell fails. The spell can recreate anything from a complete limb to a single digit, but its effect is a single discrete object - if cast upon a creature missing one finger on each hand, for instance, the caster must choose one missing digit to replace. However, the spell may be cast multiple times to replace multiple limbs. The limb has the same strength and range of movement as a normal limb for that creature, but must be moved as a conscious act of will - moving the limb requires the subject creature to Concentrate each round. As a result, unless the creature has the ability to take extra standard actions in a round or Concentrate as less than a standard action, he will be limited to a single move action during any round on which he moves his phantom limb. A creature that is subject to multiple castings of Londar's Phantom Limb can move all his phantom limbs in a single act of concentration. Limbs which are not consciously moved during a round remain fixed in place but functional - a creature with one or more phantom legs may stand in place without a concentration check, and a phantom hand which is holding an item does not require a concentration check to maintain its grip. The phantom limb replicates the original's sense of touch, but cannot produce a pain response. As a force effect, it is immune to most normal damage (see Wall of Force), and can interact with ethereal creatures and objects as though they were material. However, the phantom limb may not be used to make a natural or unarmed attack. If the variant rules on damage to specific body parts are used (DMG page 27), then a character suffering penalties to checks and saves due to a missing body part will no longer suffer these penalties if the limb has been replaced by a phantom limb, even if the character makes no concentration check that round. An 11th-level or higher caster can make Londar's Phantom Limb permanent on himself or another creature using Permanency. The XP cost is 1,500 XP. Focus: An articulated wooden replica of the limb, in any size. Casters who expect to be using this spell on others often carry a small wooden doll with articulated limbs.
Just another user 12-10-05, 10:05 AM	Beside those already mentioned there are many options. one of this (http://www.sistemamuseale.provincia.ancona.it/galleria%20immagini/ostra/09%20portantina.jpg) (I don't know the english term) with two humans or warforged servants/bodyguard. a servant with a item able to cast Tenser's floating disk enough times/day to fill your needs. A permanent ring of flying. Permanent Levitate + unseen servant on chair or equivalent. Polymorph. An animated chair of some type (i.e a construct in the form of a chair)
Thwyvylyn 12-10-05, 04:35 PM	I am sure House Cannith also makes a kind of magical cybernectics (Automail like stuff for those familiar with that)
Underhill 12-10-05, 11:00 PM	The postwar ban on warforged production would tend to limit the use of Cannith cybernetics ( thus putting the Renegade in the Mastermaker PrC.) However, it seems likely that there is an artificer somewhere that has modified the third arm (magic item from MoE) for use by an amputee. Remember, with magic anything is possible...it's just an issue of how much gold you have to spend.
JulesCARV 12-11-05, 01:12 AM	makeshiftwings, I take your point, but in Eberron, as opposed to Forgotten Realms or generic D&D, 11th (for Heal) or 13th (for regeneration) level clerics might be tougher to come by than you think. There's Jaela while she's in Flamekeep, of course, and maybe a few other clerics of that level, but they don't just sell spells to anyone who has enough money. See Dragonshards: Religion in Eberron (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20040705a).A side effect of this is that most temples do not sell divine spells. To begin with, many temples don't have a divine spellcaster. Those that do will not sell the gifts of their god for mere gold. If the petitioner is a loyal member of the faith, an adept may aid him at no cost, or the adept may set a price based on the abilities of the adventurer, calling upon him to make a sacrifice to prove his faith or perform a service in the name of the church. In Eberron Under the Glass: Healing (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebug/20050110a), it is said "... people in Eberron may consider low-level arcane magic somewhat routine, while divine healing is still somewhat surprising." Sometimes, it's hard to take background material about how typical Eberronians don't have access to divine spells (or how typical untrained laborers make 30 gp a year, etc, etc) seriously, because PCs never seem to be short of divine spells when they need them. For NPCs, though, I think it makes sense to take the background material (6 or 7th spell level divine magic being very hard to come by, for example) as stated, rather than applying the experience of typical PCs. You do raise a good point as far as House Jorasco is concerned though. I'll have to take it into consideration. I'm not sure what major dragonmarks of Jorasco do (I don't have the ECS yet). Phantom Limb and Cannith grafts wouldn't be of much use unless they can use cybernetics to reconnect nerves in the spine in the specific case that I posited. The guy still has legs, and cutting them off and replacing them with grafts or phantoms won't change anything: he just can't move 'em. This would be something to keep in mind for cases that do involve amputees though. I do like the idea of a Floating Disk + Unseen Servant + chair combo. If the Floating Disk is continuous, and the Unseen Servant is command-word activated, and the disk has a load-bearing capacity of 200 lbs (i.e., has to be second caster level), then the whole combo costs 5350 gp. (2000 gp for continuous magic spell * 1 for spell level * 2 for caster level = 4000 gp gets you a Floating Disk chair, 1800 gp for command-word activated spell * 1 for spell level * 1 for caster level * 75% for adding similar ability to a single magic item adds 1350. A small cost is added for a comfortable chair, but that's probably pretty small (10 gp, maybe?)) A second question is whether an unseen servant is strong enough for transportation: given that it can lift 20 lbs, if we take that to mean that it can exert 20 lbs of force in any direction (i.e. 90 newtons), it would certainly be enough. Is this affordable, though? We might guess that a typical worker in Aundair has an income of 260 gp per year (Say they have 2 ranks of craft or profession, get an average of 10 on checks, for a typical weekly income of 6 gp/week, and, like untrained laborers (who make 1 sp per day of work, but get 30 gp per year on average, not 36.5 gp), work 5/6ths of the time). Typical workers might make up the bulk of the working population, and suppose the lower class of untrained day laborers making 30 gp per year and the petty bourgois class of magewrights and successful merchants cancel each other out in terms of gross income, so the mean income for workers is 260 gp per year. However, children, the disabled, housewives, and the elderly don't work (housewives work, of course, but they aren't generally compensated for their work by their husbands, children, or elderly parents in ways that are easily taxed by feudal lords like, say, blacksmiths, farmers, or carpenters). So say half of the population works in a taxable way. So the total income of a town is about population * 260 / 2 gp, say. In the case of a 3000-person town, say 390,000 gp. If the feudal lords of the top family in the town take 1% of that as their disposable income (vassals below them and lords above them take their cut too, and they have responsibilities to the town in terms of guards and civic facilities that they have to supply), for 3900 gp per year, then the magical chair would cost 4/3rds of their annual income. Given that a permanent magical device like a disk/unseen servant/chair combo lasts indefinitely, though, it could be resold, and was possibly bought used in the first place. If we say that the real interest rate is 5%, then oppurtunity/rental cost of the chair is about 270 gp per year, more than the average person's annual income, and far more than just hiring two unskilled laborers to tote him in a litter (60 gp), or even hiring two shifts of unskilled laborers to carry him in a litter (120 gp), so that he has someone to carry him 24 hours a day. On the other hand, the chair/disk/servant combo definitely gives someone more autonomy and privacy. Note: my information on feudal lords' incomes is completely speculative. If anyone has more accurate, canonical information, correct me. So it looks like a floating disk/unseen servant chair is out of the reach of typical people, given that it costs about twenty times the typical worker's annual income, but might be accessible to the wealthy. Then again, with 5,400 gp, or 270 gp per year to rent, you might be able to just find a Jorasco healer who would have heal/regeneration powers. Perhaps I'll say that these people have been trying to get a Jorasco healer, but they haven't successfully gotten one in the year or two that this guy has been injured (for surgery to fix a difficult-to-fix but non-fatal problem, wait times can be long, after all).
Serow Darkstar 12-11-05, 07:37 AM	Well, apparently chairs with wheels existed as early as 525 AD, by what I can find information wise. In 1553, Romans had wheeled carts to allow the disabled to work the fields. How very nice of them. 1595, King Philip II had a wheelchair, with foot rests, pushed by servents. I think it's safe to say in a world with Airships, and the Lightning Rail system, we're gonna have things like Wheelchairs. Heck, in Shadows of the Last War, there's an Elemental-Powered Land Cart, that moves to the whim of driver, and ignores rough ground. It's like a car, but slower, and with better handling on rough roads. So, take a chair, pop some wheels onto it, a Dragonshard and an Elemental... And you've got a self propelled wheelchair. Depending on the Elemental, you could have a chair capable of going over water, hovering a bit off the ground and going up stairs, or ignoreing the bumpy road. Fire's probably not a good one to mess with though. A chair made of heated metal will certainly get you moving, but only because you're trying to get out of it, I'd think.