Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jeffv 12-29-05, 11:39 AM	I'm a fairly new DM. I'm starting up a new campaign and one of my prospective players presented me with an interesting challenge: He wants his character to be blind. I always encourage players to be creative with their character development and something like this isn't out of the realm of possibility for my games, but that one kind of stopped me in my tracks. I've been going over things like blindsight, scent, and tremorsense trying to figure out a balance for this. At this point I'm thinking myself in circles and I'd like a bit of advice. First off, has something like this been done before? Does anyone have a set of rules for this that they've used in the past? Here's what I've been coming up with: - Blindsight 60 ft, keyed to touch (vibrations), hearing, and smell - Scent (primarily for tracking, since he wants to be a ranger) - Automatic failure on anything pertaining directly to sight (spot checks, reading, etc) - -4 penalty to search checks and other checks pertaining indirectly to sight at DM discretion (possibly things like balance, ideas welcome) - +2 circumstance (?) bonus to listen checks due to exceptionally acute hearing - Vulnerability to sonic damage for the same reason - Vulnerability to anything that would deprive him of any of his three "sight" senses (deafness, for instance): In addition to the penalties for losing that sense, he would be considered flat-footed, take a -1 penalty to AC, and take an additional -2 penalty to search and all other "visual" checks. All opponents would have partial concealment (20% miss chance). Loss of two or three "sight" senses would result in effective blindness for the character, resulting in full blindness penalties. Feedback on this? I feel like I'm overcomplicating this, I do tend to do that, but at the same time it seems like just handing him blindsight and scent and saying "poof, you can see" is a bit powerful, what with the immunity to gaze and blinding attacks and the negation of magical darkness, invisibility, displacement, blur, concealment... as I said, I'm pretty much thinking in circles at this point so any assistance would be welcome. :)
Illion the Red 12-29-05, 11:47 AM	If the Player wants to play a blind Character, let him play a blind Character. Why does he need anything in return? If a Player wanted to play a Fighter with an 8 Strength, would you give him something to compensate for his low strength?
SimianShaw 12-29-05, 11:54 AM	Oh that's interesting. . . but I do feel that later down the road you will be kicking yourself as you try to figure out ways to counteract the blind ranger's abilities. Maybe you could blind him after the campaign is already in progess. Give him a chance to get used to being able to see and then take away his vision if he still wants to be without it.. Of course, you will have to take care when describing the action. Even in almost complete darkness, people who can see still rely on their vision instead of their other senses.
pres_man 12-29-05, 11:55 AM	If he wanted to be a wizard, I'd let him have his spellbook in brail. That would be the extent of the accommidations I would make. He can take blind fighting and go the route of being a horizon walker (one of the terrains gives tremorsense). But I wouldn't start giving him a bunch of free abilities, a disability shouldn't make a person better than a typical person. If you are starting at high enough level you might allow him to be a grimlock.
DMK69 12-29-05, 12:12 PM	I came across this link that was interesting in regards to this subject..... http://www.dcrouzet.net/nbomisc/downloads/conditions.pdf Here is the section on Blind from the above PDF: BLIND You are unable to see at all, and lack even the mental ability to understand visual information about your surroundings. Prerequisites: Wisdom 14 or less. Penalties: You suffer the standard penalties for the blindness condition, including the inability to use the Read Lips or Spot skill. Although you have grown accustomed to your blindness, under most conditions any skill that uses vision will suffer –2 circumstance penalty. (These skills include Alchemy, Appraise, Craft, Disable Device, Forgery, Open Lock, Scry, Sense Motive, and Spellcraft) When attempting to identify a spell being cast without a verbal component, you can not use the Spellcraft skill. Benefits: You automatically gain the Blind- Fight feat as a bonus feat. No gaze attacks will affect you, and you gain a +2 bonus to your Will Save. The lack of sight is compensated by improvements in your other senses, so you gain a +4 bonus to your Listen skill. You gain a +2 bonus to your Heal, Intuit Direction, and Profession skills. Any benefits for spells that are based on Wisdom are treated as if your Wisdom score were greater by +4.
imperialjunkie 12-29-05, 12:23 PM	I think granting blindsight is way too powerful. The highest that I would go would be blindsense. Blindness should be a major weakness. Blindsense would make up for this some, but not completely. In this case, the Blind-Fight feat would be pretty valuable in that it gives the ranger his Dex modifier back to AC, his speed is not hampered as much (3/4 instead of 1/2), and it allows him to reroll all of his miss chances (50%). The benefit that the blind character would give is automatic awareness of anyone in range regardless of Hide & Move Silently checks. This is a pretty good benefit to the group that helps to balance out the negatives of a blind character.
Pellanor 12-30-05, 03:31 PM	Here's what I do for Blind Characters (I came up with this ruling, cause I have a concept for a blind character that I'd like to play): - Listen is always a class skill. - Blind-fight as a bonus feat, for free (Players Hand Book pg 89) - Hear the Unseen as a bonus , for free (Complete Adventurer pg 119) note: if you don't have those books, you can find the feats on crystalkeep.com - And of course, everything that comes with being blind (imunnity to gaze attacks, unable to read, failure on spot checks, etc...) That's it, that's all. That should allow the character to work reasonably well, but he'll still be disabled. Of course you have to make sure that a simple remove blindness spell can't cure him, or otherwise he'd just gain all of these bonuses, and have no penalties. I'd also let him take the Quick Reconnoiter feat (CAdv pg 112) without needing the prerequisit ranks in Spot. This is actually a feat that would be highley recomended for him to take, as it would let him pin-point all his opponents once per round as a free action (providing he makes his listen check, and has Hear the Unseen). edit: You also may want to consider the Scout class from Complete Adventurer, as it gets blindsense and eventually (I beleive) blindsight. If the Player wants to play a blind Character, let him play a blind Character. Why does he need anything in return? If a Player wanted to play a Fighter with an 8 Strength, would you give him something to compensate for his low strength?Actually yes, he would have something to compensate for it, one of his other attributes would be higher. Sure it may not be optimal, but he's still gaining something for it.
00_Whupass 12-30-05, 03:54 PM	Here's what I've been coming up with: - Blindsight 60 ft, keyed to touch (vibrations), hearing, and smell - Scent (primarily for tracking, since he wants to be a ranger) - Automatic failure on anything pertaining directly to sight (spot checks, reading, etc) - -4 penalty to search checks and other checks pertaining indirectly to sight at DM discretion (possibly things like balance, ideas welcome) - +2 circumstance (?) bonus to listen checks due to exceptionally acute hearing - Vulnerability to sonic damage for the same reason - Vulnerability to anything that would deprive him of any of his three "sight" senses (deafness, for instance): In addition to the penalties for losing that sense, he would be considered flat-footed, take a -1 penalty to AC, and take an additional -2 penalty to search and all other "visual" checks. All opponents would have partial concealment (20% miss chance). Loss of two or three "sight" senses would result in effective blindness for the character, resulting in full blindness penalties. This would be great if you were building a Daredevil template, but Daredevil has innate super powers (read as LEVEL ADJUSTMENT), you're typical blind person doesn't have any of the this stuff, Sent and Blindsight (though based on your discription I think you might be going for tremorsense) are incredibly powerful abilities, essentially negating blindness and offering an advantage over traditionally sighted characters, since both abilities still function in almost all conditions that normally effect sight, low light, darkness, magical darkness, concealment due to smoke or fog, ect. Furthermore Scent offers bonuses on detection skills and tracking, once again this is an additional power normal sighted characters don't get. "Vulnerablility to Sonic Damage" is a little vague, what exactly to you mean, 1.5xdamage, 2xdamage. I think both of the dissadvantages (sonic vulnerability and vulnerability to deafness) you've built into your blindguy template to try to balance the awsome abilities are far to conditional to be an effecting counter to the awsomeness that is Blindsight and Scent. As written I'd say this should come with at least a +2 LA. I would likely just let the player play his blind character and leave it at that, nothing extra, nothing special. The most I would give such a character is Listen is always class skill, and Blindfight for free. This makes blindness still a major disadvantage, which it should be, but might will allow the player to not be a complete invalid.
jeffv 12-31-05, 09:13 AM	Thank you all for your advice. As I said, I'm pretty inexperienced at this type of thing and I knew what I was doing was powerful, but I wasn't sure just how powerful. I'll look over some of these and pick a setup for him, I'm sure I can figure out something that'll work. Actually yes, he would have something to compensate for it, one of his other attributes would be higher. Sure it may not be optimal, but he's still gaining something for it. I agree with this. As I said in my original post, I encourage creative character development. Admittedly this is pushing the envelope, but just saying "ok, you're blind" with no offset doesn't send the message to players that I'm open to what they'd like to do with their characters. Thanks once again. I'll still keep an eye on this thread if anyone else wants to add anything, though. :cool:
Frida 12-31-05, 10:40 AM	I think you are all focusing a little to much on the combat aspect of being blind. Consider all the problems you face otherwice. You are heavily dependant on the other characters to tell you what things and people looks like. I would say that most adventures are impossible to do for a single blind character with no supernatural abilites. Considering this, does it really matter if the character is slightly more powerfull in battle in some situations. He/She is going to need it after walking blindly into the eneimies path. I dont think that people decide to play blind characters beacuse the want cool abilities like dare devil. I think they do it to roleplay the different outlook bllind people must have on the world(no pun intended) Atleast I did. I played a druid who used her animal companion as a blind dog, it worked fairly well. The important thing is for everyone to have fun not for everything to be completely balanced. And even if you want to play a blind character you dont want to feel completely useless compaired to everyone else in the party. Basicly with the help of the wolf my character had a good sence of everything that was going on in a 30 feeet radius. With the exception of that she couldnt use ranged weapons. No loss in speed or AC. I think it worked well and so did everyone else.
pres_man 12-31-05, 11:59 AM	Here is the thing, non-magical blindness seems like a pretty bad disability, and in real life it is. But in D&D it can be dealt with fairly easily with alter self, polymorph, druid's shape shift, etc.
OmniPaul 12-31-05, 04:33 PM	The thing I'm bothered by the most is how blindness is a disability in real life, but in DnD, blindness is apparently a superpower.