AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

As the topic states, I'm currently thinking about making one of my characters blind and i need some thoughts and opinions in this matter.

Well, firstly - If you've had/or have a blind character. How do you RP Him/it/her?

Secondly, Do you think it adds flavour to the RP, or not? Would you avoid to RP with blind characters, or vice versa?

Third, What does the DM's think about this? I've heard opinions regarding "mute" characters not adding anything.

Sooo....Let ze Discussion begin!

A mute character can't speak. Which... can get tedious, I suspect.

A blind character could work. I don't see why it couldn't. But you better have 100+ Listen or similar to represent the characters ability to engage in combat and what not.

That's just my opinion though.

Hm. Yea, Gotta have a keen sense of listen. Duely noted!

I was thinking about the "Combat" Actually... I've seen youtube clips of Blind people able to beat and win in hand-to-hand combat, And other swordfights due to sensing and listening to the opponent.

I would 'think' the same would go in combat with demons and devils. The opponent would snort/frown/Breathe heavily. prehaps the armour would "clank" enought for a blind character to 'hear' where it is and be able to swing at it...

or would that be someting imaginary?

Last edited by Nekhy on Mon, Dec 07 2009, 18:02 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Search is your friend. I got a blind character, and opinions on the topic, which I've posted before. But I am not reposting, now that I have to type with left hand only.

But I agree with the Listen skill thing. Preferably Blind Fight, too, to make it work. And Spot as low as you can go. Not excluding penalties to Spot.

Edit: It's also good to keep in mind the realities of a fantasy game allow more liberties and room for (sensible) use of imagination coming up with explanations for how a blind person can fight etc. Everybody is a superhero of sorts on Amia, and thus what is "normal" is scaled up.

I actually like mute characters a lot more than I do blind ones. A mute character can bring about rather humurous situations as you try to understand just what the hell are they trying to tell you using gestures... but from experience people just give up on you after a few days. A pity, though.
Answering your question/third point, I think they add just as much as a 'normal' character, but they take more effort in order to do so.

As for blind characters... never really been a fan of them since the player can see things and will always find a way (unconsciously or not) to downplay the blindness handicap...especially in combat situations

Don't really think anything in paticular about it, it all depends on how you manage to roleplay it out.

In my experience, disabilities and quirks like this tend to be nothing but gimmicks. The idea may be cool, but eventually it becomes nothing but an irritating hinderance to RP. I guess it's not so evident with blindness as with muteness or deafness. But I look at it from the point of economical interaction: if you're going to communicate the same things anyway, it eventually becomes tedious to jump through hoops just to accomplish the same thing everybody else does without problems.

It might be cool, but it'll have to be very cool to make up for the required extra effort after the charm of novelty expires.

I have a character who is blind. She wasn't born that way, but suffered the equivalent of a Sunburst right in her face and as a Light Sensitive race (kobold), I ruled that it fried her vision. The Spot she had was shifted to thematically function more like spatial awareness and scent, and I started putting points into Listen instead.

It changed the way she was played, as for a while as she was still acclimating to the loss of a sense and learning to rely on her other senses, she had either a physical escort or used her staff and feet (kobolds don't wear footwear, so she had full sensation to walk by) to navigate familiar places by feel; by lines, by textures, by substance.

These days, Kosj'oth is fully adjusted.

As for if it adds flavor or not; it was a part of the RP that was going on, so yes. The event resulted in some goals for the tribe that stimulated other RP and so on.

How it affected my play with other characters or if it made them want to avoid my character, I really can't say, since I think more character were put off by the fact she was a kobold rather than that she was blind. Further, the scope of her RP outside of the tribe or other monstrous affairs was typically with characters who already knew her (whether friendly or not) or merchant business, which tends to be unconcerned with handicaps so long as you can still communicate and close a deal in a timely fashion.

As for myself, I don't avoid characters who are mute or blind - as a player. My characters have varying tolerances, however. Some are attracted to differences or handicaps, others find them repulsive, and yet others don't care one way or the other unless it directly affects them.

I can think of a main problem. Encountered it trying to play a horridly burned character, covered in scars and such.
Every other player will just simply make the remark to look for a clerk our take a swim in a fountain of purification. Kinda got annoying after having heard it a hunderd times. If people take notice at all. I mean this being basicly DnD with ever other person having some kind of strange body distortion, blindness or muteness the average person wouldn't even notice it.

Don't want to discurrange you though. It's always great to find a person who manages to keep up their character concept and doesn't disappear in the great thick grey underlayers of amia.

Mr Mago wrote:

A mute character can't speak. Which... can get tedious, I suspect.

I disagree with that one. When I first made Daniel he wasn't mute but would only string five words max together and then only to certain people and it made for some really good RP

Or at least YOU thought it was really good RP.

My opinion. Ask the DMs to permanently place the blind mechanic onto your toon. Then you'll have REAL good fun.

lathandier wrote:

Or at least YOU thought it was really good RP.

My opinion. Ask the DMs to permanently place the blind mechanic onto your toon. Then you'll have REAL good fun.

That....Is actually a good idea. But how about RP and such? I recently encountered a problem when blinded people cannot hear(Read) what people say if they're not in 1-5yards from them.

The Game mechanics just doesn't send the Text to you. can any DM confirm this?

They could just... You know... Darken your screen. or you could turn your monitor off.

lathandier wrote:

They could just... You know... Darken your screen. or you could turn your monitor off.

Gamma Slider ftw

trufax.

Spam is not very helping you know...

I was being completely honest, actually.

Taking into account the problems, price, and time spent to make a persistant "blind me" widget, and how it screws up with your hearing, which you're supposedly to be better at now, the gamma slider in Video Options might be a viable alternative. Saves times, saves DC, and you don't have to worry about any wacky OoC mechanics. Turn your screen's brightness down and get as into character as you care to.

Muspelkvist wrote:

lathandier wrote:

(...) Ask the DMs to permanently place the blind mechanic onto your toon. Then you'll have REAL good fun.

That....Is actually a good idea. But how about RP and such? I recently encountered a problem when blinded people cannot hear(Read) what people say if they're not in 1-5yards from them.

The Game mechanics just doesn't send the Text to you. can any DM confirm this?

Yeah, you won't be able to see/"hear" any text. Basically, it won't work as you want it for.

Relevant to your interests, the Blindness request I made: http://www.amiaworld.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=21309

LetumLux wrote:

Muspelkvist wrote:

lathandier wrote:

(...) Ask the DMs to permanently place the blind mechanic onto your toon. Then you'll have REAL good fun.

That....Is actually a good idea. But how about RP and such? I recently encountered a problem when blinded people cannot hear(Read) what people say if they're not in 1-5yards from them.

The Game mechanics just doesn't send the Text to you. can any DM confirm this?

Yeah, you won't be able to see/"hear" any text. Basically, it won't work as you want it for.

Relevant to your interests, the Blindness request I made: http://www.amiaworld.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=21309

This is really intresting stuff! ...I would totaly want such a widget...Did they mention how many DC's it would cost you?

No. Uh, near as I can tell it got overlooked and didn't end up getting discussed. *Clears throat.* Chances are it would run 15 DCs because it would need to be a scripted item, to the best of my knowledge. Since it's a completely malign power, there might be another standard for it, I'm not sure.

Blind would surely work way way better and be less of a drag than mute or deaf. But I agree with the high Listen and high Search skill points. Blind Fight, no doubt about that one. Besides, Blind Fight is just a good feat to have.

Um... I'm not so sure about taking Search as a blind character. You can't really "hear" a trap. Really, close your eyes and try to "search" for something that doesn't make noise. Don't use your hands either. :wink:

Ye. I guess i'll just have to be "Agile", and have a decent amount of reflex to avoid the nasty traps around amia. Other than tha, i guess he'll learn after a few failures. . . . . . . Outch.

Thanks guys for the help also! You're all been truly super! But let's have this topic sink to the bottom now!

I've stated my opinion on this before, so to keep it concise and polite, I agree with Iron. With 100 + listen you should be good enough to hear a heartbeat within a metre or two, and may be able to hear the swords slicing through the air well enough to find them. You could probably try to echolocate yourself around, but the wavelength of sound would probably so long that everything smaller than a half a metre is a fuzzy splodge, and anything further away than a few dozen metres would be 'invisible', such as it were.

Dark Immolation wrote:

Um... I'm not so sure about taking Search as a blind character. You can't really "hear" a trap. Really, close your eyes and try to "search" for something that doesn't make noise. Don't use your hands either. :wink:

Search makes for a fine skill to double as a sense of smell and other fitting skills, not just the mechanical one of finding traps.

o0GuNz_N_RoSeZ0o wrote:

Dark Immolation wrote:

Um... I'm not so sure about taking Search as a blind character. You can't really "hear" a trap. Really, close your eyes and try to "search" for something that doesn't make noise. Don't use your hands either. :wink:

Search makes for a fine skill to double as a sense of smell and other fitting skills, not just the mechanical one of finding traps.

True. There aren't may skills to represent hightened sense of smell which is an awesome RP ability btw. It still runs into trouble with some of the traps though. Perhaps you smell acid, cold chemicals, sulfur and alchemist fire, and ozone from traps. But it'd be hard to see *walks up on holy trap* "*Sniff, sniff*... I smell.... holy?" I guess you can find some reasoning IC.

However, however... I would give almost anything to have this same character walk into the Den of Sin and say in a smooth voice "*sniff*.... I smell sex and... candy...".

You can always be a good sport and ignore it's engine use too. As in, you see it OOCly, but ICly you've decided your blind so you ignore that you can see it and walk right into it as you would have in any other case.

The blind-effect is not really a good suggestion, if you think of it for a moment (not that it's often presented as a real suggestion, but I digress). It is not the player who is blind. It is the character who is blind, but still played by a player with good vision. The blindness effect makes playing the game impossible, as well.

The best thing is to have a look at how real blind people cope with life, and start from there, really. You'd be amazed at what happens when a blind person's senses are extended with the help of a guide dog, for example. It is not an all-crippling condition by any means, even if it feels like that to us with good vision. We're simply not used to it, and getting used to blindness takes years. If we close our eyes and pretend to be blind, we have a wholly different blind experience than what someone without eyesight for ten years would have.

Yes, and how many blind people have become very successful swordsmen? There are limitations to being blind, no matter how well one can learn to use one's senses to compensate.

There are billions, in fantasy literature! Don't you know that being blind is actually a benefit? You gain the feat "Literary Badass" and you'll only be surpassed by the hero in his Crowning Moment of Awesome. You might die mid-story though in a Heroic Sacrifice.

How many people with regular eyesight have become very successful swordsmen, returning from war after war alive, and how many who took up arms died on the first blow from the opponent in real battles? My bet is, that there was very few of the former compared to the number of the latter.

The point is, reality doesn't always translate to fantasy directly. Here everybody is an adventurer, essentially a superhuman. The whole range of familiar skills scales differently to the characters of this world. It's the beauty of role-playing, to make the impossible (or truly difficult) possible in ways that are beyond our abilities in the real world.

I think it's fine to dislike blindness as a character trait for whatever reason, but justifying that by saying it's implausible or impossible just goes against the whole idea of this game. There are some things that are not possible (or at least very improbable) in D&D, for certain, but blindness of the adventurer is not one of those. Blindness is simply an interpretation of the possibilities offered by the core rules, in the form of skills and feats.

Nekhy wrote:

How many people with regular eyesight have become very successful swordsmen, returning from war after war alive, and how many who took up arms died on the first blow from the opponent in real battles? My bet is, that there was very few of the former compared to the number of the latter.

The point is, reality doesn't always translate to fantasy directly. Here everybody is an adventurer, essentially a superhuman. The whole range of familiar skills scales differently to the characters of this world. It's the beauty of role-playing, to make the impossible (or truly difficult) possible in ways that are beyond our abilities in the real world.

I think it's fine to dislike blindness as a character trait for whatever reason, but justifying that by saying it's implausible or impossible just goes against the whole idea of this game. There are some things that are not possible (or at least very improbable) in D&D, for certain, but blindness of the adventurer is not one of those. Blindness is simply an interpretation of the possibilities offered by the core rules, in the form of skills and feats.

Indeed. Well said. I've got nothing. That is all.

Everyone is a superhero. If everyone has trouble versing this monster, why is a blind superhero likely to do as well? Daredevil may be awesome in his own Universe, but pit him against similar superheroes who can see and he's gone.
I just don't like the idea as far as suspension of disbelief goes, but it's up to you if you want to make one.

TormakSaber wrote:

There are billions, in fantasy literature! Don't you know that being blind is actually a benefit? You gain the feat "Literary Badass" and you'll only be surpassed by the hero in his Crowning Moment of Awesome. You might die mid-story though in a Heroic Sacrifice.

They also gain Plot Armour and Unacceptable Target.

Might actually imput some real life science into this while my breakfast warms up... Humans experience sight on two levels. One concious and one unconcious. The unconcious sight extends a few degrees beyond the concious and mainly deals with movement.
I'm sure some of you have heard it say you should feel your opponents sword in a sword fight, not try to follow it with your eyes. As a fanatic re-enactor I can attest to this. Sword fighting is something you let the unconcious part of the mind handle because the concious part can follow it quickly enough.

Now to the point. One can be blind in the concious field of vision yet retain some unconcious sight. As I understand it, it's rare and as you can understand not every useful in daily life, but it's some nice fluf.

Oh! Breakfast

Or, if you want a cool disability that does not screw you over: Bad hearing. Hindering enough to create amusing RP, and not so annoying that you want to burn your computer or sacrifise it to the Linux Penguin.

A fun thing to do would be to ask for some sort of widget that gives you the blindness effect constantly, can make the experience very awesome.

Also, be aware of spoil sport clerics. They WILL try and heal you at every oppertunity, they will heal, restore, regen and bloody will try reviving your damned eyes to make themselves feel good. It can get very depressing when you have to try and make up viable excuses as to why these things aren't working.

My suggestion is not a blindness, but a curse. This circumvents clerics and their obssessive compulsive need to heal anything that gets a bloody paper cut.

Selvec Darkon wrote:

Also, be aware of spoil sport clerics. They WILL try and heal you at every oppertunity, they will heal, restore, regen and bloody will try reviving your damned eyes to make themselves feel good. It can get very depressing when you have to try and make up viable excuses as to why these things aren't working.

My suggestion is not a blindness, but a curse. This circumvents clerics and their obssessive compulsive need to heal anything that gets a bloody paper cut.

My advice is to just say it doesn't work, and if they ask, tell them to ask ICly, and when they do reply "If I knew that I wouldn't be blind, would I?"

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