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Gaire
2009-01-20, 03:53 PM
Okay, so I'm setting up to DM a standard, vanilla 3.5 game. One of my players wants to play a character who was blind from birth. I'm almost positive I've seen the rules for blind characters before, but I can't recall what book they're in. Anyone know before I start digging through my books?

Fax Celestis
2009-01-20, 03:56 PM
I don't recall it ever being in a book, but you could start here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11489).

Gaire
2009-01-20, 04:00 PM
I'm hoping to not make them burn feats on it, but if I can't find any alternatives, I'll throw those in. Thanks.

Dyllan
2009-01-20, 04:18 PM
Okay, so I'm setting up to DM a standard, vanilla 3.5 game. One of my players wants to play a character who was blind from birth. I'm almost positive I've seen the rules for blind characters before, but I can't recall what book they're in. Anyone know before I start digging through my books?

He does know clerics have spells for that, right?

Gaire
2009-01-20, 04:24 PM
He does know clerics have spells for that, right?

Yeah, but he wants the blindness for flavor more than anything.

Darth Stabber
2009-01-20, 04:28 PM
If the character was blind from birth it would be very easy to rule that healing magic could not undo what was not broken, since his eyesight was not taken, just never there

Dyllan
2009-01-20, 04:30 PM
Yeah, but he wants the blindness for flavor more than anything.

I realize that, but how does he explain why he doesn't get it fixed by a cleric?

NINJA'd - Good answer, Darth Stabber.

Fax Celestis
2009-01-20, 04:33 PM
Also try a constant item of synesthete (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/synesthete.htm), a steal at 1500gp.

Gaire
2009-01-20, 04:45 PM
That was going to be my ruling on the blindness issue. If later in the campaign he decides that he wants to be able to see, I might let him pray to a god for eyesight. Doubt that he'll go back on it, though. This guy plays some pretty cool characters.

The synesthete looks pretty cool, though.

Narmoth
2009-01-20, 05:03 PM
Give him blind fighting for free. Let him improve on it by using feats sounds fair to me.
Give him keen hearing or something like that for free as well.

On a related note:
A warrior becoming blind, and for some reason incurable: is there any way to make up with feats for his loss so he's just as good on hitting things like before?

Darth Stabber
2009-01-20, 05:04 PM
I've played a psion that had that power permanancied, Works really well, Lead to some strange rullings given that I was playing a race that had scent and a lvl of ranger, I could smell through my feet giving me a +4 bonus to tracking by scent and I didn't have to get my nose right up to the ground to do it, then I stepped in poo and was nauseated until i got my feet washed.:smalleek:

as far as feats, i think the feats Fax suggested could do the trick.

Gaire
2009-01-20, 05:40 PM
I was honestly thinking of letting him have Blindfight for free, then letting him pick up the Blindsense and Blindsight abilities from the DMG as successive feats.

xanaphia
2009-01-20, 05:44 PM
On a realistic note, blindness should cripple you in a fight completely. IN real life, bind people don't get more of other senses--that's a myth. They certainly don't get blindsense.

However, you could rule that blindness makes you able to do more powerful spells or something.

Fax Celestis
2009-01-20, 05:48 PM
On a realistic note, blindness should cripple you in a fight completely. IN real life, bind people don't get more of other senses--that's a myth. They certainly don't get blindsense.

However, you could rule that blindness makes you able to do more powerful spells or something.

That'd be all well and good, if this were reality. This is, however, a game where wizards reshape time, monks fall over 100' without being harmed, lava doesn't kill you instantly, and a low-level bard can convince a deity to do what he wants.

PCs are heroes, and if the hero happens to be blind, then he should be not your typical blind person.

Epinephrine
2009-01-20, 06:15 PM
On a realistic note, blindness should cripple you in a fight completely. IN real life, bind people don't get more of other senses--that's a myth. They certainly don't get blindsense.

However, you could rule that blindness makes you able to do more powerful spells or something.

Human echolocation is a known phenomenon. There is documented evidence of a blind child able to shoot baskets by clicking.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a784403638~db=all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation

It's certainly rare, but it can develop. The brain is remarkably plastic. The blind can actually retrain their visual cortex - reading braille for example can involve the visual cortex.

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/23/10/4005

MickJay
2009-01-20, 07:06 PM
Blind bard could work well, and there's a famous quasi-historical precedent :smallwink:

As for rules: he may use only area and touch spells and has extra-effective songs, for example.

I'm not a great believer in rulebooks :smalltongue:

ed. most blind people do have (to some extent) increased sensitivity to non-visual impulses (especially sounds), but the degree of that may greatly vary, and consequently, the usefulness.

ed2. if the player wants his character blind from birth, then any method of simulating sight would probably cause sensory overload, and confusion, at least until he got used to the new sensation and started to make sense of what he was "seeing". Imagine suddenly being assaulted by a huge amount of sensory input, equal more or less to what you see and hear taken together, but not fitting any pattern you know. For some time it would likely be far more hampering than the blindness itself.

Still, I don't see much point of playing a blind character just to have the blindness removed from the game (for every practical purpose) by a prosthetic sight; I'd rather prefer to work around the fact rather than try to get rid of it, as some suggested.

Townopolis
2009-01-20, 07:15 PM
Well, it should be easy to look up the blind status effect on the SRD. I've had DMs choose to give blind fight as a bonus feat, and I've had a DM who decided to give nothing at all for it (although they did rule that any divination spell I cast that used my character's vision acted as if he wasn't blind).

If you're starting at a high enough level and have the MIC. Have him pick up a blindfold of true darkness. You can have it be an actual magic item, or refluff it as inherent to the character. Either way, I'd have him buy it out of his own WBL. If it is an item, have him still be blind without it (the blindfold, surprise surprise, blinds you and then gives you blindsense... or blindight, I can't remember). However, don't take his blindfold away for extended periods of game time. If he gets it enchanted with nystul's magic aura (to make it undetectable) nobody should really take it from him. And if they do, have it handy once he escapes captivity (you know, along with the paladin's full plate, heavy shield, and longsword, and the wizard's spellbook).

Fax Celestis
2009-01-20, 07:57 PM
Blind bard could work well, and there's a famous quasi-historical precedent :smallwink:

Ayreon? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment#Act_I:_.22The_Dawning.22) :smalltongue:

Gaire
2009-01-20, 08:07 PM
Nuts. I was gonna go with Homer...

Now that I've looked it up, I want to give him the Blindfold of True Darkness. Unfortunately, I'd have to make it somehow part of his character or something that an NPC gives him, because they're starting at level 1. We're gonna powerlevel through about five levels, then slow down at level 6.

shadowfox
2009-01-20, 08:14 PM
Um... Couldn't you just give the character a sense-based Blindsight? (Like Daredevil.) There are blind bikers that get around by listening to the echo of their bike's wheels (I remember skimming through an article, or maybe it was a short piece on the news...). If you're blind from birth, you learn to accommodate.

At any rate, you'd probably base the blindsight on sound. Smell would be a bit strange (but interesting to describe), and tremorsense has its own limitations.

In my current campaign, a PC found a 3rd party book of races, one of which was blind. I was planning on giving her blindsight, and I was all excited about dealing with descriptions to her.

ericgrau
2009-01-20, 08:53 PM
Try this:


Blinded
The character cannot see. He takes a -2 penalty to Armor Class, loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), moves at half speed, and takes a -4 penalty on Search checks and on most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Spot checks) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) to the blinded character. Characters who remain blinded for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them.


So now you just have to decide which penalties to reduce or remove.

(This is all IMO) But I'd flat-out disallow it as it should make his character unplayable. Providing bonuses strong enough to make up for it is unrealistic, as is disallowing restoration once the party gets high enough cleric magic. But if he wants to handle a role in the party that doesn't require vision at all, then I would allow it with some of the above penalties reduced. I'd probably cut the skill check and AC penalties in half, but leave the rest (including no dex bonus to AC). I would not give him any kind of bonus feat, and later he could get his sight restored. That doesn't mean he wouldn't want to take such feats on his own, though. I might give him a +2 to listen checks or something similar when his eyes are closed (or while he's still blind).

Alternatively, he could play a grimlock. There's a nice dare-devilish monster for you. Strong for its ECL, too.

PinkysBrain
2009-01-20, 09:29 PM
I'd give him blindsense 30 feet and blind fighting as a bonus feat, good enough to be able to play, bad enough to hurt. As for why it couldn't be regenerated, lets say he is a one in a million freak of nature ... it's his natural state.

If he wants anything better he can chose to improve it through magic, magic items or class abilities ... plenty of ways to get blind sight or similar.

Devils_Advocate
2009-01-21, 12:32 AM
"Toph is not truly blind. She is simply incapable of seeing anything less awesome than she is."
- "Avatar: The Last Airbender" fandom

I assume that healing magic doesn't fix congenital disabilities, since it just returns a creature to its normal, healthy state. It's like how a winged humanoid cleric can't use regeneration to give you wings, however unfortunate he might regard your condition. Similarly, you can't use restoration to fix a naturally horribly low ability score.

Transmutation magic is something else again, since it can grant thing properties they never had. The darkvision spell, amusingly, is not limited by RAW to working on creatures with eyes. (Amusing because it's basically like normal sight, so it makes sense as a modification to normal vision. E.g. it doesn't give any bonuses related to/implying sight in all directions or anything.)

Even mitigated blindness is more severe than a normal flaw (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterFlaws.htm). Then again, normal flaws tend not to actually balance an extra feat, hence their popularity, but still. Even with Blind-Fight, a one-in-four chance of missing any given attack is pretty significant, as is the inability to Spot.

On the other hand, if you get rid of those drawbacks one way or another, the guy's not really blind anymore. He just has an alternate form of "vision". At that point it's not really a major drawback, just some relatively minor drawbacks but also minor benefits (can't read, immunity to gaze attacks, etc.). Whether that's appropriate or not depends on whether the player wants it as a major drawback.

An important point to note is that just as this guy shouldn't be so severely penalized as someone recently blinded because he hasn't learned to rely on vision, he should still be more penalized than a sighted character if magically granted vision because he has zero experience in making use of visual information. If nothing else, if you give him a bonus to Listen, he should get at least as big a penalty to Spot.

Prometheus
2009-01-21, 09:52 AM
I had a monk character who I gave Blind-fight, waved the loss of dex bonus to AC, and rage as a barbarian instead of sight (the rage fit into the character's personality and has nothing to do with the blindness). It was balanced well enough, but you have to ask whether or not your character wants balanced. After all, a min-max-er could take blindness in exchange for a benefit.

I think my solution (without the rage) is probably a good one (Blind fight + dex bonus is not loss). The character still can't see, has a 25% miss chance, and has a -2 penalty to AC. Of course, the character can still be caught flat-footed if something isn't heard.

If you need to explain why a character can't just say use Synesthete or Clairvoyance to see, just say that their brain isn't wired for it (and be sure to accompany this explanation with a movement of the hand indicating a wave).

angus cotton
2009-01-22, 11:07 PM
Here, this is a prestige class I made not to long ago that I have made available in the games I have DMed. No player has chosen to dip in it, so as such, it is not playtested. Use, change it, mix it up at your own risk. Note also, this was not designed to be realistic, but to fit the fantasy archetype it represents:

the Blind Archetype

In reality, this is just a PrC I came up with to help come up with a viable option for someone that wished to play a common literary and movie archetype--the blind warrior. You see it in Warcraft, in David Carradine movies (Circle of Iron, for example), the Zatoichi series, heck, you even see a blind Jedi in the latest game from Lucas Arts, "Force Unleashed"...I don't know, seems this archetype is even overused in some cases. Anyhoo, it has been discussed on various DnD forums as well, with no real solution that I have seen. Here is my crack at it. I wanted it only to be a dip-class alla Archmage--this is designed only to accent another class.

Hit Dice: 1d10

Class Base
Level Attk ..Fort ..Ref/Will .....Special
1st .....+1 ....+0 ....+2 .....Spacial Awareness 10'; Monk ability, Talented Listener, Blind Adaptibility
2nd .....+2 ....+0 ....+3 .....Uncanny Dodge
3rd .....+3 ....+1 ....+3 .....Spacial Awareness 100'
4th .....+4 ....+1 ....+4 .....Improved Uncanny Dodge
5th .....+5 ....+1 ....+4 .....Spacial Awareness 300'

Requirements:
Wisdom: 13+
Concentration: 4 ranks
Listen: 9 ranks
Feat: Blind-Fighting
Special: Character must be clinically blind for a period of 1 month.

Class Skills:
Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Jump (Str), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Swim (Str), and Tumble (Dex)

Class Features:
Spacial Awareness (Ex): Out to a range of 10', the Blind Archetype is completely aware of all things around him as if by sixth sense, he sees. This completely removes any penalty of the condition summary 'Blinded' (if they aren't already removed by the Blindfighting feat). This further allows the character to do normal activity that would normally require eyesight, like target spells and shoot missle weapons (note this still requires 'line of sight', meaning no obstructions, like walls, for these activities). The range of this ability is increased to 100' at level 3, and 300' at level 5. All the benefits of being Blind still apply, such as not being fooled by sight-based magic such as Invisibility, Mirror Image, Darkness, etc., as well as immunity to Gaze Attacks.

Talented Listener (Ex): To reiterate, all penalties of condition summary blind are removed as if the character can now see--this includes the ability to again make skill checks without the need of seeing the opponent (making a Spellcraft check to identify a spell with only somantic components, for example, is perfectly allowed). Moreover, the character may now use his Listen skill in place of his Spot skill for purposes of seeing things out to the range of his Spacial Awareness. Note, in skill use, one must still have "line of sight" to the target. You can not, for example, Sense Motive on a person who is not in the same room with you.

Monk Ability (Ex): Blind Archetypes are quasi-martial artist in their own right. As such, each level of Blind Archetype grants the same base fighting abilities (and restrictions) of a monk of equal level for purposes of calculating damage from unarmed strikes, AC bonus, etc. If the character already has levels in monk, then those levels stack for purposes of base fighting calculations.

Blind Adaptibilty (Ex): If, for some reason, the character is healed of his blindness or forced to see in some way he loses all Blind Archetype abilities. He may, however, regain his Blind Archetype abilities by simply closing his eyes, and making a DC 10 Concentration check as a full round action. Once he has made the check, he may act normally with full Blind Archetype abilities until he opens his eyes once again. If he is kept from closing his eyes, for some reason (a Suggestion spell, for example), well, then he is prevented from regaining his abilities.

Uncanny Dodge (Ex): At 2nd level, a Blind Archetype retains his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) even if he is caught flat-footed or struck by an invisible attacker. However, he still loses his Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized. If he already has uncanny dodge from a different class, he automatically gains improved uncanny dodge instead.

Improved Uncanny Dodge (Ex): At 5th level and higher, a Blind Archetype can no longer be flanked. This defense denies a rogue the ability to sneak attack the character by flanking him, unless the attacker has at least four more rogue levels than Blind Archetype levels. If a character already has uncanny dodge from a second class, the character automatically gains improved uncanny dodge instead, and the levels from the classes that grant uncanny dodge stack to determine the minimum level a rogue must be to flank the character.

Other Restrictions: If you are Deafened, or in an area of a Silence spell, you also lose all Blind Archetype abilities.

Kiren
2009-01-22, 11:15 PM
My dm made my character run into trees, and my character was a druid.

Anyway, here are the blindness rules

The character cannot see. He takes a -2 penalty to Armor Class, loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), moves at half speed, and takes a -4 penalty on Search checks and on most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Spot checks) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) to the blinded character. Characters who remain blinded for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them.

What I bolded should be accustomed to, I would add some bonuses to show what the rest of the senses have increased by (Check first, I don't know if someone blind from birth would get a advantage to other senses or if its sight cut off later in life that increases other senses.

Blind fight should be given to him or her for free.