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View Full Version : Born Blind Advice Needed [3.5]



PetrossJ
2011-05-19, 07:34 PM
Recently, I have been working on a feat that would allow me to play a blind character in 3.5, and still be competitive. I am a fan of the design of the Vow of Poverty feat in The Book of Exalted Deeds and use that design for creating my level based feat for being born blind.

I would appreciate any advice more skilled people can give me on balancing, improving, and over all tweaking of this system. Also in previous homebrew designs I have com up with, it has been noted that my wording is notoriously bad. So if there are any confusions please post a response

This feat can only be taken at level 1 during character creation.
Requirements: You must be a race that normally has visual sight.

Drawbacks: The character automatically fails all spot and search checks, and takes a -10 to all disguise checks and illusion spells because he has never seen what these things are supposed to look like. All enemies have total concealment (50% miss chance). The character can not use spells that rely on sight, ie: arcane eye, arcane sight, etc... The character looses all proficiencies with ranged weapons.

Unlike normal blindness, the character has lived with blindness his entire life, allowing him to overcome several blindness disadvantages. The Character dose not take a -2 penalty to AC and he retains his dex bonus (if any) to AC. The character also moves at his full speed, ie, a born blind human has a speed of 30.


Benefits: +5 listen checks and listen is always an in class skill. Blind creatures are not subject to gaze attacks , blinding attacks, and illusions that rely on sight. See table below for additional benefits.

If the characters blindness is ever healed then that character looses all benefits gained from the feat and he can not retrain this feat.

1: Wis Bonus to AC if wearing light or medium armor
2: Blindsense 10'
3: Blindsight 5'
4: Scent ability
5: Listen bonus increases to +8

6: Uncanny Dodge, if he has uncanny dodge from a class, he instead gains improved uncanny dodge.
7: Blindsense 20'
8: Can take 10 on listen checks
9: Blindsight 10'
10: Listen bonus increases to +11

11: Damage Reduction 5/-, vulnerability 5 sonic
12: Blindsense 30'
13: Tremorsense 5'
14: Blindsight 15'
15: Listen bonus increases to +15

16: Damage Reduction 10/-, vulnerability 10 sonic
17: Blindsense 40'
18: Tremorsense 10'
19: Blindsight 20'
20: (Perk needed for this level. Ideas are welcome)

drakir_nosslin
2011-05-20, 03:45 AM
Interesting idea, though balance-wise I think it needs some tweaking. And why damage reduction? It doesn't really seem to fit in with the rest of the abilities.

Also, you might want to specify if the effects of this blindness replaces or are in addition to the official one (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#blinded), as they are not identical.

PetrossJ
2011-05-20, 09:07 AM
Thank you for that and if you have any other tweaking suggestions, please tell me.

As for the damage reduction, well.... I haven't been able to rationalize that just yet. A couple of the people that I have talked to say that mechanical, DR looks decently balanced, but we can't get it to make logical sense.

The closest thing I can get to rationalizing DR is that when your blind in the "time setting" of DnD, your life is a lot rougher than normal peoples, so, you get tougher. Your only weakness is that since you use your ears to see, sonic attacks hurt a lot worse than normal. (hence vulnerability to sonic attacks)

Also, I said that I used the style for the VoP feat.... and VoP had DR, so I also have no creativity.

crusaderjim
2011-05-20, 10:18 AM
I like it a lot, but I also agree that DR doesn't really make any sense. Unfortunately I don't know what to replace it with. Good job with everything else so far though.

drakir_nosslin
2011-05-20, 04:42 PM
Thank you for that and if you have any other tweaking suggestions, please tell me.

As for the damage reduction, well.... I haven't been able to rationalize that just yet. A couple of the people that I have talked to say that mechanical, DR looks decently balanced, but we can't get it to make logical sense.

The closest thing I can get to rationalizing DR is that when your blind in the "time setting" of DnD, your life is a lot rougher than normal peoples, so, you get tougher. Your only weakness is that since you use your ears to see, sonic attacks hurt a lot worse than normal. (hence vulnerability to sonic attacks)

Also, I said that I used the style for the VoP feat.... and VoP had DR, so I also have no creativity.

Well, the difference is that VoP makes you give up all your WBL which is quite a bit more to surrender than your sight, I'm not sure that you need DR just to make it balanced.

erictheredd
2011-05-20, 04:49 PM
why can't this blindness be healed? you're going to need to answer that one.

and what's to keep a character from getting a blindsight item early on in the game and having essentially no draw back?

PetrossJ
2011-05-20, 07:07 PM
Drakir:
you would think that... until a DM of mine brought up ranged rogues with a 60ft sneak attack and a 60ft move speed, and bonuses to AC vs AoO. Even at level 20 sneak attack at over 30ft is guaranteed against this a character with this Feat. However, I would gladly take another idea if you can come up with one.

eric:
it can be healed, you just waste your first level feat because you would lose everything quickly as your ears no longer have to pick up the slack from your lack of sight. Taking this feat says "my character has adapted to being blind, and is ok with it".

And the DM for the second one. But you get blindsight already, and depending on ranges of items, I don't know if I would allow those to stack.

ericgrau
2011-05-20, 09:28 PM
I've seen one person grant tremorsense 60' in return. There's still a 50% miss chance with some attacks, but there are ways around that. Like blind fight. Or spells or abilities that don't require precise targeting. Another equally effective method without adding a single new rule is to simply make DC 20 listen checks against any active foe that didn't move after attacking/casting, or DC 20 + move silently check (if any) against foes that did move. Problem there is you better make sure your DM is playing listen by RAW as many don't know this rule.

From there it may seem like it's still a minor disadvantage due to the miss chance but all you have to do is carry around smoke bombs or fog spells and suddenly your foe is at a greater disadvantage because he's not as well prepared for it as you are.