playing blind

[Mrgone]

ok. here we go. I'm currently playing in a gladiator based campaign. all the players were awarded 2 understudies for our last adventure. i want one to be blind. how would i do that and still maintain relative effectiveness. one of my lackies was set at level 5 the other is level 2.

[Amidus Drexel]

Grab the blind-fight feat, if you hadn't thought of that already.

If you make the 5th-level one a psion, you can give him the Touchsight power. I don't know if that really fits with a gladiatorial campaign, though.

[limejuicepowder]

This goes firmly in to ad-hoc territory, but how long has the character been blind? If it's a long time, I would think he would have mad bonuses to listen, thus allowing him to rather easily locate people vis listen checks. Combined with blind-fight, he'd make a decent combatant (25% miss chance). While this is initially a drawback, if it's combined with sight-blocking spells, like fog cloud, he could turn it to his advantage.

He could also take a level in swordsage or warblade and grab the level stance that gives scent.

[Feralventas]

Do you want your character to be outright BLIND or do you want them to be denied sight. There's a difference.

If you want to be Blind, simply gauge out the eyes with a backstory, take Blind Fight and go from there; there are lots of good feats and classes that can work without sight. Healers can usually find themselves, and I'm sure a warrior cleric's patron of war would appreciate someone with the guts to go into an arena blind.

If you just want to deny them sight, then there are lots of alternative perception options. One level in Swordsage or Warblade will give you access to the Hunter's Stance, which gives you Scent up to 30ft. Two feats from savage species will give you 60ft range, and pin-point accuracy (knowing exactly where things are) within 20ft. Wizard4/Initiator1 can get you into Jade Phoenix mage to be a blind warrior/mage. Touchsight was mentioned above. Most mid to high level 'casters gain darkvision, blindsense, blind sight, or tremmor sense.

There's a skill-monkey PrC that grants Tremmorsense in Lords of Madness. A few levels of Shadowcaster grants Darkvision 30, and a fair few more grants 60ft. There's also a Shadow Magic feat in the same book to grant you awareness of anything in darkness, which depending on how your DM rules, might be everything in the area, everything that casts a shadow, or just things that are in actual darkness rather than just being unseen to you.

I'm actually a little unsure of that last one, so I'll edit if I'm outright wrong.

Edit: I was half right. It takes a move action to do, and requires you know a specific mystery (shadow magic spell, Bend Perspective). Once you take the move action, you'll know where all creatures in shadowy illumination or darkness within 20ft are, and which direction they're in. Very situational, but combined with Darkness as a cantrip and the spell being used, it should be an easy situation to arrange.

[Mrgone]

awesome. i love it. he's mostly gonna be rp. the way we came about the lackys we thwarted a gladiator uprising and as a reward we were granted a sudo version of freedom. we were awarded a team of gladiators each of us gain 2. i plan on R.P.ing a means for the gladiators to earn their freedom via the same way i did. in a since. they train under me win battles and after so many they are freed. this one in particular was blinded in the original escape attempt when the uprising started. so i as a character plan on training him to use it to his advantage. i figure he was a generic fighter to begin with and me being a fighter lvl 2 warblade lvl 6 would probably train him in a similar style of fighting.
i'm currently using a lock-down build with a heavy chain (custom spike chain).

blind fighting would be perfect. at level 5 i asume we can rp traing till he's level 6 wich gives him 60 foot blind since. wich is cool. and your suggestion on stances would be pretty sexy also.

is there a way to nix the concealment modifiers completely?

[Mrgone]

very nice feral. just saw your post. that's awesome sauce. i think we've prety much got him flushed out.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I've always thought that giving a character that's been blind for a long time a +8 circumstance bonus to listen and the ability to always take 10 on listen was a pretty good compromise. Unless a target is trying to move silently that'll almost always get you a pin-point after you put two ranks in listen.

I based it on the racial skill mods associated with a climb or swim speed. It's kind of like a racial "listen speed" :smalltongue: