Help! Playing a blind(ed) character?

[Von Zinzer]

The game I'm in is [PF], but I don't think that matters to the topic.

So here's the deal: my level 3ish party went through a magic mirror into an alternate plane (of darkness), blah blah blah, my sorcerer took a spell to the face and is now permanently blind. Ouch. We all survived thanks mostly to dumb luck, and are now back in the real world, where I'm faced with a twofold predicament:

As a character, how do I get my eyesight the hell back? We're in a situation where we're exploring trackless wilderness; there are no towns or ye olde magic shoppes to speak of, so potions are mostly out of the question. We have a cleric, but I'm not sure I'll survive the three levels until he can cast remove blindness! Anyway, the regaining of sight is a secondary concern for me at this point. It's largely up to the DM if he gives the opportunity.

What I really want to know is this: do y'all have any experience playing blind (or blinded) characters? How do I role play this? I don't want [my character] to be useless or worse, a liability, but it seems to me that 21st century accessibility standards don't apply in this late-medieval setting.

Any insight would be welcome.

[Invader]

Remove blindness/deafness is the easiest way (3rd lvl spell). The Regenerate spell should get you sight back but it's a 7th level spell. There are a number of things that can help like the blind fight feat, tremor sense spell, scent spell, blind sense feat (wild shape prerequisite), life sense feat (no con prerequisite),

[Juntao112]

This is a serious problem. What spells do you have?

[Acanous]

Summon Monsters a lot, and use them to fight for you. Your Familiar can deliver touch spells, so use it to target things like Shocking Grasp.

Then, at lv 5, when your cleric gets Remove Blindness, get your sight back and resume winning without having to worry about a gimped spell list.

[Almagesto]

Summon Monsters a lot

:vaarsuvius: That's actually a very good advice.

However, I would also just ask the DM to house-rule that while you are blind(ed) you get the blind-fight feat as a bonus [much like a flaw from the PHB II]. I mean, you are after all roleplaying a very difficult character at this point. And, as a (blind) sorcerer, re-rolling the chance to hit is basically just to defend yourself in the instance you get stuck into melee (although this could only happen due to lack of organization on behalf of your party :elan:).

Another option a clever DM might use is to place a treasure that can help you, e.g. a ring of tremorsense, allowing you to sense anything directly in touch with the ground at say... 30 ft. That is, at the very least, FAIR. I mean it's half of what a small monstrous spider gets. Also, he could give you a helmet that makes you akin to DareDevil.

Once again, is all up to how strict your DM is and how much he's willing to help you roleplay a seemingly broken character.

Then again, who knows? You might actually enjoy a lot of advantages from being a handicapped character: getting a free ale every now and then, a perk or two at the local guild for the short-sighted and blind adventurers :cool:, the occasional donation, and pending on whether the campaign is PG13 or more, pity can get you a lot of... PIZZA (yes, that's what I wanted to say... pizza :belkar:)

Hope this helps. Also, feel free to PM me in case of any doubt (or ask your DM to do so if he feels like one of these options made sense and needs ideas on how to implement them).

[Vaz]

Dispel Magic? Doesn't that remove Blindness? At least for a while.

Ask if the spell was Instantaneous or Permanent Duration. If the latter, you can at least have the Cleric cast Dispel Magic during the first round for 1d4 rounds of sight.

[Von Zinzer]

This is a serious problem. What spells do you have?
Level 3 fetchling sorcerer (Shadow bloodline, Umbral wildblooded variant)
Cantrips: detect magic, light, mage hand, mending, prestidigitation
1: colour spray, memory lapse, ray of enfeeblement, silent image

(A side note: a further side effect of the escape from the world in the mirror was to strip my character of both his fetchling race and shadow bloodline. So we can treat him as a half-elf with the arcane bloodline.)

The party (for reference):
Sorcerer (arcane bloodline)
Witch (basically a tank as far as I can tell)
Paladin (standard sword-&-board)
Gunfighter (pistolero)
Cleric (travel domain)
Rogue (standard issue)

... I would also just ask the DM to house-rule that while you are blind(ed) you get the blind-fight feat as a bonus [much like a flaw from the PHB II]. ... Once again, is all up to how strict your DM is and how much he's willing to help you roleplay a seemingly broken character. ... Then again, who knows? You might actually enjoy a lot of advantages from being a handicapped character...


Our DM, perhaps frustrated by the last campaign's... less-than-subtle ... combat style :belkar: has decreed that "The kid gloves are off" when it comes to fights. Hence the permanent blindness (to answer Vaz's question). Now, to be completely fair, I got my character into this predicament by role playing misunderstanding an order despite the danger involved.
Basically, we had just entered mirror-pocket-verse, and were in a seemingly abandoned mansion. Our paladin knocked at the first closed door, which opened a crack to reveal a fey lady who screamed "No! You're not supposed to be here!" and slammed the door. Cue a collective WTF from the party, as there's no reason for anyone in this 'verse to know who we are. So the cleric tells me to "Try talking to her in your native language." What he meant was to speak Aklo. Yes, my character speaks Aklo, but his native language is (badly accented) common. So I as a player knew what he meant, but my character just thought he meant "Go be charming!". So I open the door, open my mouth, and take a spell to the face. I responded with an immediate (blind) colour spray, which won us the fight, but yup, still blind.
My point is that the DM is unlikely to throw me a bone, at least in the short term. I have a feeling that he'd actually prefer me to try to RP this for a while. I'm game, really, because it seems like a challenge. I'm just a bit frustrated that a bunch of my spells are significantly less useful now (and I don't have that many spells!). Also free pizza.

Just occured to me: is there some sneaky way to use a familiar as, well, eyes?

[Zanthy1]

Level 3 fetchling sorcerer (Shadow bloodline, Umbral wildblooded variant)
Cantrips: detect magic, light, mage hand, mending, prestidigitation
1: colour spray, memory lapse, ray of enfeeblement, silent image

(A side note: a further side effect of the escape from the world in the mirror was to strip my character of both his fetchling race and shadow bloodline. So we can treat him as a half-elf with the arcane bloodline.)

The party (for reference):
Sorcerer (arcane bloodline)
Witch (basically a tank as far as I can tell)
Paladin (standard sword-&-board)
Gunfighter (pistolero)
Cleric (travel domain)
Rogue (standard issue)


Our DM, perhaps frustrated by the last campaign's... less-than-subtle ... combat style :belkar: has decreed that "The kid gloves are off" when it comes to fights. Hence the permanent blindness (to answer Vaz's question). Now, to be completely fair, I got my character into this predicament by role playing misunderstanding an order despite the danger involved.
Basically, we had just entered mirror-pocket-verse, and were in a seemingly abandoned mansion. Our paladin knocked at the first closed door, which opened a crack to reveal a fey lady who screamed "No! You're not supposed to be here!" and slammed the door. Cue a collective WTF from the party, as there's no reason for anyone in this 'verse to know who we are. So the cleric tells me to "Try talking to her in your native language." What he meant was to speak Aklo. Yes, my character speaks Aklo, but his native language is (badly accented) common. So I as a player knew what he meant, but my character just thought he meant "Go be charming!". So I open the door, open my mouth, and take a spell to the face. I responded with an immediate (blind) colour spray, which won us the fight, but yup, still blind.
My point is that the DM is unlikely to throw me a bone, at least in the short term. I have a feeling that he'd actually prefer me to try to RP this for a while. I'm game, really, because it seems like a challenge. I'm just a bit frustrated that a bunch of my spells are significantly less useful now (and I don't have that many spells!). Also free pizza.

Just occured to me: is there some sneaky way to use a familiar as, well, eyes?

I this that makes a really cool plot point, with the fey lady, seems like a really fun adventure! At higher levels I feel like the familiar can do other things, but im not sure if you can see through its eyes, but it could speak telepathically to you, and if you wear the familiar like a hat, or goggles, it could guide you i guess lol.

Free pizza? I am totally game for trying that out lol.

On a side note, I really want to make a blind sorcerer! You are right, it sounds like an awesome challenge! However the difference would be that I am making him with the knowledge that he is blind, and not being thrown into blindness lol.

Good luck!

[Grendus]

Just occured to me: is there some sneaky way to use a familiar as, well, eyes?

Depends. If it's a Raven, you could have it call out where the enemies are. They would be treated as having total cover, but you could attack into their square with spells like Ray of Enfeeblement. Your familiar can also deliver touch spells... except you don't have any. Since your familiar has an int of 7, you could use it as a targeting radar - have it send fear through it's empathic link if any allies are within the 15 foot cone of Color Spray and aggression if any enemies are in the cone.

[Juntao112]

Level 3 fetchling sorcerer (Shadow bloodline, Umbral wildblooded variant)
Cantrips: detect magic, light, mage hand, mending, prestidigitation
1: colour spray, memory lapse, ray of enfeeblement, silent imageLook on the bright side. You can still use Color Spray by asking your party members to point you in the right direction before firing, and you can still make illusions with Silent Image. Ray of Enfeeblement is going to be useless for a while, though. Not sure what memory lapse does.

[Psyren]

Just occured to me: is there some sneaky way to use a familiar as, well, eyes?

This is one reason why blind Psions are better than blind Spellcasters - unlike a familiar's emotional/empathic link, Psicrystals have an actual telepathic link to tell you what they see, and at mid-levels you can actually look through their "eyes." And all of that is in addition to the psion's other tools they can use to bypass blindness like Synesthete, Touchsight and Mindsight. What's more, Psicrystals can even see through magical darkness.

[Fouredged Sword]

Cost to hire a cleric to cast a 3rd level spell.
CL x 30 gp
Remove blindness, Level 3 spell, minimum caster level for a cleric, 5.

Thus 150gp.

Just go to the local town and pay the town cleric.

[Diarmuid]

Serious question...if you're blind do you have Line of Sight to anything?

[Psyren]

Serious question...if you're blind do you have Line of Sight to anything?

Nope! Being blind means that everything has Total Concealment relative to you, which prevents line of sight.

[Von Zinzer]

Cost to hire a cleric to cast a 3rd level spell.

Total noob question, sorry: where do I find this price list for spellcasting?

And while that sounds like a good idea, as mentioned above my party is exploring its way through a wilderness. The closest thing we have to a town is a trading post with a shantytown full of refugees rapidly growing around it. No such cleric exists at any known location. (Want to know the entire non-mundane stock of the trading post?)
- +1 Ranseur (2310)
- +1 Banded Mail (1400)
- Wand of Heat Metal (4500)
- Headband of Inspired Wisdom {+2} (4000)
- Bracers of Armour {+1} (1000)
...and nothing magical with a caster level of >2 is even possible.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

Look on the bright side. You can still use Color Spray by asking your party members to point you in the right direction before firing, and you can still make illusions with Silent Image. Ray of Enfeeblement is going to be useless for a while, though. Not sure what memory lapse does.
Good point! We made it through the last encounter in part by having the cleric use me like some kind of Megatron. I have this vague notion of acquiring a familiar and using it as a targeting system (hat tip to Zanthy1's COTD above) (get it? Hat tip? :smallbiggrin:).

Any thoughts out there on making convincing illusions if you can't, you know, see what you're making or where you're placing it?

[Psyren]

Total noob question, sorry: where do I find this price list for spellcasting?

Here. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices)


Any thoughts out there on making convincing illusions if you can't, you know, see what you're making or where you're placing it?

All you need to make a figment is to know what something looks like. Unless you're trying to make something you haven't seen before, you need your memory to do that, not your sight.

[Von Zinzer]

Thanks for the link, Psyren. The last paragraph was also relevant to this scenario:

In addition, not every town or village has a spellcaster of sufficient level to cast any spell. In general, you must travel to a small town (or larger settlement) to be reasonably assured of finding a spellcaster capable of casting 1st-level spells, a large town for 2nd-level spells, a small city for 3rd- or 4th-level spells, a large city for 5th- or 6th-level spells, and a metropolis for 7th- or 8th-level spells. Even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells. SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices)

Good point, too, about the figment-making requiring only memory. The thing that gets me is that some of the more interesting uses require interaction with the environment to make it work. Say, for example, making it appear that there is a wall closing the mouth of an alley when we try to hide there. If I can't see the alley... you get the idea. :smallsmile: