I am playing a blind and one armed character

[Divine wizard]

So, I recently started a new campaign with some friends of mine. The original scores I rolled were 20, 20, 17, 13 ,2 , And 1. In this campaign I am playing a wizard so I put a 20 in int, a 20 in con, and the 17 in dex (so the wizard might survive). In the end I put the 1 in wisdom and the 2 in strength. After this I decided to make him blind from birth (to explain the 1 wis) and one armed (for the 2 strength). I talked with the Dungeon master for this campaign and he decided to let me have the war caster feat to make up for the blindness and one armed-ness. I started as a variant human (2 bonuses 1 skill and a feat) and took the polearm master feat (I have a quarter staff and we use the house rule of finesse quarter staffs) to give him better combat abilities. I was wondering if any other DM’s or players have played something like this and know how I can role play it / work it into the campaign.

[JackPhoenix]

If you're blind, you'll be unable to use any spell that require you to see your target. That's a lot of them.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Keep in mind that your attack rolls are going to be made at disadvantage and attack rolls against you are going to be made at advantage. That's assuming you can even find the fight to begin with as Hearing would be your primary tool to find a threat, and you're making that Hearing Perception check at a -5. You're not just one armed and Blind, you're also bordering on Deaf as well.

Were you rolling d20's for stats? I can't think of a method of rolling that would allow you to roll under 3 otherwise. I'm not sure that a 1 in wis is going to make this character work, you'd have done better putting it into Cha and roleplaying the most offensive old man wizard in the world.

It's also worth noting that unless your DM says that other Wizards were kind enough to scribe their spells in braille, you're never going to be able to copy a spell into your book making your spell list incredibly small.

As for roleplaying this character: You have no idea where you are, you have no idea what's going on. The fact that you've decided to be an adventurer is insulting to your 20 intelligence and you're counting each and every day you live through as a blessing from the gods.

[JackPhoenix]

As for roleplaying this character: You have no idea where you are, you have no idea what's going on. The fact that you've decided to be an adventurer is insulting to your 20 intelligence and you're counting each and every day you live through as a blessing from the gods.

Common sense fits under Wisdom, not Intelligence, so it fits

[gryffydd65]

In 2nd edition , a friend played a blind illusionist who lost his sight at 14, and could only do illusion of things found around a sea village as that was his background , it didn't work out very well .

[Unoriginal]

Can you even carry a spellbook with 2 in STR?

[ProsecutorGodot]

Common sense fits under Wisdom, not Intelligence, so it fits

I guess you're right, Survival is a wisdom skill. Intelligence covers logic and deductive reasoning though, I feel like an intelligence of 20 would pass a check to logically deduce their chances of surviving a goblin encounter.

[Keravath]

Can you even carry a spellbook with 2 in STR?

Can you even lift your own body weight (e.g. stand up) with a 2 in strength? (the rules say that your carrying capacity is str x 15 so theoretically the str 2 character can actually carry 30 pounds of gear which is pretty impressive for str 2 :) ).

I think that if you want to get a better feel for playing this character you should play the sessions with your eyes closed or a blindfold on. If you want to cast a spell then you will need to point at a spot on the map with your team mates offering suggestions if they aren't too busy. If you happen to blast some team mate because you can't see what you are doing then that's what happens. However, I would try to make sure that the rest of the players are ok with a blind wizard in their midst.

Blinded causes advantage when you are attacked and all your attacks are at disadvantage. Permanently. This will make the character pretty useless and frustrating in combat and the pole arm master feat really won't help with that at all since if you move into melee range you will be dead in a few seconds given a wizard's hit points and the advantage to hit that every little goblin or orc will have, never mind the more challenging opponents.

If you play the character correctly, within the limitations of the rules, then the character will most likely be a detriment to the party in the long run.

----

In my opinion, to make it feasible, you would need some homebrew modifications to reduce the penalties from the blinded condition. Perhaps some form of limited range sense of perception 30' which would give advantage on attacks and disadvantage to attackers within that range ... when combined with the blinded condition this would negate all sources of advantage and disadvantage for the character within 30'. This is not the same as blindsight which effectively would let the character see ... this is just the ability to sense what is going on accurately within a specified range.

e.g.

Enhanced Senses: Feat (or you could make it a warlock invocation if that is more thematically appropriate ... maybe the wizard had to make some deal to be able to perceive the world around them)

Your study of arcane lore and focus on perceiving the world around through all your available senses allows you to be aware of the weave and how it flows around you within 30'. This ability has the following benefits.
- all attacks by you have advantage within 30'
- all attacks against you originating within 30' have disadvantage
- you can perceive your surroundings within 30' sufficient to target spells requiring sight


This feat is OP for ANY character that can see. I would not recommend using it. However, for a blind character, it negates the advantage and disadvantage effects of being blind within the radius of 30'. (It also negates any other form of advantage and disadvantage so that the character will never be in a situation where they can attack with advantage). In addition, it allows accurate targeting of their spells within 30'. This still may be OP since it also allows the character to operate in complete darkness but the 30' range is also pretty limiting and you could make it less. However, to make the character effective and usable for a party ... I think it needs something to offset the negative effects of blindness since otherwise the character is pretty unplayable.

P.S. It can be interesting to roll d20s for stats but honestly, stats of 1 or 2 really aren't playable (or very difficult to interpret) and starting with stats of 20 is pretty boring ... just my opinion :)

P.P.S. With a wisdom of 1 ... what sorts of decisions can this wizard make? Does a high intelligence compensate for a low wisdom? The wizard clearly won't be able to notice anything going on around them since they have -5 to perception checks to start with. The challenge is how to roleplay the extreme lack of wisdom.

[nickl_2000]

Can you even carry a spellbook with 2 in STR?

Sounds like this is a character that needs an alternate spellbook. Maybe braille like tattoo bumps that the character puts on their skin?

I believe that carry weight = STR x15. So a total carry weight of 30 lbs.

4 lbs quarterstaff/arcane focus
4 lbs Robes
8 lbs for 3 days rations
1/2 lbs for sack
5 lbs for full waterskin
8? lbs tattoo kit

29.5 lbs, you have a whole .5 lbs left to work with :)

[Slipperychicken]

I was wondering if any other DM’s or players have played something like this and know how I can role play it / work it into the campaign.

If your GM doesn't care about encumbrance (probably doesn't, given that you're rolling ability scores with 1d20 and houseruling the crap out of the game), then the strength doesn't matter. For your combination of disabilities I'd just assign disadvantage on strength/dex-based checks and saving throws, auto-fail saving throws that rely on visually perceiving a threat, disadvantage on all attack rolls, disadvantage on perception checks where sight would be helpful, and auto-fail perception checks where sight is necessary to pass.


Can you even lift your own body weight (e.g. stand up) with a 2 in strength? (the rules say that your carrying capacity is str x 15 so theoretically the str 2 character can actually carry 30 pounds of gear which is pretty impressive for str 2 :) ).

Body weight doesn't count against encumbrance. Where do people keep getting this idea?

[GlenSmash!]

I'm also curious what variant you used to roll stats.

And Yeah Body Weight doesn't count toward encumbrance so don't worry about that.

[Trampaige]

God this is a trainwreck.

Okay. So.

Your familiar communicates with you telepathically, and as an action you can use their senses. Find Familiar seems mandatory. Your familiar can be your seeing eye owl, and presumably after years of living like this you're fairly decently able to walk around based on it telling you to slow down, step around things, etc. Outside of combat, you can spend an action to take over your familiar's senses, so it's even feasible for you to navigate by their sight and sound (since you're basically deaf with 1 wisdom.) In combat, you'd have to spend an action to acquire sight, and as a DM I'd fudge that the very next turn you could cast a spell that requires you see a target as long as it's your first action of the round. That's a huge, hefty penalty.

It can deliver touch spells for you, which is a possibility to consider.

You don't have to see where you're aiming a fog cloud or a fireball or similar spell. Technically you could excuse the blindness and lack of perception by fluffing party members telling you to aim 45 degrees to your left 80 feet ahead and casting there.

Advantage/disadvantage is so stupid sometimes that RAW you can cast invisibility or fog cloud on yourself and then your target not being able to see you cancels out you not being able to see them. But given that you have a 1 and a 2 in stats, the whole thing is stupid anyway.

Edit: For reference sake, a Zombie has 6 wisdom.

[Keravath]

Body weight doesn't count against encumbrance. Where do people keep getting this idea?

I think the basic idea is that folks at first think the range of strength scores should cover from extremely high strength where folks can clean and jerk 500 pounds to bedridden where the strength is so low that they can barely carry themselves.

I realized however that the strength scale doesn't work that way when I looked up the carrying capacity of a str 2 character and found would be 30 pounds.

The real world is actually filled with a lot of strength 2 characters on that basis.

Similarly the average is supposed to be a strength of 10 which is supposed to be able to lug around 150 pounds of gear. In the real world, I suspect the number of folks who could carry a 150 pound pack any distance is very small. I've gone camping with a 80 pound barrel backpack of food (9 days of food for 5 people ... though a lot was dehydrated) and it was pretty brutal portaging that a few kilometers ... hard to imagine 150lbs.

So .. not surprisingly .. the D&D strength numbers are far from "realistic" and even a strength of 1 might not be the lowest possible score for a character or NPC.

[MaxWilson]

So, I recently started a new campaign with some friends of mine. The original scores I rolled were 20, 20, 17, 13 ,2 , And 1. In this campaign I am playing a wizard so I put a 20 in int, a 20 in con, and the 17 in dex (so the wizard might survive). In the end I put the 1 in wisdom and the 2 in strength. After this I decided to make him blind from birth (to explain the 1 wis) and one armed (for the 2 strength). I talked with the Dungeon master for this campaign and he decided to let me have the war caster feat to make up for the blindness and one armed-ness. I started as a variant human (2 bonuses 1 skill and a feat) and took the polearm master feat (I have a quarter staff and we use the house rule of finesse quarter staffs) to give him better combat abilities. I was wondering if any other DM’s or players have played something like this and know how I can role play it / work it into the campaign.

Not a wizard, but a blind Shadow Monk. I gave her +2 Dex to make up for her blindness. She used the Darkness spell to neutralize her disadvantage for being blind. I think she also took the Alert feat, which turned darkness into a distinct advantage for her, but I am not sure of my memory on that point.

She didn't have Wis 1 or Str 2 though. That is... extremely low. I have no idea how to go about roleplaying a Wis 1 Int 20 character. Sheldon Cooper on steroids?

[nickl_2000]

I think the basic idea is that folks at first think the range of strength scores should cover from extremely high strength where folks can clean and jerk 500 pounds to bedridden where the strength is so low that they can barely carry themselves.

I realized however that the strength scale doesn't work that way when I looked up the carrying capacity of a str 2 character and found would be 30 pounds.

The real world is actually filled with a lot of strength 2 characters on that basis.

Similarly the average is supposed to be a strength of 10 which is supposed to be able to lug around 150 pounds of gear. In the real world, I suspect the number of folks who could carry a 150 pound pack any distance is very small. I've gone camping with a 80 pound barrel backpack of food (9 days of food for 5 people ... though a lot was dehydrated) and it was pretty brutal portaging that a few kilometers ... hard to imagine 150lbs.

So .. not surprisingly .. the D&D strength numbers are far from "realistic" and even a strength of 1 might not be the lowest possible score for a character or NPC.

To be fair what do you do for a living? Do you ride in a car/bus/train everywhere you go? Are you spending all day working out in a field, or hand sewing fabric, or working blacksmith tools, or hand grinding grain to make bread? It may not be "realistic" but it also is talking about a different world than we are in now.

[SirGraystone]

An house cat has a strenght of 3

[Schopy]

In my opinion Perception is based on Wisdom, not because it determines how good you can see or hear, but because of how good you interpret the things you see or hear.

Two guys see a dustcloud behind them, the one with low Wisdom nods and carrys on doing whatever, the other one with high Wisdom recognizes they are being followed and can maybe even tell how many riders there are.

So, if you want to play a blind character, more power to you, but if you want to roleplay that 1 in Wisdom and 20 in Int you could try a savantlike approach (like Rain Man). It could explain not needing a Spellbook (you can just memorize all the spells, even if someone is just reading them to you) etc.

But again, if your DM and your group don't mind a blind one-armed wizard who whirls a quarterstaff around like nobodys business, have fun! ☺️

[Slipperychicken]

Similarly the average is supposed to be a strength of 10 which is supposed to be able to lug around 150 pounds of gear. In the real world, I suspect the number of folks who could carry a 150 pound pack any distance is very small. I've gone camping with a 80 pound barrel backpack of food (9 days of food for 5 people ... though a lot was dehydrated) and it was pretty brutal portaging that a few kilometers ... hard to imagine 150lbs.

So .. not surprisingly .. the D&D strength numbers are far from "realistic" and even a strength of 1 might not be the lowest possible score for a character or NPC.

If you use the variant encumbrance, which is pretty much designed for use when you get annoyed with this sort of thing, then the average person could carry up to 50lb before being considered encumbered. Which lines up rather well with the weight of soldiers' total gear historically. The game even acknowledges that default encumbrance is designed for ease of play over realism, offering the variant rules as an alternative for gamers who value that more highly.

As for being bedridden, roleplaying games in the style of D&D will assume characters who are physically fit to travel and perform adventuring activities such as making camp, riding mounts, and so on. If we were to use strength for this, I'd conisder that to happen on a score of zero.

[furby076]

how about you ask your DM to let you swap out 3 points from each of your 20 stats and apply it to your 1 stats. Playing blind as an adventurer? Unless your dm is giving you some magical sight, don't attempt to do it. Put it this way, soldiers get sent home from war for way less aggregious injuries than being blind.

your character will be borderline useless, less than useless, unless you do some heavy metagaming. animal have more wisdom than you.

I wouldn't even allow you to play with a 1 wisdom.

[Albert_Newton]

I have read some of the messages posted on this thread, and I know this has been said before, but I just have to say:
How did you get 2 20's, a 2 and a 1?
I know a couple of people who play D&D who I've never played with, and often they make the same mistake as you clearly have, so this is not uncommon. Still, it is clearly written in the PHB that scores are made by rolling 4d6 and discarding the lowest roll. 18 and three need to be much, MUCH rarer ability scores that 20 and 11.

[djreynolds]

So, I recently started a new campaign with some friends of mine. The original scores I rolled were 20, 20, 17, 13 ,2 , And 1. In this campaign I am playing a wizard so I put a 20 in int, a 20 in con, and the 17 in dex (so the wizard might survive). In the end I put the 1 in wisdom and the 2 in strength. After this I decided to make him blind from birth (to explain the 1 wis) and one armed (for the 2 strength). I talked with the Dungeon master for this campaign and he decided to let me have the war caster feat to make up for the blindness and one armed-ness. I started as a variant human (2 bonuses 1 skill and a feat) and took the polearm master feat (I have a quarter staff and we use the house rule of finesse quarter staffs) to give him better combat abilities. I was wondering if any other DM’s or players have played something like this and know how I can role play it / work it into the campaign.

You should play it where the barbarian has to carry you on his back all the time.... and he is deaf.

Honestly you could do what ever. But IMO, I feel the 1 and 2 go both to intelligence and wisdom or to strength and dexterity.

[Laserlight]

Side comment: As a DM (and someone who's fought with a polearm, back in my SCA days), I would never allow a one armed character to take PAM.

Main point: STR 2 doesn't mean one armed, it just means you're weak. You could still hold a wand and dagger, or climb a ladder, or do other things that one-handed people can't.
Similarly, WIS 1 doesn't mean "blind"; you still have the possibility of making perception checks, you're just bad at it. Perhaps you're near sighted, perhaps you have your head in the clouds, perhaps you do see a 1 and a 2 but instead of coming up with 3, you get caught up in number theory. Perhaps you're a teenager, and horribly self-absorbed. In short, you're gimping yourself in ways you don't need to. My suggestion on how to best solve that would be "don't do it."

[Finback]

Multiclass into rogue, just so you can be the one-armed bandit.

[iTreeby]

Uhhh I guess you cast the spell that gives you dark vision? The spell says I have vision now, horray.

Take some warlock levels and get sight from a pact? You have devil's eyes now, congrats.


Being blind is really bad for an adventurer.

[AHF]

Can you even lift your own body weight (e.g. stand up) with a 2 in strength? (the rules say that your carrying capacity is str x 15 so theoretically the str 2 character can actually carry 30 pounds of gear which is pretty impressive for str 2 :) ).

I think that if you want to get a better feel for playing this character you should play the sessions with your eyes closed or a blindfold on. If you want to cast a spell then you will need to point at a spot on the map with your team mates offering suggestions if they aren't too busy. If you happen to blast some team mate because you can't see what you are doing then that's what happens. However, I would try to make sure that the rest of the players are ok with a blind wizard in their midst.

Blinded causes advantage when you are attacked and all your attacks are at disadvantage. Permanently. This will make the character pretty useless and frustrating in combat and the pole arm master feat really won't help with that at all since if you move into melee range you will be dead in a few seconds given a wizard's hit points and the advantage to hit that every little goblin or orc will have, never mind the more challenging opponents.

If you play the character correctly, within the limitations of the rules, then the character will most likely be a detriment to the party in the long run.

----

In my opinion, to make it feasible, you would need some homebrew modifications to reduce the penalties from the blinded condition. Perhaps some form of limited range sense of perception 30' which would give advantage on attacks and disadvantage to attackers within that range ... when combined with the blinded condition this would negate all sources of advantage and disadvantage for the character within 30'. This is not the same as blindsight which effectively would let the character see ... this is just the ability to sense what is going on accurately within a specified range.

e.g.

Enhanced Senses: Feat (or you could make it a warlock invocation if that is more thematically appropriate ... maybe the wizard had to make some deal to be able to perceive the world around them)

Your study of arcane lore and focus on perceiving the world around through all your available senses allows you to be aware of the weave and how it flows around you within 30'. This ability has the following benefits.
- all attacks by you have advantage within 30'
- all attacks against you originating within 30' have disadvantage
- you can perceive your surroundings within 30' sufficient to target spells requiring sight


This feat is OP for ANY character that can see. I would not recommend using it. However, for a blind character, it negates the advantage and disadvantage effects of being blind within the radius of 30'. (It also negates any other form of advantage and disadvantage so that the character will never be in a situation where they can attack with advantage). In addition, it allows accurate targeting of their spells within 30'. This still may be OP since it also allows the character to operate in complete darkness but the 30' range is also pretty limiting and you could make it less. However, to make the character effective and usable for a party ... I think it needs something to offset the negative effects of blindness since otherwise the character is pretty unplayable.

P.S. It can be interesting to roll d20s for stats but honestly, stats of 1 or 2 really aren't playable (or very difficult to interpret) and starting with stats of 20 is pretty boring ... just my opinion :)

P.P.S. With a wisdom of 1 ... what sorts of decisions can this wizard make? Does a high intelligence compensate for a low wisdom? The wizard clearly won't be able to notice anything going on around them since they have -5 to perception checks to start with. The challenge is how to roleplay the extreme lack of wisdom.

If you were going to do this why complicate with all the advantage / disadvantage elements? Why not just have it be:

Enhanced Senses: Feat (or you could make it a warlock invocation if that is more thematically appropriate ... maybe the wizard had to make some deal to be able to perceive the world around them)

Your study of arcane lore and focus on perceiving the world around through all your available senses allows you to be aware of the weave and how it flows around you within 30'. This ability allows you to act as if you could see within 30'. As a result, you would not suffer the penalties normally associated with blindness (disadvantage on attacks, advantage for opposing attacks) and would be able to target opponents up to 30' away for spells that require you to see your target. Combat will function normally where enemy that achieves advantage against you or that imposes disadvantage on you through some other means than the fact of your blindness (i.e., this feat will not cancel advantage or disadvantage from another source - it merely removes these aspects of your blindness).

This would impose some major challenges to your limited senses without being so crazily problematic as being a blind caster. You would have to sort out how the DM wanted to deal with things like Invisibility and whether that would still function normally as it would allow them to evade your enhanced senses, etc.

----

At the end of the day, I agree with others who suggested just not going down this path and expressing your super low wisdom in other ways. Perhaps some checks that you automatically fail for being so clueless, etc. but not being unable to see targets or incoming attacks.

[Xaryo]

that just gave me ideas to play a blind character for my next one.

probably a chainlock. having always seen through the eyes of the familliar.
probably homebrewing something with the dm for some advantage on hearing check.
maybe focussing on spells requiring saving throw instead of attack roll

[Mellack]

To the OP, I suggest you go through the spell list and look at how many have the phrase "that you can see" in them. It is a large amount.

[Requilac]

A weasel and house cat has a strength of 3 and all oozes have a wisdom of 6. This means that your character has less strength than a kitten and is less perceptive than an animated pile of slime without sensory organs. I think you should probably beg your DM to use some points of your character’s intelligence to improve their strength and wisdom, because otherwise your character is largely infeasible.

This only role your character could possibly play is someone’s unusually intelligent familiar... speaking of that, Does your DM allow homebrew races? :smallbiggrin: