You're blind. They're blind. Everyone's blind! Adapting to blindness in dnd

[BrotherClod]

Hi all, would love your help/input on a few things!

I'm writing up a new campaign and came up with the idea of everyone being blinded (PCs, NPCs and monsters alike). This then spun out into a far more elaborate story that includes an aboleth seeking vengeance, a peculiar type of fungus, some trapped wind elementals, an elaborate cave system, druids, triffids...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

This idea allows me to really mix up how some monsters are played (a hag coven is suddenly VERY reliant on that hag's eye, any monster with blindsight is suddenly dominate in his area, etc etc). It also gives the PCs a clear quest and leads to an obvious reason to help many NPCs.

The mechanics are that (due to an elaborate aboleth plan) there is a fungal spore released across the land each and every night that causes a permanent blindness condition in all who see it (rediculously high con saving throw to avoid, DC~25). It can be cured easily enough (lesser restoration is only a second level spell) but it's a spell not everyone can access, particularly most monsters/isolated communities.

I don't intend to penalise the PCs with this and I expect to quickly hand out a some magic items that either give limited sight or cure blindness. But my questions for you lot are...

1. Is the blinded condition, or restricted radius sight, particularly bad for any specific PC?

2. Are there anyways a low level character could circumvent this blindness? I've already realised casting Find Familiar would give them a sort of sight but is there anything else?

3. How about higher level NPCs? I'm picturing a wizard using a Tiny Servant much like one would use a guide dog but new ideas would be greatly appreciated!

4. Are there any monsters that you think would be particularly interesting in these circumstances? I'm planning on there being a dragon somewhere who's a lot more amenable than normal as they struggle to get by using just their limited blindsight. Not to mention the triffids.

5. Any other thoughts / ideas?

Thanks all!

[MoiMagnus]

+ Characters will lower HP and defence are particularly vulnerable when blind. On top of the advantage enemy get for being unseen, it's much more difficult to take cover or run away where you don't know from where the enemy will attack. Tactics are also much more difficult when you don't know how far away are the incoming enemies.

+ Obviously, long-distance characters will be at disadvantage, and feats that increase range are much less interesting. Not that much a problem IMO.

+ Mechanically, you might be significantly increasing the number of disadventage given here and there, which makes the Rogue pretty unhappy with their sneak attacks, and make other source of disadventage less relevant ("double disadventage" doesn't exist). On the other hand, the lucky feat becomes much stronger, especially if you follow RAW where you can chose any of the three dice when using lucky on the disadventaged roll.

[Aett_Thorn]

Weapon attackers will be able to attack with no problem, but will never be able to get advantage, which may cause issues amongst the players if they’re trying to.

However, spell casters may be screwed. Most spells require that you see the target. If you’re blind, you can’t see the target and therefore can’t cast spells. It also kind of screws over illusionist characters even more, since if everyone is blind, most of their spells won’t work even if they can get them off.

[da newt]

Tasha's added the blind fighting style option for 10' blind sense. Martials with this FS will dominate blind foes.

Any adventuring party w/ lesser restoration will find they have a huge advantage against foes who are blinded.

Casters and ranged weapon attackers who are blind are nearly useless.

Does Devil's Sight counter your blindness?

Familiars and wildshaping and polymorph and summoning stuff that doesn't rely on sight will become much more useful / common.

[kazaryu]

+ Characters will lower HP and defence are particularly vulnerable when blind. On top of the advantage enemy get for being unseen, it's much more difficult to take cover or run away where you don't know from where the enemy will attack. Tactics are also much more difficult when you don't know how far away are the incoming enemies.
this is only true if the enemies aren't blind, which they will be most of the time.




I don't intend to penalise the PCs with this and I expect to quickly hand out a some magic items that either give limited sight or cure blindness. But my questions for you lot are...

1. Is the blinded condition, or restricted radius sight, particularly bad for any specific PC?
casters mostly. so many spells require you to be able to see. martials will actually be relatively unawawfected in combat. since the disadvantage to attacking while blind is cancelled out by the advatntage for attacking a blind opponent. obviously if they're not fighting a blind opponent, it hurts martials too.


2. Are there anyways a low level character could circumvent this blindness? I've already realised casting Find Familiar would give them a sort of sight but is there anything else?
as people have noted, to some extent the blind-fighting style partially negates the effects.


3. How about higher level NPCs? I'm picturing a wizard using a Tiny Servant much like one would use a guide dog but new ideas would be greatly appreciated!
depends. rich NPC's (or higher level caster NPC's) would likely just get a magic item that negates the blindness. to prevent player theft you could easily 'code' the magic item so that it needs to be made to fit a particular mind. (i.e. the magic item functionally replaces their eyes, so it needs to be made to specifically integrate with a person's mind. This doesn't completely prevent theft, but it does make it a bit more of an adventure. first they gotta get the item, then they gotta figure out how to adjust it so it works with whoever they wanna give it to. ya know?

other high level NPC's might have access to lesser restoration, or possibly even a spell that makes them immune to the spores?

4. Are there any monsters that you think would be particularly interesting in these circumstances? I'm planning on there being a dragon somewhere who's a lot more amenable than normal as they struggle to get by using just their limited blindsight. Not to mention the triffids. any character that was already blind could prove interesting. i mean like a humanoid, not monster.

[Keravath]

If you are looking for RAW, the advantage from others not seeing you cancels the disadvantage when you can't see. As a result, all to hit rolls are essentially unaffected by blindness. The rules do not impose any range limitations on this constraint.

In addition, having advantage and disadvantage automatically cancel all other reasons for advantage or disadvantage.

- barbarians reckless attack does nothing
- being prone does not give advantage to adjacent attacks
- firing ranged weapons with opponents adjacent does not incur disadvantage
- faerie fire does nothing since folks can't see it and because another source of advantage does nothing

However, RAW, being blind does NOT affect a character's movement. There are no rules constraining where a character can move or what they are aware of when blind. They do automatically fail perception checks that rely on sight so a DM could say that since they don't see their surroundings, they don't know where anything is because they fail all the perception checks they would normally automatically pass but that would be a ruling.

In reality, being blind could impose a lot of constraints. They would be unaware of trees, holes in the ground, traps or even which direction they happened to be walking. It would be almost impossible to navigate from one location to another without some sense of their surroundings but this would all be DM rulings and would have to be explained to the players exactly how it would work.

Mechanically, as mentioned, spell casters are likely to be the most strongly impacted in terms of RAW because a lot of spells require a target that you can see. Luckily, lesser restoration only requires touching a creature so if the party can cast lesser restoration on all blinded members each day they will be able to wipe out blinded NPCs since they will have advantage on every attack roll. On the other hand, if the NPCs can also cure blindness so that your battles are balanced again, then there is hardly any point to mass blindness except as a drain on party spell slots and for narrative interest.

[AdAstra]

As stated earlier, Lesser Restoration can remove Blindness. Thus, assuming there's no reapplication of the blinding effect, as soon as they have access to someone who can cast it (and 5 classes can get that spell), they're good to go, since it's an instantaneous spell that removes the effect.

If you did want to continue to pursue this idea (and mind, it's a very cool idea), in order for it to not just be an overwhelming advantage for the players once they get access to Lesser Restoration, you'd probably have to make adjustments.

Since the blinding comes from some kind of very powerful wide-ranging effect, it would make sense to say that Lesser Restoration can only suppress it. How long it can do this would be up to you, but given that it provides a huge advantage and is only a 2nd level spell it probably shouldn't last very long. Perhaps a minute? Even that would still make it one of the best "buffs" in the game since it's not a concentration spell.

[MrStabby]

Weapon attackers will be able to attack with no problem, but will never be able to get advantage, which may cause issues amongst the players if they’re trying to.

However, spell casters may be screwed. Most spells require that you see the target. If you’re blind, you can’t see the target and therefore can’t cast spells. It also kind of screws over illusionist characters even more, since if everyone is blind, most of their spells won’t work even if they can get them off.

I think this is the main thing.

Some classes will be a lot more affected by this than others - I think bards tend to be pretty screwed from the perspective of needing to see their spell targets (with a few exceptions) whereas for other casters it might just mean their spell list, for practical puposes, is half the size.

[BrotherClod]

Thanks for the input all.

Hadn't really appreciated how beneficial wild shape and polymorph would become. My villainous druids just got another ace up their sleeves!