Blind Elf Subrace

[RickAsWritten]

Hello fellow Brewers,

I'm restarting my campaign and one of my players asked if they could play as a race of blind elves loosely based on the AppleTV show, See. Blindness is tricky because blindsense is a strict upgrade over regular vision in the sensed area, and then a severe downgrade outside the range. Here is my first pass at a blind elf subrace. Please let me know what you think.

Elf Subrace: Moon Elves of Selena

Ability Score Increase

One ability score of your choice increases by 1 (must be different that your +2).

Born Blind

You can't see, and automatically fail any ability check that requires sight. You are immune to the blinded condition.

Heightened Senses

You have blindsight with a range of 5 feet (blind beyond this radius). Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn’t behind total cover, even if you’re in complete darkness. Moreover, you can see an invisible creature within that range, unless the creature successfully hides from you.
In addition, you have tremorsense with a range of 30 feet, which can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that you and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance.

Cantrip

You know one cantrip of your choice from the wizard spell list. Wisdom, Intelligence or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it (choose 1).

Extra Language

You can speak, read, and write one extra language of your choice.


I'm not sure if I went too heavy on the restrictions since blindsense is such an odd rule. As far as I understand it, he will be normal in melee and any ranged attacks he makes within 30 feet (against non-fliers) will be straight rolls, but all ranged attacks will have advantage on him. He is planning on playing a barbarian if that factors into it at all.

Has anyone worked with a blind homebrew or character that can provide input?

As a side note, we used a collective map drawing game to each create one continent/empire of the world so the blind elves make sense conceptually within the world since the player designed a whole empire based on it.

[GalacticAxekick]

Fighters have access to the Blindfighting Fighting Style, which gives them 10 feet of blindsight on top of normal vision at 1st level.

If these elves have blindsight but lack normal vision, it should be at least 10 feet too. The Fighter is proof that that isnt game-breaking.

[Draconi Redfir]

what i did when i made a blind sorcerer a few years back who was also blind from birth, was use the logic that "She's blind, not blinded". So the result was that very little changed for her, any perception or senses were assumed to just not be using her eyes, and i think the most that was different was that bright-light based effects couldn't affect her (though things like colour spray still might just due to sheer sensory overload), and she suffered a -2 AC against ranged attacks.

could possibly work with something similar here. So the "heightened senses" thing might not be needed at all, the player just uses normal senses just fluffed to be sound or vibrations rather then sight.

So I'd say just add in the -2 to AC vs ranged attacks and spells, MAYBE a -2 AB when using ranged attacks and spells to your "Born Blind" trait. Maybe the "Ability checks that require sight" thing could be re-written to say that most perception checks assume you're using senses other then sight, and it's only the checks that specifically require sight and nothing else that you automatically fail.

If you feel this needs a buff, i could probably see the blindsight 5ft thing still working out, though I'm not sure the tremorsense is really needed, as you'd just be working with normal perception just re-flavored to be using different senses.

[Calen]

Extra Language

You can speak, read, and write one extra language of your choice.

Are you stating that this worlds Elven is Braille or is the sub-races language Braille? That might factor into the read/write aspect of an extra language.



Has anyone worked with a blind homebrew or character that can provide input?


I am running a campaign with a blind monk. At this high level he has blindsense 30, typically anything within that range operates normally. past that range they make perception checks to locate targets or rely on the party shouting "Over here!"
I would say that a blind character relies on the player to a great extent, willing to accept the difficulties. As a DM you can help with that by having invisible enemies or illusions that will not fool the blind character, a way to make the difficulty become an aid.

[GalacticAxekick]

Has anyone worked with a blind homebrew or character that can provide input?Oh! I neglected to mention, but your other thread reminded me:

You might be interested in my 5e Race Revision. The Grey Dwarves in that project are blind with 60 feet of tremorsense and special abilities related to their heightened senses.

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?633318-Race-Revised-(Gnome-Barbarians-Orc-Wizards-amp-Hybrids-Hybrids-Hybrids)