Quote Originally Posted by EggKookoo View Post
The wheelchair needs to simultaneously be no better than being fully-abled and not appreciably worse. To me, that means the best way to handle it is narrative. You get around in dungeons in your wheelchair just like the rest of the party does on foot. How did you get that wheelchair up that small ridge? Athletics check = 18. Very nicely, thank you.
I'm sympathetic to these goals, but I'm also a simulationist, and having stuff that doesn't actually matter bothers me and detracts from my fun, so I'd actually go for modeling a wheelchair as a kind of mount instead. If you want a self-propelled wheelchair I'll be happy to charge you seven years without love for one (you can buy it from a hag in your backstory, and if it gets destroyed you can buy another from her, in exchange for your seven happiest memories) and it can function as a Medium mount with 15' move that can nevertheless carry a Medium creature. Or you can pick a Large wheelchair with 50' move, or just use a regular saddle and a horse. (King Cho-Hag from the Belgariad comes to mind as a disabled person who did exactly that: spent almost his whole life in the saddle.)

That is, I'd want the choice to play a disabled character to be significant, in a plausible way, while also being interesting enough that I personally would be tempted to play one for some concepts. There's a Str 6 Barbarian [Defensive Duelist, Skill Expert (Athletics), Bear Totem] which I rolled up once in discussion on 3d6-in-order and made into a withered old man of the "get off my lawn!" persuasion--I'd play that guy in an adventure as a wheelchair-bound grappler in an instant, because it fits his concept. (Further concept: the price he paid the hag is every happy memory of his parents, but he cheated her of her price because it turns out he was an urchin raised on the streets. Now the hag has a grudge against, and grudging admiration for, him, and if he ever needs another wheelchair she's likely to price-gouge him twice as hard.)