Combat wheelchairs

[Mellack]

To me this boils down in part to not understanding the community for which this is intended. We know already that some people who could gain their hearing back, refuse cochlear implants because they don't see being deaf as something to "cure". I watched an interesting documentary on exoskeleton legs, and more then a few of those interviewed stated quite plainly that they preferred their wheelchair and had 0 interest in the new technology. That might not make sense to many, but it doesn't have to. Especially when talking about ableism, I don't believe I really get a say in telling a person what the ideal fantasy character for them should be. It might include cool exoskeleton legs, a wheelchair, or maybe just playing a character that doesn't have the issue at all.

So what this boils down to for me, is if you have a player who wants to be the charging barbarian, but in a wheelchair because that's the fantasy that's cool for them, then that's what is cool for them. You don't have to understand it, or identify with it yourself. It's not some agenda that you're being forced to adopt. It's just an option for someone who wants the character they're playing to represent them.

And, no it shouldn't need to come with a bunch of drawbacks because that's "realistic", because that's not how we do that. It's adjacent to the reason that we don't force a person who wants to be a 5'1" character to take a penalty to their strength. If someone wants to play a short really strong character we let them, because that's fulfilling some role their interested in. If you have someone who wants to play the heroic knight in a wheelchair because that's the fantasy their going for, penalizing it is just an underhanded way of saying "yeah, I don't want you doing this, so I'm gonna make it basically not worth it to do that".

One last thing. I feel like sometimes we get caught up in this idea of, "well, if I allow this one person to have this, I got to fit an entire industry of it into my world", and that's simply false. Maybe that character is the only person with that tech. Maybe they themselves made it, or they have a friend who made it, and that's the only person who knows how to build this. In that world, this becomes a tiny blip of an exception. I do that kinda stuff all the time with my players. I'm not a huge fan of the UA ranger who shape shifts into a tree, but I'm letting my player, play that class, and their loving it. It doesn't mean, my world my now contain a bunch of other rangers who can also do this. He's the exception. Their's 1 ranger in my entire world who dedicated themselves to the forest to such a degree that they can become a tree and it's him.

Much of what you discussed can more easily and efficiently be handled narratively. Just describe them as being in a wheelchair, but mechanically everything works the same. There is no mechanical difference between being 5' tall or 7' tall. Many of the complaints here seem to be that this was instead made far more difficult by giving mechanical rules, including making the chair better than normal characters.

Also, the listed chairs are given an in-world story of being common enough to be found easily in any city. So the author seems to be directly working against such stories as you suggest.