Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
Another player who was at the table during the incident sent me this meme after the problem player in question (they had a history) left the group chat.
Felt like sharing it here because I'm sure more people should keep this kind of thing in mind.
Depending on the magic it might not make sense because people could heal everything, although you could explain it away by saying that the character could not afford a skilled healer.
I looked it up and the first known wheelchair that you could move yourself in was invented in the 1600s, which was after firearms became relatively common.
I'm gonna devil's advocate this for a second.
Unless you're very poor (which is fair in most fantasy settings there's always poor people) magic kinda negates disabilities.
Like is there no spell that can cure these disabilities?
With that said to have that big of an issue with it just makes you an ass
Lesser restoration (5e 2nd lvl) can cure blindness, but I'm not sure if it can restore destroyed or removed eyes. So it would depend on the kind of blindness, and if it was at all magical in nature. That and from a few threads the estimate for its cost is around 40 gold. For a lot of "commoners" their income is anywhere from poor (60sp) to well off(1gp) per month. So I can easily see many mid tier peasants not having the money to have lesser restoration cast on them. Especially if they live in some tiny village where there isn't a temple in town, like you would have in a city.
Even in a city if the head priest is high level, and has say, 4 other actual clerics in the building not just priests, thats 18 casts of lesser restoration (wasting high lvl slots on a lvl 20 cleric) and maybe 5 per 5th level cleric. So 38 a day. In a city with tens of thousands of citizens with many myriad medical issues. Sure maybe there are 4 or 5 temples, but its still just a numbers issue at some point.
The dnd economy is a bit wonky and its magic system is difficult to match with the world sometimes, esp high magic settings, but I think the sheer scale of the population of commoners and non magic users sort of makes it pretty understandable that disabilities would still exist everywhere except the very wealthy or capable(adventurers themselves).
This of course all depends on what level of magic you have in your world. If it's very high magic then maybe there are a lot less disabilities, but those that exist are less "im blind from basic eye deterioriation" and more "goblins tore my eyes out as a child and it'll take a decently capable cleric to fix this, and also I'm blind so I make very little money so I'm SoL"
I'm no Dungeon Master but when a PC has their limb ripped off, isn't the magic that is required to restore the limb kept behind quite a high spellcasting level? And the cost of the materials might be out of reach to more like "Michigan poor" than just "Dharavi poor".
7th level spells, yes. Most people who get to a high enough level to use those spells are busy with politics or preventing world ending horrors.
Im kind of ambivalent on this.
On one hand, ~medieval times, which are usually the general era and technology level the average fantasy setting plays in, have no concept of disability and people who have one are usually ostracized and/or begging in the streets. Blindness may be on the more tolerated side of things, but deformities or developmental abnormalities are definitely not accepted. Also, if there is magic why wouldn’t they use it to cure it?
On the other hand, it’s a fantasy roleplay setting and the primary function is to be fun. So if everyone agrees it shouldn’t be a problem to have a scenario with it, more power to you
I don't know where people like you get their ideas about medieval times, but even if you confine your view to a fairly narrow part of history and the world you're still wrong... Disability was a huge part of life as one would imagine of a relatively violent and hard world with little medical technology. Blindness, deafness, muteness, lameness, mental illness and physical deformity were all facts of life then as they are today even if the causes and treatments were not as understood. Varying degrees and types of what would now be called disabilities were very common among the peasantry and less common but much better cared for among the wealthy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_in_the_Middle_Ages
Heck, the Hapsburgs inbred themselves to extinction over several hundred years along with a host of physical deformities.
While of course there is a storied history of monasteries sheltering the sick and disabled and of leper colonies, most people with disabilities in medieval Europe lived within the community, working where they could and being supported and cared for by their community and families where they couldn't. Begging obviously was where some ended up but was not the default.
It depends on the tone of the setting. Someone who gets their leg broken in a Forgotten Realms game can usually find a small-time priest to cast Cure Wounds on them, preventing most disabilities that aren't from birth. Someone who gets their leg broken in Warhammer Fantasy has to hope within their gimped traveling distance that there's a priest of the correct faith capable of appeasing the gods for the healing to happen, before their detriments become permanent. As such, having a disabled character in a game with more accessible healthcare requires an extra degree of explanation, on top of the PCs' and players' emotional response to someone being so downtrodden. The circumstances of their ailment, who or what was responsible, how they see their ailment and work around it, all are weights on the players' suspension of disbelief that a GM has to take into account that they generally otherwise wouldn't with John Miller, the able-bodied dude who runs the mill with a wife, three kids, and a problem with rats stealing the grain that he mills. It's like a Chekov's Gun in that sort of way, the GM as a storyteller surely wouldn't spend the effort to decide that an NPC has a trait that is notably separate from the default without it being somehow relevant to the plot. The mage asks the party to do a quest for their magical research, a general asks the party to do a quest for national security, and a person in a wheelchair... what desire do you give them that wouldn't be misconstrued as able-ist or a waste of that character trait? It's very difficult, often comes with an air of making some kind of a statement, either that they're a writer capable enough to wear disabled-face without it being offensive, or taking a preachy high-ground telling people a message about human sympathy, determination, and adaptability that they've already been made well aware of by the existence of popular culture.
I'm dreaming of a VR game with a disabled wizard who is confined to a chair and uses telekinesis or teleportation to move around. That would give the game a lore reason for VR locomotion.