My character is blind. She was blinded by her father at the age of ten. She has been training in the martial arts. What abilities or disadvantages should I add to this character before she begins her adventures.
Effectively blinded. If the DM is willing to work with you on the character, saying she has undergone training to overcome her blindness, for example, I'd go with automatic failure on all ability checks requiring sight, but advantage on all perception checks that use the other senses. I'd then completely remove the disadvantage and advantage for attacks. Also, you're immune to the blinded condition.
excellent. She is very skilled. She was a street urchin before she was blinded and then afterwords she was befriended by a monk and taught survival skills and martial arts. She is the offspring of a Celestial that was raped by a demon lord. Her mother thinks she died at childbirth when one of her people took her and left her with a poor couple. When they died she was on the streets.
So basically share the backstory with the DM and they will help me make adjustments. Thanks for the response.
A couple of years ago, my daughter designed a blind earth genasi fighter for our home game, and I (as her DM) asked for guidance on enworld. You might find my thread there helpful, although some of the details will obviously be different.
If I was feeling kind, I might do something crazy like 5ft blind-sence to reflect the training, or even tremor-sence (not sure if that one made it from 3.5 to 5e) to give spacial awareness, but still leave the issues with identifying foes and handling sight based tasks.
Just thematically, I think a blind character would be pretty attracted to a powerful being who offered a way to have sight...like say via a Chain Warlock :)
Depending on what class(es) you take, you'll want to have a sit-down with the DM about spells and targeting, too. There are a lot of spells that specify picking a target "you can see", where the spell itself plausibly doesn't need that restriction. Animal Messenger, for example. By RAW, you have to be able to see the target. But why couldn't a blind spell caster, holding a small animal in her hand, be able to cast that spell? It's not like you can't identify which animal you're picking at that point. and seeing the animal has no other effect on the spell's function. As a DM I'd easily allow touch to work in almost all instances of spells that specifically require you to be able to see the target.
Give any class the Ritual Caster feat and grab the Find Familiar spell. You can use the familiar's sight/hearing. Or make a Monk and homebrew a feat to turn you into Daredevil :P
My character is blind. She was blinded by her father at the age of ten. She has been training in the martial arts. What abilities or disadvantages should I add to this character before she begins her adventures.
As someone who is blind, I can tell you she would know general areas of where enemies are, but she would not know facial expressions or upper body movement. Though she would be very skilled at finding things and basically have advantage both at night and in dark areas where the rest of the party cannot see. I would also say she would dream on vision as long as she is under 45 y/o. She would also have flashbacks and PTSD of the loss of her vision (if you are willing to explore that type of path
My character is blind. She was blinded by her father at the age of ten. She has been training in the martial arts. What abilities or disadvantages should I add to this character before she begins her adventures.
As someone who is blind, I can tell you she would know general areas of where enemies are, but she would not know facial expressions or upper body movement. Though she would be very skilled at finding things and basically have advantage both at night and in dark areas where the rest of the party cannot see. I would also say she would dream on vision as long as she is under 45 y/o. She would also have flashbacks and PTSD of the loss of her vision (if you are willing to explore that type of path
Would she have 'advantage' the game mechanic in dark areas, or would she just not have disadvantage like the rest of the party? If she's totally blind, she would have the same skills in the dark as she would in the light of day, right? So her abilities wouldn't tail off in the dark, but she wouldn't get better either--i.e. the Advantage game mechanic.
My character is blind. She was blinded by her father at the age of ten. She has been training in the martial arts. What abilities or disadvantages should I add to this character before she begins her adventures.
As someone who is blind, I can tell you she would know general areas of where enemies are, but she would not know facial expressions or upper body movement. Though she would be very skilled at finding things and basically have advantage both at night and in dark areas where the rest of the party cannot see. I would also say she would dream on vision as long as she is under 45 y/o. She would also have flashbacks and PTSD of the loss of her vision (if you are willing to explore that type of path
Would she have 'advantage' the game mechanic in dark areas, or would she just not have disadvantage like the rest of the party? If she's totally blind, she would have the same skills in the dark as she would in the light of day, right? So her abilities wouldn't tail off in the dark, but she wouldn't get better either--i.e. the Advantage game mechanic.
Theoretically the enemy can't defend itself against your attacks, so you could theoretically still get advantage in darkness if the blindness mechanic is somehow negated for attacks.
I think the only want to do this is to homebrew. The easiest way to do that is with a feat or class modification.
Something Like Blind Sense - Requires Monk:
Character is permanently Blind.
Automatically fail all vision related checks
Advantage on all auditory related checks.
You can sense vital areas on your enemy. Add your Wisdom Modifier to all attack and damage roles. Additionally, add your Wisdom Modifier to all Spell Attack and Spell damage roles.
You may disrupt the natural Ki in an enemy and use their own Ki against them. Once per turn, you may use an enemy's own ki against them. Once per turn you may use an ability that uses Ki without spending a Ki point. You may use this ability a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier per long rest.
Theoretically that would balance out the blind bit. You still have disadvantage on roles, but you attack harder when you hit. You fail vision checks, have advantage on hearing checks. Your Ki related abilities will be less effective, but now you have a way to use Ki strikes when you have no Ki. And the blindness still impacts the way the character is played. I have no idea if this is a balanced feat. My gut says it's a really good feat, but still not that OP. I'll do some math later.
I think this could be a very interesting Character to DM as aDuet!
I think describing scenes solely in terms of sound, smell, kinesthetic sense, and - in the case of a Monk - Ki sense ( if your DM is homebrewing such for this Character ) could be very interesting.
I know you're Playing with more than one other person, but I think this could be very interesting as a 1:1 DM:Player campaign.
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My character is blind. She was blinded by her father at the age of ten. She has been training in the martial arts. What abilities or disadvantages should I add to this character before she begins her adventures.
As someone who is blind, I can tell you she would know general areas of where enemies are, but she would not know facial expressions or upper body movement. Though she would be very skilled at finding things and basically have advantage both at night and in dark areas where the rest of the party cannot see. I would also say she would dream on vision as long as she is under 45 y/o. She would also have flashbacks and PTSD of the loss of her vision (if you are willing to explore that type of path
Would she have 'advantage' the game mechanic in dark areas, or would she just not have disadvantage like the rest of the party? If she's totally blind, she would have the same skills in the dark as she would in the light of day, right? So her abilities wouldn't tail off in the dark, but she wouldn't get better either--i.e. the Advantage game mechanic.
Theoretically the enemy can't defend itself against your attacks, so you could theoretically still get advantage in darkness if the blindness mechanic is somehow negated for attacks.
So the blind character doesn't have advantage, but if she has a way to fight normally without disadvantage (which I think you'd have to do to make the character survivable), then she'd still not have disadvantage in darkness. So then if the opponents couldn't see in the darkness, she would have advantage. Whereas with others, if they have disadvantage in the dark, they would just cancel out with the opponents who also can't see. Okay, I gotcha. :)
If the opponents can see in the dark, then she is just fighting normally. But importantly without disadvantage.
That would be the key for this character--being blind is interesting for an RPG character because it should make the character have to do things differently. But you also don't want every attack to be with disadvantage. Maybe no disadvantage in melee, but ranged attacks are harder? I think I would rewatch Rogue One for some ideas. :)
Sorry to Necro an old thread, but I read this a while back and just had an idea that won't be too limiting. This is a cool character concept and I thought I'd comment on it in case someone else wanted to play this iconic character.
Give the character tremorsense. "tremorsense can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that the monster and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance. Tremorsense can’t be used to detect flying or incorporeal creatures." The way I'm interpreting this is the player could effectively see anything that is on the ground while the character is on the ground, but be effectively blind to anything floating above it or on a different surface. The giant eagle is effectively invisible, but the invisible stalker effectively is not.
This would be a big advantage to fighting invisible creatures, but a big disadvantage to fighting flying creatures. It's a decent trade-off I think. Creatures on the ground while you are on the ground would be seen, but anything not in the ground would be unseen. You could hear a flying creatures flapping it's wings, but otherwise be completely blind with regards to it. g
You wouldn't get disadvantage in darkness and your attacks technically would get advantage against any creatures in darkness that can't see in it. That's a huge bonus that should probably be offset by some other mechanic. Perhaps the monk loses the ability to catch projectiles but could still deflect it. Perhaps instead projectiles attacks against the monk have advantage. Way of Shadow would probably be extremely strong with this character because of her ability to cast the darkness spell. A solution might be to have magical darkness also disrupt tremorsense for the monk negating that obviously OP bonus. A better solution perhaps would be to throw creatures at the monk that can deal with it. Creatures with true sight or the ability to dispell the darkness. That would probably be more fun for the monk. When it works, it's amazing. Just create encounters where it's not always going to work.
As for skills checks, you are blind. You fail all sight related checks. You could probably find ways to use hearing instead of sight in certain situations. Like hearing the assassin sneaking up on you instead of seeing it. Perhaps when looking for a secret door, you can tap your staff on the ground and listen for differences, making a hearing check to find it.
In normal encounters there wouldn't be any major changes in fighting. Invisible creatures would be easier for the blind monk to fight while flying ones would pose the same challenge that the invisible creatures once posed. Even more challenging actually as they're also flying.
Even without homebrew or house rules, I took on this challenge and I have been building a character based around skills and spells that enhance perception. I figure even a blind person can cast detect magic or see invisibility and increase their perception in different ways. Since you already have disadvantage on attack rolls, no need to worry about things like sunlight sensitivity. And since other creatures will have advantage attacking you, you may as well focus on ways to negate that, like protection from evil and good. I built a character at level 4 to get their first ASI and develop a small collection of spells. I also picked the rogue arcane trickster archetype because I wanted to primarily be able to become hidden with all the benefits associated therein and also have some spellcasting ability as well. For combat spells, I tried to primarily pick spells that were saving throw dependent so that my disadvantage on attacks would not matter. A lot of spells require you to see the target, which would be an issue unless you had your perception enhanced through magic. There are definite disadvantages, but at the same time, things like attacking while prone and attacking invisible enemies aren't any disadvantage anymore.
I wonder how practical this character would be to play. It's interesting.
I’d definitely give her a familiar you can look through if your DM wants you to stick to the ‘blinded’ case by the rules. I’d honestly see if you can speak to your DM and see if there’s something you can do around this, like having hearing that can overcome the loss of sight up to a certain range, which will effectively give them a form of truesight in that range to make up for it? (Like a character can’t SOUND lighter if they’re using disguise self, you could hear if they’re wearing cloth or armour, that kind of thing?)
I am toying with the idea of putting my players in the situation where they must find a follower of Tyr the maimed god, but they find out the all of his followers have been dead for hundreds of years. So one of them must become a follower by voluntarily blinding themselves and cutting off a hand to show fealty to him. I plan of giving then having Tyr grant them some sort of sight replacement where they can see as if they were in the ethereal plane. Plus giving them a badass weapon from Tyr himself.
A). The character may not live long and or be a big + to the party.
B). But man—the story would be epic if they survive. ‘I played a *@!&$@!& BLIND CHARACTER TO LEVEL 14...”. LIKE—everything you do which would be minor to a normal character—is now bragging rights!!
Again...if it survives. If the party supports them and helps out vs. saying—ok Stevie wonder....you’re on your own with this higher ground.
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My character is blind. She was blinded by her father at the age of ten. She has been training in the martial arts. What abilities or disadvantages should I add to this character before she begins her adventures.
Effectively blinded. If the DM is willing to work with you on the character, saying she has undergone training to overcome her blindness, for example, I'd go with automatic failure on all ability checks requiring sight, but advantage on all perception checks that use the other senses. I'd then completely remove the disadvantage and advantage for attacks. Also, you're immune to the blinded condition.
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excellent. She is very skilled. She was a street urchin before she was blinded and then afterwords she was befriended by a monk and taught survival skills and martial arts. She is the offspring of a Celestial that was raped by a demon lord. Her mother thinks she died at childbirth when one of her people took her and left her with a poor couple. When they died she was on the streets.
So basically share the backstory with the DM and they will help me make adjustments. Thanks for the response.
A couple of years ago, my daughter designed a blind earth genasi fighter for our home game, and I (as her DM) asked for guidance on enworld. You might find my thread there helpful, although some of the details will obviously be different.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
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I created a blind character using the varient human and the homebrew blind fighting feat.
If I was feeling kind, I might do something crazy like 5ft blind-sence to reflect the training, or even tremor-sence (not sure if that one made it from 3.5 to 5e) to give spacial awareness, but still leave the issues with identifying foes and handling sight based tasks.
Just thematically, I think a blind character would be pretty attracted to a powerful being who offered a way to have sight...like say via a Chain Warlock :)
Depending on what class(es) you take, you'll want to have a sit-down with the DM about spells and targeting, too. There are a lot of spells that specify picking a target "you can see", where the spell itself plausibly doesn't need that restriction. Animal Messenger, for example. By RAW, you have to be able to see the target. But why couldn't a blind spell caster, holding a small animal in her hand, be able to cast that spell? It's not like you can't identify which animal you're picking at that point. and seeing the animal has no other effect on the spell's function. As a DM I'd easily allow touch to work in almost all instances of spells that specifically require you to be able to see the target.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
Give any class the Ritual Caster feat and grab the Find Familiar spell. You can use the familiar's sight/hearing. Or make a Monk and homebrew a feat to turn you into Daredevil :P
As someone who is blind, I can tell you she would know general areas of where enemies are, but she would not know facial expressions or upper body movement. Though she would be very skilled at finding things and basically have advantage both at night and in dark areas where the rest of the party cannot see. I would also say she would dream on vision as long as she is under 45 y/o. She would also have flashbacks and PTSD of the loss of her vision (if you are willing to explore that type of path
Would she have 'advantage' the game mechanic in dark areas, or would she just not have disadvantage like the rest of the party? If she's totally blind, she would have the same skills in the dark as she would in the light of day, right? So her abilities wouldn't tail off in the dark, but she wouldn't get better either--i.e. the Advantage game mechanic.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
Theoretically the enemy can't defend itself against your attacks, so you could theoretically still get advantage in darkness if the blindness mechanic is somehow negated for attacks.
I think the only want to do this is to homebrew. The easiest way to do that is with a feat or class modification.
Something Like Blind Sense - Requires Monk:
Theoretically that would balance out the blind bit. You still have disadvantage on roles, but you attack harder when you hit. You fail vision checks, have advantage on hearing checks. Your Ki related abilities will be less effective, but now you have a way to use Ki strikes when you have no Ki. And the blindness still impacts the way the character is played. I have no idea if this is a balanced feat. My gut says it's a really good feat, but still not that OP. I'll do some math later.
I think this could be a very interesting Character to DM as a Duet!
I think describing scenes solely in terms of sound, smell, kinesthetic sense, and - in the case of a Monk - Ki sense ( if your DM is homebrewing such for this Character ) could be very interesting.
I know you're Playing with more than one other person, but I think this could be very interesting as a 1:1 DM:Player campaign.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
So the blind character doesn't have advantage, but if she has a way to fight normally without disadvantage (which I think you'd have to do to make the character survivable), then she'd still not have disadvantage in darkness. So then if the opponents couldn't see in the darkness, she would have advantage. Whereas with others, if they have disadvantage in the dark, they would just cancel out with the opponents who also can't see. Okay, I gotcha. :)
If the opponents can see in the dark, then she is just fighting normally. But importantly without disadvantage.
That would be the key for this character--being blind is interesting for an RPG character because it should make the character have to do things differently. But you also don't want every attack to be with disadvantage. Maybe no disadvantage in melee, but ranged attacks are harder? I think I would rewatch Rogue One for some ideas. :)
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
Maybe the character learned limited blindsense
Sorry to Necro an old thread, but I read this a while back and just had an idea that won't be too limiting. This is a cool character concept and I thought I'd comment on it in case someone else wanted to play this iconic character.
Give the character tremorsense. "tremorsense can detect and pinpoint the origin of vibrations within a specific radius, provided that the monster and the source of the vibrations are in contact with the same ground or substance. Tremorsense can’t be used to detect flying or incorporeal creatures." The way I'm interpreting this is the player could effectively see anything that is on the ground while the character is on the ground, but be effectively blind to anything floating above it or on a different surface. The giant eagle is effectively invisible, but the invisible stalker effectively is not.
This would be a big advantage to fighting invisible creatures, but a big disadvantage to fighting flying creatures. It's a decent trade-off I think. Creatures on the ground while you are on the ground would be seen, but anything not in the ground would be unseen. You could hear a flying creatures flapping it's wings, but otherwise be completely blind with regards to it. g
You wouldn't get disadvantage in darkness and your attacks technically would get advantage against any creatures in darkness that can't see in it. That's a huge bonus that should probably be offset by some other mechanic. Perhaps the monk loses the ability to catch projectiles but could still deflect it. Perhaps instead projectiles attacks against the monk have advantage. Way of Shadow would probably be extremely strong with this character because of her ability to cast the darkness spell. A solution might be to have magical darkness also disrupt tremorsense for the monk negating that obviously OP bonus. A better solution perhaps would be to throw creatures at the monk that can deal with it. Creatures with true sight or the ability to dispell the darkness. That would probably be more fun for the monk. When it works, it's amazing. Just create encounters where it's not always going to work.
As for skills checks, you are blind. You fail all sight related checks. You could probably find ways to use hearing instead of sight in certain situations. Like hearing the assassin sneaking up on you instead of seeing it. Perhaps when looking for a secret door, you can tap your staff on the ground and listen for differences, making a hearing check to find it.
In normal encounters there wouldn't be any major changes in fighting. Invisible creatures would be easier for the blind monk to fight while flying ones would pose the same challenge that the invisible creatures once posed. Even more challenging actually as they're also flying.
Even without homebrew or house rules, I took on this challenge and I have been building a character based around skills and spells that enhance perception. I figure even a blind person can cast detect magic or see invisibility and increase their perception in different ways. Since you already have disadvantage on attack rolls, no need to worry about things like sunlight sensitivity. And since other creatures will have advantage attacking you, you may as well focus on ways to negate that, like protection from evil and good. I built a character at level 4 to get their first ASI and develop a small collection of spells. I also picked the rogue arcane trickster archetype because I wanted to primarily be able to become hidden with all the benefits associated therein and also have some spellcasting ability as well. For combat spells, I tried to primarily pick spells that were saving throw dependent so that my disadvantage on attacks would not matter. A lot of spells require you to see the target, which would be an issue unless you had your perception enhanced through magic. There are definite disadvantages, but at the same time, things like attacking while prone and attacking invisible enemies aren't any disadvantage anymore.
I wonder how practical this character would be to play. It's interesting.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I’d definitely give her a familiar you can look through if your DM wants you to stick to the ‘blinded’ case by the rules. I’d honestly see if you can speak to your DM and see if there’s something you can do around this, like having hearing that can overcome the loss of sight up to a certain range, which will effectively give them a form of truesight in that range to make up for it? (Like a character can’t SOUND lighter if they’re using disguise self, you could hear if they’re wearing cloth or armour, that kind of thing?)
I am toying with the idea of putting my players in the situation where they must find a follower of Tyr the maimed god, but they find out the all of his followers have been dead for hundreds of years. So one of them must become a follower by voluntarily blinding themselves and cutting off a hand to show fealty to him. I plan of giving then having Tyr grant them some sort of sight replacement where they can see as if they were in the ethereal plane. Plus giving them a badass weapon from Tyr himself.
A). The character may not live long and or be a big + to the party.
B). But man—the story would be epic if they survive. ‘I played a *@!&$@!& BLIND CHARACTER TO LEVEL 14...”. LIKE—everything you do which would be minor to a normal character—is now bragging rights!!
Again...if it survives. If the party supports them and helps out vs. saying—ok Stevie wonder....you’re on your own with this higher ground.