Also, shouldn't invisible creatures be virtually undetectable to a person who can neither see or hear them (barring snowy terrain or flour shenanigans, ofc)?
I do not think most creatures can be completely silent. Breathing and walking make noise if you are close enough to the nose and floor. There is also disturbance in the air and vibrations through the floor. Maybe a normal human might not perceive them cause our senses suck, but an elf might be able to, and a small spider on the floor certainly can feel the vibration through the floor as we giant humans walk around.
[SNIPPED]
Re: Invisible creatures. Breathing and walking make noise, but a person who is completely deaf or in a zone of the Silence spell would not be able to hear anything whatsoever, which is the topic of this thread.
Mechanics and Lore are inter-related. If lore has no attachment to mechanics, you get a game where players don't know how to solve problems on their own or you get a game that is effectively a chess game with dice, like Warhammer. That is not an RPG. "Spideysense" a) does not exist in D&D, and b) doesn't actually help Spider-Man see opponents. It's a way for to help him dodge out of the way of imminent danger, not what he uses to swing from building to building or to decide where to aim his punches and kicks.
Actually, it is. Spider-Man has long been noted as having had no formal martial arts training, instead relying on his spider-sense to tell him where and how to hit enemies (explaining how he could use super strength against normal human foes without breaking bones or punch a fist-shaped hole in someone's torso) and aim his webs while swinging so he doesn't attach them to something that wouldn't be able to support his weight. When he lost his spider-sense but not his other powers in one story arc, he was so off his game that he could barely land a punch successfully until Iron Fist taught him martial art techniques that were specially designed for someone with Spider-Man's powers.
I used to read plenty of Spider-man comics. This never came up. Considering that different writers all have different takes of their own on widely recognizable characters, I'm not going to disagree with you on this.
However, that still has no more direct relation to Blindsight as it is used in 5E since Spidey Sense is significantly more powerful than Blindsight and there is no relationship between 5E Blindsight, lorewise, and the Marvel franchise, let alone a specific character like Spider-Man.
I agree that the suddenness of onset for the condition could reasonably play a role, but I can also understand if WotC would rather just not bother trying to justify that in the fiction and devote text to distinguishing between people who've been deaf all their lives vs deaf for a shorter time vs deaf suddenly as the result of a debuff. Just seems like a path that it's easier not to embark on in the first place by attaching loss of spellcasting capability to that condition.
Okay, but WotC does actually have "Blinded" as a condition, which inflicts very significant debuffs as a result. So why is it that "Deafened" has next to no impact on combat whatsoever? Also note that "blinded" and "deafened" are adjectives that imply a change of condition. This is not a character or creature that was born blind or deaf. I get that modern society tends to rely ever so much on sight, but the idea that suddenly not hearing anything does not impose any problems while trying to respond to a literal life-and-death situation baffles me.
I think humans (and I assume most other fantasy species too) rely a lot on sight for our perception of the world, far more than hearing. Beind deaf is crippling, but it is not as crippling as being blind, so blindness being more crippling as a condition makes sense. If a creature has blindsight based on hearing, and that creature is deafened, then if the GM wants to apply the blinded condition to the creature too, I think that is fair and reasonable.
Since nobody else is offering any homebrew suggestions to make Deafened condition more meaningful, here are a few off the top of my head. I don't actually recommend that all of these be added to rules, necessarily, but since I'm the only one brainstorming, I'm putting up just everything that comes to mind:
* Any spells that require more than 1 round to cast take twice as long. This includes Ritual casting.
Reason: the PC/NPC is not accustomed to not hearing their own voice while casting and this problem is pronounced enough with complex spells that they get muddled, so the caster needs more time to get it right.
* DEX saving throws no longer fully benefit from your proficiency bonus, getting only 1/2 the proficiency (rounded down).
Reason: Sudden loss of hearing is disorienting. Even moreso in the middle of combat. Also, sense of balance is somewhat correlated to being able to hear. In real life, this would apply to driving, as when there are unexpected movements by drivers or pedestrians and the driver is deaf or too busy listening to their cell phone.
* All bonuses to Initiative are cut in half. This includes both bonuses from your DEX modifier as well as from feats.
Reason: If you are not born deaf, losing hearing is a significant impediment to situational awareness and the ability to respond suffers.
* Invisible creatures are undetectable by you unless they leave signs of the location, such as tracks or drops of blood.
Reason: Being unable to either see or hear an invisible creature naturally makes it next to impossible to know whether they are in many situations.
* Attack rolls made while using the Blindfighting Fighting Style only benefits from 1/2 your Proficiency bonus.
Reason: A person who has learned this fighting style compensates for not using their eyes by using a combination of senses that includes hearing. Loss of hearing decreases the effectiveness of this style.
I agree that the suddenness of onset for the condition could reasonably play a role, but I can also understand if WotC would rather just not bother trying to justify that in the fiction and devote text to distinguishing between people who've been deaf all their lives vs deaf for a shorter time vs deaf suddenly as the result of a debuff. Just seems like a path that it's easier not to embark on in the first place by attaching loss of spellcasting capability to that condition.
Okay, but WotC does actually have "Blinded" as a condition, which inflicts very significant debuffs as a result. So why is it that "Deafened" has next to no impact on combat whatsoever? Also note that "blinded" and "deafened" are adjectives that imply a change of condition. This is not a character or creature that was born blind or deaf. I get that modern society tends to rely ever so much on sight, but the idea that suddenly not hearing anything does not impose any problems while trying to respond to a literal life-and-death situation baffles me.
There are plenty of spells that don't rely on sight though. You can be a functional, if impacted, spellcaster without that sense. (You can also be a decent martial, though you'll probably want to pick up Blind Fighting.)
In any event, I'm not saying that Deafness impacting spellcasting would be unjustifiable; it might even be fun to bring that back! But as far as why they didn't, all we really have are theories.
Stab your ears, now, try telling what you are saying... it isn't about non-hearing people being incapable, it is about sudden deafness interferes with even knowing if you are or aren't saying anything... People who have their hearing disrupted often can't even tell if they are saying anything or not, and will often be too loud, too quiet, or slur their words, because you react to hearing yourself and can't when you are deafened... a permanently deaf person will be more likely to be consistent than someone who has suddenly lost their ability to hear.
The premise is the sudden loss of hearing makes you more likely to mispronounce a word or put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. Not even deafened, Harry Potter uses Floo Powder and instead of going to Diagon Alley, he he goes Diagonally. If you can't hear, you can't be clear.
Stab your ears, now, try telling what you are saying... it isn't about non-hearing people being incapable, it is about sudden deafness interferes with even knowing if you are or aren't saying anything... People who have their hearing disrupted often can't even tell if they are saying anything or not, and will often be too loud, too quiet, or slur their words, because you react to hearing yourself and can't when you are deafened... a permanently deaf person will be more likely to be consistent than someone who has suddenly lost their ability to hear.
The premise is the sudden loss of hearing makes you more likely to mispronounce a word or put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. Not even deafened, Harry Potter uses Floo Powder and instead of going to Diagon Alley, he he goes Diagonally. If you can't hear, you can't be clear.
Being deaf does not mean you cannot feel the vibration of your own vocal chords. Deaf people are not completely incapable of verbal communication.
Stab your ears, now, try telling what you are saying... it isn't about non-hearing people being incapable, it is about sudden deafness interferes with even knowing if you are or aren't saying anything... People who have their hearing disrupted often can't even tell if they are saying anything or not, and will often be too loud, too quiet, or slur their words, because you react to hearing yourself and can't when you are deafened... a permanently deaf person will be more likely to be consistent than someone who has suddenly lost their ability to hear.
The premise is the sudden loss of hearing makes you more likely to mispronounce a word or put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. Not even deafened, Harry Potter uses Floo Powder and instead of going to Diagon Alley, he he goes Diagonally. If you can't hear, you can't be clear.
Being deaf does not mean you cannot feel the vibration of your own vocal chords. Deaf people are not completely incapable of verbal communication.
Not completely incapable, but as previously discussed, you're pretty unlikely to maintain the same control over pitch and tone you previously had without your primary means of gauging them, and some iterations of vocal components indicate that it takes that level of fine control to cast spells properly. If spell failure was still a thing, deafness increasing the failure range would be a good way to apply a debuff to that aspect of casting.
Stab your ears, now, try telling what you are saying... it isn't about non-hearing people being incapable, it is about sudden deafness interferes with even knowing if you are or aren't saying anything... People who have their hearing disrupted often can't even tell if they are saying anything or not, and will often be too loud, too quiet, or slur their words, because you react to hearing yourself and can't when you are deafened... a permanently deaf person will be more likely to be consistent than someone who has suddenly lost their ability to hear.
The premise is the sudden loss of hearing makes you more likely to mispronounce a word or put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. Not even deafened, Harry Potter uses Floo Powder and instead of going to Diagon Alley, he he goes Diagonally. If you can't hear, you can't be clear.
Being deaf does not mean you cannot feel the vibration of your own vocal chords. Deaf people are not completely incapable of verbal communication.
Not completely incapable, but as previously discussed, you're pretty unlikely to maintain the same control over pitch and tone you previously had without your primary means of gauging them, and some iterations of vocal components indicate that it takes that level of fine control to cast spells properly. If spell failure was still a thing, deafness increasing the failure range would be a good way to apply a debuff to that aspect of casting.
Plus, speaking the incantation to cast a spell requires significantly more precision than simply talking does.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
RE: Blindsight - a creature's statblock tells you if its blindsight is based on a particular sense, e.g. the Bat Echolocation ability. If such a line isn't present, the blindsight can't be turned off by turning off a particular sense.
No, deafened just makes you auto fail perception checks that requires hearing.
I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with boosting casters and mostly to do with streamlining the game. I'm not sure if it really makes I difference - I don't think I've been deafened at all so far in any of my games.
It's also arguably ableist; the assumption behind the spell failure in prior editions seems to have been a belief that non-hearing people aren't capable of speaking clearly or articulately.
TBF, if someone has suddenly been rendered deaf- which would be the usual circumstance where this rule would come into play,
Where in the rules does it say they have to have perfect pitch or tone to cast a spell?
Stab your ears, now, try telling what you are saying... it isn't about non-hearing people being incapable, it is about sudden deafness interferes with even knowing if you are or aren't saying anything... People who have their hearing disrupted often can't even tell if they are saying anything or not, and will often be too loud, too quiet, or slur their words, because you react to hearing yourself and can't when you are deafened... a permanently deaf person will be more likely to be consistent than someone who has suddenly lost their ability to hear.
The premise is the sudden loss of hearing makes you more likely to mispronounce a word or put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. Not even deafened, Harry Potter uses Floo Powder and instead of going to Diagon Alley, he he goes Diagonally. If you can't hear, you can't be clear.
Being deaf does not mean you cannot feel the vibration of your own vocal chords. Deaf people are not completely incapable of verbal communication.
Not completely incapable, but as previously discussed, you're pretty unlikely to maintain the same control over pitch and tone you previously had without your primary means of gauging them, and some iterations of vocal components indicate that it takes that level of fine control to cast spells properly. If spell failure was still a thing, deafness increasing the failure range would be a good way to apply a debuff to that aspect of casting.
Plus, speaking the incantation to cast a spell requires significantly more precision than simply talking does.
Again where does it say that in the rules? Sounds like something you can do homebrew if you want, but it isn't part of RAW.
RE: Blindsight - a creature's statblock tells you if its blindsight is based on a particular sense, e.g. the Bat Echolocation ability. If such a line isn't present, the blindsight can't be turned off by turning off a particular sense.
No, deafened just makes you auto fail perception checks that requires hearing.
I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with boosting casters and mostly to do with streamlining the game. I'm not sure if it really makes I difference - I don't think I've been deafened at all so far in any of my games.
It's also arguably ableist; the assumption behind the spell failure in prior editions seems to have been a belief that non-hearing people aren't capable of speaking clearly or articulately.
TBF, if someone has suddenly been rendered deaf- which would be the usual circumstance where this rule would come into play,
Where in the rules does it say they have to have perfect pitch or tone to cast a spell?
" Plus, speaking the incantation to cast a spell requires significantly more precision than simply talking does."
Again where does it say that in the rules? Sounds like something you can do homebrew if you want, but it isn't part of RAW.
It doesn't in 5e, which lacks a spell failure mechanic. We're discussing how the concept has been applied in prior editions and what narrative explanations have been given. And while the rules don't say it, quite a few of the novels written for D&D mention such things.
RE: Blindsight - a creature's statblock tells you if its blindsight is based on a particular sense, e.g. the Bat Echolocation ability. If such a line isn't present, the blindsight can't be turned off by turning off a particular sense.
No, deafened just makes you auto fail perception checks that requires hearing.
I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with boosting casters and mostly to do with streamlining the game. I'm not sure if it really makes I difference - I don't think I've been deafened at all so far in any of my games.
It's also arguably ableist; the assumption behind the spell failure in prior editions seems to have been a belief that non-hearing people aren't capable of speaking clearly or articulately.
TBF, if someone has suddenly been rendered deaf- which would be the usual circumstance where this rule would come into play,
Where in the rules does it say they have to have perfect pitch or tone to cast a spell?
" Plus, speaking the incantation to cast a spell requires significantly more precision than simply talking does."
Again where does it say that in the rules? Sounds like something you can do homebrew if you want, but it isn't part of RAW.
It doesn't in 5e, which lacks a spell failure mechanic. We're discussing how the concept has been applied in prior editions and what narrative explanations have been given. And while the rules don't say it, quite a few of the novels written for D&D mention such things.
If someone wants to homebrew it, go for it. But that's a significant bump in efficacy over the current to consider.
I don't even remember them being that specific in the older rules. And what constitutes 'quite a few novels', and which ones? There are lots of things in the novels that aren't in the rules.
Out of curiosity how long and how often does a players character get the blind or deaf condition??
Personally if was DM, would try to avoid inflicting either condition on a players character, especially to the point of needing to create/expand on how either condition functions for that brief moment. However if it was a permanent condition affecting the players character, then I would be happy to discuss and sort out during session 0, so all are on same page.
As for everywhere else, wouldn't the affects be conditional to the situation and as long as it doesn't hinder the story, does it matter as anything more then story fluff.
I don't remember either condition coming up in any of my games. Maybe once or twice at the most, then?
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I used to read plenty of Spider-man comics. This never came up. Considering that different writers all have different takes of their own on widely recognizable characters, I'm not going to disagree with you on this.
However, that still has no more direct relation to Blindsight as it is used in 5E since Spidey Sense is significantly more powerful than Blindsight and there is no relationship between 5E Blindsight, lorewise, and the Marvel franchise, let alone a specific character like Spider-Man.
I think humans (and I assume most other fantasy species too) rely a lot on sight for our perception of the world, far more than hearing. Beind deaf is crippling, but it is not as crippling as being blind, so blindness being more crippling as a condition makes sense. If a creature has blindsight based on hearing, and that creature is deafened, then if the GM wants to apply the blinded condition to the creature too, I think that is fair and reasonable.
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Since nobody else is offering any homebrew suggestions to make Deafened condition more meaningful, here are a few off the top of my head. I don't actually recommend that all of these be added to rules, necessarily, but since I'm the only one brainstorming, I'm putting up just everything that comes to mind:
* Any spells that require more than 1 round to cast take twice as long. This includes Ritual casting.
Reason: the PC/NPC is not accustomed to not hearing their own voice while casting and this problem is pronounced enough with complex spells that they get muddled, so the caster needs more time to get it right.
* DEX saving throws no longer fully benefit from your proficiency bonus, getting only 1/2 the proficiency (rounded down).
Reason: Sudden loss of hearing is disorienting. Even moreso in the middle of combat. Also, sense of balance is somewhat correlated to being able to hear. In real life, this would apply to driving, as when there are unexpected movements by drivers or pedestrians and the driver is deaf or too busy listening to their cell phone.
* All bonuses to Initiative are cut in half. This includes both bonuses from your DEX modifier as well as from feats.
Reason: If you are not born deaf, losing hearing is a significant impediment to situational awareness and the ability to respond suffers.
* Invisible creatures are undetectable by you unless they leave signs of the location, such as tracks or drops of blood.
Reason: Being unable to either see or hear an invisible creature naturally makes it next to impossible to know whether they are in many situations.
* Attack rolls made while using the Blindfighting Fighting Style only benefits from 1/2 your Proficiency bonus.
Reason: A person who has learned this fighting style compensates for not using their eyes by using a combination of senses that includes hearing. Loss of hearing decreases the effectiveness of this style.
There are plenty of spells that don't rely on sight though. You can be a functional, if impacted, spellcaster without that sense. (You can also be a decent martial, though you'll probably want to pick up Blind Fighting.)
In any event, I'm not saying that Deafness impacting spellcasting would be unjustifiable; it might even be fun to bring that back! But as far as why they didn't, all we really have are theories.
Stab your ears, now, try telling what you are saying... it isn't about non-hearing people being incapable, it is about sudden deafness interferes with even knowing if you are or aren't saying anything... People who have their hearing disrupted often can't even tell if they are saying anything or not, and will often be too loud, too quiet, or slur their words, because you react to hearing yourself and can't when you are deafened... a permanently deaf person will be more likely to be consistent than someone who has suddenly lost their ability to hear.
The premise is the sudden loss of hearing makes you more likely to mispronounce a word or put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. Not even deafened, Harry Potter uses Floo Powder and instead of going to Diagon Alley, he he goes Diagonally. If you can't hear, you can't be clear.
Being deaf does not mean you cannot feel the vibration of your own vocal chords. Deaf people are not completely incapable of verbal communication.
Not completely incapable, but as previously discussed, you're pretty unlikely to maintain the same control over pitch and tone you previously had without your primary means of gauging them, and some iterations of vocal components indicate that it takes that level of fine control to cast spells properly. If spell failure was still a thing, deafness increasing the failure range would be a good way to apply a debuff to that aspect of casting.
Plus, speaking the incantation to cast a spell requires significantly more precision than simply talking does.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Where in the rules does it say they have to have perfect pitch or tone to cast a spell?
Again where does it say that in the rules? Sounds like something you can do homebrew if you want, but it isn't part of RAW.
It doesn't in 5e, which lacks a spell failure mechanic. We're discussing how the concept has been applied in prior editions and what narrative explanations have been given. And while the rules don't say it, quite a few of the novels written for D&D mention such things.
If someone wants to homebrew it, go for it. But that's a significant bump in efficacy over the current to consider.
I don't even remember them being that specific in the older rules. And what constitutes 'quite a few novels', and which ones? There are lots of things in the novels that aren't in the rules.
Out of curiosity how long and how often does a players character get the blind or deaf condition??
Personally if was DM, would try to avoid inflicting either condition on a players character, especially to the point of needing to create/expand on how either condition functions for that brief moment. However if it was a permanent condition affecting the players character, then I would be happy to discuss and sort out during session 0, so all are on same page.
As for everywhere else, wouldn't the affects be conditional to the situation and as long as it doesn't hinder the story, does it matter as anything more then story fluff.
I don't remember either condition coming up in any of my games. Maybe once or twice at the most, then?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.