I have seen several people try to make blind characters or ask how to make them, and most of the time they give up or bend the rules because being blind comes with a lot of disadvantages. But if anyone still wants to be a blinded character, here is a build that I think might work. Please notify me if it has serious flaws or if you see a better way to do this.
First be an Eldritch Knight and get the find familiar spell. I would suggest a bat or an owl as your familiar. Out of combat, you can use this to see, but it takes an action to use and can't be done in combat. Still, it can communicate with you telepathically, so it could give you directions and warn you of dangers you can't see. Also, as a bonus action, you can command it to take the help action which can cancel the disadvantage you have because you are blind.
For your fighting style, I would choose blind fighting from Tasha's Cauldron so that you have blindsight out to 10 ft. This should cancel out any melee dangers you come across, and allows you to function pretty normally out of combat.
For your race, I would pick the sort-of-new Unearthed Arcana dwarf for One Dnd. It gives you limited tremorsense which gives you another option for sight in case your other abilities fail for some reason. It can't be relied upon as your go to option though because flying creatures would be invisible to you, it has limited use, and some DMs may not allow that race as an option. If you can't use that race, I would suggest a race with proficiency in perception. The Wildhunt Shifter gives you advantage on Wisdom checks which would help you navigate and enemies can't have advantage on attack rolls against you while within 30 ft of you.
Since this build is for a blind melee fighter, I would suggest you use a shield and have heavy armor so that if your blindness causes enemies to have advantage on attacks against you, you still have a high armor class to protect you.
A large weakness with this build is that you would perform very poorly with ranged weapons and attacking a flying monster would be very difficult. Another thing to point out, is that blindness can be cured with lesser restoration which is a pretty low level spell. If you want to keep your blindness, you probably want to make it so that only a wish spell or other high level blindness can cure you. Or you could say that lesser restoration only cures you of your blindness for a short while and then you lose your sight again.
If this helps anyone fulfill their desire to play a sightless character, you're welcome. If there are major flaws in this build or ways that it could be better, please let me know.
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Wouldn't it still allow a blind character to see for a certain amount of time?
I would rule that the answer is likely no, depending on the source of a creature’s blindness. A person who’s straight-up missing their eyes or have gashes across eyes that they do have won’t be granted sight by a 2nd-level spell: regenerate would be necessary for that. Since blindness/deafness doesn’t specify the manner of blindness it places upon a creature, I would consider lesser restoration to be valid in that case.
Another thing to do with this character would either be a variant human to pick up the alert feat, or just get the feat normally. Alert will give you higher initiative, you can't be surprised while conscious, and other creatures don't gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being unseen by you. All creatures are unseen by you but none of them would have advantage against you. However, if a spell like faerie fire or some other effect that gives others advantage against you affects you, it would still count because it only stops advantages as a result of being unseen by you.
We had a player try this in a campaign and it worked well for close in encounters.
He was a variant human with the Alert feat and a battle master fighter with Blind Fighting. The party would tell him which direction to go to find an opponent. Just get him within 10 feet and he would do the rest. Outside of combat he would just follow us around. It was a fun build and added to roleplay since teamwork was critical.
That worked well on the jungle island we started on because we never had a long range encounter. Good in dungeons too. Later we were rescued by a Spelljammer and the build wasn't useful anymore, so the player rolled up a new character.
A blind character with Alert and Blind Fighting can be fun but only in the right campaign.
Why put so much effort into making a 'Blind' character if you then go out of your way to provide the character as many forms of sight as possible that aren't just regular eyeballs? Workarounds for temporary conditions are one thing, but if you're layering a familar, Blind Fighting, Tremorsense, and more to negate and nullify the penalties from blinded...just don't play a blind character to start with?
If someone wants to do the whole Blind Zen master thing, someone so in tune with their surroundings that their being blind doesn't really affect them...then don't be blinded. Play the character normally in combat and use the narrative to do the Blind master bit. Put a book in front of the guy and he looks at you funny, take him to an art gallery and he looks at you even more funny, but put him on a battlefield and his senses are so tuned that he doesn't need his eyes to see. He just does his thing. You don't need to focus on ways to suffer from the mechanical blinded condition and then work around them, just play the guy like he can see shapes/objects clearly but not colors/patterns/writing.
Why put so much effort into making a 'Blind' character if you then go out of your way to provide the character as many forms of sight as possible that aren't just regular eyeballs? Workarounds for temporary conditions are one thing, but if you're layering a familar, Blind Fighting, Tremorsense, and more to negate and nullify the penalties from blinded...just don't play a blind character to start with?
If someone wants to do the whole Blind Zen master thing, someone so in tune with their surroundings that their being blind doesn't really affect them...then don't be blinded. Play the character normally in combat and use the narrative to do the Blind master bit. Put a book in front of the guy and he looks at you funny, take him to an art gallery and he looks at you even more funny, but put him on a battlefield and his senses are so tuned that he doesn't need his eyes to see. He just does his thing. You don't need to focus on ways to suffer from the mechanical blinded condition and then work around them, just play the guy like he can see shapes/objects clearly but not colors/patterns/writing.
thats definently a fun way to play it, i also did something like that for a mute person on a sorcerer, but, i think the goal for this, is to do it with mechanics?
not sure why, but im pretty sure it just might be for the sake of doing it, itself
Here's a great discussion about including characters with disabilities and pitfalls to avoid when representing them. It's a great discussion and worth watching the whole thing.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Why put so much effort into making a 'Blind' character if you then go out of your way to provide the character as many forms of sight as possible that aren't just regular eyeballs? Workarounds for temporary conditions are one thing, but if you're layering a familar, Blind Fighting, Tremorsense, and more to negate and nullify the penalties from blinded...just don't play a blind character to start with?
If someone wants to do the whole Blind Zen master thing, someone so in tune with their surroundings that their being blind doesn't really affect them...then don't be blinded. Play the character normally in combat and use the narrative to do the Blind master bit. Put a book in front of the guy and he looks at you funny, take him to an art gallery and he looks at you even more funny, but put him on a battlefield and his senses are so tuned that he doesn't need his eyes to see. He just does his thing. You don't need to focus on ways to suffer from the mechanical blinded condition and then work around them, just play the guy like he can see shapes/objects clearly but not colors/patterns/writing.
I made it because I saw a whole lot of people try to make it and it didn't work which started me thinking about it and I came up with this. It can also be fun to play a character with certain weaknesses that challenge how you play. Pretending he is blind wouldn't give you these weaknesses and then you wouldn't be able to work around them and come up with fun solutions. It would be possible to play him as that Blind Zen master thing you were talking about, but it would be weird if he ever got blinded by a spell or had to fight an invisible creature and couldn't find it. What if that guy gets turned to stone by looking at a medusa he couldn't see? It is useful to have the mechanics so that you have the weaknesses and can work around them, and on the occasion that it is useful, you can use it to your advantage.
There's a race of humanoids called the grimlock. They are all blind, since their life underground resulted in their eyes evolving away, but they can use blindsight, provided they are able to hear.
Also, there is real-life scientific research that shows that blind people can make up for lack of sight by using echolocation, similar to how a whale does. As long as they are able to hear, they are able to effectively "see."
Therefore, using the sight mechanics of the grimlock, you could play a blind character that doesn't feel like it is disabled, but rather has a different way of experiencing the world. It has some advantages (can't be blinded, can see invisible creatures) and some disadvantages (blinded if deafened, can't read ink or see in color). Overall, it should be balanced.
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Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
That could work and might actually be the best way to do it. You would have to establish how far the blindsight goes because while you can see a house miles away from you, you can't hear a house miles away from you. The only problem though, is that mechanically there is no way to swap eyesight for blindsight which is why I made my character, to have a character who can operate while blind using only rules he is normally allowed to have. But, your way would actually be a good way to do it and if you want to do it, you could talk with your DM and it really isn't that big of a stretch. If I was the DM I would allow it.
And what would the range of this echo location be exactly?
And is it a concentration ability or a passive ability like real sight?
What level of noise would blind it?
And if its an active clicking you use to see, how far away can it be heard by others? ( I would say twice the distance your echo location works at.)
At my best guess no one will be happy unless it lets them "see" exactly as well as normal sight at all distances plus it lets you "see" in the dark. And they want it at first level.
The blindsight couldn't be far, probably only 60 ft. It wouldn't require concentration. Any effect that deafens the character would also blind them. Though if you want to give them another weakness, you could say a certain amount of thunder damage blinds them for a certain amount of rounds. If it is an active clicking, then I would give them disadvantage on stealth checks. There might not need to be an active clicking though, like how Daredevil doesn't need to make sound, he just detects his surroundings through sounds already there.
Another possibility that would require DM approval would be to make a character like Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Replace normal sight with tremorsense, give them maybe 120 ft of tremorsense while they are in contact with the earth, and lower it when they are in buildings or wearing shoes. It would be a cool ability, but it would still have weaknesses and strengths. They can see invisible creatures within range, but any flying monsters are invisible to them. They can be weakened if forced to wear shoes, and not wearing shoes might come with some weaknesses. They also can't read, and they can't see things off in the distance. But they can detect things below the earth, and they can see things behind cover and maybe in other rooms.
Those few people who actually use echo location to see only see out to about 10 ft the best one can only see out to about 2o ft and that all with concentration.
Your benders tremor sense would be the farthest in the game.
As far as I know, there is no way to get permanent blindsight beyond 10 ft. The Dwarf fighter I made had only ten feet of blindsight, and the rules never mention concentration.
Are there really not any monsters with 120 ft of tremorsense? That is disappointing. There really should be more. If I was basing a character's tremorsense off of Toph and that was their only form of sight, then I feel like it should be long. It allows them to sense things farther away, which will slightly make up for the fact that flying creatures are invisible to them, and in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Toph was able to alert everyone else to the approach of someone who was just out of sight.
You are right though, this is a fantastical world and so super powers are allowed for the most part.
I have seen several people try to make blind characters or ask how to make them, and most of the time they give up or bend the rules because being blind comes with a lot of disadvantages. But if anyone still wants to be a blinded character, here is a build that I think might work. Please notify me if it has serious flaws or if you see a better way to do this.
First be an Eldritch Knight and get the find familiar spell. I would suggest a bat or an owl as your familiar. Out of combat, you can use this to see, but it takes an action to use and can't be done in combat. Still, it can communicate with you telepathically, so it could give you directions and warn you of dangers you can't see. Also, as a bonus action, you can command it to take the help action which can cancel the disadvantage you have because you are blind.
For your fighting style, I would choose blind fighting from Tasha's Cauldron so that you have blindsight out to 10 ft. This should cancel out any melee dangers you come across, and allows you to function pretty normally out of combat.
For your race, I would pick the sort-of-new Unearthed Arcana dwarf for One Dnd. It gives you limited tremorsense which gives you another option for sight in case your other abilities fail for some reason. It can't be relied upon as your go to option though because flying creatures would be invisible to you, it has limited use, and some DMs may not allow that race as an option. If you can't use that race, I would suggest a race with proficiency in perception. The Wildhunt Shifter gives you advantage on Wisdom checks which would help you navigate and enemies can't have advantage on attack rolls against you while within 30 ft of you.
Since this build is for a blind melee fighter, I would suggest you use a shield and have heavy armor so that if your blindness causes enemies to have advantage on attacks against you, you still have a high armor class to protect you.
A large weakness with this build is that you would perform very poorly with ranged weapons and attacking a flying monster would be very difficult. Another thing to point out, is that blindness can be cured with lesser restoration which is a pretty low level spell. If you want to keep your blindness, you probably want to make it so that only a wish spell or other high level blindness can cure you. Or you could say that lesser restoration only cures you of your blindness for a short while and then you lose your sight again.
If this helps anyone fulfill their desire to play a sightless character, you're welcome. If there are major flaws in this build or ways that it could be better, please let me know.
lesser restoration doesn't cure blindness, it removes the blinded condition. Not the same thing
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Wouldn't it still allow a blind character to see for a certain amount of time?
I would rule that the answer is likely no, depending on the source of a creature’s blindness. A person who’s straight-up missing their eyes or have gashes across eyes that they do have won’t be granted sight by a 2nd-level spell: regenerate would be necessary for that. Since blindness/deafness doesn’t specify the manner of blindness it places upon a creature, I would consider lesser restoration to be valid in that case.
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Okay, that makes sense. I hadn’t thought of that.
Another thing to do with this character would either be a variant human to pick up the alert feat, or just get the feat normally. Alert will give you higher initiative, you can't be surprised while conscious, and other creatures don't gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being unseen by you. All creatures are unseen by you but none of them would have advantage against you. However, if a spell like faerie fire or some other effect that gives others advantage against you affects you, it would still count because it only stops advantages as a result of being unseen by you.
We had a player try this in a campaign and it worked well for close in encounters.
He was a variant human with the Alert feat and a battle master fighter with Blind Fighting. The party would tell him which direction to go to find an opponent. Just get him within 10 feet and he would do the rest. Outside of combat he would just follow us around. It was a fun build and added to roleplay since teamwork was critical.
That worked well on the jungle island we started on because we never had a long range encounter. Good in dungeons too. Later we were rescued by a Spelljammer and the build wasn't useful anymore, so the player rolled up a new character.
A blind character with Alert and Blind Fighting can be fun but only in the right campaign.
Yeah. I would like to play one to try it out, but I feel like most campaigns would be problematic.
Query.
Why put so much effort into making a 'Blind' character if you then go out of your way to provide the character as many forms of sight as possible that aren't just regular eyeballs? Workarounds for temporary conditions are one thing, but if you're layering a familar, Blind Fighting, Tremorsense, and more to negate and nullify the penalties from blinded...just don't play a blind character to start with?
If someone wants to do the whole Blind Zen master thing, someone so in tune with their surroundings that their being blind doesn't really affect them...then don't be blinded. Play the character normally in combat and use the narrative to do the Blind master bit. Put a book in front of the guy and he looks at you funny, take him to an art gallery and he looks at you even more funny, but put him on a battlefield and his senses are so tuned that he doesn't need his eyes to see. He just does his thing. You don't need to focus on ways to suffer from the mechanical blinded condition and then work around them, just play the guy like he can see shapes/objects clearly but not colors/patterns/writing.
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thats definently a fun way to play it, i also did something like that for a mute person on a sorcerer, but, i think the goal for this, is to do it with mechanics?
not sure why, but im pretty sure it just might be for the sake of doing it, itself
Here's a great discussion about including characters with disabilities and pitfalls to avoid when representing them. It's a great discussion and worth watching the whole thing.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I made it because I saw a whole lot of people try to make it and it didn't work which started me thinking about it and I came up with this. It can also be fun to play a character with certain weaknesses that challenge how you play. Pretending he is blind wouldn't give you these weaknesses and then you wouldn't be able to work around them and come up with fun solutions. It would be possible to play him as that Blind Zen master thing you were talking about, but it would be weird if he ever got blinded by a spell or had to fight an invisible creature and couldn't find it. What if that guy gets turned to stone by looking at a medusa he couldn't see? It is useful to have the mechanics so that you have the weaknesses and can work around them, and on the occasion that it is useful, you can use it to your advantage.
There's a race of humanoids called the grimlock. They are all blind, since their life underground resulted in their eyes evolving away, but they can use blindsight, provided they are able to hear.
Also, there is real-life scientific research that shows that blind people can make up for lack of sight by using echolocation, similar to how a whale does. As long as they are able to hear, they are able to effectively "see."
Therefore, using the sight mechanics of the grimlock, you could play a blind character that doesn't feel like it is disabled, but rather has a different way of experiencing the world. It has some advantages (can't be blinded, can see invisible creatures) and some disadvantages (blinded if deafened, can't read ink or see in color). Overall, it should be balanced.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
That could work and might actually be the best way to do it. You would have to establish how far the blindsight goes because while you can see a house miles away from you, you can't hear a house miles away from you. The only problem though, is that mechanically there is no way to swap eyesight for blindsight which is why I made my character, to have a character who can operate while blind using only rules he is normally allowed to have. But, your way would actually be a good way to do it and if you want to do it, you could talk with your DM and it really isn't that big of a stretch. If I was the DM I would allow it.
And what would the range of this echo location be exactly?
And is it a concentration ability or a passive ability like real sight?
What level of noise would blind it?
And if its an active clicking you use to see, how far away can it be heard by others? ( I would say twice the distance your echo location works at.)
At my best guess no one will be happy unless it lets them "see" exactly as well as normal sight at all distances plus it lets you "see" in the dark. And they want it at first level.
The blindsight couldn't be far, probably only 60 ft. It wouldn't require concentration. Any effect that deafens the character would also blind them. Though if you want to give them another weakness, you could say a certain amount of thunder damage blinds them for a certain amount of rounds. If it is an active clicking, then I would give them disadvantage on stealth checks. There might not need to be an active clicking though, like how Daredevil doesn't need to make sound, he just detects his surroundings through sounds already there.
Another possibility that would require DM approval would be to make a character like Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Replace normal sight with tremorsense, give them maybe 120 ft of tremorsense while they are in contact with the earth, and lower it when they are in buildings or wearing shoes. It would be a cool ability, but it would still have weaknesses and strengths. They can see invisible creatures within range, but any flying monsters are invisible to them. They can be weakened if forced to wear shoes, and not wearing shoes might come with some weaknesses. They also can't read, and they can't see things off in the distance. But they can detect things below the earth, and they can see things behind cover and maybe in other rooms.
Those few people who actually use echo location to see only see out to about 10 ft the best one can only see out to about 2o ft and that all with concentration.
Your benders tremor sense would be the farthest in the game.
But again your looking for super powers.
As far as I know, there is no way to get permanent blindsight beyond 10 ft. The Dwarf fighter I made had only ten feet of blindsight, and the rules never mention concentration.
Are there really not any monsters with 120 ft of tremorsense? That is disappointing. There really should be more. If I was basing a character's tremorsense off of Toph and that was their only form of sight, then I feel like it should be long. It allows them to sense things farther away, which will slightly make up for the fact that flying creatures are invisible to them, and in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Toph was able to alert everyone else to the approach of someone who was just out of sight.
You are right though, this is a fantastical world and so super powers are allowed for the most part.
Or become a druid and turn into a bat.
I have made a whole race that is blind but uses echolocation and other senses to get around.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/1323175-skulk-dwarf
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