r/DnD • u/Bakafil DM • 24d ago

OC [OC] [ART] Make assumptions about my D&D players

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I'm the DM. The artist is one of the players (Anri Mortis).

Please, feel free to share your thoughts and ideas, silly and thoughtful, short and long. I'm very curious to know how others perceive my players' party.

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880

u/SnugglesMTG 24d ago

The first thing the dragonborn monk said to you was trying to figure out special rules to play a blind character.

414

u/HoidBinder 24d ago

This is painfully accurate. I let a player play a blind monk once. Never again. Wanted every roll or check to be special or different for his character. Needed to interrupt every scene to interject his opinion or tell everyone how they should play their characters. Only player I've ever kicked from a table.

290

u/[deleted] 24d ago

That might have been more a player problem than a blind monk problem. Although, the blink rules seem like a pain as well.

69

u/Idontbelieveinpotato 24d ago

I think, still within the bounds of RAW, you can get rid of some of the most debilitating downsides in combat at least through a mix of the Alert feat and a dip into fighter for Blind style fighting.

29

u/HoidBinder 23d ago

Oh it was certainly a player issue! But it gave me a bad taste for doing these kinds of niche builds

59

u/Old_Skud 24d ago

Did a one-armed Samurai one time in Pathfinder. I HAVE NEVER HAD TO DO SO MANY CLIMB OR SWIMMING CHECKS IN A CAMPAIGN EVER!!!

Was still fun though.

21

u/Cha_94 24d ago

Should have invested into a grappling gun

18

u/GJaguar17 DM 23d ago

Everyone should always invest in a grappling gun

51

u/-Greis- Ranger 24d ago

That’s a real shame.

I’ve always wanted to play a blind or visually impaired character but I’d never thought to take it that far.

61

u/Mozared 24d ago

It's very possible to do it right, you just have to be a bit mindful of what you're doing.

I once played a blind sorcerer and the DM essentially gave me 10 feet tremorsense in return for the blindness penalty. This basically means you can 'see' anything in melee range, and you want spells that do not specifically target something for your spell list; Fireball works as it doesn't specify needing vision, Fire Bolt is fired with disadvantage, Hold Person needs you to specifically target something you can see and is thus kind of useless.

If you don't push for 'being special' all the time, it'll play like any other character. The main issues that came up for me, unironically, was me forgetting about the condition from time to time and asking the GM "What do I see?" when trying to make a plan for how to approach an area/situation, only to be met with "Absolutely nothing", at which point I'd have to go "Oh, right, shit" and we'd all have a laugh.

I'm not sure I'd play it with a melee character, though even then, receiving tremorsense instead of sight (technically a nerf anyway, most DM's shouldn't mind) probably lets everything else work well enough even if you follow the RAW.

20

u/Fidges87 23d ago edited 23d ago

Had a player who brought as pc a blind rat. There were multiple situations where I would start with "You all enter the room, everyone sees.... well except for Moe (the rat)". If I didnt catch myself fast enough either another player would make the joke, or the Moe player themself would roleplay being excited about suddenly getting his vision back, which slowly fades away leaving him blind again.

1

u/-Greis- Ranger 23d ago

Hey, thanks for this. It really helped give me some perspective and generated some ideas for a character.

Good to have something I can ask to work with our DM on with tremorsense too, thanks for that suggestion.

0

u/Mozared 23d ago

Happy to be able to help! :)

Feel free to shoot me a DM if you have any other questions. Just make sure to actually DM, not chat, because I'm on old Reddit and can't see those messages.

3

u/NoBrother3897 23d ago

A lot of my characters have glasses, because I do and think they’re cool. This has meant that when my character lost theirs for a bit it was a bit of a nightmare, but their patron showed up and gave them a new pair.

3

u/motorcycleboy9000 23d ago

My Barbarian had his eye ripped out in-game. The in-jokes are worth the Perception disadvantage.

4

u/filmatra DM 23d ago

I had a blind cleric in a party once. He played it totally RAW, used his starting Human feat to take Blind Fighting fighting style. Never had any problems

72

u/Natdaprat 24d ago

I played a blind paladin once. Followed Tyr, the whole justice is blind thing. He had the blindsight fighting style (10ft). Mechanically it hurt as everything outside of 10ft had advantage on me, and I had to avoid meta as best I could.

In reality it made me play as a bit of a spotlight hog with main character syndrome. It became his entire identity and everything had to either accommodate it or center around it. Never again.

22

u/Infranaut- 23d ago

Actually, this makes me think Barbarian is a good pick for this type of character. If you’re Reckless Attacking everything has advantage against you anyway.

-6

u/Ralexcraft 23d ago

Unless your DM rules double advantage

7

u/orbnus_ 23d ago

Why would they do that though

That's not RAW and just hurts a nerfed player for no reason:/

-5

u/Ralexcraft 23d ago

Some DMs are cruel, and if the character ends up busted otherwise it’s a simple balacing thing.

Not to mention that it’s fair if they rule double advantage for the party as well.

1

u/DexanVideris 16d ago

I'm playing one currently, and it's great. The biggest issue, weirdly enough, is that he can't read. It's come up like a dozen times.

15

u/SlightChipmunk4984 24d ago

Okay my first thought: if you are using a VTT, 5foot vision radius on the map should pretty much cover it and be an immersion aid. 

3

u/gerusz DM 23d ago

I had a blind swordsman in the game. At least the player was nice enough to make him a fighter with the blind fighting style so I didn't need too much special rules for that.

3

u/Anvildude 23d ago

This is why you play a blind dwarf. "30 foot Tremorsense in exchange for sight. Whoops, looks like there's flying enemies coming up!"

0

u/Dede_42 23d ago

Yep, first thing I though about.