Has nobody thought of the blindness/deafness spell?
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
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There's good discussion here that's all been very helpful. I happy to see that the concept is doable in some degree.
I think I'll follow the tips by The Fox and Imbicatus's suggestion. I'll have my kitsune wear smoke goggles and roleplay it as being partially blind. Though not true blindness, it's still a significant visual impairment. I don't want to make my fellow players uncomfortable by using a blindfold. I'll tell them upfront about my character, and if they aren't happy with it, I'll use a different character or take the goggles off.
One of the reasons I choose kinectist is because they get area effects and their blasts can be touch attacks. Plus, I really loved the idea of a pyrokinectic kitsune. I might also invest towards social skills for my usefulness out of combat. Perhaps my character was a street beggar. Who could resist the charms of a cute little blind fox?
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Another option worth investigating: take levels in Summoner and see through the eyes of your Eidolon.
I think the character concept is doable.
While I love the concept... IMHO It's not real workable.
Bond Senses (Su): Starting at 2nd level, a summoner can, as a standard action, share the senses of his eidolon, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching everything the eidolon does. He can use this ability a number of rounds per day equal to his summoner level. There is no range to this effect, but the eidolon and the summoner must be on the same plane. The summoner can end this effect as a free action
And other than Bond Senses the best you get is something to guide you around...
Unfortunately, my only experience with playing a disabled character wasn't in PFS - I had a sarcastic but mute sorcerer who simply expressed herself in different ways. Playing a disability can actually be pretty fun if you can manage to work it into the game properly. ^^
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Another option worth investigating: take levels in Summoner and see through the eyes of your Eidolon.
I think the character concept is doable.
While I love the concept... IMHO It's not real workable.
Bond Senses (Su): Starting at 2nd level, a summoner can, as a standard action, share the senses of his eidolon, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching everything the eidolon does. He can use this ability a number of rounds per day equal to his summoner level. There is no range to this effect, but the eidolon and the summoner must be on the same plane. The summoner can end this effect as a free action
And other than Bond Senses the best you get is something to guide you around...
"This is my seeing-eye-dolon."
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There's good discussion here that's all been very helpful. I happy to see that the concept is doable in some degree.
I think I'll follow the tips by The Fox and Imbicatus's suggestion. I'll have my kitsune wear smoke goggles and roleplay it as being partially blind. Though not true blindness, it's still a significant visual impairment. I don't want to make my fellow players uncomfortable by using a blindfold. I'll tell them upfront about my character, and if they aren't happy with it, I'll use a different character or take the goggles off.
One of the reasons I choose kinectist is because they get area effects and their blasts can be touch attacks. Plus, I really loved the idea of a pyrokinectic kitsune. I might also invest towards social skills for my usefulness out of combat. Perhaps my character was a street beggar. Who could resist the charms of a cute little blind fox?
Why not that magic blindfold that makes you blind but gives you a sword-length Blindsense? It is in ultimate equipment.
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Also, area-of-effect blasters can still throw around spells like burning hands or fireball even while blinded. For area-of-effect spells, one only needs to designate the point of origin by describing it. If they have an ally act as a spotter for them they are fine. "Drop a fireball 45 feet straight ahead, about 5 feet to the left and 5 feet off the floor! Fire for effect!"
Only spells that have Target or Targets in the spell description require line of sight to cast. And even those can be cast on creatures the spell-caster manages to touch (either because the target is an ally, or by making a touch attack).
You cannot judge distance while blind by game mechanics. You can pick a direction, point and shoot. But unless the character can do spatial geometry in their head, a spotter doesn't really do any good beyond "to your left!".
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You cannot judge distance while blind by game mechanics. You can pick a direction, point and shoot. But unless the character can do spatial geometry in their head, a spotter doesn't really do any good beyond "to your left!".The rules disagree with you and allow the placement of area effect spells by defining the location on the origin point.
How do you accurately define the origin point of an AoE effect without metagaming? You know there are monsters in that square, but your character wouldn't, unless they had some other ability that allowed them to pinpoint a square without sight.
Venture-Captain, Texas—Austin
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Honestly, the only mechanical way to play someone blind and not be useless as far as I can see (hehe) is to play a clouded vision oracle, and take the halfing/Gnome/Tengu FCB.
That way you have blindsense at level 7, and blindsight at 10. Be sure to grab blind-fight at 7 as well. You can flavor it as your vision getting worse as you go but you senses highten. So 1-6 you see, but only short range, 7-9 you "blind" yourself but can sense where people are, and then at 10+ you can "see" people within 15 ft, even though you are blind
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Honestly, the only mechanical way to play someone blind and not be useless as far as I can see (hehe) is to play a clouded vision oracle, and take the halfing/Gnome/Tengu FCB.
I was actually thinking about a cavalier who has his horse walk towards the bad guy and he swings away yeah he has a miss chance but would not be the worse character I've seen.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
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There's rules for using Perception checks to figure out which square a creature is located at. And not all area effects need to be aimed like fireball.
However, I don't want to waste time at the table by doing a Perception checks each turn and I want to avoid metagaming. This is one reason I'm going with the smoke goggles suggestion.
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I could imagine a fireball thrower, or an archer, even, learning through touch memory and the like how high to raise his arm/bow to correspond to distances called.
"The troll's fifty feet away from a step to your left!"
"Okay, step to the left and give it a 35 degree angle..."
People with disabilities learn ways around them. Just as we can't assume they can do everything we can, we can't assume they can't do everything we can't.
EDIT: A small sidenote.
Before someone tries pointing out the entirely logical fact that the "caller" shouldn't be able to peg distances so accurately, remember this: A fighter can always tell when he's 35 feet away and needs to charge. An archer can always tell how close he needs to move to get Point Blank Shot. A mage can always tell exactly how near he has to get before casting charm person (not to mention exactly where he needs to lay the fireball to avoid frying his buddies).
Clearly, we handwave a lot of that stuff because "Brutus starts charging! Unfortunately, he was 65 feet away, so he won't complete that charge until next round" and "Excelsio casts the spell! Unfortunately, he's slightly out of range, so it does nothing" aren't very fun. We shouldn't only get pedantic about it when blind people are involved.
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This thread needs a reference to 1977's Master of the Flying Guillotine, which was about this crazy old guy with wild eyebrows who was blind and could throw this weird beheading contraption around with his 60' blindsense, which could auto-kill as long as it hits ranged touch.
Someone needs to stat block this guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQQdK1Sn2s
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Honestly, the only mechanical way to play someone blind and not be useless
Its been said before in this thread but it bears repeating that how much the character is impaired depends a LOT on the character. I have a Duettist Bard who would still be very effective. She has a Thrush familiar who can tell her where to step, where to aim, etc. Her main contribution is buffing and social skills, both of which are unaffected. She doesn't need to see the enemies to insult them (blistering invective).
A blind PC can work pretty well for a home game in which the GM and players are all on the same page about it - including PFS as home games. But, as you might have noticed from this very thread, there are going to be varying degrees of tolerance if you take the PC to a game day or convention. There you're building a scratch group with players you may have never met before and some of them will probably take a dim view of your PC and be vocal about it.
Yeah, without getting too bashy (the Society isn't exactly my thing), I don't think PFS can really handle a concept like this.
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One of the players in my area made a Zatoichi character using a dip into Oracle to get blind.
venture captain ichi is still my fave character. I tell the table I play him as true blind with a daredevil sense to handle the clouded vision curse.
can he see thirty feet? sure. but "daredevil awareness" makes just as much sense to me as "clouded vision" - he was absolutely useless when it came to ranged combat.
I had some GMs give me a bonus on saves vs illusions, and they'd give me penalties on perception at a distance. I was utterly fine with that. other GMs would play it by the book and say I could see 30 ft, I was also fine with that.
mostly, I just loved saying, "no I don't" every time the GM said to the table, "so you see..."
also, he has the light cantrip but thinks it's detect magic. he honestly can't tell the difference, but the joke locally quickly became "it lights up" when I detected magic.
but realistically, PFS is terrible for this type of character gimping. if you actually took the blindness penalties and everything you'd be dead before you saw level 2. in a home group, there's all sorts of ways to work it out with the group and GM to make it work.
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Well, they have not even allowed Sign Language, or any other kind of non-verbal language.
So, Deaf PCs are kind of screwed.
I thought you could get "lip reading" with a linguistics point, and it applies to all other known languages? was I misinformed? I know there are limits to how well it works (distance, light, etc) but it's still something.
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I thought you could get "lip reading" with a linguistics point, and it applies to all other known languages? was I misinformed? I know there are limits to how well it works (distance, light, etc) but it's still something.Well, they have not even allowed Sign Language, or any other kind of non-verbal language.
So, Deaf PCs are kind of screwed.
I also had heard or read somewhere you could put a rank in Linguistics and get Lip Reading as a language. I am not really sure where my source is for that now though.
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I also had heard or read somewhere you could put a rank in Linguistics and get Lip Reading as a language. I am not really sure where my source is for that now though.I thought you could get "lip reading" with a linguistics point, and it applies to all other known languages? was I misinformed? I know there are limits to how well it works (distance, light, etc) but it's still something.Well, they have not even allowed Sign Language, or any other kind of non-verbal language.
So, Deaf PCs are kind of screwed.
Constantly asking allies to take off their Helmets, Masks, etc., including magic ones are a massive pain.
Communication should not be this hindered.
There is Drow Sign Language, but it's somehow totally illegal.
Must be a number of Deaf Drow, mocking other Deaf members of different races.
Also, Sign Language is somehow evil.
Oh, as a sidenote, there is a very handy +1 bow enchantment. It's not available for a few levels, but Seeking eliminates the Concealment chance altogether. It's basically the only way to really play a blind ranged PC. You still need a caller, of course.
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The Mask of a Thousand Tomes is a legit PFS-legal item that grants you a +10 competence bonus on all knowledge checks at the cost of rendering you blind whilst you wear it, and you need to wear it for at least 10 minutes to get the benefit of the item.
If nothing else, that there is a way to 'blind' your character legally, and if your party has a major problem with it, just take off the mask for the scenario.
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Another option worth investigating: take levels in Summoner and see through the eyes of your Eidolon.
I think the character concept is doable.
He's got the right of it. Heck, while it may not mesh well with the OP's original concept, you COULD play a Summoner who's eidolon does the fighting, while the blind(folded?) summoner is there for knowledge and social skills. Even build it as an interdimensional seeing eye dog.
...just remember the wonky alignment/subtype limitations if you want it to be a mount. Hope you like Demons and Elementals!
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I actually like the perma-Smoked Goggles idea. It would be the equivalent of having really bad cataracts, which qualifies as legally blind, but you'd still be able to generally get around.But that's not a real handicap. That's a self-inflicted fetish, which can easily be removed by taking off the goggles. Having spent years reading for a blind friend, it irks me somewhat to hear someone suggest trivializing the handicap this way.
And quite frankly if we were going to explore a dungeon, your character would have to give mine a real good reason as to why you'd insist on wearing your fetish goggles.
Because I was once petrified by a basilisk and am now paranoid about gaze attacks? Although my character doesn't owe your character any explanations about my gear.
And no one was saying "a person wearing smoked goggles is exactly in the same as a person who is actually blind". The point was that smoked goggles are a legal option in PFS to achieve the same mechanical effects as a character with impaired vision.
(FWIW, my brother was blind, and it never occurred to me to be bothered by this.)
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The real problem is table variation.
Casting a fireball - works
Where does it go off?
Did anybody on the table give exact locations (30 foot ahead etc)
Do you ask for perception checks to have the exact distance right and add an error similar to a failed splash weapon if the character doesn't get it right?
I do insist that invisible characters are NOT taken into account when targeting. This results in occasional friendly fire.
I could go on
I have a deaf character in my Rise of the Runelords game. Often he (or me) forget it. But we are pretty used to it. Initiative roll - sorry you don't roll as initiative is triggered by the sound of an explosion and you can act next round when you notice your friends acting.
Someone shouts a warning - sorry - not for you. Oh yes - ther are the occasional auto succeed conditions.
But my experience
It works because I know that character well and I'm not suprised at a table with it. It works well because the whole table looks out for meta-gaming and stops it. It works because the player has accepted that he gimped himself partly and that is out balanced by a min-maxer.
Blind is much more a problem and while I can see it working in a private game I would discourage it for PFS. Too many issues and expect table variation A LOT - including being not welcome by some players as well as GMs.
Your force it on them - they don't have a decision. As I said above - how do you target a fireball if the rest of the group isnt giving you directions. In the same group you work out how to overcome issues - mixed together with strangers it can end up with hurt feelings on both side.
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You are in a corridor - you hear heavy footsteps coming your way - you have won initiative
Do you
Wait until someone tells you what is going on
Or
Cast a fireball in the middle of that group hitting
A group of 12 goblins
A group of 11 goblins and the gagged, half dead noble you are told to rescue
A group of adventurers fleeing from a horde of goblins
Correct is
