The Blind Swordsman is a massive trope in fantasy literature. Take a look at David Carradine’s character in Circle of Iron for an archetypal example. It’s a staple in many kung fu movies - the Master uses their hyper developed senses for sounds and for movements in the air to sense and react to their enemies. Or take Luke Skywalker fighting the drone with his eyes covered by using the Force. Hodr was the blind son of Odin.

Blindness also occurs throughout mythic traditions, sometimes as punishment by the gods. It occurs in Greek and Jewish myths. The witch-woman in Hawk the Slayer was blind (played by the great Patricia Quinn, who also starred as Magenta in Rocky Horror).

I think it makes perfect thematic sense to include blindness in characters. A blind beggar, a blind prophet, or a blind samurai are all staples of the fantasy tradition. I’d actually love it if we had to work out a player character who is blind, but that would take a fair amount of effort. I think the payoff would be remarkable and memorable, though.

There’s also the common modern fantasy trope of blind heroes - Daredevil, blind swordmasters, demon hunters from Warcraft, etc. I wouldn’t count these characters as “disability representation” because they can perceive their environment as well as a sighted character could, but they certainly set a precedent for meeting a blind NPC in an RPG.

Cochlear implants are frowned upon by some in the Deaf community.

It is also basically impossible to use a wheelchair while holding something in one hand, so if there’s enough magic around to push a wheelchair, there’s probably enough to make your legs work.

First, off the top, you can stop your wheelchair, use your hand(s) for something else, and then start moving again.

Second, you’re making a lot of assumptions about the magic system. Every magic system has limitations. What if healing is a clerical spell, not a magic spell, and there are no clerics around? Maybe the nearest cleric who can heal is many miles away, perhaps over dangerous terrain inhabited by bandits, monsters, etc. Maybe the spell requires some very specific and difficult-to-obtain materials. Or maybe the spell is very high-level, requiring many years to learn, so clerics or mages charge a very high fee for this service. Any of these, or a combination, could be a reason why a disabled person (or a family member on their behalf) is questing.

Maybe the knowledge of the healing magic was held by some ancient civilization and it was lost when that civilization fell, but the disabled character has found a clue to where some ancient ruins could be unearthed where the secret might be found.

Or maybe the GM just says “Yeah, spells can’t do that in this setting.”

Tenser’s Floating Disk could be used as well, if you want to abide by D&D magic. A magic disk that hovers 3ft - 90cm over the ground, but can’t overcome obstacles taller than 10ft - 3 meters. It only lasts 1 hour and only follows the wizard, so you can’t command it from atop, but it doesn’t need concentration. I’d haggle with the DM to make some allowance on movement while atop it, like having to cast a cantrip (using a valuable action if during combat) or having it last 8 hours if cast as a level 2 spell.

This looks to be a wizard being ambushed along a well paved path. I don’t think they needed an all terrain wheelchair. They were just going about their day.

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I’m picturing something that walks like a spider.

Maybe they’re making a run from a hospital invaded by goblins.

Not only that, if you could afford a wheelchair or glasses in a medieval setting you can probably afford healing magic

In nearly every RPG or fantasy story I have ever encountered, performing any magic costs and flight or hover magic cost a fuck load. Why would anyone waste mana on floating around like a fucking diva when they could save their mana and use it to kick ass?

Not to mention that badass moment when you drop your cane(hello Yoda) or get up from your wheelchair using your well stored magic, or force or whatever power, and beat the fuck out of your enemies with all that stored up potential.

Gimme a fucking break. What kind of namby pamby players are you?? Bitching about how it looks to use regular disabled people’s equipment? Fuck right off. Only 12 year olds and fucking hipster posers give a fuck how things look.

Similar idea re: magic

Guild Wars 2 hit the trans issue with one of their Npcs in Lion’s Arch. Different toon after season 2 rebuild, same name. Talk to her after the event (him, before the world event) and she says something like “well, it’s a magical world… I figured: new Lion’s Arch… time for a new me.”

One of the PCs (new guy brought in after the other guy left) at the table literally has prosthetic legs as an artificer because his character was born without them.

Magical legs work better for an adventuring party for sure IMO but a wheelchair bound NPC in a city is fine.

Hell the artificer has made it a personal goal to no matter the cost allow people to walk again with their prosthetic legs. (A generous patron gave them their first set) He’s going to encounter one soon (I’m the DM, it’s going to happen) and the player will (likely) have the gold for a set. But they’re not free to make and the components aren’t free.

It’s interesting to me to put problems in front of my players for them to solve in inventive ways. They never fail to surprise me.

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Another reason the chair looks out of place is because it’s a transfer chair, not a self propel chair. These chairs are designed to push someone, they aren’t designed for independent mobility.

These chairs are commonly represented in media because they are cheap and often the “first chair” a disabled person will get because of their affordability and needing something quick. But they are bog standard and you can’t really get around by yourself in one without more pain or fatigue. You’ll then start the process of getting a measured for a chair that will fit your needs.

Some people only have a transfer chair because they are semi-ambulant/part time chair user, so that’s all they need. But most people who use a wheelchair will not use a transfer chair long term. It’s temporary because it’s shit.

So it doesn’t make sense that someone with an active lifestyle, like a DnD character, would use this style chair as their main aid. Unless there’s something in the campaign, like their main chair was damaged, or the disability is recently acquired, the character is poor, etc.

The issue is that this toes the line on erasure. If a character is disabled but offsetting all of their disabilities with magic, they’re not disabled. The disability is just flavor text at that point, which feels a little bit like wearing an offensive caricature of a race as a Halloween costume.

If you want to include a disabled character in the party, that’s great. But disabilities come with drawbacks that real people with disabilities struggle with every day. If a person with a disability wants to erase their disability in a fantasy setting, that’s cool. At that point, it could simply be a power fantasy, the same way people want to play super powerful wizards and super strong barbarians.

But if an otherwise able bodied person wants to play a caricature of a disabled person without actually role playing the disabled part, it could become downright offensive to the people who actually struggle with those disabilities. Because at that point it’s not roleplaying a disabled person; It’s just leaning on stereotypes when it’s convenient, without actually roleplaying the real life struggles that accompany the disability.

Look at Toph from Avatar as a good example. She was blind and used her abilities to offset that when possible. But the important part is that she was still blind, and still regularly dealt with the drawbacks from being blind. She couldn’t read or write, because braille hadn’t been invented. And if she was ever away from solid ground, (like when flying or on sand) she wasn’t able to see anything. Because her sense of “sight” relied on her physical connection to the solid ground. So when she wasn’t touching solid earth, she was completely blind. And she also couldn’t see anything that was airborne, like when they were attacked by giant flying insects. She was blindly throwing rocks into the air, because she couldn’t see where the enemies were.

This wheel chair looks out of place for the setting

dude…

It’s literally a made up world.

And then there’s bloodborne.

First guy you meet in bloodborne is in a wheelchair.

The old man who helps you is in a wheelchair.

You get shot at by tricked out wheelchair tanks.

One of the PCs (new guy brought in after the other guy left) at the table literally has prosthetic legs as an artificer because his character was born without them.

Magical legs work better for an adventuring party for sure IMO but a wheelchair bound NPC in a city is fine.

Hell the artificer has made it a personal goal to no matter the cost allow people to walk again with their prosthetic legs. (A generous patron gave them their first set) He’s going to encounter one soon (I’m the DM, it’s going to happen) and the player will (likely) have the gold for a set. But they’re not free to make and the components aren’t free.

It’s interesting to me to put problems in front of my players for them to solve in inventive ways. They never fail to surprise me.

It also means that people may have disabilities but won’t be held back by them without removing that aspect of their life. And it could be ruled that the differently-abled aspect is something not even magic can take away because it’s so intrinsic to the character

As a DM I would probably assume the player was fucking with me (because that’s the mood in my friend groups)

But my response would be something like ‘fine, but realize not every adventure will be wheelchair accessible, you could hardly take a wheelchair into a goblin cave. The world is not naturally kind to disabled people and this world will not be adjusted for you character’

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There could be magic, but not magic capable of curing diseases. If the extent to which your mages are capable of manipulating the elements is spewing fireballs or perhaps summoning a storm, treating an infection might be beyond their capabilities. You might also have a setting where disabilities are the result of curses that only mages of exceptional capabilities are able to treat.

There is also another dimension to this; millions are still direly ill because they can’t afford treatment.

And even in our modern world, with all our magic, there are some diseases and conditions we haven’t been able to cure. There is more than one problem that has the same output (blindness) so maybe in the fantasy world they have magic to fix someones macular degeneration but not their optic nerves

I mean, some people literally just don’t view their conditions as disabilities. We don’t even need to talk about ability to afford something.

If magic exists to eliminate all disabilities, then there should be no smart, rich people with disabilities in your world

I disagree. I know plenty of smart people with disabilities who wouldn’t take a cure if it was possible. Most of them are autistic. Autism is a disability in a world that doesn’t accommodate it, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a disability politically, not intrinsically. And deafness is pretty undeniably a disability, but I’ve read about deaf people not wanting to join in on hearing society because they think the deaf community is better.

This might sound hard for you to understand if you’re fully abled, so I’ll put it in terms you can understand. Imagine if tomorrow scientists invented a cheap, painless procedure to install a third arm in your chest. Everyone’s getting them because they’re so useful, and clothing stores are quickly switching to shirts with three arm holes. It’s getting hard to find shirts with only two arm holes, in fact. Even if everyone you knew said they preferred having three arms, would you get one?

ability TRUE

This is where a good storyteller would have a blast.

Maybe a mage could heal it, but then they would take on the disability themselves.

Or a magical disability is the result of a 1:1 battle with another magic wielder. Only a being of equal power can cause permanent damage.

The disability is a payment for some rare power. Maybe you lose your eyes but can now see the astral plane and pilot the Event Horizon.

Along with what everyone else said - in some universes using magic has a cost to the user. So one could be exhausted just getting around by constantly needing to be floated along.

We have it set up in our campaign where it’s often seen as hella rare for someone with that level of magic

More specifically out campaign turned into a space campaign amount lv 15 cause our planet exploded cause lore lmao

But there’s like planets where there’s nothing but the most basic of cantrips so we end up being gods to them

so far only one has attempted to exploit this and it was the cleric lmao Mainly because they are now the last embodiment of their God and are sort of designed to become them or something lol

Holy shit these are some amazing ideas. Got anymore I can steal use?

And, those are awesome solutions, my thought is, that a random peasant could get disabled and not afford magical solutions. Or maybe they’re superstitious of magic. Maybe they’re part of a blood cult that worships some demon that values the sacrifice of limbs. There are legitimate reasons to have some npcs with disabilities.

“Roll for dexterity” when you enter a city that’s not wheelchair accessible at every single stairway 💀

The unspoken part of that argument being they deep down desire a world that has no non-white, disabled, queer people in it at all and don’t understand others don’t think that way.