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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hawk Diesel" data-source="post: 7791639" data-attributes="member: 59848">For the same reason a person may choose to play a first level human fighter even if there is already a human fighter in the party. Because it provides unique role playing opportunities and ways of interacting with the game world. Your class and race alone do not define how you play your character.D&D is not a single player game. If you purposely choose to make your character mechanically weaker, that means more work for the party around you. And not all groups would be cool with that. Additionally, if you take on a flaw for some other compensatory benefit, that gets really close to mistakes of previous additions that led to power gaming.Let's change the example in the OP. Instead let's say a player wanted to play a character with no arms. Or no legs. Would you allow it?Personally, as a DM that has to ensure enjoyment for all players, not just one, I would say no. It just puts undue strain on the rest of the party. The group has to use an undue number of resources to manage the liability of the one player, and as a result that player ends up taking an unfair amount of the spotlight and attention in the game simply due to their choice to take on a handicap. Also, from a role playing perspective, why would an adventuring group bring a person along who couldn't completely hold their own with the challenges ahead? Last time I checked, you can't enlist in the military if you have medical issues that would impair your ability to fight. Why would it be different for adventurers that go out expecting danger and combat?But, I'd allow this same character if they had some kind of prosthetic, graft, or ghost/psionic limbs. Mechanically it changes nothing, thus no undue strain on the party or stealing of the spotlight. But the player still has a character with a history of having lost their sight/limbs, the challenges they endured with them gone, and their new perspective after regaining their function. It is still a central aspect of the character's identity and affects how one might role play them. You also create opportunities for the DM to remove or threaten to remove the player's crutch during the game, placing the DM and the story in charge of when the player's disability becomes relevant to the game in a way everyone can enjoy, rather than the player forcing it on everyone in the game.I'm just from a school of thought that not everything in D&D needs to be represented by unique mechanics. Most times its sufficient to just reflavor or reskin existing mechanics, or make them purely story elements without any need for mechanical impact on the game. You have fewer issues with upsetting game balance that way.</blockquote>

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