Blind Character by Design

[jodyjohnson]

Tremorsense is actually limited to not cancel advantage for unseen enemies. It just lets you know where stuff is same as is they failed a Hidden check or are not trying to Hide.

 

[MechaPilot]

Does that mean that if you're human, you can only "smell" in bright light, if you're an elf you can "smell" in dim light, and if you're a dwarf you can "smell" in the dark?
Otherwise you are changing mechanics already, and would be better off explicitly defining it.

There are bound to be some mechanical ramifications, especially with regard to situational modifiers, but I think that handling it mostly with DM narrative is probably best.

Since 5e has one Perception skill for all the senses, there is no need to determine the sense being used before making the roll. Simply pick the sense that makes the most sense for the narrative as it's playing out.

 

[ArwensDaughter]

Thanks everyone for the replies. This has been very helpful. At this point, here's what I'm thinking, thanks to your input:

-Tremorsense to 120' when barefoot and on earth or stone.
-Blindsight to 10' (barefoot not a requirement, due to involvement of other senses)
-enemies who are not "grounded" have advantage on attacks/she has disadvantage vs. "ungrounded" enemies.
-I'm still on the fence about giving ranged attacks from "grounded" enemies advantage
-I'll give her a homebrew, earth-based ranged attack cantrip (akin to fire bolt) in place of a bow & arrows on equipment list.
-I'm thinking about giving her limited uses of "Mold earth" mostly for flavor

She's very set on fighter, and not much interested in multi-classing, but if she wants to go further down the earthbending route, I'll encourage her to consider Eldritch Knight for an archetype, or choosing feats over ASIs to give her more earth-based "spells."

Thanks, too, for the caution about how such a character could be inadvertently offensive to some. That's not my daughter's intention: part of what she loves about Toph is that Toph is a very strong, capable character while having significant limitations in particular areas. She wants a chance to explore that concept while role-playing.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Wow - two completely different takes there. (And pretty sure I was half asleep when I wrote my post... I mean what a 2nd line Talk about stating the bleeding obvious ).
[MENTION=12283]Illithidbix[/MENTION]. You are right. I do not know Toph at all. Perhaps this PC is just 'normal'. Sight is just described differently. Sounds like what [MENTION=17086]Umbra[/MENTION]m says. Want to say they are blind, but don't want the hard parts to deal with that to go with it.

Which is fair enough for this eg by the sounds of it. Why worry about a rule at all? This PC simply 'sees' things differently.

As far as actually being blind, I agree with [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] there. WE actually have varying degrees of blindness in our FLaw rules set. You get some benefits in other areas, but you still gain the blinded condition. Yes, it is a penalty.

 

[The Human Target]

Yeah, don't make it complicated or realistic.

Give Disadvantage vs ungrounded enemies or skill checks situations.

Have her be able to "see" in any lighting conditions.

Roleplay the rest.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

My take:

Take a PC. Variant human, with the Alert feat.
Declare them to be Blind.
Cast spells and do things that don't require attack rolls.
If you do want to do things that require attack rolls, cast Darkness or Fog Cloud around yourself. Now you're the one who has the advantage, since neither of you can see each other but you have Alert, which means enemies have disadvantage to attack you, but not vice-versa.

You're done.

 

[Ganymede81]

The easiest and perhaps most elegant solution is to restrict her blindness to the realm of roleplay. Assume she has some sort of extraordinary sense that fills the role of sight and acts as if it were sight then call it a day.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The easiest and perhaps most elegant solution is to restrict her blindness to the realm of roleplay. Assume she has some sort of extraordinary sense that fills the role of sight and acts as if it were sight then call it a day.

Personally I think it is much cooler to make the PC actually blind and then make her awesome anyway. 5E already gives everyone amazing blindfighting powers (e.g. can hit an orc at 200 paces (600') in pitch darkness at no penalty except mere disadvantage, which you would have had anyway due to long range). Might as well exploit them to be awesome.

Imagine an Alert, blind Bladesinger who relies primarily on Sword Burst to do melee damage and Fireball to clear out swarms of enemies. You can't tell me that's not cool.

 

[Ganymede81]

Imagine an Alert, blind Bladesinger who relies primarily on Sword Burst to do melee damage and Fireball to clear out swarms of enemies. You can't tell me that's not cool.

It reminds me of a trap I once devised that involved a large bladed spinning top that caromed randomly in a dungeon room. It was admittedly pretty fun.

 

[Nytmare]

I saw a case, however, where a player brought such a character to a table that had a real blind person at it, and that person was... well, put off a bit.

[TANGENT!] For a very, very brief time I tried running a friend who had been blind since birth through an RPG playing a character who could see. Holy crap was that a challenging experience.