D&D General Diabetes in dnd

[Starfox]

It is a hard issue, due to euphemism threadmill. Any word chosen for this will eventually become a bad word, and be replaced by another well-intentioned word that in turn will become a bad word and be replaced by yet another one.

To be honest, this happens in Swedish too, just not as quickly and more based on social class than on physical phenomena. For some reason I don't fully grasp, the N-word is unacceptable in Swedish, despite Sweden having almost no black people at all 50 ago. An Americanism I guess. I wonder how that works in Spanish-speaking countries? But otherwise, its more that "janitor" became "hygiene technician" and such. The Sami national minority in Sweden used to be called Lapps but are now called Sami, but Sami now has the same negative connotations that Lapp used to have. And the Northern region of Sweden, where many Sami live, is still named Lappland.

Human language is just irrational in many cases.

This is as long as I think I should go in this direction, or it will quickly become political.

 

[Starfox]

I'm not sure what to tell you... it's a definition of the word, and not one with any negative connotations. If you want to assign a negativity to the word, that is absolutely your prerogative. If I knew you in daily life, I wouldn't use that word in that context around you out of respect for you. But to expect the internet at large to conform to something that exists only for you personally... that's a bit much.

Sorry for the number of replies in a row, I am in different time zone from many of you.

I find it a bit funny that the very first meaning of Invalid that comes up in my mind, someone handicapped by war wounds, was not directly mentioned in the dictionary.

Its also a bit funny that in the sense of in-valid the word works in English, but not in French, where I suppose English got the word from. Chat GPT agrees with me on this. As I said elsewhere, I think Chat GPT makes a good dictionary, but its not perfect

 

[Morrus]

Speaking of this from a value perspective, I feel that this validates the invalid (I'll continue to use that term in this discussion as we all know what I'm talking about).

When people tell you that a term is offensive, listen to them. Please do not continue to use this term.

 

[MoonSong]

Prosthetic Limb is a common magic item with zero function other than replacing the missing limb & being functional. It's practically on the same level of availability as the useless fluff starting trinkets a lot of backgrounds already grant. "Hey GM can I start with it because $reason" probably doesn't need an entire background to circumvent.

This, I'm a fan of modelling as much as possible with a character, but I'm not sure of how much we need to model disability. I'm honestly not a fan of the flaws for feats model. Disability in game shouldn't be just another way to minmax. At the same time, I don't think we should punish players who want to do this for representation/escapism/catharsis. The best way I think would be go on a case by case basis treating the player as an individual with their own goals and agenda. A lot of this could be roleplayed only, and maybe if the player wants through scores or choice of skills, or even negotiate with the DM if they want to model disadvantages. But again, there is no one-size-fits-all.

As I've mentioned, this is hard stuff.

 

[Oofta]

In my 4E campaign, two of my players wanted to be disfigured. One wanted to lose an eye, another a hand. So I worked it in to one of our intro sessions.

Thing is though, it never had any mechanical impact. The PC with an eye maybe should have had disadvantage on some things because they lacked depth perception, but I've known people with only one eye and it never really mattered. My father only had one hand, it never really slowed him down and when people met him they were always amazed that I hadn't ever said anything. Personally I have to wear glasses but it doesn't give me any special bonuses other than I can see things clearly that are more than a few feet away.

So I would pretty much ignore any disability, abnormality or disease unless and until the PC wanted to make it into an issue. Want to be diabetic in my game? Okay, let me know if it ever affects you in a negative way or if it affects your goals in life. Other than that? It's one of the least important things about your PC, right up there with the color of your hair.

 

[Starfox]

These things are much easier to balance in more freeform games. In a game like DnD it makes sense to have specific rules-defined abilitets and disabilities. In a freeform game it just becomes a part of the conversation. A blind character's player can claim to be better in a certain situation because of more awareness with other senses, and if it makes sense to everyone you just go with it. If the table thinks the ability to sense spirits makes sense for the blind, then so be it. Or not. Less can be more in cases like this.