Quote from: Opaopajr;1139459:confused: Combat Wheelchair. :eek: I have suddenly realized my RPG life has been incomplete without... Jousting Palanquins! /rushes off to find my 'Complete Handbook: Fighters' for jousting tournament rules

At one time I remember hearing about 'Roman-X' motorized chariot races.

But I just had a brainwave: how many people here have been in a group with some form of disabled player? Any disability? I had one who had serious vision issues. We had to print him up some specialty character sheets and we got him some larger dice to roll with. No biggie.

He didn't want to play as a blind guy, surprise surprise. Now, how many people in wheelchairs are going to want to play a character in a wheelchair?

I am reminded, oddly, of a heartfelt letter to Dragon Magazine back in the 80's. The writer spoke of a friend of his who had suffered severe medical issues, but thanks to D&D, was able to fight, run, cast spells, and live (at least vicariously) through their character. Who'd want to roleplay being so severely ill that just living is an adventure with brutal skill checks to boot?

If you've got the magic for a magic wheel chair why not just levitate around?  I could see a gnome adventurer with a mechanical wheel chair as a gizmo.  I did have a player put his character in a wheel chair for laughs earlier this year, it was pretty annoying.

Quote from: yancy;1139441The combat wheelchair seems more like something you'd stick some gimmicky NPC with, for a single combat, than anything a player character in a D&D campaign would want to put up with.

In fact, it seems more like something suited to a superhero game with point generated characters rather than D&D. Granted, I've never read 5th edition D&D (or 3rd, other than through video games, or 4th, other than discussions I cringed at participating at). Is 5th edition D&D like Champions or something, can you minmax your character by putting all your points into your wheelchair?

LOL, "Bad Medicine For Dr. Drugs" was a supers campaign set in high school.    It had a worse than Clark Kent's glasses absurdness.  The default team of secret heroes were kids in the school.  One kid was wheelchair bound, and when the heroes showed up, one of the superheroes rode a souped up wheelchair.  It was such a subtle and obscure item that I am sure nobody ever figured it out.

Quote from: Crawford Tillinghast;1139476LOL, "Bad Medicine For Dr. Drugs" was a supers campaign set in high school.    It had a worse than Clark Kent's glasses absurdness.  The default team of secret heroes were kids in the school.  One kid was wheelchair bound, and when the heroes showed up, one of the superheroes rode a souped up wheelchair.  It was such a subtle and obscure item that I am sure nobody ever figured it out.

There's an in-universe movie in the Battletech setting where the fictionalized head of the Draconis Combine's Internal Security Force (their secret police) has a wheelchair that turns into a suit of powered armor. The actual head of the ISF even makes fun of it and lampshades it (right before he uses a hidden mini-SRM launcher to cause a blowout on a spaceship that kills the ringleaders of an attempted coup against the Coordinator. Badass).

Quote from: Marchand;1139419While reading about D&D's Combat Wheelchair, this caught my eye:

"Views on disability in the RPG space are slowly changing. WotC has made edits to the text of Curse of Strahd on D&D Beyond to remove mentions of NPC being ashamed of her disability."

In its tiny way, this is some "cropping out Trotsky from the old politburo photo", Orwell Ministry of Truth level shit.

I now actually find the trigger warning on WotC content on drivethru etc. to be reassuring; it means it's less likely they will go through and retroactively edit historic material to make it compliant. Not that I would consider that very likely anyway, as they are a commercial operation and presumably would not find it profitable to do so.

As for the wheelchair... ok, hope there are no stairs in the dungeon. That said it has magic in the arms (so you can make it go without spinning the wheels), so maybe it can just float up the stairs, like new Daleks.

More generally, I don't know any disabled gamers, but generally the attitude among disabled people I know is they want to get on with their lives with the disability being as small a thing as possible. If any of these folks decided to play D&D, I imagine the last thing they would want is to have the "combat wheelchair" option shoved in their faces. Would this kind of thing not just make people more self-conscious and therefore uncomfortable?

So a shittier but permanent version of Tenser's Floating Disk?

Okay, lets make a version that doesn't suck, it needs to give the PC advantages over having his legs restored or having magical prosthetics done:

Tenser's Mobility Disk:

The Wizard spells a small metal disk (the size of a coin) that the PC must carry with him for the Disk to manifest itself, the disk has no real time limit but it does grow flimsy if used continuously for more than 24hrs.

It operates like a flying carpet but can't fly, only hoover 3 feet above a surface (Including liquids), it has a base speed of 10 and a run speed of 20. Carry 500 pounds minus the PC's weight.

When finding a stair it can use each step as solid surface, not true with ladders or ropes, but the PC can be pulled up by his team mates with little to no effort since it cuts the weight by half.

Tenser's Mobility Disk, unlike Tenser's Floating Disk, can't be separated from it's owner.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1139488So a shittier but permanent version of Tenser's Floating Disk?

Okay, lets make a version that doesn't suck, it needs to give the PC advantages over having his legs restored or having magical prosthetics done:

Tenser's Mobility Disk:

The Wizard spells a small metal disk (the size of a coin) that the PC must carry with him for the Disk to manifest itself, the disk has no real time limit but it does grow flimsy if used continuously for more than 24hrs.

It operates like a flying carpet but can't fly, only hoover 3 feet above a surface (Including liquids), it has a base speed of 10 and a run speed of 20. Carry 500 pounds minus the PC's weight.

When finding a stair it can use each step as solid surface, not true with ladders or ropes, but the PC can be pulled up by his team mates with little to no effort since it cuts the weight by half.

Tenser's Mobility Disk, unlike Tenser's Floating Disk, can't be separated from it's owner.

I don't remember specifics, but in the Joel Rosenberg Guardians of the flame series, the players get transferred into their characters bodies and the guy who plays the dwarf happened to have cerebral palsy or something similar. While the rest of the party wanted to get back to the real world he was going to help him but there was no damn way he was going back.

I am not disabled, but I find this shit offencive to logic and misguided at best.

Well don't go staking this in the ground as the low-point. Someone will go yet further... something more ludicrous. But this was pretty low (i.e. stupid).

Quote from: LiferGamer;1139539I don't remember specifics, but in the Joel Rosenberg Guardians of the flame series, the players get transferred into their characters bodies and the guy who plays the dwarf happened to have cerebral palsy or something similar. While the rest of the party wanted to get back to the real world he was going to help him but there was no damn way he was going back.

I am not disabled, but I find this shit offencive to logic and misguided at best.

Ever read 'Call Me Joe' by Poul Anderson? Link here.

I have deep suspicions as to who's pushing this 'disabled activism' and if they're actually, y'know, disabled or crippled in some way. It used to be 'no, they're not disabled or crippled, just differently abled!', now it's 'BEHOLD MY DISABILITY HEAR IT ROAR' or some such.

Why wouldn't you just go to a cleric for a Restoration spell.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;1139445Leaving aside the actual issues (should mainline RPG's from a mega-corp deal with sensitive issues or just skim the surface in order to build the brand in to something we can license for movie deals ...), there are multiple ways a disability could work.

First, it's a world where fireballs shoot elves from their butts, which, I must admit, is a great response to every argument involving realism.

Second, the genre has changed. In a more traditional exploration based game then yes, absolutely, it may be hard to fit in. But in the modern "investigate & arrest"  genre it could totally work. You have your SWAT team party members and your social ones and your smarty ones. When it comes time to hit the warehouse then some members hang back. This would follow the traditional beats of network Tv shows. I could argue that it's actually in the same vein as Detect spells in modern D&D: they are too low level for the game actually being played at the table these days; this is just another ack that some parts of the rules/genre don't fit the modern game.

Sure yeah, Wheelchair SWAT, kinda like this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxtzJAbJ_yM

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1139552Why wouldn't you just go to a cleric for a Restoration spell.

Because Restoration spells are ableist and demeaning, you exclusionary bigot!

Quote from: VisionStorm;1139558Because Restoration spells are ableist and demeaning, you exclusionary bigot!

beat me to the punch.

You know... it's pointing things like this that should, if logic had any meaning among these morons, cause them to deconstruct the very idea of "magic" as the very force of the Ableist Demonlord that exists only in their imaginations.

I just realized Animate Object is in 5E.

Nothing says you can't animate the wheelchair to roll and stop on command, y'know.

Again. This is silly in any setting other than a low-magic one.

Quote from: tenbones;1139540Well don't go staking this in the ground as the low-point. Someone will go yet further... something more ludicrous. But this was pretty low (i.e. stupid).

O/U on how many months until they're asking to include people in comas.

I smell sexual fetish underneath the obvious virtue signalling. Before you scoff, look it up. There's a whole world of sexual fetish for various disabilities and amputations.

Consider the freakfest that 5e draws as fans, I wouldn't be surprised.

Quote from: TJS;1139438or don't view the world through the lens of a 21st century college educated American.

The 21st century college indoctrinated American'ts.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1139459B]Jousting Palanquins![/B]

I worked on a Jousting Palanquin card game a few years ago. It was going to be Car Wars Fantasy, but I never could get the mechanics where I was happy with gameplay. Maybe need to revisit that.