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Just out of curiosity... what class are you looking to play? I'm going to presume... not Zen Archer Monk.This is more just a rules clarification. I have a concept or two bouncing around I'd like to make sure aren't going to get signed into retirement their first game.
Then the character really can't be disabled. If you can't get through your 4 years of Basic Training... then you never get commissioned.
I have long been thinking about a character sitting in a wheelchair. This should not be an issue for a wizard or a psychic imo. Oracle with lame curse seems obvious for this...
Take a wheelchair out in the woods sometime, and I'm not talking about the manicured lawns that pass for forests these days.... or the usual town that has a mudpath for a road and guess again.
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Is it possible to start play with a character that is somehow disabled with a distinct mechanical effect?
For example, I'd like to start play with a one-armed character. Page 23 of the guide says:
All conditions gained during an adventure, except for permanent negative levels, ability drain that does not reduce an ability score to 0, and conditions that provide no mechanical effect, must be resolved before the end of the session; if these are not resolved the character should be reported as ‘dead.’Emphasis mine. Since the condition would not have been gained during the adventure, there is no need to retire. If character creation doesn't support creating disabled characters, then you can simply gain the disability during downtime. You're still not gaining it "during the adventure", so perhaps there is some leeway in the rules.
The only thing really approximating being disabled in any way are the oracle curses. Deafness (deafness), clouded vision (is more like cataracts than blindness), lame (I know one guy who plays a lame pirate with a "pegleg"), maybe blackened too. Otherwise, not really.
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Get a wand of floating disk for the low levels, then just prep and cast it with a lesser metamagic rod of Extend spell and then you should be good for all day.
It's not the same as a wheelchair, but it's probably a little thematically cooler (unless you just really want the Professor X thing going on), and you're less likely to get smacked by table variation.
Venture-Agent, Minnesota
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Take a look at the oracle curses blackened limbs and lame... You can approximate a number of physical disabilities off of those two.
If you go lame, you can still do the wand of floating disk.
I have to admit that the reason that I love oracles so much is the curses. The opportunity to be deaf, or have bad vision, or some other interesting impediment.
Hmm
Not quite a missing arm but there's a specific campaign trait from Skull & Shackles for playing a character with one leg.
"Peg Leg: One of your legs was bitten off below the knee by a shark when you were just a child, and was replaced with a wooden peg leg (Pathfinder Player Companion: Pirates of the Inner Sea 20). You’ve long since gotten used to your prosthesis, however, and take none of the normal penalties from having a peg leg. You’ve had to learn to deal with the pain of your injury as well, and you gain a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saves. Ever since your accident you’ve hated sharks, and you also gain a +1 trait bonus on damage rolls against sharks and other animals with the aquatic subtype."
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Not quite a missing arm but there's a specific campaign trait from Skull & Shackles for playing a character with one leg.
"Peg Leg: One of your legs was bitten off below the knee by a shark when you were just a child, and was replaced with a wooden peg leg (Pathfinder Player Companion: Pirates of the Inner Sea 20). You’ve long since gotten used to your prosthesis, however, and take none of the normal penalties from having a peg leg. You’ve had to learn to deal with the pain of your injury as well, and you gain a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saves. Ever since your accident you’ve hated sharks, and you also gain a +1 trait bonus on damage rolls against sharks and other animals with the aquatic subtype."
Except campaign traits aren't PFS legal (and i don't think there's a S&S boon to make one legal, though there are for some of the other campaigns)
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Not quite a missing arm but there's a specific campaign trait from Skull & Shackles for playing a character with one leg.
"Peg Leg: One of your legs was bitten off below the knee by a shark when you were just a child, and was replaced with a wooden peg leg (Pathfinder Player Companion: Pirates of the Inner Sea 20). You’ve long since gotten used to your prosthesis, however, and take none of the normal penalties from having a peg leg. You’ve had to learn to deal with the pain of your injury as well, and you gain a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saves. Ever since your accident you’ve hated sharks, and you also gain a +1 trait bonus on damage rolls against sharks and other animals with the aquatic subtype."
That's awesome. I'll need to pick that up :)
One-Armed doesn't need to be complicated. Just add it to your descriptor and tell the GM you will only be equipping a single 1H weapon at a time. You can keep it almost entirely in the realm of RP without needing a mechanic to back it up.
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You can keep it almost entirely in the realm of RP without needing a mechanic to back it up.
This. While it's great to be able to realize a concept for your character, giving them mechanical disadvantages that they're bound to is not a good idea (and not technically allowed in PFS). Other players depend on your character to be able to satisfy their role, since they are included in the APL calculation. If you have more disadvantages than you should, you are making the scenario artificially harder for everyone.
Having said that - there are lots of characters who never use two hands at the same time, so it's easy to do without giving yourself a mechanical disadvantage. Just don't ask your GM to give you any bonuses not not having an arm and you'll be fine.
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Also, please bear in mind that if the depiction of the injury is exceptionally over the top or if you have someone at the table that *is* living with a similar drawback IRL that it may be construed as 'being a jerk' indirectly.
Please communicate politely with your fellow players to ensure that you're not being one.
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Since the condition would not have been gained during the adventure, there is no need to retire.
Your emphAsis is on the wrong syllAble.
"Conditions", as far as Pathfinder defines them, are things like Poison, Disease, Blindness, Deafness, Death, and so forth. Having one arm isn't a "condition". Since you can only gain conditions during a scenario, that's what the section you quoted is referring to.
If you can find a mechanical way to obtain a physical handicap, such as through an Oracle curse, then by all means feel free to go that route.
I would caution against going about it in any other way. Say your "one-armed" character is dominated, and ordered to attack the party. Although you've been flavoring your handicap as roleplay, now it's granting you a mechanical benefit. Same thing for claiming your character is blind, making them thus immune to sight-based effects.
But if you can find a mechanical way of going about it, go nuts.
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The difference doesn't actually matter in that case since blindness is a condition and either of those situations would require you to fix them or be marked as dead. Besides as a GM I wouldn't be cool with the eye stabbing thing as it also bypasses the need to take the physical damage associated with stabbing your eyes out. There really aren't that many legitimate ways to play a physical impairment. Trust me I've been looking into the wheel chair thing for a while in the hopes of re-creating a character of mine from another system. I've pretty much resigned myself to either forking over the money/pp for the wand to get the floating disc or possibly buying some kind of medium sized cart or wagon or something similar or possibly using PP for a Caravan vanity/paying for a slave to push me around(that may be outside the legal scope of these options though).
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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My new gnome will be starting play at level 4 or 5 (GM credits) and will only have one hand. Said hand will be replaced by a Wizards Hook because it's amazing but requires a stump. So the character will be created when ze has enough money/fame for it. From a narrative standpoint, ze's "always" had it.
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It's not quite a wheelchair, but one of my friends plays a Lame Oracle who rides their Mount Companion everywhere. I find it to be thematic, practical, and effective. It is also perhaps more fitting for the era and setting of PFS. That could narrow down your character build or Mystery, but I know for a fact that the Nature Mystery can do it from Level 1. Lunar too if you don't mind waiting a few levels and/or start as a Small character. :)
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Forget the sewers, what passes for midieval streets would make a conventional wheelchair stuck in the mud. Luxuries such as paving and sidewalks are a modern invention.
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I feel we need to get back on track for a little bit. One handed character, is it mechanically possible in PFS? No hook hands, no tumor-familiar-snake-arms, no blackened oracle curses, no optimization tricks with shields and stumps. Just no hand. Born or otherwise. I'd love to play a disabled character as well, especially as Society is introducing new interesting disabled NPC:s to the scene!
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Honestly just look at the Oracle curses drawbacks without the benefits. Blind or near blind with no darkvision. Lame without the gained endurance. Just make sure either through class or magic, you have a way to compensate for these disabilities enough that the Pathfinder society would consider you an asset rather than a liability.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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It occurs to me that if you wanted to play a one-handed character in a home game, you could impose the following restrictions.
* Retrieving an item is a standard action.
* The only shield you can use is a buckler.
* You cannot cast spells with somatic components while holding a weapon.
And this is exactly the problem. There is honestly no difference between "My character is unable to walk and uses a wheelchair" and "I'm playing a character who pretends that he's unable to walk." Accept those restrictions, but there's no rule that says you have to do so, or that you can't decide, in extremis, to forego the restrictions.
And that will, at some tables, land you into an awkward situation.
(cue harp glissandos: everything loses focus and when they resolve, we're in the middle of a hypothetical combat against a punk band of minotaur children...)
Kyle's druid is unconscious, one round from dying. His tiger animal companion is providing most of the fighting power for the party right now. Your character is 30 feet away, with a cure light wounds wand sheathed in your belt. Your character is under the effects of haste. All the other PCs are unconscious and stable. Your character acts before Kyle's.
So, you should be able to move to the druid, drawing the wand as part of the move action, and heal the druid before the PC dies.
Except that you've decided, for flavor, that you can't draw a weapon or wand as part of a move action, as the wheelchair requires both hands. So, Kyle's character dies, because you could have saved him if you'd wanted to -- there's no rule that says your PC can't just stop pretending and run over to him -- but decided to keep up the facade. Kyle's druid dies, the tiger stops being an animal companion and runs off, pretty soon your PC goes down, and the GM rules that retrieving the PCs in this situation isn't viable.
(more harp glissandos. And we're back.)
Some players are okay with that. Others will grouse.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Is it possible to start play with a character that is somehow disabled with a distinct mechanical effect?
For example, I'd like to start play with a one-armed character. Page 23 of the guide says:
All conditions gained during an adventure, except for permanent negative levels, ability drain that does not reduce an ability score to 0, and conditions that provide no mechanical effect, must be resolved before the end of the session; if these are not resolved the character should be reported as ‘dead.’Emphasis mine. Since the condition would not have been gained during the adventure, there is no need to retire. If character creation doesn't support creating disabled characters, then you can simply gain the disability during downtime. You're still not gaining it "during the adventure", so perhaps there is some leeway in the rules.
As others have suggested, search for something that can approximate what you are looking for that is already legal, and really really consider what effect something like that will have on the table.
If your character is intentionally weakening himself.. the other players might not appreciate you making their scenario harder, and you will often have no idea which of those players has a loved one who is dealing with a disability, so be very very careful.
Talk to your local players and GMs who they feel about you exploring those options, and maybe, just shelf the idea for a home game.
