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I noticed on page 21 of the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guide that you are allowed to play a character that is naturally blind or deaf. The only "advantage" of doing this is that your character is automatically proficient in either the tactile or signed versions of any language they know.
Anyways, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this and I am really interested in playing a character that is naturally blind. In particular I'm thinking of making a Mystic with the empath connection. Partially because the disadvantage of being blind is partially mitagated by the blindsense(emotion) they eventually get, but mostly because a mystical blind swordsman just sounds cool to me. Anyways, I'm just wondering if anyone has actually taken the option of having a character with a natural disability in Starfinder.
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There’s just one question I ask whenever a player pitches me on such a concept: In a world of readily available cybernetic prosthetics and magical healing, why does your character still have a permanent disability?
Zatoichi is a cool series of movies, but a permanently blind swordsman makes a lot more sense in late Edo period Japan than it does in a universe of cybernetic space-monks and rocket-pilot paladins.
There’s just one question I ask whenever a player pitches me on such a concept: In a world of readily available cybernetic prosthetics and magical healing, why does your character still have a permanent disability?
Check out Mute in Netflix, it tackles that very issue.
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There’s just one question I ask whenever a player pitches me on such a concept: In a world of readily available cybernetic prosthetics and magical healing, why does your character still have a permanent disability?
Zatoichi is a cool series of movies, but a permanently blind swordsman makes a lot more sense in late Edo period Japan than it does in a universe of cybernetic space-monks and rocket-pilot paladins.
Perhaps the blindness stems from a genetic disease. Since it's genetic, it is literally part of your natural self, and any magic simply reverts back to that default. Cybernetics don't work, because your brain has never known such sensory organs as "eyes" and thus never developed the tools necessary to interface with-- or interpret signals from-- cyber optic implants.
How's that for an explanation? It's the exact reasoning I used in Pathfinder to get away with playing a quadriplegic.
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There’s just one question I ask whenever a player pitches me on such a concept: In a world of readily available cybernetic prosthetics and magical healing, why does your character still have a permanent disability?
I think you have a good point, there. I think blindness and deafness would be considerably rarer. Although I can still see people not getting it fixed for a variety of reasons. Besides it being incurable, poverty and religious beliefs come to mind as a reason someone wouldn't have cured it.
But that's also why I think its so interesting that it was included in the Society guide. There's really no "trade-off" given for giving your character one of these disabilities, but there must have been some demand for including this in the guide as a character option. Perhaps there were requests from role-players with disabilities? I know Starfinder is pretty new still, but I'm kind of curious if there is anyone who has played a blind or deaf character yet.
Flag to move to the Stafinder Society area.
Yeah, I guess I should have posted this in that subforum. I goofed there. I'll flag it too.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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There’s just one question I ask whenever a player pitches me on such a concept: In a world of readily available cybernetic prosthetics and magical healing, why does your character still have a permanent disability?
A genetic disorder in the optic nerve would likely prevent most solutions. The cyberware most likely assumes normal optic nerves, while magical healing may restore you to the 'healthy' condition which genetically is blind.
You could make a technomancy equivalent of Geordi LaForge's VISOR. It has a lot of useful qualities (seeing things like spectrographic qualities and magical auras/fields) but is so different from normal sight that many things people in the setting take for granted (like art and video) would leave him completely lost. He could analyze the chemical contents of the materials of a painting at will, but he won't see it as a whole or really experience the emotional impact of it. In many important senses, he's still blind. Plus the technology might cause its own difficulties (Geordi had to deal with crippling, untreatable headaches).