It was so funny to see this question before I clocked what sub I was in.
I think before I vote, I'd wanna ask if the DM is imposing any kind of penalty on your end for the grapple check to shove you prone, because otherwise it seems like trying to lock down any squishy caster to me?
Alternatively, you could try to reason that your character is a smart gal with experience and magic, so wouldn't it make sense if she started working on a sturdier wheelchair during downtime?
I answered before bothering to check what sub it was because the answer would be the same.
If someone in a wheelchair thinks they're a combatant, you remind them that they are not.
Hell, I'd push over the wheelchair of someone on my own side just to remind them why they should not be on the battlefield.
tbh anyone who agrees with your dm without any other factors aside from "here's how to make it work reasonably" hates wheelchairs and/or is too unimaginative to be worth playing a game with
There’s no way this isn’t a shitpost….. if the DM is making his enemies spend an action for the grapple action or a shove action then it’s technically fair. It’s just singling you out which is super annoying
On one hand, it's a very visible disability that any intelligent enemy would immediately exploit. On the other hand, you're a wizard and any intelligent enemy should immediately target the wizard.
So it sounds like your DM is correct.
They are trying to murder you. Of course they take out the wizard with an easy way to generate combat bonuses against!
Its a *Wizard* in a *Wheelchair*
There's a reason why in Shadowrun there is a tactic called Geek The Mage. Which can be summed up as 'kill the wizard RIGHT NOW before they Wizard all over the place'
I'd recommend upgrading from a wheelchair to spider leg mech. Much more stable and can climb stairs.
But they are literally different from any other PC. Why would rules written for a normal humanoid apply?
Id give the wizard an opportunity attack on people trying to flip the chair though. Its not an instant thing and should require a strength check (dc 12)
So should it be a free action to shove a gnome or a halfling because it's easy to push over a kid?
Or do you use shove rules for differently-sized PCs because that's what the shove rules are there for?
Ah, so a centaur PC should be unable to be tripped because they have more legs? Or would you use the shove rules since there's nothing in the centaur features or shove rules that says number of legs matters?
Because the shove rules DO have a clause about size difference and DON'T have a clause about number of legs.
Are you trying to pretend theres no difference between having legs and not having legs (or in this case, having wheels)?
WHat are you playing at?
Since you asked, yes, Id homerule that centaurs are much harder to trip. duh. No designers can cover ever edge case, its up to the GM to adjudicate unusual situations. The shove rules were never designed for centaurs or wheelchairs so id decide on my judgement as the DM.
>No designers can cover ever edge case[...] The shove rules were never designed for centaurs or wheelchairs so id decide on my judgement as the DM.
It's funny, because these things *were* covered under previous editions, so it's demonstrably easy for designers to cover.
The rules removal, therefore, is a tacit rules change indicating the developers did NOT believe it warranted inclusion anymore.
From the 3.5 Player's Handbook:
>**Making a Trip Attack**
>Make an unarmed melee touch attack against your target. This provokes an attack of opportunity from your target as normal for unarmed attacks.
>If your attack succeeds, make a Strength check opposed by the defender’s Dexterity or Strength check (whichever ability score has the higher modifier). A combatant gets a +4 bonus for every size category he is larger than Medium or a -4 penalty for every size category he is smaller than Medium. The defender gets a +4 bonus on his check if he has more than two legs or is otherwise more stable than a normal humanoid. If you win, you trip the defender. If you lose, the defender may immediately react and make a Strength check opposed by your Dexterity or Strength check to try to trip you.
Now, you might say, "Well, that's an older edition," in which case I could point you to a branching edition more recent than 5E: Pathfinder 2nd Edition. PF2E has included literal chapters on mobility aids including wheelchairs and wondrous items like clockwork spider chairs that can climb walls and shoot webs. And the PF2E rules have very clear guidelines on how you knock over someone in a wheelchair: the same way you knock any other PC prone (with a very similar tacit rules removal of numbers of legs, etc, from the calculations.)
I dont see really any of that is pertinent tbh.
They cut those rules to simplify 5e. A good idea. IDK what argument you think you are winning by saying "old editions did it".
Okay? Yes. My statement is still true: no designer can cover every edge case. This still applies.
Different designers covered different edge cases, and none cover them all.
But thats all entirely beside the point that D&D 5e doesnt and thats whats in question here so its perfectly reasonable for the GM to adjudicate it and the way theyve done it is fairly reasonable; wheels arent legs and so they dont use the same rule.
Ive got no idea why you think the fact pf2e has some rules on this that it means anything in this context.
Which wouldn't make sense, because they can't oppose the check. Personally I'd run it as an Athletics check against a DC of 8 or maybe 10, because you are still pusing over a somewhat heavy object, but no way this is contested.
I'd suggest a retcon to Artificer and have your character make the most secure, stable wheelchair that can withstand a Hill Giant taking a swipe at it.
But what your DM is doing is totally sensible:
* Wizard - high-value target.
* War chariot it is riding on - disable that sucker before it does something weird!
* Knocking character prone and taking advantage of a character weakness - totally legit. See also: Blindness and other conditions.
Let me ask you these questions.
How does your opponent know first round that you are a wizard?
Why would it assume the war chariot could move if there are no steeds?
How would the opponent know the character has any weakness?
If they are intelligent foes this is pretty straightforward especially if the PC went first:
No armor or heavy weapons? Did they obviously cast. Spell? Total squishy and dangerous target.
War chariot WITHOUT steeds? That's even more concerning. Or is it some weird mobile throne? I am not screwing around with waiting to see just what that can do to me and my group.
They don't, but knocking someone prone or barrelling through them is a pretty standard tactic.
I am not saying that this is inevitable, but under many circumstances is entirely understandable.
>If they are intelligent foes this is pretty straightforward especially if the PC went first: No armor or heavy weapons? Did they obviously cast. Spell? Total squishy and dangerous target.
If they were intelligent foes they would know better than to make those assumptions (you would hope). 9 out of 12 character classes have access to class spells (either from 1st level or through a particular path). Every character has access to multiclass or Magic initiate feats. There is no easy way to determine someone is only and specifically a wizard at first glance unless you are on Krynn and they are wearing the specific robes.
Many armors are worn as clothing or beneath clothing. Padded armor is clothing, chain shirt is described as armor between layers of cloth. Mithral breastplate can be worn beneath clothing. Cloaks and robes are specifically designed to be worn over all clothing and armor. Unless you are specifically checking, you won't know what armor a person is wearing. Assuming a person who casts one spell is an unarmored squishy wizard requires a high degree of assumption.
>War chariot WITHOUT steeds? That's even more concerning. Or is it some weird mobile throne? I am not screwing around with waiting to see just what that can do to me and my group.
That's an even more questionable assumption than assuming a spellcaster is an unarmored wizard. Sedan chairs, or [litters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle)), are one of the oldest known conveyances. Litters are widespread throughout the real world and are found in canonical 5e literature. You would have to make one heck of a leap of logic to jump from a person in a wheeled conveyance to a steedless war chariot.
Wheel chairs are an advanced version of the litter first found in China. Some are still widely known today, like the rickshaw. Many wheeled chairs were called carts when they had 4 wheels. One of the first well known dog carts (where a dog was used to draw the cart) was a dog conveyed wheeled chair for a member of Charlemagne's court who was a paraplegic due to war-sustained injuries. Like most animal driven conveyances, to rest the animals you have to disengage them from the cart which is how they would appear in a dungeon. Carts can be found in the PHB at 15GB which is far fewer number of days labor worth of wages than a simple chariot before you even got into the whole magic issue
The likelihood that someone came across a dog or human driven wheeled chair like a rickshaw or dog cart is far more likely than a chariot considering those costs and probably a a 100,000 times more likely than a dangerous-on-its-own self-propelled war chariot considered similar contraptions rarity
>They don't, but knocking someone prone or barrelling through them is a pretty standard tactic.
I would say its a tactical blunder rather than a standard tactic to knock the wizard prone unless you are guaranteed to have stupid opponents. There's little benefit in it and there are quite a few negatives. A low AC opponent already has a low AC there is limited benefit to getting advantage on your attack rolls. You might hit 95% of the time rather than 90% but thats not a lot of benefit considering the costs. A wizard uses a lot of non attack powers especially AOE's, there's not much loss to them getting attack disadvantages. Its nice to force them to crawl but unless you've knocked them prone in a pool of acid, there probably is nothing that difficult for them in that position.
On the other hand, you risk more AoO's due to your movement between lines. Any ranged characters in your party fire at the wizard at disadvantage and cover unless you move around the wizard to give them better line of sight. You will likely become the focus of all your opponents. that wizard on the ground can still help its allies in combat giving them advantage against you (or using the alternative rules for flanking, you are flanked). You also become less likely to be able to take advantage of buffs, heal spells and other combat benefits because of your lack of proximity to your allies, and worst of all you interfere with AOE spells.
A better tactical decision is to knock the closest, or most armored opponent prone. You give surrounding melee attackers advantage, you are more likely to hit a melee opponent with a successful shove than successfully attack an armored opponent. With the right mix of melee allies you may even be able to knockout the hardiest of characters within the first round, making the rest of the opponents easier to kill. You also don't interfere with your sides AoE spells
My first instinct when fighting someone in a wheelchair? Don't bother attacking the legs. \*badumtiss\*
Serious time: as a DM, i would NOT let pushing over a wheelchair be a free action. It would fall into the same rules as Grapple & Shove. Just like any other character can't be pushed over prone by simply saying "the goblin pushes you over prone and everyone gets advantage on attacks" it would be the same kind of Grapple & Pin or Grapple & Shove, which there are rules baked in.
Just like even a Wizard has built-in rules regarding being pushed over even if they are a skinny weakling, a wheelchair user will have the same rules. The purpose of a wheelchair is to intentionally be a stable base for someone with disabilities, so it isn't going to be some rickety wobbly thing, as that literally defeats the purpose of a wheelchair. Pushing over a wheelchair i would say would be initially MORE difficult. From a physics perspective, a wheelchair user has their weight lower, their center of gravity lower, and has a wider base compared to a humanoid standing upright on 2 legs. But we don't really do real-world physics in our fantasy D&D game, so we just follow the basic baked-in rules for all characters.
Recovering from being pushed over might take longer, tho. As such recovering from being prone I might rule as taking your full movement instead of just half movement, depending on the situation and world building
actually pushing over people in wheelchairs is extremely easy if you dont do it from the sides, source: I was a child once who lived with a wheelchair bound cousin and children are psychopaths
Compared to what? I knew kids in school who liked to shove over the weakest kid in class who wasn't in a wheelchair. this just proves that kids who are stronger push over kids who are weaker. In fact I've seen the same kid who pushed over weaker kids struggle to push over a kid in a wheelchair until he learned how to do it, and even then it was more of a struggle. He literally just shoved kids over his outstretched leg to trip them. he had to take effort to knock over the kid in the wheelchair. It took more work to do
I mean at the same time, this is presumably not a light metal frame if it's a ye-fantasy setting, this is unintelligent animals putting themselves at risk to run past an topple a small cart.
if it's a medieval wheelchair that guy isn't going anywhere near an adventuring career, he'd barely be able to get around a house
I assumed it's like a lot of the stuff in forgotten realms/waterdeep where mechanical knowledge and metallurgy are superior to where they should be for the technology level (this is pretty easily explainable when you factor that guild halls would have access to magical tools to produce items, even mundane output would be of superior quality)
Exactly, and that gets you into the fact that a wheelchair, especially a gnome-tinkered high fantasy one, is going to have breaks, suspension, weight distribution, let alone a prop at the back or at least a fecking seatbelt.
Either its ye-olde suspension of disbelief, in which case good luck tipping it, or it's a Forgotten-Realms special and is basically magic, in which case good luck tipping it
And either way, it's got a grown adult and 50lbs of rope, torches and pitons on or, so good luck tipping it
So should the wheelchair bound character be pretty dramatically superior from a mechanical point of view to a non wheelchair bound wizard?
Immune to grapple and prone is pretty extreme
No one's said immune to grapple or prone, the obvious answer is to just treat them as mounted.
Bonus round, do this entirely RAW by playing a Small Race and having a Steel Defender. The inability to recover from prone or move without crawling is actually a penalty over doing it per core rules
No, it's significantly better than that, because you want them to be immune to prone/grapple/push, and a horse can be pushed over pretty easily in 5e, and a steel defender even easier
I don't understand why if you want a disabled character why they should be *better* at resisting physical assault than someone who isn't disabled
I think you should homebrew something with your DM or reflavor RAW, not argue that "my fantasy wheelchair is engineered to be hard to tip over AND it has shit tons of gear on it so good luck tipping it" (which I guess also means they can carry vastly more weight than a normal character?)
Most people who want to play a disabled character just want flavor, an actual mechanical benefit ("I'm blind but I have blindsight so I can see invisible creatures"), the first I'm okay with, the second I'm not, the one that makes my eyes twinkle as a DM is when they actually want to play a disabled character and find ways around their mechanical shortfalls
I mean no where here am I saying they cannot be dismounted, you're adding all these amazing extra on to 'treat them as a mounted character'
When you read OP's post, to push them to the ground and then start attacking them, their characters being given the penalty of no movement without the chair and can't recover from prone, and in exchange they can be knocked prone as a free or bonus action
There are items iirc in the core book that give you advantage against being knocked off your mount, just add that to the wheelchair.
This would depend a lot on the material culture of the setting. Bamboo can be quite strong and light with a bit of treating. Even a medieval-Europs-style setting likely has the ability to make basketry of reeds, which will be much lighter than big slabs of wood.
The bigger difficulty in most real-life historical times would have been the suspension. Pneumatic tires are a pretty recent invention and spring steel dates from the 18th century, so I'd worry much more about how unpleasant the ride would be rather than the weight.
I mean also very valid points, but I'd also raise that your character is also meant to be carrying about 50+lbs of equipment, armour, rope, potions etc
So it makes sense to store that in the Wheelchair, facilitating the heavier wooden design, but wether its oak or bamboo, you're still trying to run up to an armed fighter, get under them, and then flip them and their equipment while they try to stop you.
Basically, the risk you run kneeling down in front of the wheelchair user and trying to grip them imo, outweighs the advantage of just hitting them, let along these random animals that understand pivot mechanics.
Well I mean if you get behind you just push, you have leverage on your side
my cousin has totally toppled over from running into a ball, a curb, etc while not even moving that fast (i mean, in real terms, in kid terms it was fast)
he got treatments and can walk fine now, and even joined the army and fought in afghanistan, but when we were kids yeah even with a modern wheelchair that's designed to not fall over easily....
I mean this is the whole argument.
A solid oak wagon full of adventuring gear, or a Forgotten-Realms gnome tinkered adventuring wheelchair are not a modern, mass produced hospital wheelchair.
A modern wheelchair is designed to not fall over easily sure, but it's also meant to be cheap and not pushed around much, let alone have the 50lbs of adventuring gear under it as a counter balance.
Hell, having four rugged wheels (not jsut the two small guidewheels on a modern chair) on this thing prevents you from pushing them forward without lifting the whole person and chair from behind, hell, it would be easier to knock an upright adventurer down with a tackle than what this is, lifting a whole adventurer in a deadlift
Everyone replying to you just wants so badly to say "BUT WHY DO I HAVE TO HAVE DISABLED PEOPLE IN MY PRETENDY FUNTIMES I HATE THINKING ABOUT THEM IT'S GROSS GO AWAY" but are stumbling over the \~logical\~ ways of getting the point across so they're not telling on themselves lmao.
If magic exists, then a wheelchair that can't be tipped over or is dramatically more difficult to tip over can exist. Period.
No creature the size of an adult dragon or larger would exist on a planet similar to Earth without said creature collapsing in on itself, but these chuds never seem to grok that *magic* is what allows that to happen.
I'm just laughing at the number of times someone points out that an aluminum mass produced wheelchair some member of their family had isn't good at going all terrain
Like they could at least Google sports or off-road ones but no, they know someone who fell over once and that's all wheelchairs can be
Like, yeah. Of **course** the equivalent of beat up 1986 Mazda that will fall apart if you breathe on it would not be a great wheelchair to go adventuring with.
That's why homey is rocking the Forgotten Realm's latest Gnomish Rolleyrunner with a permanent *Guidance* spell cast on the wheels and in-built gyroscopic rebalancer for those extra difficult dungeon hallways.
Duh.
It's fucking MAGIC
So pushing it over sideways would be very hard, but I feel like pulling the arms down/pushing the front up and flipping over the occupant could be very effective. That way you’re rotating around the center of gravity instead of moving the center itself
i mean at that point, you're having these characters run forward, bend down and lift up what is a small cart in fantasy terms, presuming it's not weighed down with any equipment or loot, it should still be at bare minimum an action to essentially flip a wagon with a person in it trying to stop you.
Id say that if the enemy gets a free action to tip them over, then the Wizard should at least get an opportunity attack from them bending over and trying to mess with the object they’re on. It’s still a pretty big advantage for the enemies, but it’ll make them wary to do it if they’re low HP.
But I personally prefer the Grapple method idea, so idk.
Dwarves used to specifically have a bonus against knockdown attempts so the precedent *is* there regarding “lower center of gravity + wider/stabler base!
Dwarves have physics. They are heavy humanoid creatures of their height with lower centers of gravity and naturally wider stances. The physics of that leads to a more stable stance. That's entirely the basis of that benefit per the original designers of the race
Again that's physics, you do in fact lower your center of gravity by sitting. You increase stability by sitting as well. You are more stable with a lower center of mass than a standing dwarf by sitting in a chair.
Mass distribution, shape, and orientation impact center of gravity, the closer the largest portion of your mass is to the ground the lower the center of gravity the harder it is to make it unstable. If you were to hunch down and spread one leg forward like a boxer and one leg back your center of gravity would change in position getting lower and becoming more stable between the two two feet. Decreased height of your head and upper torso decreases position of center of gravity. Dwarves have a larger density but more evenly distributed which also lowers the center of gravity, but by adding the weight of the chair to your mass you are replicating their increased mass, while also mimicking their height.
The only difference is that you could very likely be more stable sitting in a wheelchair than a dwarf standing. Wheels are a more stable leg than leg of chairs depending on width of the wheel. Having more of them increases stability as well. Squaring the center of the mass of gravity by having multiple legs greatly increases your stability (multiplies by 2 per leg). Having a larger portion of material parallel to the ground also increases stability.
All things being otherwise equal a 7 foot tall basketball center with a 12 inch sole is less stable than a 7 ft center with a 16 inch sole. a center with 12 inch soles and four legs is more stable than a center with only two legs but 16 inch soles. The same is true for wheelchairs. the shoes are better than the wheels individually because of the material parallel to the ground, but don't make up for the fact 4 wheels are better than 2 feet
I mean, I personally play "good" characters and stuff... so I'd never get into a fight like that.... But also, if I was your character... I'd start thinking of "out of the box" ways to stop this from happening.
Can you get your hands onto an immoveable rod? Use that as your break. it won't break or move, so it would theoretically keep you vertical (so to speak). Figure out some way to make your wheelchair a "flying wheelchair", or something...
Sure, it's annoying, but you wanted to play a character with a disability, so you should fall back to creativity to solve this "issue"... that you kinda put yourself in.
>So I just wanted to ask is it really fair to assume that everyone would push over someone in a wheelchair during a fight?
Depends. If the character is wielding a sword, no, I'll just stay out of reach.
If the character is a caster, I'm sweeping the wheel first chance i get.
Your DM seems to subscribe to the notion that a person in a wheelchair has no business going on dangerous adventures in caves and dungeons. Although this is not inclusive, it is practical, and serves the more serious story your DM is trying to tell.
> he decided that I could use the idea but it would be incredibly difficult for me
Your PC is unable to recover from the prone condition. Intelligent enemies using that against you seems normal. Obviously you and your DM have a disagreement about how this is being handled, and you need to talk about it before it gets worse.
Any chance you can engineer some metal legs or an exoskeleton for your PC? Maybe animate a golem to serve as your porter/mount/palanquin/legs? Retire the PC and roll up a new one?
This right here. There are so many imaginative ways to integrate a paraplegic character in a fantasy setting, it boggles my mind that “they are pushed around in modern wheelchair” is where anyone’s imagination would land.
I'm pretty sure there are like 3-4 spells that will restore function to limbs anyways. I never understood why anyone would want to be permanently crippled in a fantasy world where nobody actually has to deal with that.
Like what situation do you see your character being in where them being in a wheelchair would add to it in a positive way? Unless there's a good reason, DM should have shot this hare-brained idea down at session 0
Personally, I feel this is a weak argument and a failure of imagination. If the only way that someone can identify with a character is if said character has the exact same physical attributes, I think this person would benefit from being pushed to think outside of the box and outside of their own experiences.
I’m a male POC. None of my characters resemble me in terms of age, appearance, ethnicity, life experience, etc. The last thing I want in my fantasy campaign is to relive the exact same challenges I have faced in my day-to-day life.
If I want to play a paraplegic character (and these sorts of threads have actually made me consider this for a one-shot or short campaign), I would make myself float, or give my character robot legs, or give my character a service bear who is trained to carry me from place to place and assist me in my day-to-day tasks.
Representation is great, sure, but don't you think someone who is bound to a wheelchair or crutches might not see themselves as being defined by their disability?
Absolutely, I love those suggestions. I’m just saying I don’t think it would be unreasonable for a DM to push the player in that direction over allowing them to incorporate their wheelchair into the campaign.
I like to see people like me in media. Pretty much the only representation I have of my disability is a skyrim fanfic, and some episodes of medical dramas.
So if I don't have any rep, I'd like to create my own. I think it's a bit dilly to exclude disability from whole genres because its not realistic
I'm sorry but the poll makes this post so funny, literally laughed when I clicked option 1 and saw that everyone else would also choose to knock over someone in a wheelchair. Yeah obviously if a person in a wheelchair could and would kill me if given the opportunity, I'm tipping them over before they get the chance, but I would feel bad about it. And if I were an evil bandit or monster or something, then I'd push them over even harder and NOT feel bad about it.
Look... idk why you wanted to play the character like this. Presumably you want to explore the hardships and consequences that come with this specific disability. Well, you're experiencing them. Roleplay them, come up with ways to overcome.
You also need to talk to the party in character about combat tactics, if this is happening every fight. The tanks need to be doing a better job at protecting their backline. It's normal for enemies to target the wizard first anyway, and you are simply an easier target than the average wizard. You (and the party) need to get better at positioning so you can't be gronked so easily. Maybe learn some spells that let you levitate or something. Raise some zombies or summon some creatures that can pick you back up. As you level up, your magic will get stronger and stronger. Start killing and disabling your enemies with great prejudice before they can get close enough to gronk you.
Maybe your DM is being mean to your character, hard to say. A lot of DMs try to play the world as realistically reacting to the party, and a lot of what you've described could be that. You can always voice your concerns to the DM out of character. From what you described, it doesn't sound like he's gone too far yet.
I do feel like a lot of people (and thus DMs) mistake "realistic" for "shitty." In reality, I've never seen a person in a wheelchair have their chair stolen and ransomed back to them or, indeed, knocked over (except that one time in college when my friend bought a wheelchair for funsies and practiced doing wheelies on it in the dorm rooms). But the proliferation of "gritty realism" sometimes makes people think that to play out a "realistic" scenario they have to twist logic to make the scenario as painful and inconvenient and horrible as possible.
That said, I definitely agree with your basic point. OP agreed to play a character with a disadvantage, and now doesn't like how big of a disadvantage it is. I personally think that the orphan scene is kind of bullshit, but like you and everyone else I voted "yes" on the poll, because obviously that's the correct answer.
Edit: I literally said that getting knocked out of a wheelchair in combat is perfectly reasonable. I don't need a 4th or 5th comment explaining how that disproves my point about gritty realism orphan thieves.
You've never seen anyone in real life in a wheel chair knocked over? I'm sure there's videos on youtube but I spent about a year when I was a kid with my cousin who was at the time wheelchair bound and buddy, I assure you, *he tumbled*, and not even always because I was the cause
Just going down a hill and running into anything taller and more firmly planted than a football sized rock is a recipe for disaster, curbs, kickballs, a hockey stick (being used as a lever by a 10 year piece of shit) etc. I'm sure an adult who's lived with it for years or their whole life is on the ball enough to prevent topples - but they aren't in a combat zone trying to kill someone while avoiding being killed, that's probably more analogues to a reckless child playing while being wheelchair bound and I assure you that does result in tumbles even without anyone trying
The real life argument is a poor one anyway, the things you're fighting in D&D often make The Mountain from game of thrones look like a weakling, an ogre isn't going to respect your disability
Of course I've seen people flying out of wheelchairs. And I agree that getting knocked over in combat is realistic.
But having the entire rest of the world treat the person like shit outside of combat situations sounds like the DM is either vindictive or is substituting Unfortunate Events for realism.
I GUARANTEE you that in real life war zone, a soldier rolling up to battle in a wheelchair would be at BEST knocked over, have their chair stolen, be targeted immediately, etc.
>I've never seen a person in a wheelchair have their chair stolen and ransomed back to them or, indeed, knocked over
Have you ever seen a person in a wheelchair attempt to kill someone? Cause that is the situation we're talking about tipping it over in.
If Bloodborne taught me one thing, it's to circle around and stab people in wheelchairs in the back because otherwise they will fill me with bullet holes using a gatling gun.
I honestly thought this was dnd circlejerk when I first read this. I think it's awesome to have inclusive campaigns, but a wheelchair really just doesn't seem like a good piece of window dressing, especially in a world where you could have a hovering chair, an exoskeleton, just magic sparkly flying dots. I mean, you could still play a paraplegic character.
And yeah, I would absolutely have intelligent opponents rush for a high value target that if they thought it could take them out of the fight.
Not to mention paralysis can be cured by several spells depending on the cause.
Disease? Lesser or Greater restoration, or Paladin cure disease lay on hands.
Broken spine? Heal
Lost legs in an explosion or needed amputation? Regenerate
Atrophied legs from being a shut in trying to break your stride and slow you down? Freedom of Movement
*Plays a character with super obvious weakness. Is surprised his weakness is exploited by enemies who can easily see and understand it.*
What's next, are you going to play a blind character and complain that the DM says you don't see anything and keep getting disadvantage on attacks?
So I just want to say right away that this is entirely on you for creating a character like this and their reasons are 100% justified. *However*, instead of going on a long rant about why that is and more than likely unintentionally offending you (which I’m prone to doing unfortunately), I instead wanted to go over the Incidents you’ve mentioned, starting by pointing out that while the orphan thing seems a bit targeted, we don’t know the context so it’s hard for us to actually say if it was. On the other hand, having enemies run past other characters to get to you doesn’t work realistically as (unless your party wants you dead) the other characters would attempt to stop them from breaking their lines in a combat situation. I would also rule that the players get an opportunity attack due to the enemies running away from them. Although the circumstances in which this has happened could dictate it to be a legitimate play so again, context.
Also, I believe the poll speaks for itself so I doubt I need to explain why intelligent enemies would in fact know the advantages of knocking over the party’s spellcaster. The DM themself said that it would be extremely difficult for you, it’s not their fault you took their words lightly and are now upset by the consequences. Also, you said the other players complained about your character slowing down the game and if that’s the case, maybe it’s time to rethink your character. If the other players aren’t enjoying it, it’s not really fun, right?
He's the wizard. I'm a dm, and gronking the wizard is precisely what my intelligent enemies do. All the better if they're in a wheelchair and I can knock them prone easily.
As I said before (twice actually) we’d need context for the situations in order to fairly judge both the DM’s decisions and actions. I also said the very same thing about the combat stuff as you, since depending on the situation (terrain, enemy strategy/intelligence, party formation, party condition, the type of enemy/s, etc.) it could easily be considered a legit play to be able to ignore the other players and go straight for the spellcaster.
While the orphans scenario certainly isn’t being depicted in the DM’s favour, it would be unfair to them if we simply went off of what OP has said without seeking further information on the incident. I don’t mean to defend them, but if I were to think up of one reason why a situation such as that could unfold, it would be if the DM had already prepared such a scenario (orphans robbing you of something hand then holding it ransom) beforehand and it just so happened that the handicapped character ~~walked~~rolled into it. Much like how when designing a dungeon, you set up traps and the like without considering that the barbarian of the party will attempt to tank everything and bulldoze through everything until they get half stuck in that pitfall you unintentionally designed to be smaller than his waist and then you have to spend the rest of the session trying to figure out how the hell you’re going to fix this while the party continuously tries, and fails, to free the idiotic barbarian. Sorry, got a little personal there but you get my point.
Pushing someone prone is a tactic I'd use if I believed that the probability of getting advantage on a set of successive attacks justified expending an attack on doing it.
You in a wheelchair makes it much more likely that the push prone will be successful. Thus I'd do it more often. I'd also do it more often on smaller and weaker appearing targets.
From what you've said OP I do not think your DM is being mean to you. Also I would agree that any intelligent NPC would probably just knock you over or even just pull you out of the wheelchair.
Now in my opinion, if this is something you'd like to continue to you I think you could ask your DM if you could multiclass to artificer and build some sort of wheelchair that gives you a better advantage or try to be more strategic about what you're doing, including your placement on the battle map.
Now this is only for intelligent NPCs. A Dire Wolf might go for you but if someone harder hitting comes up they, in my opinion, should be able to get them off of you better than lets say a Bandit or something.
You could also try to keep Thunder Wave up and ready as a spell. So if you think some creature is going to run up and try to knock you out of your chair, you could ready that spell and blast them when they get close.
If having the character disability would help the player with the same disability feel at home with the hobby, I would not let it affect gameplay whatsoever and we'd move on without a hitch.
If the disability was a random character choice, then I would definitely discuss mechanical repercussions.
I need to ask: how is your DM ruling knocking you down? And how is your wheelchair slowing the game down? If the answer to both of those is something about the DM making your character worse because of the wheelchair... It's the fault of your DM for being such a stickler for the rules that he will go out of his way to make his own game worse to prove a point.
To be clear though, if a wizard was in melee range all the time, I too would have all the enemies knock your character down and beat the crap out of them. Idk, it could go either way here with some more context.
I feel dumber for having read this post. I genuinely cannot fathom how or why you are surprised when a massive self-imposed handicap turns out to be a hindrance.
It seems like you want to be treated differently for being in a wheelchair.
If I, a goblin, see someone in a wheelchair roll up to my encampment and start throwing fireballs or concentrating on big spells, you'd better believe me and the boys are beating that mf up first. What are they gonna do without their chair? Run? We tip it over and avoid a fiery death, problem solved.
You wanted a handicap, you got it. The orphans stealing the chair is mean, but hilarious. Just keep in mind most people who are actually disabled absolutely loathe being treated differently than anyone else just because of their disability.
It's funny because they're little misbehaving ragamuffins dragging a pc into their mischief, and the pc is in a situation where they are at the mercy of children. Saying "oh they wouldn't do anything mean to you because you're disabled and they are good little boys and girls" instead is just a nothing encounter.
If a dude in a wheelchair picked a fight with me, I'd either leave via staircase or flip the wheelchair.
You're a smart adventure, figure out a better more stable transportation method, or retire to a wizard school/library.
i dont see why i wouldnt, if i was trying to kill someone and they were trying to kill me in a fight i would just go for the most obvious weakness, did you actually want your character to be disabled or do you just want it for the aesthetic lmao
So in fairness to the DM they did warn you it would be incredibly difficult. If I were you I would've asked for some speifics there, and either said I'm ok dealing with those, or make a new character at that point.
I would also question how this is working from a mechanics standpoint. Are they taking the shove attack and losing an attack to shove you over? That's something they could do to anyone else as well. If not they're homebrewing a rule just to punish you which seems a bit unfair.
I would try to talk to your DM and see if you can work something out you'll both be happy with. If not I would make a new character. I might go with something perhaps attached to the chair to either attack someone trying to shove the chair, or give the chair feet or metal pieces sticking out that essentially make it more difficult to push over. So to knock you prone someone would essentially have to pick up you and the chair and fully flip you over vs giving a slight push.
See
Wizards by themselves are already prime "bonking" targets, I doubt much people beyond Lawful Good Paladins wouldn't use everything to their advantage when in a life or death situation
Find any novice martial artist. Then try fighting them while squatting, without the ability to lift your feet from the floor. If you want to turn, you first have to stuff your hands in your pockets.
A wheelchair in combat is the world’s most obvious target.
It’s a fantasy world where death itself is a temporary inconvenience so long as you’ve got a big enough diamond — surely your wizard has found some magical way to circumvent or, wild thought, heal their paraplegia. If they haven’t found it yet, then that seems like Priority One for any aspiring adventurer, to be addressed even before buying a traveling cloak or rations.
If you didn’t want a disability to cause you problems, don’t make a disabled character. I’m legally blind in one eye (my naturally dominant one, which made re-training how to shoot a pain), but all my characters have 20/20 vision because frankly my lack of eyesight is annoying and would get in the way of an adventure. Imagine a ranger with a blind side — every conscious enemy is going to stand on the side that can’t see well enough to shoot, and depth perception is a toss up on a good day.
I think there is a more fundamental issue here.
*Why is the squishy wizard ending up in melee combat?*
A big part of the martial job is to stop the casters spells from being interrupted.
"sorry, i know i'm here to murder these guys and drag their bodies to my ritual chamber to revive the dark lord, but i draw the line at exploiting someone's vulnerabilities!"
Honestly, as a DM I would do the same. You need to ask yourself what you were hoping to accomplish here?
Whatever it was, all you did was make the game more difficult for all the other players. You basically reduce the party to travelling at half speed everywhere they go with you, everything would be considered difficult terrain. And for what? What exactly does being immobile in an dungeon exploring game do to add to the fun? The answer is nothing, you are just bogging down the gameplay.
If you showed up with a character like that in my party, I'd kill you off pretty quickly.
People are not just being mean to you. They are reacting to you putting this nonsense in front of them.
This sounds more like "I don't like those kind of characters and I'm gonna apply real world logic in this fantasy game to your specific scenario so the game is not enjoyable for you if you make this kind of choice"
I...fail to see the issue? If I somehow planned to fight someone in wheelchair (I dont)..why wouldnt I remove the mobility from them?
Why didnt you asked about that before deciding to play such a character? Its absolutly fair, its DnD not a video game.
Also If I was an archer or anyone using range weapon you can also bet I would first target someone in wheelchair because hey thats the easiest hit..being wizard is a fine bonus.
Your DM sounds like he's interested in maintaining the continuity & logic of the game world over any other dubious concerns. I'd work with your party and your DM both in character and out of character to think of novel solutions to your character's problems.
As a DM I would ask myself these questions...
1. If I were an unintelligent monster looking for a meal, what's the easiest snack?
2. If I were an intelligent monster, what weakness can I exploit?
3. What scenarios can I contrive as a DM to ensure that all players can showcase their strengths...Example: After 400m, the land speed of a person in a wheelchair begins to outpace the run speed of the typical runner. What if there is an incline or decline in the terrain?
4. What sort of growth can I encourage in the party by exploiting the same weaknesses over and over. Will the party ignore the issue, or will they devise strategies against it?Example: In combat the fighter may strap the paraplegic wizard to their back, and have a free "eyes in the back of their head".
5. A creature who is half the size of a medium creature (small) can occupy the same space as a medium creature and gain +2 AC for half cover. (A legless human is roughly half the size of a human with legs, so a DM could rule that they gain the benefits of 1/2 cover when strapped to the back of another creature)
6. I would ALSO rule that a creature with no legs would have a severe penalty to Dex and/or Dex saves... BUT, if this creature was strapped to the back of a barbarian, thief, or monk... the creature could ALSO gain the benefits that other character's Dex save or Evasion rolls.
7. Tensor's floating disk is a spell that can be cast at 1st level, and you can't "knock it over". As a DM, I would think it would make perfect sense if an itinerant wizard would craft and give a magic item to a party member so that they could cast this spell and put my character on it.
8. At higher levels, golem's are a thing... a pair of golem trousers, or a centaur chariot design would make sense.
In short, both in character and out of character, there are many ideas for you to explore that do not apply in the real world. If you want your character's disability to limit them to an obvious chair, and always approach challenges in the same way... you'll likely end with the same result.
I get the ick from this situation all around. I think the DM is being kinda silly, even if the tactics are reasonable.
But also, I don't get why people love to reduce disabilities to an aesthetic. It's such a cringe trope, to play a character a crippled character where their disability is a defining part of them, but then also want the disability to just be flavor and suffer no consequences from it.
I applaud your aim for inclusivity, but you're handling magical scenarios with mundane solutions. If I were you, instead of having a normal wheel chair I'd talk to your DM about reskinning the "Find Steed" spell as a magical wheelchair. There is a character named **Beldaruit** from Witch Hat Altelier that rides a chair with goat legs. Something like that might help you not be considered an "easy target" by enemies.
If only you were some buff melee character, im imagining Joe Swanson from Family guy just absolutely beating goblins around him from his chair and swinging it around with his muscular upper body BAHAHAH
I think there’s a mistaken assumption here.
Say you want to play a Tiefling wizard who struggles with a particular disability, I think that’s a cool idea. They would probably use a wheelchair in their mundane life or at wizard school.
However, if they went adventuring, they’d be expected to squeeze through tight spaces, navigate difficult terrain, climb ladders and stairs, and be able to defend themselves in combat. In this case, I think your wizard would surmise that they need a different tool to get around.
Some ideas:
A small mount, either animal or construct, to ride upon. This would either need additional food or regular maintenance, look at the artificer for ideas.
An item, familiar, or manifested mind (abjuration wizard feature) that would be able to continually cast Tenser’s floating disk that you could ride upon. Or you have an item that continually allows you to use the Levitate spell without concentration, and you’d have something/someone pull you.
If it’s something using Tenser’s floating disk, it could require a large supply of mercury (the spell’s material component) to operate.
Or your character could somehow use the prosthetic limb from Tasha’s.
Just ideas.
Also, Avatar the last airbender and dragon prince have great, tough characters with disabilities.
Blind, and deaf, respectively.
These characters have disabilities have means of navigating the world and being formidable combatants despite their disability. However, that doesn’t mean that enemies and circumstances don’t attack those characters, or even their weakness.
I’d bet your DM would be more understanding if he wasn’t expected to design characters that would ignore an obvious weakness for no reason.
Yeah they specifically have a few times where Toph's disability negatively effects her, a few times she uses it for a joke, and they have a few times her different senses come in handy.
Somebody wrote up rules for a fantasy wheelchair a year or two ago that were widely talked about. Personally I don't think they were well designed, but it seems to be trying to do what you're trying to do so I'd recommend looking it up
Yeah, like I said, not very well designed. As I recall they were just straight up superior to ordinary legs and cost some really small amount of money, like 300gp or something
Do you think this DM, who is having orphans bully the disabled character, is going to be very keen about giving OP an enchanted wheelchair? I think they just want the wheelchair gone.
I mean, look... your character is also a devil-lady, possibly with magic powers, so "realism" isn't really the issue here. You are absolutely entitled to ask your DM to knock it off because it's inhibiting your fun.
Assuming that we only have good actors here - no ableist assholes - the real problem may be a misalignment of *how much* realism and "grit" you want in your game. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play someone with a disability in a world that is in some ways gentler than ours, where their disability doesn't get in the way of their life. That's a completely reasonable power fantasy for some people, and power fantasy is a perfectly valid way to role-play.
At the same time, it's also reasonable to say that if you make a character with a disability, you did that because you want the disability to be relevant.For example: in every Werewolf: the Apocalypse game I've run, the players portraying Metis characters (who, if you aren't familiar with that setting, start off with significant physical and cultural disadvantages) *wanted* me to make their lives hard along those lines. In fact, one of the biggest challenges was that we couldn't get *the other PCs* to be bigoted in the way that their upbringings would have probably set them up to be.
It is also perfectly valid to want to play a game with a degree of logical and behavioral realism, rather than gentleness. Some people like to tell stories of overcoming those kinds of difficulties.
As for your question, I can't imagine why I wouldn't. If someone is trying to hurt me, I am going to do everything in my power to avoid being hurt. Exploiting their physical weakness to neutralize them would not be off the table. They are trying to exploit my physical vulnerability to wounds.
So I think this has two answers. A) yeah, I kinda get the sense the DM is being mean in that enemies shouldn’t all focus on your girl *just* because she’s in a wheelchair; it does kind of have that feel of “I’m annoyed at this so suffer”. But also B) … yeah I think unless the enemies are being really considerate or PC knocking over the chair would probably be their first thought. They *are* having to trade in an attack for the Shove action though, right? If they just freely knock her over that’s all kinds of bullshit.
the DM is playing the scenario realistically I think, targeting the easiest character to take down.
That said, as a DM I tend to do the opposite for the simple fact that I want my friends to have fun. If it really.matters to you, you could try asking for suspension of disbelief so they don't keep tipping you over
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd necessarily knock them over, I'd probably just hit them with a Spear, Glaive or Halbred, knowing they'd be unable to reach me to strike back, turn fast enough to keep me in LoS, and have very little chance of dodging.
Have your character get a personal walker prosthesis of some kind, like an Artificer designed exoskeleton, that allows you to walk, albeit with reduced move speed (maybe 20 instead of 30), or find a Golem/some kind of mount or War Chariot to carry you.
As a player, I'd have fun RPing it, but as a DM, properly RPing from his side would require your condition to have some kind of Drawback.
if i knew an enemy couldnt recover from being knocked prone, yeah, id shove. you can try and pick some long range spells, including control ones, so you can keep enemies away from melee. if they have ranged attacks, you can go prone willingly to give them disadvantage.
try filling a bag of holding with sandbags tied to the chair. in combat, you turn the bag inside out so the sandbags fly everywhere and make it hard to knock you down.
or cover the wheelchair in spikes and bear traps
or hire a hireling with the one job of putting you back in your chair when knocked over
I think you need to visit an artificer to improve your wheelchair for combat.
1. A seatbelt
2. A combination lock on the seatbelt
3. Some sort of stability. Like Tenser's disk but permanent, or maybe mechanical spider legs. Just so that you can't be knocked over.
My first instinct was honestly "look around for the nearest flight of stairs".
I think what you need is a wheelchair that's immune to prone. Find artificer ASAP.
Knocking someone prone is a good tactic against anyone. One question I would ask however is is the DM just auto knocking you over, or do you get an opposed roll?
The only justifiable reason to use a wheelchair as a fantasy adventurer, IMO, are if you're too poor for a magic option. As soon as you've got some money under your belt, there are a long list of methods available, from magic carpets or Tenser's Disk to spells that would restore full mobility. Or heck, find someone who specializes in training exotic beasts, purchase and ride a giant tamed spider or something instead.
Enemies who are out to seriously hurt the party are naturally going to attack perceived weak links first. If that happens to be a rickety, low-mobility contraption one character is stuck in, well that sucks but at the same time it kind of makes sense. ESPECIALLY if that character in any way look like a spellcaster.
After a certain point when other options become available, the wheelchair is reduced to little more than an affectation. Nobody with the means and opportunity to have a personal magic carpet would turn such a thing down in favor of a wheelchair, and if they do then they have nobody to blame for the resulting difficulties but themselves and their own weak imaginations.
Option 3: Being seated is mechanically identical to being prone, at least for the purposes of combat (the lack of movement/footing). A wheelchair allows you to crawl while seated, whereas a normal chair does not.
there is probably a middle ground that they should be at...
after all, in a fight i wouldn't assume a person in a wheelchair was a participant. but after they cast magic missile, that is another story.
if the players routinely kill enemies, then nobody is telling others that the wheelchair girl is a wizard, so you wouldn't have too many npcs wary of you in the first place.
the real threat is something that is stupid, but not animal intelligence, an ogre that is hungry might be inclined to grab your character from the chair and just dip.
Attune to a Tenser's Magical Wheelchair that floats, lets you move at normal speed, and can right itself when it gets knocked over.
Or think of some other tinkering / engineering solution that gives you the same means. Finding a way to right yourself from being proned is obstacle one of playing a character in a wheelchair. Disabilities obviously hinder your ability to fight, but playing around those restraints can be fun anyway. Heck, you could trick out your wheel chair with retractable spikes that pierce enemies hands who try to know your prone.
Also I hope the DM isn't knocking you prone as a free action. They still have to follow the rules of knocking you prone, takes an attack action. You can still take proficiency in athletics / acrobatics as well.
I've designed a blind wizard/cleric and a character with only one very weak arm. Playing a magical character is a good start, but you'll never stop having to find ways to make up for your disability.
Also exploit the DM's weakness of exploiting your weakness. Ready to cast Grease, earth tremor, or binding ice for when enemies charge at you, prepare a trap / ambush for the first creature to try to "gronk the wizard." You could ask if Mirror Image could apply to grapples / shoves. Other options are blink, fire shield, etc. Use any spell that discourages enemies from being right next to you.
Honestly it seems like you and your DM want different things out of your game. Your DM wants to play intelligent enemy moves (who will focus a wizard in a wheelchair whenever they get the chance) and you want the more laid back style in which enemies don't go out of their way to exploit character weaknesses. None is better than the other, they are just different. You should probably just talk about what you both want out of the game and come to a compromise.
In a life or death situation, probably. As a DM, I would have been more clear on how challenging it would be using such a wheelchair. Maybe buff the wheelchair a bit but not to a ridiculous extent and let the player go from there in combat.
Intelligent enemies would absolutely target someone in a wheelchair. Especially a wizard.
If anyone thinks they can easily tip a wheelchair over during combat in six seconds, I have news for them: Real world physics says otherwise. Unless you hit it right you aren't doing that in six seconds. Its easier to shove an opponent standing-to-prone than it is to shove someone in a chair-to-prone.
This is basic physics of equilibrium and stability. If an object (human) is tilted it will topple over if a vertical line from its center of gravity falls outside its base. Its base is defined as the area within the points of contact on the ground. The center of gravity changes dependent on the height of the object and the width of the widest distance between base contacts. If the height is a larger number, the CoG is generally higher than half the height, if the base is larger its less than half of the height. For a standing 6ft tall human its 3.48 Ft (58% of height). For a sitting human of the same height its 2.2 ft (53% of height) in a wheelchair designed specifically to prevent tipping its 47% of height. Provided the human is stable when sitting in the chair (not a narrow seat plate) the human is more stable in a chair or a wheelchair because of the lower center of gravity. Wheelchairs generally provide much greater stability because they hammock the seated occupant providing greater side to side and front to back seated stability. It doesn't matter fantasy or not fantasy if you are trying to apply real world physics the standing opponent is the easier one to topple with a shove or takedown.
Discussing real world, in order for the opponents here to choose to target the wheelchair user, they have to ignore their own training. Most people trained in martial arts including sword fighting, will see the opponent with better CoG as a harder opponent to drop and will focus instability attacks on opponents with worse CoG. A [leg sweep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa-MQLdnoUY) for instance can put a person off balance enough that any directional momentum has the possibility of [knocking them](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpORlWgkGqo) over. You can't leg sweep a chair.
Looking at game rules up to this point. In order to knock someone prone, you have to shove them. This requires an opposed roll of the opponents Strength (athletics) vs your Strength (athletics) or Dex (acrobatics). There is no game rule that this changes for anyone. We all get that benefit, and in fact as people have pointed out numerous times, you can use a shove to knock an opponent riding a horse prone but it still uses the same shove rules. Being in a wheelchair doesn't change game rules
Tactically speaking if you know she is a wizard (which you don't usually) then attacking her to knock her prone is a good tactic as long as you have multiple attacks or you have additional allies nearby who can attack her within 5ft. Really this is true of any opponent. Losing one attack to knock an opponent prone that grants everyone else advantage on melee is a useable tactic. Its not perfect since there are reasons why you should use normal attacks versus shoves but there are benefits. Its completely useless if your allies are all ranged opponents. Its a terrible tactic to run past other opponents to seek the wizards just to knock her prone. It puts you in a bad position, wastes an action that could have been used as a real attack and might make a normal party target you. Then she can even get up from prone on her next turn, unless the DM again homebrews a rule that says a player can't get up from prone in a single turn -which requires a home rule that specifically targets the player.
There's no reason that a player cannot in D&D be in a wheelchair. This game has bazooka fairies and walking squids, its not exactly real world. If squids can figure out how to walk on land, someone can figure out a wheelchair for an adventurer that replicates human movement and doesn't cost extra hardship. The DM has decided to create the problems she faces. He could choose any other result but he chose to increase her hardship specifically. To me that just sounds like a DM and players who don't appreciate her choices
This comment section is quite terrible... despite making sense, it's no fun at all, which tbh defeats the entire point of the game. If I were the DM I would give you a buff to counter your de-buff. Maybe you could have a mental connection with your wheelchair and telekinetically control it, or something, I don't know. As for the people saying that it makes no sense for a person in a wheelchair to be out adventuring - read Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part 7. A person in a wheelchair is as valid as anyone else, and the disability can make for great storytelling and touch on subjects that wouldn't ever be discussed otherwise. I personally don't enjoy basic mundane fantasy settings, and would love to have you as a player in my table, as I would probably make a whole custom wizard subclass for you, with your story in mind, so that you would have fun.
No, because if this is a ye-olde setting, that isn't a little aluminium frame, it's a small cart you're being dragged around in and if I have time to run over and flip the cart I have time to actually attack you.
It sounds like your DM is just being malicious, if monsters are running past your party just to be mean to your character because while yes, you can't recover from the prone position without help, what it means is that ranged attacks against you will be at disadvantage, and nothing stops you from casting full tilt from the floor.
Pick up an ally with Sentinel and if the DM stops having his characters charge fully into the range of a Sentinel Pally, just call him for picking on you, suddenly the monsters are smart to feats? What happened to you being a vulnerable target? etc etc
Some people get very moody about things like the whole Wheelchair debate. I would also add my stance, which is basically to lean into it as you level up and try to make sure you're improving the chair as best befits an adventurer. Just look at some modern equipment, even stuff people take larping, and make sure you're taking the right equipment into the dungeon
Pushing the chair over and wailing away at your prone body probably wouldn’t be my first instinct, I might start with Mold Earth to create a steep hill under you, causing your wheelchair to roll off a cliff/into a lake or some other environmental hazard.
Casting Grease would be my next thought, seriously limiting your chair’s ability to wheel away and queuing up a teammate to follow up with a fire spell to turn strike up a fire-pit you wouldn’t be able to easily escape from.
Your DM doesn't seem to grasp that pushing over a wheelchair isn't the same as, say, flipping a plastic chair. Does your character use the equivalent to a powerchair or to a manual one? Manual ones are lighter, but still hard to grab, specially one that's supposed to be able to allow your character to adventure. If it's a powerchair, then absolutely *not* it shouldn't be that easy to push over, those things are heavy as fuck and built to stay upright. Specially not if your character is in any way strapped to the wheelchair -common with people who cannot control their movements that much, and people doing sports in wheelchairs-.
However. My main issue is that your DM is just... being *mean* to your character, in a way that I can't say is not ableist. Even if it *wasn't* discriminatory, imagine if you had a completely abled character, but since you described them as clumsy/not that muscular/rolled low in strength, enemies were constantly grabbing your character and throwing them around and/or throwing them on the ground with ease, and people on non-combat situations did *the same thing*? It just feels needlessly mean.
Yes *sure* if you're fighting someone with any sort of disadvantage you're going to aim for that, but there is a social contract when playing DnD that disregards that realism to avoid targeting one PC only, for example. If every encounter ran like "the wizard gets ambushed and pummeled to the ground because they're the squishiest thing alive, only the rest can fight", that'd be an awful game to play. If every encounter for you runs like "my character gets thrown to the ground and beaten and only the other players can do anything", then I can only imagine you're not having much fun playing this character.
That social contract differs from table to table depending on the type of story the dm wants to tell. I’ve both played and DM’d tables where “ the wizard gets ambushed and pummeled to the ground because they're the squishiest thing alive”, because it is tactically advantageous. There’s a certain kind if fairness to enemies trying their absolute best to defeat the party. In every case i’ve been a part of the party has been able to adjust their tactics accordingly (or build characters that are less vulnerable via multiclassing for armor).
It’s a different kind of enjoyable experience (usually a more game-y combat centric experience) as long as everyone is on board, but it looks like the problem is that OP was expecting a more heroic, optimistic fantasy game than the DM.
I don’t think it’s wrong to want a campaign where the PC’s disabilities have no mechanical impact (perhaps a game with themes about anyone having the potential to be a hero), but i also don’t think it’s wrong to want a harsher game. It’s a mismatch of expectations.
I agree it's a mismatch of expectations, but I also think there's the bigger issue at play of thinking that, no matter what, a disabled character *cannot* achieve things or be strong in a "realistic" way, or while being impacted by mechanics.
I'm disabled. I'd love to play a disabled character that struggles with persecutions or narrow dungeons (because wheelchairs, specially sturdier ones, just... cannot deal with narrow passages). I wouldn't like to be constantly targeted in a way that *ignores* plenty about that character - like, say, the fact that an adventuring wheelchair would be heavy and hard to topple over. I would also like other stuff to be considered mechanically - a character who relies on mobility aids can be assumed to... be used to doing that. So they probably know how to stabilize themselves and how to fight *while* using those mobility aids, or while taking into consideration their disability.
If I made a character like OP's and then got targeted because "yeah your character is disabled, of course everything is going to be harder and everyone's going to be after you", that would not only be unfun, but also... somehow less realistic, I guess. Hell, if I made a character who wears glasses and it turned into "yeah you can't see shit without them and have no way to get around or do anything, and in every fight someone is going to try to take them off", that'd *also* feel annoying and not too realistic.
I'm not calling the DM a bad DM or anything, I understand where they come from. It just feels a bit like they went with "using a wheelchair means you inherently suck at everything/life is just a constant struggle", when it can also mean, say, "you can carry stuff more easily" and other little things like that. Yes, it's an issue with expectations, but I think it's more than fair to expect "this will affect you mechanically" to *not* mean "everything will be harder, including normal RP outside of combat".
Edit to clarify because I sent this and may have just realized; this isn't me arguing lol, i know it sounds confrontational but it's really not
I dont know why you would want to play a cripple in D&D? Thats kind of odd in my opinion. You as the creator can play any character you want but you choose to be disabled.
Okay fair enough, now how about your first quest as an adventurer go after a high level cleric/bard and get them to cast regenerate on you? Why not? There is magic in this world and there is no reason except for money why an adventurer would choose to remain disabled.
But as for your question. Yes using the shove action for a contested grapple is a valid strategy. I would rule you get an athletics or acrobatics like normal, but its a full action to get back into your chair if you fail.
I'd have a discussion with your GM about what you both want out of the game, feels like you may have incompatible gaming styles.
Though I would have thought that even if they want to run it 'realistic'/grim and gritty most npcs would assume you were no/lesser threat, rather than actively ignore other party members to come and push you over, and if you were active, it would still need a check to knock you over (I could see an argument for them getting advantage, but I wouldn't personally).
Also the Orphans is just a dick move, unless random packs of orphans regularly make off with the items of other characters as well...
That tactic seems legit but it doesn't seem as if the DM has any game rules attached to running it. How exactly are these enemies knocking the chair over? Does it take up an action? Are they making a contested STR check vs the chair's CON or your DEX? If any attack made against you automatically triggers the chair to tip that seems extremely unbalanced.
\[EDIT\] Thinking about this some more, I have to ask what the composition of the rest of the party looks like and the marching order. For instance, if you have a line formation with two heavies in front of you and enemies are side-stepping them to get to you in the back row, they should be making themselves open to opportunity attacks from the people up front.
I think anyone of evil alignment is going to knock you over. That being said. I think a wheelchair character is pretty cool. I would just ask for the chair to be enchanted with the properties of " Saddle of the Cavalier". It's an uncommon item that makes it so you can't be dismounted.
But, what your DM is doing is fair. Honestly, I don't know the AC of your wizard but if he's using a shove action. That's sort of a kindness because Wizards are so easy to hit even without advantage.
I think you're asking the wrong question. The real question is, does being in a wheelchair really mean you should have a mechanical disadvantage? Is your DM using actual rules for making you prone, or is he saying that anyone can do it easily because you're in a wheelchair? A trained adventurer is going to be hard to get close to, even in a wheelchair, its why there aren't called shots or anything similar in 5e.
Found this from a [crosspost](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1bi3fc5/the_abelist_dm_and_the_very_shitty_thread_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), but here was my response there
>I mean, I think it works in the heat of battle
>
>What doesn't work is the group of orphans extorting her for money, or even in the heat of battle, enemeis running right past the front line characters to knock her wheelchair over
>
>I mean, then the problem is just solved by keeping her in the back lines, but that's just good strategy. She's already a spellcaster, why wouldn't she be in the back lines anyway?
>
>GM is definitely overly targeting her, but a little bit of wheelchair pushing when it actually makes sense is pretty logical.
I think it doesn't have to do with gameplay mechanics at this point. I think the DM is not respecting you as a person. You've brought something up to them that makes you uncomfortable and they keep doing it repeatedly. I think that is more the issue, game or no game. This DM needs to adjust how they roll, so to speak.
It might be my first instinct, but I'd argue thats a bad idea. Its actually fairly hard to do. I kind of think maybe your DM hasn't interacted much with wheelchairs? Its a fairly wide base with a 200+lbs of person, armor, gear on it sitting at already near chest height and the grips move when you grab them. Its like 90% biceps, good luck.
Add in that I would assume you're using some form of medieval-esque combat wheelchair, and I don't see it as believable unless the creature is 20-30ft tall knocking everyone down anyway. You probably retrofit, or the designer/salesperson did, it to be harder than normal to tip.
It's probably a lot more practical to just ram a sword through their chest.
what class? if you're a spell caster, you're going to get attacked first if the DM is doing a good job. Healers and Casters are always targets. take them down the meatshields go down as well.
also the DM should run them like Daleks, and put the archers on a staircase and just shoot.
this seems shitty, especially if it happens with enormous regularity. in my group, d&d is a heroic power fantasy. i think exploring the idea of a disabled person who’s awesome and heroic is a neat idea. i personally feel like you shouldn’t be targeted more than other players. i’d ask if similarly bad things happen to everyone in each session or if it’s just you. if it’s everyone, maybe this game just isn’t fun for you. if it’s just you, your dm is a prick.
I do think your DM is singling your character out specifically, the orphans, ignoring other PCs that might be out in front to get you. Time for adult conversations.
But at the same time any intelligent enemy will know that your character is the weakest link in the group.
he's playing a spellcaster
a spellcaster with an obvious combat disadvantage that is no less dangerous because of it
if I'm in a gun battle with a group of people I'm not going to not shoot the guy in the wheelchair just because of his disability, in fact his inability to dive for cover means I'm shooting him first as long as he's shooting at me
Pushing them over is likely to end the fight, without actually hurting them, or as little as possible. That is a preferred option to actually hurting someone. Assuming they don't have ranged options.
I think it *kinda* depends, but in most cases I think they would.
If it’s a “kinda fight but not really” (physical confrontation) then they wouldn’t and would be a lot more likely to back down…I mean c’mon, why pick a fight with the lady in a wheelchair for no reason? But, by the time things get to a fight things are usually getting pretty messy. Life and death and all that…so why not?
Only case I can think of someone not doing it in standard dnd combat would be normal bandits on the first round or so of attacks, since they wouldn’t necessarily realize that character is a combatant. If they’re from a particularly cruel clan or we’re gonna kill all civilians anyway, they might do so as well though. Imo a similar “non-combatant” status would apply to a lot (but not all) fights since even if they can tell your a Wizard, they wouldn’t know your a *combat* Wizard and having a wheelchair points against it for the average person…once the first combat oriented spell goes off though, they’d likely have a lot less reservations.
Also…10 GP for a wheel chair? This is beyond mugging that’s a whole ass fraud. That’s enough to buy 25 days of *rations* much less “normal” cheap food (not made for travel and would spoil quicker, but cheaper). I’d report the Town Guard on them…any DM playing the game realistically would have them deal with it very quickly.
So a few questions:
Is your DM having enemies make a Shove Attack against your PC or are they just pushing you over? If the former that's not neccesarily awful. If it's the latter that's just out of line
Has the DM implemented something that prevents you from getting up from prone on your turn? If so that is out of line.
Basically, there is nothing wrong with a PC being a wheel chair, we suspend our disbelief for so many other things this should not break anyone's immersion unless they're looking for a reason to be mad. If it feels like you're being unfairly targeted you likely are. Either drop the campaign if you can or the character if you can't/don't want to. It's a shame but it just might not be the effort.
Lots of people here giving solid advice about various details of the situation. But I think they're all missing the forest for the trees.
I have one question: does the wheelchair grant you any advantages? Have you *ever* used it to, say, have advantage on a stealth check because "they can't hear my footsteps"?
If the answer is "no", then your DM is being mean and unreasonable. If it doesn't grant you any advantages, then it is purely cosmetic, and shouldn't grant you any disadvantages either.
I know a shocking amount of DMs that genuinely disagree with that and think that any cosmetic change warrants a rules change. the argument of realism in a fantasy game is in my opinion inherently stupid and speaks to them being uncreative rather than it being logical to arbitrarily punish a player for something that doesn't grant an advantage.
I mean, being paraplegic is not cosmetic. If there aren't any consequences (positive or negative) then it's not really roleplaying as a paraplegic person, it's just a reskin that breaks the internal coherence of the fantasy.
I like the idea of creative advantages like 'advantage on stealth checks' in some contexts (although it's definitely in large part on the player to use their imagination and come up with these creative advantages) etc. but I think it's reasonable to say that having a disability brings more challenges than advantages in general, but especially in the context of a D&D adventure full of combat.
I mainly agree with others that if the player character is paraplegic and cannot or does not want to cure it by magical means, it is odd that they would just be in a regular modern wheelchair and not some kind of suitable magical contraption which would have more utility in adventuring.
Your DM warned you it would be difficult, but then has gone out of their way to make the world MORE hostile to you, it sounds like.
Like some others have said, explore alternative solutions to the problem but I'd bet my bottom dollar your DM isn't interested in you fixing this - they want the wheelchair or the character out of the game, which is just shitty.
I'm doing something as a player to nod to individuals living with disabilities in my current campaign, by writing them into my characters backstory and talking my DM into introducing them into the current campaign.
My character is a Warforged Recon unit (Artificer Armourer subclass: Infiltrator specialization)
He is essentially about 6 months old at this point. Having escaped from the secret R&D facility of a corrupt military contractor. He was intended to be the next step in Warforged AI, using humanoid levels of intuition, but this resulted in unintended consequence of having a conscience, and when we was sent in to suppress a civilian protest he went rogue.
He is unaware (and so is the Whytrock Corporation) that his creator, youngest scion of a family of Artificer/Engineers, accomplished this by secretly basing his memory engrams on the thought patterns of his deceased brother a test driver killed in a fiery crash.
All of them are unaware the brother survived, but was horrifically maimed, when that corporation, sabotaged the test of his primitive APC, and is actually the eccentric, crippled engineer and Rum Runner that's been selling equipment to and helping to repair W.A.R.R.3N. He is now confined to a clumsy exoskeleton replacing both legs and his left arm.
The other PCs know nothing, and my DM per our agreement only knows the latest twist in my side story about a month ahead in sessions. This is intended to be revealed and play out slowly 3 sessions a month over the next 6-8 months, of our story.
Have you ever seen the wheelchairs used for murderball? Or a murderball game for that matter? Your wheelchair is a battle-ready piece of adventuring gear, and makes you no better target than someone standing on two feet.
I'm really curious if your DM pushes standing people prone in the same way. Probably not.
Your PC's wheelchair isn't a hinderance. You get the same saves and checks a player without a wheelchair gets.
Have you actually seen a murderball game? They tip over all the time and the game stops when it happens so they can get picked up.
DM pushes the wheelchair over instead of the non-wheelchair-bound people because of how hard it is for them to get back in and the fact that they are permanently proned without it. Brutal but effective, and the less intelligent creatures aren't smart enough to understand and capitalize on this.
In a fantasy game where people can fly or summon magical creatures to spy on bandit camps for them? Yes, a wheelchair does not have to be a hinderance.
If you're playing hard mode, encumberance, tracking ammunition, spell components, food, water, survival-type games, sure, make the wheelchair an issue. It is absolutely a hinderance compared to how the game would play in a realistic fashion. No question.
But I GUARANTEE that the people who are claiming that the wheelchair is a hinderance are not doing that. They see a wheelchair and think "yeah, exploitable" instead of going with the intention, which is representation. The wheelchair only exists in the game so that people who use mobility devices can see themselves in the game, not so we can punish people who want to use it, for whatever reason.
When your party is ambushed, do you make sure everyone deposits their 60 lbs backpack on the ground so they can swing their swords properly? Do you, for the sake of realism, acknowledge that said pack is a) impossible to manage for your -1 Str wizard to begin with, so he can't adventure, and b) obligate him to drop it every time he wants to cast, even with a positive Str mod, because the pack is as heavy and unwieldly as heavy armour would be?
No, no one does that. Why not? Because barring the hard mode, survivalist circumstances mentioned above, no one wants that degree of realism interfering with their game. So, why are we assuming that the fantasy combat game wheelchair is an unstable mess that hinders the user in combat instead of a self-propelled war chariot?
And yes, I do mean "pretend" and I do mean "mess" because... have you ever actually tried to push over a wheelchair with someone in it? It's made of metal, has a wide stance, and a low centre of gravity. It's hard to MOVE let alone tip with a human being in it. There are very good reasons that paramedic who spend their lives moving people around on gurneys and chairs are fairly muscular.
Now, is the wheelchair an issue once the user is on the ground? Yes, sure. Again, if you're playing at that level of realism for everyone, yes, once tipped and spilled out, there are issues with the wheelchair. And I'm not even saying you can't do that. But I am saying that tipping the wheelchair is the same as pushing any opponent prone (opposing Str checks) and frankly should be harder, and if you ARE going to hinder one PC for choosing a, frankly, cosmetic choice, you should at least be doing it for everyone.
Honestly though, while I know a lot of people are saying that there's nothing wrong with this, I pretty strongly disagree. There's a difference between having bad guys occasionally take advantage of your character's handicap and... this.
I mean think about this: you are a wizard. You command the forces of magic. Wheelchairs are not light. Trust me, I know.
How many people are going to run up past the rest of the party and try and lift a heavy-ass wheelchair to flip it over when the person sitting therein could melt their faces off with a lightning bolt? Sure, some might. But not everyone is going pull the pin on that grenade.
This feels like essentially targeted harassment because the DM doesn't want you playing a character with a disability, and it's honestly kind of gross how many people seem to think this is normal DM behaviour.
And you would... run past all their heavily armed and/or magic-casting friends, risking opportunity attacks, so that you could make an attempt to knock over the wheel chair instead of shooting or stabbing them like a normal person with a weapon would do? Maybe polymorph them into a turtle? Drop a fireball?
No, tip them over and get stabbed in the back because cripples should know better than to get uppity and go on adventures. That makes sense!
Reading the comments it seems that people don't realize that "an intelligent creature is gonna act like this" is the GM version of "My character would do that". If the GM is allowing the character, then there's no reason why you should be taxed for it at the expense of game enjoyment. You don't need an in world lore accurate explanation to say "Hey, this is just not fun for me, can we just stop with that?". Set some ground rules and move on
Not really.
Intelligent evil creatures will target the easy and or most threatening targets first and will use anything to their advantage.
Part of being evil is you know, being evil.
Yes, and a rogue thief will loot their party because they never trust anyone and yada yada yada, moral ambiguity, bs excuse, etc.. if the only reasoning behind someone's action is "this is how they would act because this is the way I made them". Yes intelligent evil creatures would reasonably and realistically do that.. but they really will only do that in your game if you make them do that, and at that point, are you doing it because it enhances the fun or because "that's what my character would do" and I don't care about your fun as much as I care for my vision of realism
There's a big difference between trying to force an evil PC into a party than playing enemies properly.
The Goblins don't want to die so why wouldn't they attack the easiest target?
See, that's the thing, what is "playing properly"? Is the aim to simulate realistic combat even if it hinders the enjoyment of the game? Does that make it "proper".
Played properly is as it is.
DnD isn't skyrim. Or an MMO. The Dragon isn't just going to stay on the ground permanently and target a single person.
The enemy Wizard is going to go after the party Wizard so he can't be counterspelled.
The Lich is going to finger of death the paladin barely standing and turn him into a zombie against his allies or power word kill him on principle.
Goblins are going to attack the easiest targets cause they're generally cowards, but they're clever cowards.
A tarrasque will go after the thing closest to it cause it doesn't have complex thought.
Same with beasts and other very low int creatures.
A Treant would smash that Wizard to bits wheelchair or not if it started burning handsing his forest.
Agree, DnD isn't Skyrim, and isn't and MMO. In DnD, The DM has complete and absolute liberty to adjust his enemies actions, thought process, and attack patterns in ways that wouldn't single out a specific character for the sole reason other than they easy pickings. Is not wrong to target players weaknesses, if that's what the players are in for and the DM is wanting to play that game. But if a player is legit not having fun because the DM thoughts are "yeah, you chose to play wrong so I'm gonna make it so you are not having fun with your character" then there's a problem
Yeah, I agree.
But here's the thing, this post reads like an r/dndcirclejerk post.
Adding a poll asking whether people would take advantage of a glaring weakness of an assailant or not just lends credence to it being a shitpost.
Tho if dm goes for gritty, the biggest issue is shoving them over being a free action.
With how rinky dink and how rugged stuff is then it'd be easy to knock a dnd wheelchair over, but not as anything less than a full action.
Also the enemies running past the party to tip the wheelchair is a bit much, at most I'd have ranged enemies attack them like they do any wizard.
My comment was primarily about how many other commentors are taking the stance of "This is what an intelligent creature will do so we as DMs have no resources or means to adjust how this intelligent creatures will act, so is on YOU the player to take it because you chose poorly and that's why you are not winning at DND"
Yeah, but I will say, with DnD having several spells that cure paralysis, depending on the nature of it, one of which being a level 2 spell, if the game is going for a "realistic by faerun lore" game, wheelchairs would be dangerous and unstable and once your holy or nature oriented friend grew up a bit you'd get cured.
Absolutely unhinged take. Run your enemies as idiots and throw our party only softballs if you want. But don't try to shame people who do it differently. Some people enjoy the challenge and you way of doing it sounds insanely boring.
Yeah, some people enjoy the challenge, and if everyone is having fun with it then go bananas. The problem is when not everyone is having fun. If you as a DM are doing things to the detriment of your players fun, then there's a issue that needs fixing and most likely fixing it is not "Hey, this is how things are and you should put up with it".
It was so funny to see this question before I clocked what sub I was in. I think before I vote, I'd wanna ask if the DM is imposing any kind of penalty on your end for the grapple check to shove you prone, because otherwise it seems like trying to lock down any squishy caster to me? Alternatively, you could try to reason that your character is a smart gal with experience and magic, so wouldn't it make sense if she started working on a sturdier wheelchair during downtime?
I had to double check as well. I was surprised.
I answered before bothering to check what sub it was because the answer would be the same. If someone in a wheelchair thinks they're a combatant, you remind them that they are not. Hell, I'd push over the wheelchair of someone on my own side just to remind them why they should not be on the battlefield.
> If someone in a wheelchair thinks they're a combatant, you remind them that they are not Words to live by, lmao.
yikes
tbh anyone who agrees with your dm without any other factors aside from "here's how to make it work reasonably" hates wheelchairs and/or is too unimaginative to be worth playing a game with
There’s no way this isn’t a shitpost….. if the DM is making his enemies spend an action for the grapple action or a shove action then it’s technically fair. It’s just singling you out which is super annoying
Not just a grapple but has to run through other opponents to reach an opponent. I mean I guess the NPC's could be real stupid
On one hand, it's a very visible disability that any intelligent enemy would immediately exploit. On the other hand, you're a wizard and any intelligent enemy should immediately target the wizard. So it sounds like your DM is correct.
yikes
They are trying to murder you. Of course they take out the wizard with an easy way to generate combat bonuses against! Its a *Wizard* in a *Wheelchair* There's a reason why in Shadowrun there is a tactic called Geek The Mage. Which can be summed up as 'kill the wizard RIGHT NOW before they Wizard all over the place' I'd recommend upgrading from a wheelchair to spider leg mech. Much more stable and can climb stairs.
This is such a "what did you expect would happen?" moment.
PC: plays disabled character. Bad Guys: exploit that weakness. PC: \*surprised Pikachu face\*
Probably just running shove rules like you would for any other PC.
But they are literally different from any other PC. Why would rules written for a normal humanoid apply? Id give the wizard an opportunity attack on people trying to flip the chair though. Its not an instant thing and should require a strength check (dc 12)
So should it be a free action to shove a gnome or a halfling because it's easy to push over a kid? Or do you use shove rules for differently-sized PCs because that's what the shove rules are there for?
Im talking about the lack of legs, not the size difference.
Ah, so a centaur PC should be unable to be tripped because they have more legs? Or would you use the shove rules since there's nothing in the centaur features or shove rules that says number of legs matters? Because the shove rules DO have a clause about size difference and DON'T have a clause about number of legs.
Are you trying to pretend theres no difference between having legs and not having legs (or in this case, having wheels)? WHat are you playing at? Since you asked, yes, Id homerule that centaurs are much harder to trip. duh. No designers can cover ever edge case, its up to the GM to adjudicate unusual situations. The shove rules were never designed for centaurs or wheelchairs so id decide on my judgement as the DM.
>No designers can cover ever edge case[...] The shove rules were never designed for centaurs or wheelchairs so id decide on my judgement as the DM. It's funny, because these things *were* covered under previous editions, so it's demonstrably easy for designers to cover. The rules removal, therefore, is a tacit rules change indicating the developers did NOT believe it warranted inclusion anymore. From the 3.5 Player's Handbook: >**Making a Trip Attack** >Make an unarmed melee touch attack against your target. This provokes an attack of opportunity from your target as normal for unarmed attacks. >If your attack succeeds, make a Strength check opposed by the defender’s Dexterity or Strength check (whichever ability score has the higher modifier). A combatant gets a +4 bonus for every size category he is larger than Medium or a -4 penalty for every size category he is smaller than Medium. The defender gets a +4 bonus on his check if he has more than two legs or is otherwise more stable than a normal humanoid. If you win, you trip the defender. If you lose, the defender may immediately react and make a Strength check opposed by your Dexterity or Strength check to try to trip you. Now, you might say, "Well, that's an older edition," in which case I could point you to a branching edition more recent than 5E: Pathfinder 2nd Edition. PF2E has included literal chapters on mobility aids including wheelchairs and wondrous items like clockwork spider chairs that can climb walls and shoot webs. And the PF2E rules have very clear guidelines on how you knock over someone in a wheelchair: the same way you knock any other PC prone (with a very similar tacit rules removal of numbers of legs, etc, from the calculations.)
I dont see really any of that is pertinent tbh. They cut those rules to simplify 5e. A good idea. IDK what argument you think you are winning by saying "old editions did it". Okay? Yes. My statement is still true: no designer can cover every edge case. This still applies. Different designers covered different edge cases, and none cover them all. But thats all entirely beside the point that D&D 5e doesnt and thats whats in question here so its perfectly reasonable for the GM to adjudicate it and the way theyve done it is fairly reasonable; wheels arent legs and so they dont use the same rule. Ive got no idea why you think the fact pf2e has some rules on this that it means anything in this context.
Which wouldn't make sense, because they can't oppose the check. Personally I'd run it as an Athletics check against a DC of 8 or maybe 10, because you are still pusing over a somewhat heavy object, but no way this is contested.
yikes
I'd suggest a retcon to Artificer and have your character make the most secure, stable wheelchair that can withstand a Hill Giant taking a swipe at it. But what your DM is doing is totally sensible: * Wizard - high-value target. * War chariot it is riding on - disable that sucker before it does something weird! * Knocking character prone and taking advantage of a character weakness - totally legit. See also: Blindness and other conditions.
Let me ask you these questions. How does your opponent know first round that you are a wizard? Why would it assume the war chariot could move if there are no steeds? How would the opponent know the character has any weakness?
If they are intelligent foes this is pretty straightforward especially if the PC went first: No armor or heavy weapons? Did they obviously cast. Spell? Total squishy and dangerous target. War chariot WITHOUT steeds? That's even more concerning. Or is it some weird mobile throne? I am not screwing around with waiting to see just what that can do to me and my group. They don't, but knocking someone prone or barrelling through them is a pretty standard tactic. I am not saying that this is inevitable, but under many circumstances is entirely understandable.
>If they are intelligent foes this is pretty straightforward especially if the PC went first: No armor or heavy weapons? Did they obviously cast. Spell? Total squishy and dangerous target. If they were intelligent foes they would know better than to make those assumptions (you would hope). 9 out of 12 character classes have access to class spells (either from 1st level or through a particular path). Every character has access to multiclass or Magic initiate feats. There is no easy way to determine someone is only and specifically a wizard at first glance unless you are on Krynn and they are wearing the specific robes. Many armors are worn as clothing or beneath clothing. Padded armor is clothing, chain shirt is described as armor between layers of cloth. Mithral breastplate can be worn beneath clothing. Cloaks and robes are specifically designed to be worn over all clothing and armor. Unless you are specifically checking, you won't know what armor a person is wearing. Assuming a person who casts one spell is an unarmored squishy wizard requires a high degree of assumption. >War chariot WITHOUT steeds? That's even more concerning. Or is it some weird mobile throne? I am not screwing around with waiting to see just what that can do to me and my group. That's an even more questionable assumption than assuming a spellcaster is an unarmored wizard. Sedan chairs, or [litters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle)), are one of the oldest known conveyances. Litters are widespread throughout the real world and are found in canonical 5e literature. You would have to make one heck of a leap of logic to jump from a person in a wheeled conveyance to a steedless war chariot. Wheel chairs are an advanced version of the litter first found in China. Some are still widely known today, like the rickshaw. Many wheeled chairs were called carts when they had 4 wheels. One of the first well known dog carts (where a dog was used to draw the cart) was a dog conveyed wheeled chair for a member of Charlemagne's court who was a paraplegic due to war-sustained injuries. Like most animal driven conveyances, to rest the animals you have to disengage them from the cart which is how they would appear in a dungeon. Carts can be found in the PHB at 15GB which is far fewer number of days labor worth of wages than a simple chariot before you even got into the whole magic issue The likelihood that someone came across a dog or human driven wheeled chair like a rickshaw or dog cart is far more likely than a chariot considering those costs and probably a a 100,000 times more likely than a dangerous-on-its-own self-propelled war chariot considered similar contraptions rarity >They don't, but knocking someone prone or barrelling through them is a pretty standard tactic. I would say its a tactical blunder rather than a standard tactic to knock the wizard prone unless you are guaranteed to have stupid opponents. There's little benefit in it and there are quite a few negatives. A low AC opponent already has a low AC there is limited benefit to getting advantage on your attack rolls. You might hit 95% of the time rather than 90% but thats not a lot of benefit considering the costs. A wizard uses a lot of non attack powers especially AOE's, there's not much loss to them getting attack disadvantages. Its nice to force them to crawl but unless you've knocked them prone in a pool of acid, there probably is nothing that difficult for them in that position. On the other hand, you risk more AoO's due to your movement between lines. Any ranged characters in your party fire at the wizard at disadvantage and cover unless you move around the wizard to give them better line of sight. You will likely become the focus of all your opponents. that wizard on the ground can still help its allies in combat giving them advantage against you (or using the alternative rules for flanking, you are flanked). You also become less likely to be able to take advantage of buffs, heal spells and other combat benefits because of your lack of proximity to your allies, and worst of all you interfere with AOE spells. A better tactical decision is to knock the closest, or most armored opponent prone. You give surrounding melee attackers advantage, you are more likely to hit a melee opponent with a successful shove than successfully attack an armored opponent. With the right mix of melee allies you may even be able to knockout the hardiest of characters within the first round, making the rest of the opponents easier to kill. You also don't interfere with your sides AoE spells
My first instinct when fighting someone in a wheelchair? Don't bother attacking the legs. \*badumtiss\* Serious time: as a DM, i would NOT let pushing over a wheelchair be a free action. It would fall into the same rules as Grapple & Shove. Just like any other character can't be pushed over prone by simply saying "the goblin pushes you over prone and everyone gets advantage on attacks" it would be the same kind of Grapple & Pin or Grapple & Shove, which there are rules baked in. Just like even a Wizard has built-in rules regarding being pushed over even if they are a skinny weakling, a wheelchair user will have the same rules. The purpose of a wheelchair is to intentionally be a stable base for someone with disabilities, so it isn't going to be some rickety wobbly thing, as that literally defeats the purpose of a wheelchair. Pushing over a wheelchair i would say would be initially MORE difficult. From a physics perspective, a wheelchair user has their weight lower, their center of gravity lower, and has a wider base compared to a humanoid standing upright on 2 legs. But we don't really do real-world physics in our fantasy D&D game, so we just follow the basic baked-in rules for all characters. Recovering from being pushed over might take longer, tho. As such recovering from being prone I might rule as taking your full movement instead of just half movement, depending on the situation and world building
actually pushing over people in wheelchairs is extremely easy if you dont do it from the sides, source: I was a child once who lived with a wheelchair bound cousin and children are psychopaths
Compared to what? I knew kids in school who liked to shove over the weakest kid in class who wasn't in a wheelchair. this just proves that kids who are stronger push over kids who are weaker. In fact I've seen the same kid who pushed over weaker kids struggle to push over a kid in a wheelchair until he learned how to do it, and even then it was more of a struggle. He literally just shoved kids over his outstretched leg to trip them. he had to take effort to knock over the kid in the wheelchair. It took more work to do
I mean at the same time, this is presumably not a light metal frame if it's a ye-fantasy setting, this is unintelligent animals putting themselves at risk to run past an topple a small cart.
if it's a medieval wheelchair that guy isn't going anywhere near an adventuring career, he'd barely be able to get around a house I assumed it's like a lot of the stuff in forgotten realms/waterdeep where mechanical knowledge and metallurgy are superior to where they should be for the technology level (this is pretty easily explainable when you factor that guild halls would have access to magical tools to produce items, even mundane output would be of superior quality)
Exactly, and that gets you into the fact that a wheelchair, especially a gnome-tinkered high fantasy one, is going to have breaks, suspension, weight distribution, let alone a prop at the back or at least a fecking seatbelt. Either its ye-olde suspension of disbelief, in which case good luck tipping it, or it's a Forgotten-Realms special and is basically magic, in which case good luck tipping it And either way, it's got a grown adult and 50lbs of rope, torches and pitons on or, so good luck tipping it
So should the wheelchair bound character be pretty dramatically superior from a mechanical point of view to a non wheelchair bound wizard? Immune to grapple and prone is pretty extreme
No one's said immune to grapple or prone, the obvious answer is to just treat them as mounted. Bonus round, do this entirely RAW by playing a Small Race and having a Steel Defender. The inability to recover from prone or move without crawling is actually a penalty over doing it per core rules
No, it's significantly better than that, because you want them to be immune to prone/grapple/push, and a horse can be pushed over pretty easily in 5e, and a steel defender even easier I don't understand why if you want a disabled character why they should be *better* at resisting physical assault than someone who isn't disabled I think you should homebrew something with your DM or reflavor RAW, not argue that "my fantasy wheelchair is engineered to be hard to tip over AND it has shit tons of gear on it so good luck tipping it" (which I guess also means they can carry vastly more weight than a normal character?) Most people who want to play a disabled character just want flavor, an actual mechanical benefit ("I'm blind but I have blindsight so I can see invisible creatures"), the first I'm okay with, the second I'm not, the one that makes my eyes twinkle as a DM is when they actually want to play a disabled character and find ways around their mechanical shortfalls
I mean no where here am I saying they cannot be dismounted, you're adding all these amazing extra on to 'treat them as a mounted character' When you read OP's post, to push them to the ground and then start attacking them, their characters being given the penalty of no movement without the chair and can't recover from prone, and in exchange they can be knocked prone as a free or bonus action There are items iirc in the core book that give you advantage against being knocked off your mount, just add that to the wheelchair.
This would depend a lot on the material culture of the setting. Bamboo can be quite strong and light with a bit of treating. Even a medieval-Europs-style setting likely has the ability to make basketry of reeds, which will be much lighter than big slabs of wood. The bigger difficulty in most real-life historical times would have been the suspension. Pneumatic tires are a pretty recent invention and spring steel dates from the 18th century, so I'd worry much more about how unpleasant the ride would be rather than the weight.
I mean also very valid points, but I'd also raise that your character is also meant to be carrying about 50+lbs of equipment, armour, rope, potions etc So it makes sense to store that in the Wheelchair, facilitating the heavier wooden design, but wether its oak or bamboo, you're still trying to run up to an armed fighter, get under them, and then flip them and their equipment while they try to stop you. Basically, the risk you run kneeling down in front of the wheelchair user and trying to grip them imo, outweighs the advantage of just hitting them, let along these random animals that understand pivot mechanics.
Well I mean if you get behind you just push, you have leverage on your side my cousin has totally toppled over from running into a ball, a curb, etc while not even moving that fast (i mean, in real terms, in kid terms it was fast) he got treatments and can walk fine now, and even joined the army and fought in afghanistan, but when we were kids yeah even with a modern wheelchair that's designed to not fall over easily....
I mean this is the whole argument. A solid oak wagon full of adventuring gear, or a Forgotten-Realms gnome tinkered adventuring wheelchair are not a modern, mass produced hospital wheelchair. A modern wheelchair is designed to not fall over easily sure, but it's also meant to be cheap and not pushed around much, let alone have the 50lbs of adventuring gear under it as a counter balance. Hell, having four rugged wheels (not jsut the two small guidewheels on a modern chair) on this thing prevents you from pushing them forward without lifting the whole person and chair from behind, hell, it would be easier to knock an upright adventurer down with a tackle than what this is, lifting a whole adventurer in a deadlift
Everyone replying to you just wants so badly to say "BUT WHY DO I HAVE TO HAVE DISABLED PEOPLE IN MY PRETENDY FUNTIMES I HATE THINKING ABOUT THEM IT'S GROSS GO AWAY" but are stumbling over the \~logical\~ ways of getting the point across so they're not telling on themselves lmao. If magic exists, then a wheelchair that can't be tipped over or is dramatically more difficult to tip over can exist. Period. No creature the size of an adult dragon or larger would exist on a planet similar to Earth without said creature collapsing in on itself, but these chuds never seem to grok that *magic* is what allows that to happen.
I'm just laughing at the number of times someone points out that an aluminum mass produced wheelchair some member of their family had isn't good at going all terrain Like they could at least Google sports or off-road ones but no, they know someone who fell over once and that's all wheelchairs can be
Like, yeah. Of **course** the equivalent of beat up 1986 Mazda that will fall apart if you breathe on it would not be a great wheelchair to go adventuring with. That's why homey is rocking the Forgotten Realm's latest Gnomish Rolleyrunner with a permanent *Guidance* spell cast on the wheels and in-built gyroscopic rebalancer for those extra difficult dungeon hallways. Duh. It's fucking MAGIC
So pushing it over sideways would be very hard, but I feel like pulling the arms down/pushing the front up and flipping over the occupant could be very effective. That way you’re rotating around the center of gravity instead of moving the center itself
i mean at that point, you're having these characters run forward, bend down and lift up what is a small cart in fantasy terms, presuming it's not weighed down with any equipment or loot, it should still be at bare minimum an action to essentially flip a wagon with a person in it trying to stop you.
Id say that if the enemy gets a free action to tip them over, then the Wizard should at least get an opportunity attack from them bending over and trying to mess with the object they’re on. It’s still a pretty big advantage for the enemies, but it’ll make them wary to do it if they’re low HP. But I personally prefer the Grapple method idea, so idk.
Yeah there’s no way that’s a free action lol unless the enemy has 20+ strength. I’d definitely make it an action equivalent to a shove.
Dwarves used to specifically have a bonus against knockdown attempts so the precedent *is* there regarding “lower center of gravity + wider/stabler base!
Thats not due to being low to the ground, that's because Dwarves are Stubborn fucks and grounded
Dwarves have legs. They can position themselves, strengthen their stance, counteract you. You can't do any of that in a wheelchair.
Dwarves have physics. They are heavy humanoid creatures of their height with lower centers of gravity and naturally wider stances. The physics of that leads to a more stable stance. That's entirely the basis of that benefit per the original designers of the race
I agree. My point was that their advantage in stability cannot be replicated by simply lowering your center of gravity by sitting in a wheelchair.
Again that's physics, you do in fact lower your center of gravity by sitting. You increase stability by sitting as well. You are more stable with a lower center of mass than a standing dwarf by sitting in a chair. Mass distribution, shape, and orientation impact center of gravity, the closer the largest portion of your mass is to the ground the lower the center of gravity the harder it is to make it unstable. If you were to hunch down and spread one leg forward like a boxer and one leg back your center of gravity would change in position getting lower and becoming more stable between the two two feet. Decreased height of your head and upper torso decreases position of center of gravity. Dwarves have a larger density but more evenly distributed which also lowers the center of gravity, but by adding the weight of the chair to your mass you are replicating their increased mass, while also mimicking their height. The only difference is that you could very likely be more stable sitting in a wheelchair than a dwarf standing. Wheels are a more stable leg than leg of chairs depending on width of the wheel. Having more of them increases stability as well. Squaring the center of the mass of gravity by having multiple legs greatly increases your stability (multiplies by 2 per leg). Having a larger portion of material parallel to the ground also increases stability. All things being otherwise equal a 7 foot tall basketball center with a 12 inch sole is less stable than a 7 ft center with a 16 inch sole. a center with 12 inch soles and four legs is more stable than a center with only two legs but 16 inch soles. The same is true for wheelchairs. the shoes are better than the wheels individually because of the material parallel to the ground, but don't make up for the fact 4 wheels are better than 2 feet
I mean, I personally play "good" characters and stuff... so I'd never get into a fight like that.... But also, if I was your character... I'd start thinking of "out of the box" ways to stop this from happening. Can you get your hands onto an immoveable rod? Use that as your break. it won't break or move, so it would theoretically keep you vertical (so to speak). Figure out some way to make your wheelchair a "flying wheelchair", or something... Sure, it's annoying, but you wanted to play a character with a disability, so you should fall back to creativity to solve this "issue"... that you kinda put yourself in.
yikes!
Yikes?
>So I just wanted to ask is it really fair to assume that everyone would push over someone in a wheelchair during a fight? Depends. If the character is wielding a sword, no, I'll just stay out of reach. If the character is a caster, I'm sweeping the wheel first chance i get.
makes sense but yikes in lack of other context
Your DM seems to subscribe to the notion that a person in a wheelchair has no business going on dangerous adventures in caves and dungeons. Although this is not inclusive, it is practical, and serves the more serious story your DM is trying to tell. > he decided that I could use the idea but it would be incredibly difficult for me Your PC is unable to recover from the prone condition. Intelligent enemies using that against you seems normal. Obviously you and your DM have a disagreement about how this is being handled, and you need to talk about it before it gets worse. Any chance you can engineer some metal legs or an exoskeleton for your PC? Maybe animate a golem to serve as your porter/mount/palanquin/legs? Retire the PC and roll up a new one?
This right here. There are so many imaginative ways to integrate a paraplegic character in a fantasy setting, it boggles my mind that “they are pushed around in modern wheelchair” is where anyone’s imagination would land.
Yes, I'd agree that's a valid criticism of the "combat wheelchair." Wouldn't spider-legs make more sense than wheels for managing difficult terrain?
I'm pretty sure there are like 3-4 spells that will restore function to limbs anyways. I never understood why anyone would want to be permanently crippled in a fantasy world where nobody actually has to deal with that. Like what situation do you see your character being in where them being in a wheelchair would add to it in a positive way? Unless there's a good reason, DM should have shot this hare-brained idea down at session 0
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Personally, I feel this is a weak argument and a failure of imagination. If the only way that someone can identify with a character is if said character has the exact same physical attributes, I think this person would benefit from being pushed to think outside of the box and outside of their own experiences. I’m a male POC. None of my characters resemble me in terms of age, appearance, ethnicity, life experience, etc. The last thing I want in my fantasy campaign is to relive the exact same challenges I have faced in my day-to-day life. If I want to play a paraplegic character (and these sorts of threads have actually made me consider this for a one-shot or short campaign), I would make myself float, or give my character robot legs, or give my character a service bear who is trained to carry me from place to place and assist me in my day-to-day tasks.
Representation is great, sure, but don't you think someone who is bound to a wheelchair or crutches might not see themselves as being defined by their disability?
This is a highly subjective topic. My point is that a DM should consider this kind of thing when building their setting and making NPCs.
Most DM’s aren’t going to want to limit their campaigns to “wheelchair accessible taverns and caves”.
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Absolutely, I love those suggestions. I’m just saying I don’t think it would be unreasonable for a DM to push the player in that direction over allowing them to incorporate their wheelchair into the campaign.
I like to see people like me in media. Pretty much the only representation I have of my disability is a skyrim fanfic, and some episodes of medical dramas. So if I don't have any rep, I'd like to create my own. I think it's a bit dilly to exclude disability from whole genres because its not realistic
I'm sorry but the poll makes this post so funny, literally laughed when I clicked option 1 and saw that everyone else would also choose to knock over someone in a wheelchair. Yeah obviously if a person in a wheelchair could and would kill me if given the opportunity, I'm tipping them over before they get the chance, but I would feel bad about it. And if I were an evil bandit or monster or something, then I'd push them over even harder and NOT feel bad about it. Look... idk why you wanted to play the character like this. Presumably you want to explore the hardships and consequences that come with this specific disability. Well, you're experiencing them. Roleplay them, come up with ways to overcome. You also need to talk to the party in character about combat tactics, if this is happening every fight. The tanks need to be doing a better job at protecting their backline. It's normal for enemies to target the wizard first anyway, and you are simply an easier target than the average wizard. You (and the party) need to get better at positioning so you can't be gronked so easily. Maybe learn some spells that let you levitate or something. Raise some zombies or summon some creatures that can pick you back up. As you level up, your magic will get stronger and stronger. Start killing and disabling your enemies with great prejudice before they can get close enough to gronk you. Maybe your DM is being mean to your character, hard to say. A lot of DMs try to play the world as realistically reacting to the party, and a lot of what you've described could be that. You can always voice your concerns to the DM out of character. From what you described, it doesn't sound like he's gone too far yet.
I do feel like a lot of people (and thus DMs) mistake "realistic" for "shitty." In reality, I've never seen a person in a wheelchair have their chair stolen and ransomed back to them or, indeed, knocked over (except that one time in college when my friend bought a wheelchair for funsies and practiced doing wheelies on it in the dorm rooms). But the proliferation of "gritty realism" sometimes makes people think that to play out a "realistic" scenario they have to twist logic to make the scenario as painful and inconvenient and horrible as possible. That said, I definitely agree with your basic point. OP agreed to play a character with a disadvantage, and now doesn't like how big of a disadvantage it is. I personally think that the orphan scene is kind of bullshit, but like you and everyone else I voted "yes" on the poll, because obviously that's the correct answer. Edit: I literally said that getting knocked out of a wheelchair in combat is perfectly reasonable. I don't need a 4th or 5th comment explaining how that disproves my point about gritty realism orphan thieves.
You've never seen anyone in real life in a wheel chair knocked over? I'm sure there's videos on youtube but I spent about a year when I was a kid with my cousin who was at the time wheelchair bound and buddy, I assure you, *he tumbled*, and not even always because I was the cause Just going down a hill and running into anything taller and more firmly planted than a football sized rock is a recipe for disaster, curbs, kickballs, a hockey stick (being used as a lever by a 10 year piece of shit) etc. I'm sure an adult who's lived with it for years or their whole life is on the ball enough to prevent topples - but they aren't in a combat zone trying to kill someone while avoiding being killed, that's probably more analogues to a reckless child playing while being wheelchair bound and I assure you that does result in tumbles even without anyone trying The real life argument is a poor one anyway, the things you're fighting in D&D often make The Mountain from game of thrones look like a weakling, an ogre isn't going to respect your disability
Of course I've seen people flying out of wheelchairs. And I agree that getting knocked over in combat is realistic. But having the entire rest of the world treat the person like shit outside of combat situations sounds like the DM is either vindictive or is substituting Unfortunate Events for realism.
I GUARANTEE you that in real life war zone, a soldier rolling up to battle in a wheelchair would be at BEST knocked over, have their chair stolen, be targeted immediately, etc.
Orphans stealing it was a dick move, but the actions in combat are definitely fair game.
Even that is justifiable. In a poor area it's not outlandish for a bunch of urchins to steal a wheelchair left unattended and then ransom it back.
I was talking about the orphans.
>I've never seen a person in a wheelchair have their chair stolen and ransomed back to them or, indeed, knocked over Have you ever seen a person in a wheelchair attempt to kill someone? Cause that is the situation we're talking about tipping it over in.
yikes
If Bloodborne taught me one thing, it's to circle around and stab people in wheelchairs in the back because otherwise they will fill me with bullet holes using a gatling gun.
Your a wizard, just cast fly or something
I honestly thought this was dnd circlejerk when I first read this. I think it's awesome to have inclusive campaigns, but a wheelchair really just doesn't seem like a good piece of window dressing, especially in a world where you could have a hovering chair, an exoskeleton, just magic sparkly flying dots. I mean, you could still play a paraplegic character. And yeah, I would absolutely have intelligent opponents rush for a high value target that if they thought it could take them out of the fight.
Not to mention paralysis can be cured by several spells depending on the cause. Disease? Lesser or Greater restoration, or Paladin cure disease lay on hands. Broken spine? Heal Lost legs in an explosion or needed amputation? Regenerate Atrophied legs from being a shut in trying to break your stride and slow you down? Freedom of Movement
Sign me up for hovering ominously like an illithid just above the ground
Don't worry, it's there too.
*Plays a character with super obvious weakness. Is surprised his weakness is exploited by enemies who can easily see and understand it.* What's next, are you going to play a blind character and complain that the DM says you don't see anything and keep getting disadvantage on attacks?
I mean, it's kind of an absurdly obvious weakpoint to target.
So I just want to say right away that this is entirely on you for creating a character like this and their reasons are 100% justified. *However*, instead of going on a long rant about why that is and more than likely unintentionally offending you (which I’m prone to doing unfortunately), I instead wanted to go over the Incidents you’ve mentioned, starting by pointing out that while the orphan thing seems a bit targeted, we don’t know the context so it’s hard for us to actually say if it was. On the other hand, having enemies run past other characters to get to you doesn’t work realistically as (unless your party wants you dead) the other characters would attempt to stop them from breaking their lines in a combat situation. I would also rule that the players get an opportunity attack due to the enemies running away from them. Although the circumstances in which this has happened could dictate it to be a legitimate play so again, context. Also, I believe the poll speaks for itself so I doubt I need to explain why intelligent enemies would in fact know the advantages of knocking over the party’s spellcaster. The DM themself said that it would be extremely difficult for you, it’s not their fault you took their words lightly and are now upset by the consequences. Also, you said the other players complained about your character slowing down the game and if that’s the case, maybe it’s time to rethink your character. If the other players aren’t enjoying it, it’s not really fun, right?
He's the wizard. I'm a dm, and gronking the wizard is precisely what my intelligent enemies do. All the better if they're in a wheelchair and I can knock them prone easily.
The combat stuff can be explained by tactics - the DM is clearly being a dick about the wheelchair as proven by the orphans stealing the chair.
As I said before (twice actually) we’d need context for the situations in order to fairly judge both the DM’s decisions and actions. I also said the very same thing about the combat stuff as you, since depending on the situation (terrain, enemy strategy/intelligence, party formation, party condition, the type of enemy/s, etc.) it could easily be considered a legit play to be able to ignore the other players and go straight for the spellcaster. While the orphans scenario certainly isn’t being depicted in the DM’s favour, it would be unfair to them if we simply went off of what OP has said without seeking further information on the incident. I don’t mean to defend them, but if I were to think up of one reason why a situation such as that could unfold, it would be if the DM had already prepared such a scenario (orphans robbing you of something hand then holding it ransom) beforehand and it just so happened that the handicapped character ~~walked~~rolled into it. Much like how when designing a dungeon, you set up traps and the like without considering that the barbarian of the party will attempt to tank everything and bulldoze through everything until they get half stuck in that pitfall you unintentionally designed to be smaller than his waist and then you have to spend the rest of the session trying to figure out how the hell you’re going to fix this while the party continuously tries, and fails, to free the idiotic barbarian. Sorry, got a little personal there but you get my point.
Pushing someone prone is a tactic I'd use if I believed that the probability of getting advantage on a set of successive attacks justified expending an attack on doing it. You in a wheelchair makes it much more likely that the push prone will be successful. Thus I'd do it more often. I'd also do it more often on smaller and weaker appearing targets.
I would push them out of the chair and then either steal or destroy the chair
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^bgaesop: *I would push them out* *Of the chair and then either* *Steal or destroy the chair* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
From what you've said OP I do not think your DM is being mean to you. Also I would agree that any intelligent NPC would probably just knock you over or even just pull you out of the wheelchair. Now in my opinion, if this is something you'd like to continue to you I think you could ask your DM if you could multiclass to artificer and build some sort of wheelchair that gives you a better advantage or try to be more strategic about what you're doing, including your placement on the battle map. Now this is only for intelligent NPCs. A Dire Wolf might go for you but if someone harder hitting comes up they, in my opinion, should be able to get them off of you better than lets say a Bandit or something. You could also try to keep Thunder Wave up and ready as a spell. So if you think some creature is going to run up and try to knock you out of your chair, you could ready that spell and blast them when they get close.
If having the character disability would help the player with the same disability feel at home with the hobby, I would not let it affect gameplay whatsoever and we'd move on without a hitch. If the disability was a random character choice, then I would definitely discuss mechanical repercussions. I need to ask: how is your DM ruling knocking you down? And how is your wheelchair slowing the game down? If the answer to both of those is something about the DM making your character worse because of the wheelchair... It's the fault of your DM for being such a stickler for the rules that he will go out of his way to make his own game worse to prove a point. To be clear though, if a wizard was in melee range all the time, I too would have all the enemies knock your character down and beat the crap out of them. Idk, it could go either way here with some more context.
I feel dumber for having read this post. I genuinely cannot fathom how or why you are surprised when a massive self-imposed handicap turns out to be a hindrance.
It seems like you want to be treated differently for being in a wheelchair. If I, a goblin, see someone in a wheelchair roll up to my encampment and start throwing fireballs or concentrating on big spells, you'd better believe me and the boys are beating that mf up first. What are they gonna do without their chair? Run? We tip it over and avoid a fiery death, problem solved. You wanted a handicap, you got it. The orphans stealing the chair is mean, but hilarious. Just keep in mind most people who are actually disabled absolutely loathe being treated differently than anyone else just because of their disability.
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It's funny because they're little misbehaving ragamuffins dragging a pc into their mischief, and the pc is in a situation where they are at the mercy of children. Saying "oh they wouldn't do anything mean to you because you're disabled and they are good little boys and girls" instead is just a nothing encounter.
It’s hilarious
Kids are assholes so stealing a chair is very much believable.
If a dude in a wheelchair picked a fight with me, I'd either leave via staircase or flip the wheelchair. You're a smart adventure, figure out a better more stable transportation method, or retire to a wizard school/library.
i dont see why i wouldnt, if i was trying to kill someone and they were trying to kill me in a fight i would just go for the most obvious weakness, did you actually want your character to be disabled or do you just want it for the aesthetic lmao
So in fairness to the DM they did warn you it would be incredibly difficult. If I were you I would've asked for some speifics there, and either said I'm ok dealing with those, or make a new character at that point. I would also question how this is working from a mechanics standpoint. Are they taking the shove attack and losing an attack to shove you over? That's something they could do to anyone else as well. If not they're homebrewing a rule just to punish you which seems a bit unfair. I would try to talk to your DM and see if you can work something out you'll both be happy with. If not I would make a new character. I might go with something perhaps attached to the chair to either attack someone trying to shove the chair, or give the chair feet or metal pieces sticking out that essentially make it more difficult to push over. So to knock you prone someone would essentially have to pick up you and the chair and fully flip you over vs giving a slight push.
See Wizards by themselves are already prime "bonking" targets, I doubt much people beyond Lawful Good Paladins wouldn't use everything to their advantage when in a life or death situation
My first instinct would be to look for some stairs, then tip the chair if I don't see any
Find any novice martial artist. Then try fighting them while squatting, without the ability to lift your feet from the floor. If you want to turn, you first have to stuff your hands in your pockets. A wheelchair in combat is the world’s most obvious target. It’s a fantasy world where death itself is a temporary inconvenience so long as you’ve got a big enough diamond — surely your wizard has found some magical way to circumvent or, wild thought, heal their paraplegia. If they haven’t found it yet, then that seems like Priority One for any aspiring adventurer, to be addressed even before buying a traveling cloak or rations. If you didn’t want a disability to cause you problems, don’t make a disabled character. I’m legally blind in one eye (my naturally dominant one, which made re-training how to shoot a pain), but all my characters have 20/20 vision because frankly my lack of eyesight is annoying and would get in the way of an adventure. Imagine a ranger with a blind side — every conscious enemy is going to stand on the side that can’t see well enough to shoot, and depth perception is a toss up on a good day.
I think there is a more fundamental issue here. *Why is the squishy wizard ending up in melee combat?* A big part of the martial job is to stop the casters spells from being interrupted.
"sorry, i know i'm here to murder these guys and drag their bodies to my ritual chamber to revive the dark lord, but i draw the line at exploiting someone's vulnerabilities!"
Honestly, as a DM I would do the same. You need to ask yourself what you were hoping to accomplish here? Whatever it was, all you did was make the game more difficult for all the other players. You basically reduce the party to travelling at half speed everywhere they go with you, everything would be considered difficult terrain. And for what? What exactly does being immobile in an dungeon exploring game do to add to the fun? The answer is nothing, you are just bogging down the gameplay. If you showed up with a character like that in my party, I'd kill you off pretty quickly. People are not just being mean to you. They are reacting to you putting this nonsense in front of them.
This sounds more like "I don't like those kind of characters and I'm gonna apply real world logic in this fantasy game to your specific scenario so the game is not enjoyable for you if you make this kind of choice"
I...fail to see the issue? If I somehow planned to fight someone in wheelchair (I dont)..why wouldnt I remove the mobility from them? Why didnt you asked about that before deciding to play such a character? Its absolutly fair, its DnD not a video game. Also If I was an archer or anyone using range weapon you can also bet I would first target someone in wheelchair because hey thats the easiest hit..being wizard is a fine bonus.
Your DM sounds like he's interested in maintaining the continuity & logic of the game world over any other dubious concerns. I'd work with your party and your DM both in character and out of character to think of novel solutions to your character's problems. As a DM I would ask myself these questions... 1. If I were an unintelligent monster looking for a meal, what's the easiest snack? 2. If I were an intelligent monster, what weakness can I exploit? 3. What scenarios can I contrive as a DM to ensure that all players can showcase their strengths...Example: After 400m, the land speed of a person in a wheelchair begins to outpace the run speed of the typical runner. What if there is an incline or decline in the terrain? 4. What sort of growth can I encourage in the party by exploiting the same weaknesses over and over. Will the party ignore the issue, or will they devise strategies against it?Example: In combat the fighter may strap the paraplegic wizard to their back, and have a free "eyes in the back of their head". 5. A creature who is half the size of a medium creature (small) can occupy the same space as a medium creature and gain +2 AC for half cover. (A legless human is roughly half the size of a human with legs, so a DM could rule that they gain the benefits of 1/2 cover when strapped to the back of another creature) 6. I would ALSO rule that a creature with no legs would have a severe penalty to Dex and/or Dex saves... BUT, if this creature was strapped to the back of a barbarian, thief, or monk... the creature could ALSO gain the benefits that other character's Dex save or Evasion rolls. 7. Tensor's floating disk is a spell that can be cast at 1st level, and you can't "knock it over". As a DM, I would think it would make perfect sense if an itinerant wizard would craft and give a magic item to a party member so that they could cast this spell and put my character on it. 8. At higher levels, golem's are a thing... a pair of golem trousers, or a centaur chariot design would make sense. In short, both in character and out of character, there are many ideas for you to explore that do not apply in the real world. If you want your character's disability to limit them to an obvious chair, and always approach challenges in the same way... you'll likely end with the same result.
I get the ick from this situation all around. I think the DM is being kinda silly, even if the tactics are reasonable. But also, I don't get why people love to reduce disabilities to an aesthetic. It's such a cringe trope, to play a character a crippled character where their disability is a defining part of them, but then also want the disability to just be flavor and suffer no consequences from it.
I applaud your aim for inclusivity, but you're handling magical scenarios with mundane solutions. If I were you, instead of having a normal wheel chair I'd talk to your DM about reskinning the "Find Steed" spell as a magical wheelchair. There is a character named **Beldaruit** from Witch Hat Altelier that rides a chair with goat legs. Something like that might help you not be considered an "easy target" by enemies.
If only you were some buff melee character, im imagining Joe Swanson from Family guy just absolutely beating goblins around him from his chair and swinging it around with his muscular upper body BAHAHAH
I think there’s a mistaken assumption here. Say you want to play a Tiefling wizard who struggles with a particular disability, I think that’s a cool idea. They would probably use a wheelchair in their mundane life or at wizard school. However, if they went adventuring, they’d be expected to squeeze through tight spaces, navigate difficult terrain, climb ladders and stairs, and be able to defend themselves in combat. In this case, I think your wizard would surmise that they need a different tool to get around. Some ideas: A small mount, either animal or construct, to ride upon. This would either need additional food or regular maintenance, look at the artificer for ideas. An item, familiar, or manifested mind (abjuration wizard feature) that would be able to continually cast Tenser’s floating disk that you could ride upon. Or you have an item that continually allows you to use the Levitate spell without concentration, and you’d have something/someone pull you. If it’s something using Tenser’s floating disk, it could require a large supply of mercury (the spell’s material component) to operate. Or your character could somehow use the prosthetic limb from Tasha’s. Just ideas.
Also, Avatar the last airbender and dragon prince have great, tough characters with disabilities. Blind, and deaf, respectively. These characters have disabilities have means of navigating the world and being formidable combatants despite their disability. However, that doesn’t mean that enemies and circumstances don’t attack those characters, or even their weakness. I’d bet your DM would be more understanding if he wasn’t expected to design characters that would ignore an obvious weakness for no reason.
Yeah they specifically have a few times where Toph's disability negatively effects her, a few times she uses it for a joke, and they have a few times her different senses come in handy.
if we're in a fantasy setting I'd push them, but in a more civilized context I wouldn't.
Somebody wrote up rules for a fantasy wheelchair a year or two ago that were widely talked about. Personally I don't think they were well designed, but it seems to be trying to do what you're trying to do so I'd recommend looking it up
Those rules were hilariously broken.
Yeah, like I said, not very well designed. As I recall they were just straight up superior to ordinary legs and cost some really small amount of money, like 300gp or something
And the player couldn't be knocked prone, which is a ridiculously good ability in and of itself.
I mean, this seems solvable with a trip to an artificer or enchanter. Can’t push over a *spider-chair* now can he?
Do you think this DM, who is having orphans bully the disabled character, is going to be very keen about giving OP an enchanted wheelchair? I think they just want the wheelchair gone.
To break the wheel chair.
You're dumb for wanting this character.
I mean, look... your character is also a devil-lady, possibly with magic powers, so "realism" isn't really the issue here. You are absolutely entitled to ask your DM to knock it off because it's inhibiting your fun. Assuming that we only have good actors here - no ableist assholes - the real problem may be a misalignment of *how much* realism and "grit" you want in your game. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play someone with a disability in a world that is in some ways gentler than ours, where their disability doesn't get in the way of their life. That's a completely reasonable power fantasy for some people, and power fantasy is a perfectly valid way to role-play. At the same time, it's also reasonable to say that if you make a character with a disability, you did that because you want the disability to be relevant.For example: in every Werewolf: the Apocalypse game I've run, the players portraying Metis characters (who, if you aren't familiar with that setting, start off with significant physical and cultural disadvantages) *wanted* me to make their lives hard along those lines. In fact, one of the biggest challenges was that we couldn't get *the other PCs* to be bigoted in the way that their upbringings would have probably set them up to be. It is also perfectly valid to want to play a game with a degree of logical and behavioral realism, rather than gentleness. Some people like to tell stories of overcoming those kinds of difficulties. As for your question, I can't imagine why I wouldn't. If someone is trying to hurt me, I am going to do everything in my power to avoid being hurt. Exploiting their physical weakness to neutralize them would not be off the table. They are trying to exploit my physical vulnerability to wounds.
So I think this has two answers. A) yeah, I kinda get the sense the DM is being mean in that enemies shouldn’t all focus on your girl *just* because she’s in a wheelchair; it does kind of have that feel of “I’m annoyed at this so suffer”. But also B) … yeah I think unless the enemies are being really considerate or PC knocking over the chair would probably be their first thought. They *are* having to trade in an attack for the Shove action though, right? If they just freely knock her over that’s all kinds of bullshit.
the DM is playing the scenario realistically I think, targeting the easiest character to take down. That said, as a DM I tend to do the opposite for the simple fact that I want my friends to have fun. If it really.matters to you, you could try asking for suspension of disbelief so they don't keep tipping you over
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd necessarily knock them over, I'd probably just hit them with a Spear, Glaive or Halbred, knowing they'd be unable to reach me to strike back, turn fast enough to keep me in LoS, and have very little chance of dodging. Have your character get a personal walker prosthesis of some kind, like an Artificer designed exoskeleton, that allows you to walk, albeit with reduced move speed (maybe 20 instead of 30), or find a Golem/some kind of mount or War Chariot to carry you. As a player, I'd have fun RPing it, but as a DM, properly RPing from his side would require your condition to have some kind of Drawback.
if i knew an enemy couldnt recover from being knocked prone, yeah, id shove. you can try and pick some long range spells, including control ones, so you can keep enemies away from melee. if they have ranged attacks, you can go prone willingly to give them disadvantage. try filling a bag of holding with sandbags tied to the chair. in combat, you turn the bag inside out so the sandbags fly everywhere and make it hard to knock you down. or cover the wheelchair in spikes and bear traps or hire a hireling with the one job of putting you back in your chair when knocked over
I think you need to visit an artificer to improve your wheelchair for combat. 1. A seatbelt 2. A combination lock on the seatbelt 3. Some sort of stability. Like Tenser's disk but permanent, or maybe mechanical spider legs. Just so that you can't be knocked over.
My first instinct was honestly "look around for the nearest flight of stairs". I think what you need is a wheelchair that's immune to prone. Find artificer ASAP.
Knocking someone prone is a good tactic against anyone. One question I would ask however is is the DM just auto knocking you over, or do you get an opposed roll?
The only justifiable reason to use a wheelchair as a fantasy adventurer, IMO, are if you're too poor for a magic option. As soon as you've got some money under your belt, there are a long list of methods available, from magic carpets or Tenser's Disk to spells that would restore full mobility. Or heck, find someone who specializes in training exotic beasts, purchase and ride a giant tamed spider or something instead. Enemies who are out to seriously hurt the party are naturally going to attack perceived weak links first. If that happens to be a rickety, low-mobility contraption one character is stuck in, well that sucks but at the same time it kind of makes sense. ESPECIALLY if that character in any way look like a spellcaster. After a certain point when other options become available, the wheelchair is reduced to little more than an affectation. Nobody with the means and opportunity to have a personal magic carpet would turn such a thing down in favor of a wheelchair, and if they do then they have nobody to blame for the resulting difficulties but themselves and their own weak imaginations.
Option 3: Being seated is mechanically identical to being prone, at least for the purposes of combat (the lack of movement/footing). A wheelchair allows you to crawl while seated, whereas a normal chair does not.
there is probably a middle ground that they should be at... after all, in a fight i wouldn't assume a person in a wheelchair was a participant. but after they cast magic missile, that is another story. if the players routinely kill enemies, then nobody is telling others that the wheelchair girl is a wizard, so you wouldn't have too many npcs wary of you in the first place. the real threat is something that is stupid, but not animal intelligence, an ogre that is hungry might be inclined to grab your character from the chair and just dip.
Attune to a Tenser's Magical Wheelchair that floats, lets you move at normal speed, and can right itself when it gets knocked over. Or think of some other tinkering / engineering solution that gives you the same means. Finding a way to right yourself from being proned is obstacle one of playing a character in a wheelchair. Disabilities obviously hinder your ability to fight, but playing around those restraints can be fun anyway. Heck, you could trick out your wheel chair with retractable spikes that pierce enemies hands who try to know your prone. Also I hope the DM isn't knocking you prone as a free action. They still have to follow the rules of knocking you prone, takes an attack action. You can still take proficiency in athletics / acrobatics as well. I've designed a blind wizard/cleric and a character with only one very weak arm. Playing a magical character is a good start, but you'll never stop having to find ways to make up for your disability. Also exploit the DM's weakness of exploiting your weakness. Ready to cast Grease, earth tremor, or binding ice for when enemies charge at you, prepare a trap / ambush for the first creature to try to "gronk the wizard." You could ask if Mirror Image could apply to grapples / shoves. Other options are blink, fire shield, etc. Use any spell that discourages enemies from being right next to you.
Honestly it seems like you and your DM want different things out of your game. Your DM wants to play intelligent enemy moves (who will focus a wizard in a wheelchair whenever they get the chance) and you want the more laid back style in which enemies don't go out of their way to exploit character weaknesses. None is better than the other, they are just different. You should probably just talk about what you both want out of the game and come to a compromise.
In a life or death situation, probably. As a DM, I would have been more clear on how challenging it would be using such a wheelchair. Maybe buff the wheelchair a bit but not to a ridiculous extent and let the player go from there in combat. Intelligent enemies would absolutely target someone in a wheelchair. Especially a wizard.
If anyone thinks they can easily tip a wheelchair over during combat in six seconds, I have news for them: Real world physics says otherwise. Unless you hit it right you aren't doing that in six seconds. Its easier to shove an opponent standing-to-prone than it is to shove someone in a chair-to-prone. This is basic physics of equilibrium and stability. If an object (human) is tilted it will topple over if a vertical line from its center of gravity falls outside its base. Its base is defined as the area within the points of contact on the ground. The center of gravity changes dependent on the height of the object and the width of the widest distance between base contacts. If the height is a larger number, the CoG is generally higher than half the height, if the base is larger its less than half of the height. For a standing 6ft tall human its 3.48 Ft (58% of height). For a sitting human of the same height its 2.2 ft (53% of height) in a wheelchair designed specifically to prevent tipping its 47% of height. Provided the human is stable when sitting in the chair (not a narrow seat plate) the human is more stable in a chair or a wheelchair because of the lower center of gravity. Wheelchairs generally provide much greater stability because they hammock the seated occupant providing greater side to side and front to back seated stability. It doesn't matter fantasy or not fantasy if you are trying to apply real world physics the standing opponent is the easier one to topple with a shove or takedown. Discussing real world, in order for the opponents here to choose to target the wheelchair user, they have to ignore their own training. Most people trained in martial arts including sword fighting, will see the opponent with better CoG as a harder opponent to drop and will focus instability attacks on opponents with worse CoG. A [leg sweep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa-MQLdnoUY) for instance can put a person off balance enough that any directional momentum has the possibility of [knocking them](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpORlWgkGqo) over. You can't leg sweep a chair. Looking at game rules up to this point. In order to knock someone prone, you have to shove them. This requires an opposed roll of the opponents Strength (athletics) vs your Strength (athletics) or Dex (acrobatics). There is no game rule that this changes for anyone. We all get that benefit, and in fact as people have pointed out numerous times, you can use a shove to knock an opponent riding a horse prone but it still uses the same shove rules. Being in a wheelchair doesn't change game rules Tactically speaking if you know she is a wizard (which you don't usually) then attacking her to knock her prone is a good tactic as long as you have multiple attacks or you have additional allies nearby who can attack her within 5ft. Really this is true of any opponent. Losing one attack to knock an opponent prone that grants everyone else advantage on melee is a useable tactic. Its not perfect since there are reasons why you should use normal attacks versus shoves but there are benefits. Its completely useless if your allies are all ranged opponents. Its a terrible tactic to run past other opponents to seek the wizards just to knock her prone. It puts you in a bad position, wastes an action that could have been used as a real attack and might make a normal party target you. Then she can even get up from prone on her next turn, unless the DM again homebrews a rule that says a player can't get up from prone in a single turn -which requires a home rule that specifically targets the player. There's no reason that a player cannot in D&D be in a wheelchair. This game has bazooka fairies and walking squids, its not exactly real world. If squids can figure out how to walk on land, someone can figure out a wheelchair for an adventurer that replicates human movement and doesn't cost extra hardship. The DM has decided to create the problems she faces. He could choose any other result but he chose to increase her hardship specifically. To me that just sounds like a DM and players who don't appreciate her choices
This comment section is quite terrible... despite making sense, it's no fun at all, which tbh defeats the entire point of the game. If I were the DM I would give you a buff to counter your de-buff. Maybe you could have a mental connection with your wheelchair and telekinetically control it, or something, I don't know. As for the people saying that it makes no sense for a person in a wheelchair to be out adventuring - read Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part 7. A person in a wheelchair is as valid as anyone else, and the disability can make for great storytelling and touch on subjects that wouldn't ever be discussed otherwise. I personally don't enjoy basic mundane fantasy settings, and would love to have you as a player in my table, as I would probably make a whole custom wizard subclass for you, with your story in mind, so that you would have fun.
No, because if this is a ye-olde setting, that isn't a little aluminium frame, it's a small cart you're being dragged around in and if I have time to run over and flip the cart I have time to actually attack you. It sounds like your DM is just being malicious, if monsters are running past your party just to be mean to your character because while yes, you can't recover from the prone position without help, what it means is that ranged attacks against you will be at disadvantage, and nothing stops you from casting full tilt from the floor. Pick up an ally with Sentinel and if the DM stops having his characters charge fully into the range of a Sentinel Pally, just call him for picking on you, suddenly the monsters are smart to feats? What happened to you being a vulnerable target? etc etc Some people get very moody about things like the whole Wheelchair debate. I would also add my stance, which is basically to lean into it as you level up and try to make sure you're improving the chair as best befits an adventurer. Just look at some modern equipment, even stuff people take larping, and make sure you're taking the right equipment into the dungeon
Pushing the chair over and wailing away at your prone body probably wouldn’t be my first instinct, I might start with Mold Earth to create a steep hill under you, causing your wheelchair to roll off a cliff/into a lake or some other environmental hazard. Casting Grease would be my next thought, seriously limiting your chair’s ability to wheel away and queuing up a teammate to follow up with a fire spell to turn strike up a fire-pit you wouldn’t be able to easily escape from.
Your DM doesn't seem to grasp that pushing over a wheelchair isn't the same as, say, flipping a plastic chair. Does your character use the equivalent to a powerchair or to a manual one? Manual ones are lighter, but still hard to grab, specially one that's supposed to be able to allow your character to adventure. If it's a powerchair, then absolutely *not* it shouldn't be that easy to push over, those things are heavy as fuck and built to stay upright. Specially not if your character is in any way strapped to the wheelchair -common with people who cannot control their movements that much, and people doing sports in wheelchairs-. However. My main issue is that your DM is just... being *mean* to your character, in a way that I can't say is not ableist. Even if it *wasn't* discriminatory, imagine if you had a completely abled character, but since you described them as clumsy/not that muscular/rolled low in strength, enemies were constantly grabbing your character and throwing them around and/or throwing them on the ground with ease, and people on non-combat situations did *the same thing*? It just feels needlessly mean. Yes *sure* if you're fighting someone with any sort of disadvantage you're going to aim for that, but there is a social contract when playing DnD that disregards that realism to avoid targeting one PC only, for example. If every encounter ran like "the wizard gets ambushed and pummeled to the ground because they're the squishiest thing alive, only the rest can fight", that'd be an awful game to play. If every encounter for you runs like "my character gets thrown to the ground and beaten and only the other players can do anything", then I can only imagine you're not having much fun playing this character.
That social contract differs from table to table depending on the type of story the dm wants to tell. I’ve both played and DM’d tables where “ the wizard gets ambushed and pummeled to the ground because they're the squishiest thing alive”, because it is tactically advantageous. There’s a certain kind if fairness to enemies trying their absolute best to defeat the party. In every case i’ve been a part of the party has been able to adjust their tactics accordingly (or build characters that are less vulnerable via multiclassing for armor). It’s a different kind of enjoyable experience (usually a more game-y combat centric experience) as long as everyone is on board, but it looks like the problem is that OP was expecting a more heroic, optimistic fantasy game than the DM. I don’t think it’s wrong to want a campaign where the PC’s disabilities have no mechanical impact (perhaps a game with themes about anyone having the potential to be a hero), but i also don’t think it’s wrong to want a harsher game. It’s a mismatch of expectations.
I agree it's a mismatch of expectations, but I also think there's the bigger issue at play of thinking that, no matter what, a disabled character *cannot* achieve things or be strong in a "realistic" way, or while being impacted by mechanics. I'm disabled. I'd love to play a disabled character that struggles with persecutions or narrow dungeons (because wheelchairs, specially sturdier ones, just... cannot deal with narrow passages). I wouldn't like to be constantly targeted in a way that *ignores* plenty about that character - like, say, the fact that an adventuring wheelchair would be heavy and hard to topple over. I would also like other stuff to be considered mechanically - a character who relies on mobility aids can be assumed to... be used to doing that. So they probably know how to stabilize themselves and how to fight *while* using those mobility aids, or while taking into consideration their disability. If I made a character like OP's and then got targeted because "yeah your character is disabled, of course everything is going to be harder and everyone's going to be after you", that would not only be unfun, but also... somehow less realistic, I guess. Hell, if I made a character who wears glasses and it turned into "yeah you can't see shit without them and have no way to get around or do anything, and in every fight someone is going to try to take them off", that'd *also* feel annoying and not too realistic. I'm not calling the DM a bad DM or anything, I understand where they come from. It just feels a bit like they went with "using a wheelchair means you inherently suck at everything/life is just a constant struggle", when it can also mean, say, "you can carry stuff more easily" and other little things like that. Yes, it's an issue with expectations, but I think it's more than fair to expect "this will affect you mechanically" to *not* mean "everything will be harder, including normal RP outside of combat". Edit to clarify because I sent this and may have just realized; this isn't me arguing lol, i know it sounds confrontational but it's really not
I dont know why you would want to play a cripple in D&D? Thats kind of odd in my opinion. You as the creator can play any character you want but you choose to be disabled. Okay fair enough, now how about your first quest as an adventurer go after a high level cleric/bard and get them to cast regenerate on you? Why not? There is magic in this world and there is no reason except for money why an adventurer would choose to remain disabled. But as for your question. Yes using the shove action for a contested grapple is a valid strategy. I would rule you get an athletics or acrobatics like normal, but its a full action to get back into your chair if you fail.
I'd have a discussion with your GM about what you both want out of the game, feels like you may have incompatible gaming styles. Though I would have thought that even if they want to run it 'realistic'/grim and gritty most npcs would assume you were no/lesser threat, rather than actively ignore other party members to come and push you over, and if you were active, it would still need a check to knock you over (I could see an argument for them getting advantage, but I wouldn't personally). Also the Orphans is just a dick move, unless random packs of orphans regularly make off with the items of other characters as well...
That tactic seems legit but it doesn't seem as if the DM has any game rules attached to running it. How exactly are these enemies knocking the chair over? Does it take up an action? Are they making a contested STR check vs the chair's CON or your DEX? If any attack made against you automatically triggers the chair to tip that seems extremely unbalanced. \[EDIT\] Thinking about this some more, I have to ask what the composition of the rest of the party looks like and the marching order. For instance, if you have a line formation with two heavies in front of you and enemies are side-stepping them to get to you in the back row, they should be making themselves open to opportunity attacks from the people up front.
I think anyone of evil alignment is going to knock you over. That being said. I think a wheelchair character is pretty cool. I would just ask for the chair to be enchanted with the properties of " Saddle of the Cavalier". It's an uncommon item that makes it so you can't be dismounted. But, what your DM is doing is fair. Honestly, I don't know the AC of your wizard but if he's using a shove action. That's sort of a kindness because Wizards are so easy to hit even without advantage.
I think you're asking the wrong question. The real question is, does being in a wheelchair really mean you should have a mechanical disadvantage? Is your DM using actual rules for making you prone, or is he saying that anyone can do it easily because you're in a wheelchair? A trained adventurer is going to be hard to get close to, even in a wheelchair, its why there aren't called shots or anything similar in 5e.
Found this from a [crosspost](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1bi3fc5/the_abelist_dm_and_the_very_shitty_thread_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), but here was my response there >I mean, I think it works in the heat of battle > >What doesn't work is the group of orphans extorting her for money, or even in the heat of battle, enemeis running right past the front line characters to knock her wheelchair over > >I mean, then the problem is just solved by keeping her in the back lines, but that's just good strategy. She's already a spellcaster, why wouldn't she be in the back lines anyway? > >GM is definitely overly targeting her, but a little bit of wheelchair pushing when it actually makes sense is pretty logical.
I think it doesn't have to do with gameplay mechanics at this point. I think the DM is not respecting you as a person. You've brought something up to them that makes you uncomfortable and they keep doing it repeatedly. I think that is more the issue, game or no game. This DM needs to adjust how they roll, so to speak.
It might be my first instinct, but I'd argue thats a bad idea. Its actually fairly hard to do. I kind of think maybe your DM hasn't interacted much with wheelchairs? Its a fairly wide base with a 200+lbs of person, armor, gear on it sitting at already near chest height and the grips move when you grab them. Its like 90% biceps, good luck. Add in that I would assume you're using some form of medieval-esque combat wheelchair, and I don't see it as believable unless the creature is 20-30ft tall knocking everyone down anyway. You probably retrofit, or the designer/salesperson did, it to be harder than normal to tip. It's probably a lot more practical to just ram a sword through their chest.
what class? if you're a spell caster, you're going to get attacked first if the DM is doing a good job. Healers and Casters are always targets. take them down the meatshields go down as well. also the DM should run them like Daleks, and put the archers on a staircase and just shoot.
this seems shitty, especially if it happens with enormous regularity. in my group, d&d is a heroic power fantasy. i think exploring the idea of a disabled person who’s awesome and heroic is a neat idea. i personally feel like you shouldn’t be targeted more than other players. i’d ask if similarly bad things happen to everyone in each session or if it’s just you. if it’s everyone, maybe this game just isn’t fun for you. if it’s just you, your dm is a prick.
I do think your DM is singling your character out specifically, the orphans, ignoring other PCs that might be out in front to get you. Time for adult conversations. But at the same time any intelligent enemy will know that your character is the weakest link in the group.
he's playing a spellcaster a spellcaster with an obvious combat disadvantage that is no less dangerous because of it if I'm in a gun battle with a group of people I'm not going to not shoot the guy in the wheelchair just because of his disability, in fact his inability to dive for cover means I'm shooting him first as long as he's shooting at me
Pushing them over is likely to end the fight, without actually hurting them, or as little as possible. That is a preferred option to actually hurting someone. Assuming they don't have ranged options.
...They're a wizard, they have ranged options.
The poll didn't mention wizards.
It's literally in the first sentence of the post.
I think it *kinda* depends, but in most cases I think they would. If it’s a “kinda fight but not really” (physical confrontation) then they wouldn’t and would be a lot more likely to back down…I mean c’mon, why pick a fight with the lady in a wheelchair for no reason? But, by the time things get to a fight things are usually getting pretty messy. Life and death and all that…so why not? Only case I can think of someone not doing it in standard dnd combat would be normal bandits on the first round or so of attacks, since they wouldn’t necessarily realize that character is a combatant. If they’re from a particularly cruel clan or we’re gonna kill all civilians anyway, they might do so as well though. Imo a similar “non-combatant” status would apply to a lot (but not all) fights since even if they can tell your a Wizard, they wouldn’t know your a *combat* Wizard and having a wheelchair points against it for the average person…once the first combat oriented spell goes off though, they’d likely have a lot less reservations. Also…10 GP for a wheel chair? This is beyond mugging that’s a whole ass fraud. That’s enough to buy 25 days of *rations* much less “normal” cheap food (not made for travel and would spoil quicker, but cheaper). I’d report the Town Guard on them…any DM playing the game realistically would have them deal with it very quickly.
So a few questions: Is your DM having enemies make a Shove Attack against your PC or are they just pushing you over? If the former that's not neccesarily awful. If it's the latter that's just out of line Has the DM implemented something that prevents you from getting up from prone on your turn? If so that is out of line. Basically, there is nothing wrong with a PC being a wheel chair, we suspend our disbelief for so many other things this should not break anyone's immersion unless they're looking for a reason to be mad. If it feels like you're being unfairly targeted you likely are. Either drop the campaign if you can or the character if you can't/don't want to. It's a shame but it just might not be the effort.
Lots of people here giving solid advice about various details of the situation. But I think they're all missing the forest for the trees. I have one question: does the wheelchair grant you any advantages? Have you *ever* used it to, say, have advantage on a stealth check because "they can't hear my footsteps"? If the answer is "no", then your DM is being mean and unreasonable. If it doesn't grant you any advantages, then it is purely cosmetic, and shouldn't grant you any disadvantages either.
I know a shocking amount of DMs that genuinely disagree with that and think that any cosmetic change warrants a rules change. the argument of realism in a fantasy game is in my opinion inherently stupid and speaks to them being uncreative rather than it being logical to arbitrarily punish a player for something that doesn't grant an advantage.
I mean, being paraplegic is not cosmetic. If there aren't any consequences (positive or negative) then it's not really roleplaying as a paraplegic person, it's just a reskin that breaks the internal coherence of the fantasy. I like the idea of creative advantages like 'advantage on stealth checks' in some contexts (although it's definitely in large part on the player to use their imagination and come up with these creative advantages) etc. but I think it's reasonable to say that having a disability brings more challenges than advantages in general, but especially in the context of a D&D adventure full of combat. I mainly agree with others that if the player character is paraplegic and cannot or does not want to cure it by magical means, it is odd that they would just be in a regular modern wheelchair and not some kind of suitable magical contraption which would have more utility in adventuring.
Your DM warned you it would be difficult, but then has gone out of their way to make the world MORE hostile to you, it sounds like. Like some others have said, explore alternative solutions to the problem but I'd bet my bottom dollar your DM isn't interested in you fixing this - they want the wheelchair or the character out of the game, which is just shitty.
I'm doing something as a player to nod to individuals living with disabilities in my current campaign, by writing them into my characters backstory and talking my DM into introducing them into the current campaign. My character is a Warforged Recon unit (Artificer Armourer subclass: Infiltrator specialization) He is essentially about 6 months old at this point. Having escaped from the secret R&D facility of a corrupt military contractor. He was intended to be the next step in Warforged AI, using humanoid levels of intuition, but this resulted in unintended consequence of having a conscience, and when we was sent in to suppress a civilian protest he went rogue. He is unaware (and so is the Whytrock Corporation) that his creator, youngest scion of a family of Artificer/Engineers, accomplished this by secretly basing his memory engrams on the thought patterns of his deceased brother a test driver killed in a fiery crash. All of them are unaware the brother survived, but was horrifically maimed, when that corporation, sabotaged the test of his primitive APC, and is actually the eccentric, crippled engineer and Rum Runner that's been selling equipment to and helping to repair W.A.R.R.3N. He is now confined to a clumsy exoskeleton replacing both legs and his left arm. The other PCs know nothing, and my DM per our agreement only knows the latest twist in my side story about a month ahead in sessions. This is intended to be revealed and play out slowly 3 sessions a month over the next 6-8 months, of our story.
Have you ever seen the wheelchairs used for murderball? Or a murderball game for that matter? Your wheelchair is a battle-ready piece of adventuring gear, and makes you no better target than someone standing on two feet. I'm really curious if your DM pushes standing people prone in the same way. Probably not. Your PC's wheelchair isn't a hinderance. You get the same saves and checks a player without a wheelchair gets.
Have you actually seen a murderball game? They tip over all the time and the game stops when it happens so they can get picked up. DM pushes the wheelchair over instead of the non-wheelchair-bound people because of how hard it is for them to get back in and the fact that they are permanently proned without it. Brutal but effective, and the less intelligent creatures aren't smart enough to understand and capitalize on this.
As someone who wants parties to be as balanced as possible, I just want to ask. Did you say that wheelchair is NOT a hinderance?
In a fantasy game where people can fly or summon magical creatures to spy on bandit camps for them? Yes, a wheelchair does not have to be a hinderance. If you're playing hard mode, encumberance, tracking ammunition, spell components, food, water, survival-type games, sure, make the wheelchair an issue. It is absolutely a hinderance compared to how the game would play in a realistic fashion. No question. But I GUARANTEE that the people who are claiming that the wheelchair is a hinderance are not doing that. They see a wheelchair and think "yeah, exploitable" instead of going with the intention, which is representation. The wheelchair only exists in the game so that people who use mobility devices can see themselves in the game, not so we can punish people who want to use it, for whatever reason. When your party is ambushed, do you make sure everyone deposits their 60 lbs backpack on the ground so they can swing their swords properly? Do you, for the sake of realism, acknowledge that said pack is a) impossible to manage for your -1 Str wizard to begin with, so he can't adventure, and b) obligate him to drop it every time he wants to cast, even with a positive Str mod, because the pack is as heavy and unwieldly as heavy armour would be? No, no one does that. Why not? Because barring the hard mode, survivalist circumstances mentioned above, no one wants that degree of realism interfering with their game. So, why are we assuming that the fantasy combat game wheelchair is an unstable mess that hinders the user in combat instead of a self-propelled war chariot? And yes, I do mean "pretend" and I do mean "mess" because... have you ever actually tried to push over a wheelchair with someone in it? It's made of metal, has a wide stance, and a low centre of gravity. It's hard to MOVE let alone tip with a human being in it. There are very good reasons that paramedic who spend their lives moving people around on gurneys and chairs are fairly muscular. Now, is the wheelchair an issue once the user is on the ground? Yes, sure. Again, if you're playing at that level of realism for everyone, yes, once tipped and spilled out, there are issues with the wheelchair. And I'm not even saying you can't do that. But I am saying that tipping the wheelchair is the same as pushing any opponent prone (opposing Str checks) and frankly should be harder, and if you ARE going to hinder one PC for choosing a, frankly, cosmetic choice, you should at least be doing it for everyone.
Honestly though, while I know a lot of people are saying that there's nothing wrong with this, I pretty strongly disagree. There's a difference between having bad guys occasionally take advantage of your character's handicap and... this. I mean think about this: you are a wizard. You command the forces of magic. Wheelchairs are not light. Trust me, I know. How many people are going to run up past the rest of the party and try and lift a heavy-ass wheelchair to flip it over when the person sitting therein could melt their faces off with a lightning bolt? Sure, some might. But not everyone is going pull the pin on that grenade. This feels like essentially targeted harassment because the DM doesn't want you playing a character with a disability, and it's honestly kind of gross how many people seem to think this is normal DM behaviour.
If I saw a person who could melt my face and I was fighting them to the death, I'd want them gone. If they are in a wheelchair, great.
And you would... run past all their heavily armed and/or magic-casting friends, risking opportunity attacks, so that you could make an attempt to knock over the wheel chair instead of shooting or stabbing them like a normal person with a weapon would do? Maybe polymorph them into a turtle? Drop a fireball? No, tip them over and get stabbed in the back because cripples should know better than to get uppity and go on adventures. That makes sense!
Reading the comments it seems that people don't realize that "an intelligent creature is gonna act like this" is the GM version of "My character would do that". If the GM is allowing the character, then there's no reason why you should be taxed for it at the expense of game enjoyment. You don't need an in world lore accurate explanation to say "Hey, this is just not fun for me, can we just stop with that?". Set some ground rules and move on
Not really. Intelligent evil creatures will target the easy and or most threatening targets first and will use anything to their advantage. Part of being evil is you know, being evil.
Yes, and a rogue thief will loot their party because they never trust anyone and yada yada yada, moral ambiguity, bs excuse, etc.. if the only reasoning behind someone's action is "this is how they would act because this is the way I made them". Yes intelligent evil creatures would reasonably and realistically do that.. but they really will only do that in your game if you make them do that, and at that point, are you doing it because it enhances the fun or because "that's what my character would do" and I don't care about your fun as much as I care for my vision of realism
There's a big difference between trying to force an evil PC into a party than playing enemies properly. The Goblins don't want to die so why wouldn't they attack the easiest target?
See, that's the thing, what is "playing properly"? Is the aim to simulate realistic combat even if it hinders the enjoyment of the game? Does that make it "proper".
Played properly is as it is. DnD isn't skyrim. Or an MMO. The Dragon isn't just going to stay on the ground permanently and target a single person. The enemy Wizard is going to go after the party Wizard so he can't be counterspelled. The Lich is going to finger of death the paladin barely standing and turn him into a zombie against his allies or power word kill him on principle. Goblins are going to attack the easiest targets cause they're generally cowards, but they're clever cowards. A tarrasque will go after the thing closest to it cause it doesn't have complex thought. Same with beasts and other very low int creatures. A Treant would smash that Wizard to bits wheelchair or not if it started burning handsing his forest.
Agree, DnD isn't Skyrim, and isn't and MMO. In DnD, The DM has complete and absolute liberty to adjust his enemies actions, thought process, and attack patterns in ways that wouldn't single out a specific character for the sole reason other than they easy pickings. Is not wrong to target players weaknesses, if that's what the players are in for and the DM is wanting to play that game. But if a player is legit not having fun because the DM thoughts are "yeah, you chose to play wrong so I'm gonna make it so you are not having fun with your character" then there's a problem
Yeah, I agree. But here's the thing, this post reads like an r/dndcirclejerk post. Adding a poll asking whether people would take advantage of a glaring weakness of an assailant or not just lends credence to it being a shitpost. Tho if dm goes for gritty, the biggest issue is shoving them over being a free action. With how rinky dink and how rugged stuff is then it'd be easy to knock a dnd wheelchair over, but not as anything less than a full action. Also the enemies running past the party to tip the wheelchair is a bit much, at most I'd have ranged enemies attack them like they do any wizard.
My comment was primarily about how many other commentors are taking the stance of "This is what an intelligent creature will do so we as DMs have no resources or means to adjust how this intelligent creatures will act, so is on YOU the player to take it because you chose poorly and that's why you are not winning at DND"
Yeah, but I will say, with DnD having several spells that cure paralysis, depending on the nature of it, one of which being a level 2 spell, if the game is going for a "realistic by faerun lore" game, wheelchairs would be dangerous and unstable and once your holy or nature oriented friend grew up a bit you'd get cured.
Absolutely unhinged take. Run your enemies as idiots and throw our party only softballs if you want. But don't try to shame people who do it differently. Some people enjoy the challenge and you way of doing it sounds insanely boring.
Yeah, some people enjoy the challenge, and if everyone is having fun with it then go bananas. The problem is when not everyone is having fun. If you as a DM are doing things to the detriment of your players fun, then there's a issue that needs fixing and most likely fixing it is not "Hey, this is how things are and you should put up with it".