I fuckin hate this notion in modern dnd (which is a misconception in the first place) that its just "let a d20 decide: the game". That's not how the game has ever been played. If you wanna have goofy mad-lib games with your friends where you just roll dice and laugh that's fine but you've never, in 50 years, had to roll to see if you're able to cast Cure Wounds or Heal.
That is a mechanic in some other games where spellcasting isn't a guaranteed thing. But not in core Dungeons and Dragons.
I wish my DM would accept this. I was born with this power but I might fail to cast it? Why am I not rolling to see if I walk properly since that was a learned ability.
didn't dnd 2e have you roll a d20 if you cast while wearing armor? too low of a roll and the cast fails? No crit effects, just simple pass/fail, right?
I guess since in many cases you do actually need to roll a dice, like when peeforming a touch or ranged touch spell, people just assume it always happens.
And even in this case. Cure wounds is a spell like any other and it is subject to a will saving throw. So to be correct the pc that was targeted by the spell would indeed roll in order to save from the unintended heal - but thats really just assuming the spell could be used like this, which in my interpretation it cannot.
So again, even if the caster rolls no dice in this case, the target could. I think this leads to people thinking there must always be a roll.
Even with regenerate, what exactly are you regenerating? If the necessary neural pathways for the legs to work never developed in the first place, they couldn't be "regenerated". If this was your goal I think you might need to true polymorph a guy into "the same guy but his legs work"
It's explicitly within the capabilities of a Lesser Restoration, but also I would not allow a player to cast that spell on another player if that other player didn't want it
Edit: also as another person said, the adult who has never used their legs before never learned how to walk, so even if they had functioning legs, it would not help
The problem is that newbies see this shit and think it's normal. One in every 20 rolls is a nat 20. It just means that what you tried went as well as it possibly could have. It doesn't make possible anything that wasn't already
Their group should be setting realistic expectations for newcomers then and if they wanna do a throwaway fun session with relaxed rules they can another time.
And if people that don't partake think a session is this wacky wild shit, who cares? They aren't playing.
Should it not be up to the DM? Sounds like the players here had a good time. Srsly this is what keeps players from DND: people who stick way too much to the rules
Nat 20 doesn't just let you do whatever. Cure wounds could easily be interpreted as returning the body to its natural state as the soul percieves it. If wanted his legs back more than anything so much that his soul held onto it like phantom pain, then I would say maybe a Greater Restoration could if he wanted that.
But if he'd grown accoustomed to his new life and his new legs and no longer sought to "restore" anything, having made peace with his injury, then no, greater restoration would just restore him to his own healthy self image. And a spell like cure wounds would do absolute dick.
I'd love to let this play out, narrate the lack of effect of this spell, and kick this asshole from the table.
My read of simple HP restoring magical healing, at least in D&D, is simply that it is equivalent to accelerated natural healing with no potential for complications. So if whatever ailment you're trying to heal wouldn't also be healed by any arbitrary amount of rest and recuperation then Cure Wounds won't cut it either.
There's a book I read that takes place in Faerun where a cleric is getting tortured by ogre clerics by having his limbs broken and then they use heal spells to heal his limbs at odd angles. After he's freed, they break his limbs again, heal them in braces, but he had a permanent limp
DnD healing can only do so much before its just some high power reality changing magic.
Exactly. If that adventurer wanted to "cure" what he saw as a flaw, he could quest for a much more specialized magical healer or more powerful spell to enable it. I mention greater restoration, but true polymorph to his original form, or some kind of time manipulation, etc. There are options, at a high enough toer of magic, to undo injury, but that power has to have been attained.
This is why amputations aren't cured by a cure wounds. You can't just grow a pile of pork by hacking into a live pig and repeatedly healing it.
It could far easier be interpreted as healing what the caster or their god perceives to be a wound, since IT'S THEM THAT DOES THE DAMN CURING.
I get inclusion, I really do. And if you wanna go there, the guy playing the cleric is a prick if he's doing this to a disabled guy's character. But you're not escaping this with logic, because disabled guy is also a prick.
You're in a universe of immortal gods, magic, amazing tech and telling stories. Don't you dare pretend there's any ailment that can't be healed by some random cleric of Waukeen or Kol Korran, both being deities of wealth that would approve of their priests being basically traveling salesmen, exchanging healing for money. You can cure anything for the right amount of gold, and let's not all act like we wouldn't want our walking/eyesight/hearing/whatever restored, and actively work to pay for one of these services.
Some of the traits we want to give our characters just don't translate into this magical world, and there's no ruling where a DM can still have it make sense if the cleric is in character when doing this. What you want to ask yourself before you get to this situation is, would this guy have seriously been crippled all his life and was never able to raise the few hundred gold for a healing spell? And would an adventuring party even want him on?
This should've been nixed at session 0 if not all players agree that this setting allows for incurable disabilities/diseases. Cause I for sure don't want a cleric in my party that "isn't allowed" to remove curses or heal. Oh, he's wheelchair-bound? The party exits the pub, you are unable to catch up to them as there are some stairs in the way. This is life without wheelchair ramps, better get used to some boring sessions ahead. Unless you wanna explore a dungeon and see if falling down stairs while stuck in a chair is gonna be easy to survive for your lvl1 wizard.
It could far easier be interpreted as healing what the caster or their god perceives to be a wound, since IT'S THEM THAT DOES THE DAMN CURING.
If the caster doesnt know how Tieflings are naturally supposed to look, are they going to then heal them of their "deformities" and remove their horns? I'd very much argue the caster's intent is irrelevent. And as others have noted, there is lore of how cure wores operates to accelerate natural healing, not just reality warp into a perfect body. Splint a break and heal it, done. Cure wounds on a fresh cut, done. Cure wounds on a 10 year old scar? Thats not a wound. No effect. Otherwise no one in DnD would have any scars, even cool ones.
because disabled guy is also a prick.
You are searching hard for reasons to argue against this. Just wanting to be how you are is not being a prick.
You're in a universe of immortal gods, magic, amazing tech and telling stories. Don't you dare pretend there's any ailment that can't be healed by some random cleric of Waukeen or Kol Korran, both being deities of wealth that would approve of their priests being basically traveling salesmen, exchanging healing for money. You can cure anything for the right amount of gold, and let's not all act like we wouldn't want our walking/eyesight/hearing/whatever restored, and actively work to pay for one of these services.
By this logic, no character in DnD should ever have scars, or exist with anything but a pristine body. And yet, some of the most famous characters out there have scars and missing fingers. How odd.
Some of the traits we want to give our characters just don't translate into this magical world, and there's no ruling where a DM can still have it make sense if the cleric is in character when doing this. What you want to ask yourself before you get to this situation is, would this guy have seriously been crippled all his life and was never able to raise the few hundred gold for a healing spell?
Usually no. A few hundred gold in most settings is actually quite a large amount for a non-adventurer.
And would an adventuring party even want him on?
Because the disabled are without worth if they inconvenience the party even slightly? Nevermind that all your ranting aboht how magic could affect the body could much more cheaply and immediately apply to objects like a wheelchair, and thus make sense for them to have worked around their disability than to have afforded some of the most expensive healing that exists to treat it.
This should've been nixed at session 0 if not all players agree that this setting allows for incurable disabilities/diseases.
Yea I don't think that most see "curing my disabled friend by force" as something that session 0 would even need to touch on. Most of these spells have "willing creature" as an assumed condition.
Cause I for sure don't want a cleric in my party that "isn't allowed" to remove curses or heal. Oh, he's wheelchair-bound? The party exits the pub, you are unable to catch up to them as there are some stairs in the way. This is life without wheelchair ramps, better get used to some boring sessions ahead. Unless you wanna explore a dungeon and see if falling down stairs while stuck in a chair is gonna be easy to survive for your lvl1 wizard.
This whole paragraph again is some hateful ableist shit with 0 imagination. I'm not even going to bother listing the dozens of simple creative solutions to "omg stairs!" that escape you, and simply point out that, again, cure wounds is a low level healing spell not even a greater restoration. And long-term scars and illnesses canonically exist in DnD. So get over yourself. If the player doesnt want "cure my legs" to be their whole fucking quest, then let them have their magical wheelchair with equivalent mobility and move the fuck on.
Jesus its not even hard. "The wheels of my contraption have a minor strength buff so i can push it easily, and some years later a kind enchanter cast a permanent low grade spider climb on the wheels so i can go up stairs and uneven terrain fairly easily now. It's not strong enough to climb walls, unfortunately. But I appreciated it immensely all the same. I get around as well as most now, I suppose. Still can't see over countertops all the time though."
I am unsure from what this is from, but I once read a story in which a form of healing magic exists. One requirement for it to work was that the person being healed needs to be OK with it. If someone tried to cure your paralyzed legs and you don't want them to be "fixed" as you don't view as an issue or being paralyzed is just part of how you are, then the magic can't work on you.
Hehe, indeed. Although they moved onto "vaccines put microchips in you to let Bill Gates control you" so who knows. (Side note, autistic people are chill, significantly less likely to ruin my night with bullshit, lol)
… Ranlar slowly rises from his wheelchair before collapsing under his own weight as his atrophied legs give out. Your party must now find a way to move him away from the orcs without using his newly healed legs, perhaps on a nearby chair with wheels.
Taking away someone's intentional, roleplayed disability definitely falls under "infringing on someone's fun", though. If the player (not just the character) is also disabled and trying to represent themselves in the game, this goes beyond infringing on fun straight into lowkey offensive. I would never let this nat 20 work. Maybe it fixes the wheelchair or something.
I have had players make persuasion checks against me before when they want to do something that's explicitly outside the rules but I think it would be cool. Depending on how cool I think it would be, the DC can be anywhere from 10 to 20, and the player doesn't have proficiency
D&D is ultimately a set of rules to guide a group improv storytelling session. One of the first rules of improv is "yes and" so you go with it within the confines of the game rules as well as what people are comfortable with. This is where /u/[email protected]'s suggestion of "Ranlar slowly rises from his wheelchair before collapsing under his own weight as his atrophied legs give out. Your party must now find a way to move him away from the orcs without using his newly healed legs, perhaps on a nearby chair with wheels." Fits so well. It "yes and"s the spell while remaining true to the other player's wishes.
The DMs job is to maintain the fun for the players, and if one player is ruining others fun they need to be spoken with and kicked out if they aren't able to be a team player. Personally, I treat a NAT20 (and critical failures) as an opportunity to do something comical that helps advance the story and improve the lore, because that creates the moments you tell to others when sharing fun stories about D&D
I once ran a campaign based on Fred Saberhagen's books of swords. I'm the books there are twelve swords that would be considered greater artifacts. One of my players was playing a pacifist. He picked up the sword called Townsaver while his village was being invaded. Anyone who has read the books knows this same situation happens right at the beginning of the series. The sword takes over, because it's power is to force anyone who holds it to protect unarmed innocents. He proceeded to slaughter the invading force. He was devastated.
It's worth reading the whole series of you're interested. They aren't awesome, but they are fairly quick reads, and the way he resolves the story is interesting.
Eric just needed a better backstory for his wheelchair-bound character. And really in most high fantasy settings the only way it makes sense to have a permanent disability like that would be from a curse.
You're assuming there are enough >2nd level casters around to cast Lesser Restoration (or whatever the equivalent is in your campaign). As far as I'm concerned, magic should be extraordinarily rare. Does every preacher get cleric powers? Does everyone with draconic ancestry get sorcerer powers? Can anyone with an instrument kill a commoner with an insult?
In my campaigns, very few NPCs are even 1st level in a class. Maybe one in every 20 villages has a 1st level cleric in their church. It takes a 130 IQ to even start learning to be a wizard. Basically everyone can trace some line back to a dragon in their family tree, but maybe 0.001% ever get strong enough powers to even cast a Light cantrip
This thread has helped my understanding why new players I meet to are so intimidated by the game. It seems many people favor strict rule following over just having a good time.
Everyone's correctly pointing out how healing doesn't with that way, how about changing someone's body against their will being totally evil and not good?
I have a character idea for a cleric that idolizes the god of pain.
They focus almost entirely on healing because you can't keep suffering if you're dead, if you're alive you can grow stronger, and therefore, in their own twisted mind, if you're suffering you're growing stronger.
They don't heal people right away unless not doing so would cause them to die and end their suffering. Instead, if the battle is over, they pull out a chart and start asking about how painful the wound is. This can be excruciating for the one who has to sit there and answer questions until they get healed.
The other portion of their build would focus on fighting the undead because they are abominations who cannot feel pain and cannot grow stronger because of it
The god goes along with it because their normal clerics may be into torture, which is great for pain, but they tend to get hunted down because of their extreme methods. This cleric causes pain indirectly by being surrounded by a bunch of murderhobos.
Wheelchairs only work because of modern paving and asphalt. Cobblestone and dirt roads would never accommodate a wheelchair. Magic carpets are right there.
Assuming no rubber or equivalent, the ride would be bumpy as hell, but doable on a well packed road, or relatively well laid stone. I've pushed patients over both surfaces, and seen plenty of patients do it themselves.
Gravel is the real pain in the ass. You get a fresh gravel path, and good luck with most wheelchairs that aren't powered and/or have narrow wheels. Way more effort.
On something like cobblestones, you might even have an easier time moving yourself without rubber tires.
For short distances, even a poorly packed but dry dirt path isn't bad.
Remember, wheelchairs annually predate asphalt by a good bit, and existed before sidewalks and such were evenly paved. Some of the older examples from the Victorian era were used on city streets that were unpaved entirely, and impassable when wet, but managed to work over the dried ruts.
Same with unpaved dirt paths that would be poorly maintained. I've had patients in chairs push themselves down paths in the woods while hunting, with things growing in the path, rocks not fully cleared, etc. That's modern chairs, but the fundamental design is more robust regarding surfaces than you'd think
I enjoy that Godbound doesn't even bother with any of the hairsplitting I'm reading in this thread. You're a god of freaking Health, of course you can fix his legs. No dice rolling involved.
Even then, curses can complicate matters, and a pantheon without an applicable power will need to endeavor to make a change.
A Greater Foe could argue for a saving throw, especially if it's against their will. A Gift might not even be enough if the deformity affects their divine soul, which sounds like a good quest hook.
Now you're talking! That's the kind of stuff I can work with right there. We can spin an adventure out of this. This is fun!
Rules lawyering and ooc arguing are not fun.
"Fixers" are fucking annoying in any roleplay experience, I don't know what drives them to it but they never seem to get that it's not like, it's not like actually being crippled.
Yeah, if someone at the table wants certain attributes for their character, the DM should not allow others to mess with that without very good reason. This guy being a dick about it? He can find another table.
What an awful DM. I can't find any TTRPGs that have a "heal wounds" spell, and I definitely can't find any that have a player roll a d20 to see how effective their healing is, but assuming this is 5th edition D&D, this is within the bounds of Lesser Restoration. Still, I'd be pissed if my character had some medical condition as part of their story, and another player just cast a spell to get rid of it