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Since the monk archetype is full of supernatural abilities anyway, you could play up the fact that he has honed his 'instincts' in training and thus has no penalties whatsoever as far as combat goes. You could say his full abilities kick in whenever he's in dangerous situations such as combat or when he's about to walk off a cliff or when a trap sends darts flying in his direction.

But to retain the aspect of playing a blind character, he has to rely on his allies to describe a scene... this gives them roleplaying possibilities.

The DM describes a scene in great detail, let's say.... a DOUBLE RAINBOW.

The monk can roleplay politely asking his ally to describe the scene in his own words.

The ally can describe the double rainbow in his own words and ask the wise monk, "What does it meaaaaaan?"

Jan 22, 2013 -- 10:25AM, DaBeerds wrote:

The problem I foresee is that any mechanics you add will become tedious over time.  If, for example,  as someone else suggests, the player has to make a perception check every round of combat in order to perceive the position of his allies and foes, it can become boring very quickly especially if you give the character a perception skill bonus and failure is rare.  In fact those rare failures would probably be even more annoying.

And if you do not give any sort of Perception bonus, then the player will feel obligated to invest a lot of skill points into perception to insure that he can "see," and therefore detract from other skills that might better suit the rest of the character concept.

I tend agree with the "strategy" of just roleplaying the blindness, no mechanics required.  At most, at your (as the DM) discretion, let the character be able to "see" when a normal character would normally be vision impaired (darkness spell, no light in a room, etc).

Even more tedious for the player's allies as varying situations keep the DM and player of the blind monk constantly engaged in private conversation. If the DM is exceptionally good at making sure each player gets a fair amount of attention, not a big deal, but it seems like anything that requires anything more than a simple dice roll will become redundant, for everyone.

If the DM is good at 'winging it' and the players aren't rules lawyers, the unique problems can be easily surmounted, since a lot of them will be simply common-sense or 'what works better for the story' answers.

Jan 22, 2013 -- 1:39PM, Ghost007 wrote:

I think simple 1 perception roll per that blind charactors turn & having to move half speed is a quick representation of his condition in combat. Don't think that will slow game at all. Their should be advantage & disadvantage. Just fluffing it ignores both. IMO

But wouldn't successive failures result in slower combat?  Say he rolls three failures in a row and simply cannot engage in combat in a timely manner, the character becomes worth less in a combat situation and combat takes longer because he cannot do anything of worth.

So to counter this you give the character a perception skill bonus to compensate, but that has to be carefully balanced.  Too high and he never fails (except on a 1) making the roll pointless.  Too low and the player may feel obligated to put points into perception at the expense of other character concept defining skills, eventually leading to the roll being pointless anyway.

Lastly, as Centauri would probably say, that's a boring consequence.  why bother?

If you want to keep it really simple, I would recomend treating the character as if it were perfectly normal in terms of mechanics. The character has a normal "sight" range, and is effected by any conditions that normally effect sight. They are just reflavored for the blindness.

If you want to make it mechanically more flavorful, I would recomend using tremorsense 10, increasing to 15 at level 21, and blindsight 1.

The blindsight 1 makes it easier for the character to interact with things. It can be explained as some magical enchantment, or a superhuman sense they have developed through training. It will allow them to see just like a normal person, but only in range 1. So they can read, help decifer clues, etc.

Tremoresense means they can't "see" anything that is outside the tremorsense range, or anything that is not touching the ground(flying monsters). A unique benifit they have however, is they can "see" creatures on the ground, even if they are magically invisible. They can also "see" perfectly in that range, regardless of light conditions. They are of course, immune to the blind condition, but automatically fail sight dependent perception checks.

If a creature is moving using stealth, I would still use a perception check as normal to detect thier location, but give them a conditional +5 bonus when the creature is within tremoresense range. If a creature is outside tremoresense range, they must always make an active perception check to determine thier location.