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Had this conversation with someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC
(files.catbox.moe)
Another player who was at the table during the incident sent me this meme after the problem player in question (they had a history) left the group chat.
Felt like sharing it here because I'm sure more people should keep this kind of thing in mind.
Another possibility is that maybe magic can only heal injuries and illnesses, but can't do anything with congenital disabilities, because the magic restores the person to their natural state, and being blind/etc is what's natural for that character. So even if magic could heal those who are disabled due to circumstances, there would still be plenty of disabled people who were born with their disabilities.
But... There's a spell called remove blindness in several dnd editions. It's not even high level.
I'd say that if there's a spell that literally states a fix, it's fixable. There might be some that do not though.
Maybe the spell only removes acquired forms of blindness, say through the magic spell Blindness, curses, etc, and has no ability to generate new, functioning tissue for someone that never had any.
Pathfinder 1e / dnd 3.5 : https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/removeBlindnessDeafness.htm
5e spell: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/lesser-restoration
5e's spell might be interpreted as in, it removes the "blinded" condition, which might be different than being "blind". However I would guess that when they developed the spell they did not think about it, they just bundled a bunch of spells in 1.
Yeah, I would agree that they probably didn't even think about it. I'd probably interpret the spell as removing the "blinded" condition, whether it's caused by magic or just someone throwing sand in the character's eyes or other "normal" causes of the blinded condition.
The Pathfinder version also specifies "The spell does not restore ears or eyes that have been lost, but it repairs them if they are damaged." Someone with congenital blindness or deafness may not have "damage" that can be repaired, and with the ears/eyes being naturally non-functional, the spell giving them a new ability (sight/hearing) that they previously didn't possess could be interpreted as being beyond the spell's scope.