Wheelchairs Are Making The Rounds Again (Just Not Into Dungeons)
Around two years ago there was a pronouning hobby tourist and troon named Sara, who at the time pretended to somehow be neither sex, but I guess that didn't provide her with enough attention (as if it ever could), sufficiently shield her from criticism, or both, so she now goes by Mark and pretends to be a man (shocking, I know).
To add to her myriad of absurd delusions she's also somehow both bisexual and asexual:
Her only vapidware trash-tier contribution to the hollowed-out skinsuit husk that was once Dungeons & Dragons was the laughably mediocre combat wheelchair, a 200gp magic item that not only essentially lets cripples maneuver about like a normal person, but comes with a number of inherent advantages to the point where even people of privileged motility would want one.
A standard-and-tired woke strategy: they start out attempting to downplay your legitimate concerns and criticisms in the hopes that you'll be stupid and/or lazy enough to shrug, agree, and refrain from challenging them. This is because they cannot withstand even the slightest amount of scrutiny: if they could, they would try and defend their moronic stances. They can't, which is why when you dare to defend yourself they resort to a series of watered-down insults like bigot, racist, sexist, etc.
But Bearded Halfwit goes the extra meter by tacking on a few false analogies. The first is the bullshit claim that gnomes will have just as bad a time. They wouldn't necessarily, because despite a reduced Speed gnomes can still maneuver about much more quickly and easily than a cripple. They're also height-divergant, so are better at hiding, making them ideal rogues/thieves or what-have-you.
However, gnomes are for some reason associated with illusion magic, and you don't need to be strong or height-typical in order to be a skilled wizard. In short, even gnomes are more useful than a cripple.
Now if you're just disingenuously focusing on brute strength, gnomes fall short...unless you're a lazy moron that plays 5th Edition. See, in older editions, back when Dungeons & Dragons was a proper roleplaying game, gnomes had penalties to Strength, grappling, being shoved around, etc. They also had to use smaller weapons. This meant that if you played a gnome fighter you'd have to be smarter and luckier, or just live with the fact that you were an objectively worse warrior than almost any other race you can name.
As for Hephaestus, there's no universal agreement as to whether in a purely mythological context he actually made anything resembling a magical wheelchair (or even the automata, which will be addressed later). But if he did? He's a god. A god of crafting. A god that, again, in a purely mythological context, also made numerous other, more noteworthy magical items.
The question is whether Bearded Halfwit understands that mortals would have an understandably harder time cranking out magic items, assuming this is even something the DM permits them to do. In older editions this was quite a laborious and sometimes inconsistent process. The idea that you would have teams of wizards dedicated to the mass fabrication of modernized, magical wheelchairs, which they'd be selling at a severe loss, just to ensure that there's a ready supply in case a cripple of all people decided to take up adventuring.
But then these hobby tourists play 5th Edition, so adventuring just might be as alien as common sense, challenge, and meaningful sacrifice.
But to answer Halfwits disingenuous question: I don't care. Not about 5th Edition, at any rate. But I know woke hobby tourists like him are only interested in attention. He's a conceited cretin that doesn't care about anything but himself. He didn't parrot that post from another tourist account because he honestly believes there is an issue that needs solving. He did it because nobody has talked about the combat wheelchair for years and he wanted some cheap, easy Likes.
The problem is that mentally ill weirdos won't stop here. Bereft of any real beliefs or purpose, they drift aimlessly and pathetically from one imagined issue to another. They'll throw trite tantrums, make a scene, threaten lives and livelihoods in the hopes that whatever change they are making merely for its own sake will become normalized, because if there's one thing they love more than Likes (besides themselves, of course), it's the brief dopamine rush that comes with knowing that a company bent over backwards to submit to their absurd and childish demands.
This is why I mock the hobby tourists. They don't play, and they certainly don't care. They are emotionally, intellectually, and morally bankrupt children who need to be confined to the asylum that Wizards of the Coast bizarrely permitted them to conquer. Actually, it's not too bizarre: they were eaten away from within by half-hearted-and-witted posers. This is another reason to gatekeep these insane fucks from the rest of the hobby: unable to create or feel joy, they are a cancerous menace that exists only to destroy.
Now, let's take a look at some of the responses:
I don't believe that his brother suffered daily discrimination, especially not from the hobby in general. Assuming this is true, I'm guessing it's because his brother was, like him, pathetic and insufferable. But his ego is too frail to admit that, to change and improve himself, so he just chalks it up to mean people just being mean for no reason.
I haven't played Eberron in many years, but I find it pretty amusing that these hobby tourists somehow think that it's a steampunk setting when everything is powered by magic. That, plus the fact that anyone could just come up behind him, stab him in the neck, and steal it. Not like he could do anything about it. Oh wait, it's Eberron, so that thing is like one inflict moderate damage infusion away from falling apart.
The lady doth project too much, methinks. Woke folk are the most miserable people on the planet. They are incapable of feeling joy, and hate everyone almost as much as they hate themselves. They would see everything burn just so they could wallow in the ashes.
They're also disingenuous, dumbasses, or both. No one at any point expressed even the slightest hint of anger about cripples. Bearded Halfwit is just lying because he knows other retards will give him Likes, which is all he really cares about: anything to get that fleeting dopamine fix.
What Axenhammer is referring to are automatons. While the automata are not universally present, when they are Hephaestus built more than two: there were tripods, moving tables, animals like dogs and lions, golden maids, etc. He didn't even build them just for himself.
Regardless, Hephaestus wasn't wheelchair-bound (wheelchairs didn't even exist in ancient Greece). He was described as having a crippled or deformed leg, and in myths where the automata are present--because, again, they weren't always--they merely helped him walk.
But assuming Hephaestus had a magical wheelchair: so what? He's a god. A god of crafting who, depending on the author, could create golden machines that could act and think. He created sandals for Hermes that let him fly (despite hilariously tiny wings), Helios' chariot (though sometimes Helios himself is credited for its construction), and numerous other magic items for mortals and gods alike.
This makes sense. Unreasonably cheap, mass-produced magical wheelchairs for a minority of a minority, cranked out by mortal hands out of the goodness of their hearts, regardless of the setting's overall level of magic, do not.
While I'm sure there are some people that for some reason, in a game where they can pretend to be whatever they want, they still want to be crippled, this does not mean that the game has to jump through a bunch of bizarre hoops to cater to them.
If you want to careen through the wilderness and dungeon in a wheelchair? Good luck, and I'd be impressed if your character managed to survive without the GM pulling punches and pandering to you (or utilizing an unreasonably cheap magic item that makes you inherently superior to people of privileged mobility).
Seriously: if anyone manages to play a cripple and make it more than a few levels, would love to hear it...so long as you earned those levels.
But frankly I don't think this is the case. I think it's almost entirely egomaniacs and cripple fetishists (with some considerable overlap between both groups). Or cripples that want to feel special and succeed without even having to try.
I have no idea what the fuck Stacey is even trying to say, but my guess is that she is upset that people don't want mass-produced, unreasonably cheap, magical wheelchairs rolling and floating around their setting. Because even if the setting was as high magic as, say, Eberron, the idea that anyone would have bothered to create them is absurd.
First, the demand would be virtually nonexistent. Legs don't work? You can get a deathless fleshcraft for your legs. Costs 6,000 gp, but your legs will never tired by walking. And this is just what I could find skimming Magic of Eberron: who knows what else there is in other books (whether 3rd, 4th, or 5th Edition). You could also get a lesser restoration or similar spell cast. Would be cheaper and do the trick as well. Or go all out with heal: spendier, but cures everything.
And even if a DM said that deathless fleshgrafts don't exist, because you're not running Eberron and the deathless aren't a thing in his setting? Just guilt him like the cripple fetishists do. Tell him it's fantasy, which somehow means that anything and everything should be available.
Second, at 200 gp the price is waaay too low. Boots of elvenkind grant Advantage on Stealth checks. They're uncommon, which means a price of 100-500 gp. If we meet in the middle we get 300 gp, but that's for an item that merely grants Advantage on Stealth checks. The combat wheelchair makes a character objectively superior to people of privileged mobility, allowing him to move indefinitely via magic stones (so no tiring out due to overland travel or even routine adventuring).
It can also float, though only and down stairs for some reason. The author's bullshit explanation is that it detects "the hazard", which only pertains to stairs and not actual hazards. Still, no chance of falling or triggering traps on them. It can also float up and down ladders, meaning that you can move and have both hands free, and there is no check or anything necessary.
Of course, that might not even matter because the chair is indestructible unless using optional rules, and even then it can only be "damaged" if a weapon attack specifically targets the wheelchair and it inflicts a critical hit: everything else does nothing, and if it doesn't suffer three critical hits in the same encounter then whatever damage the critical hits were supposed to represent magically vanish.
So, pool of acid? Just roll right on over. It's not a weapon attack so the chair is immune.
It also counts as a mount, so all your mounted stuff is always active, grants Advantage on saves to avoid being knocked prone, moves twice as fast going downhill, and grants three unique types of attacks (though these aren't particularly impressive).
But wait, there's more!
For a pittance you can tack on upgrades, such as getting Advantage on two saves against damaging spells twice per day, Advantage on Dex saves and Acrobatics checks (how?), cast Freedom of Movement 1/day (for only 500 gp), Dimension Door 1/day (also 500 gp), and more. It mentions using a downtime action to add the ability to control it via telepathy, but I don't know how much this costs, if anything.
And somehow, not allowing this overpowered vapidware trash into your game means you lack "common decency", which like racist, sexist, bigot, and nazi is merely woke-speak for "you don't agree with me". I say let these cripple fetishists boo, as we've seen what makes them cheer.
More disingenuous dumbshittery. No one is arguing against mundane wheelchairs because you're too stupid to know when a self-propelled model was finally invented (1655, though I'm guessing it was nowhere near as functional or durable as a modern-day version). They also aren't arguing as to whether a god of crafting could invent a magical wheelchair (don't know why he would bother doing so, but see no reason why he couldn't).
What they are really arguing against are cripple fetishists like you attempting to guilt trip everyone into permitting cheap, modern versions with magical features built in, so just you can pretend to be special for having a freely given magic item that removes any of the challenge and inconvenience of being crippled in the first place.
If you are allowing your players to just magically teleport horses and such around dungeons without even attempting to address the logistics that's on you. It's not our fault that you and your players are lazy, self-absorbed retards who don't want to have to think (or, rather, are incapable of thinking).
It's hilarious how badly these guys project. All these mentally ill, miserable morons do is scour the internet for things to hate and destroy. Worse, their egos are so frail, their emotions so infantile that they can only oscillate between obsession and hatred. They're incapable of understanding that there's a considerable range between the two, and it's possible to simply not like something without hating it.
Ah a pronouner. That explains so much.
I'm so very sure this guy is writing a book. I'm also not surprised that the wheelchair isn't even a speed bump to her: magic solves everything...except for her legs, of course. Because I'm sure people confined to a wheelchair would refuse magical treatment that would immediately fix them.
Of course he's also a pronouner.
Projection aside, no one is saying the player can't play how he wants. The objection is providing him with a magic item that not only invalidates his disability but makes him objectively superior to people of privileged mobility.
He not only can't see how a simple stick is nowhere near the same as a magical wheelchair, but equates GM's not wanting arcane anachronisms in their campaigns as lacking sympathy. No one is forcing cripples to play crippled characters. They can make a normal adventurer that can actually adventure. Insisting on playing a liability because you're so up your own paralyzed ass that you think it's an entire personality makes you an entitled, imbecilic loser.
Seriously, why stop at a magical wheelchair? Why not just let paralyzed characters get magical legs, for free of course (because fuck capitalism or whatever), which replaces their originals and grants a series of benefits and bonuses. After all, there are magical limbs in myths, prosthetics have been around since ancient Egypt (nevermind that it was just a toe), and we have cybernetic versions today.
This meme sums up the vapid virtue-signaler line of what could very generously be described as thinking perfectly:
No one is trying to take away your mass-produced, modernized, magical wheelchairs snowflakes. Normal gamers don't suffer from the compulsion to wear disability as a mere fashion accessory and pretend to succeed in an imaginary elfgame by having a contrivance that circumvents any and all obstacles.
Challenge makes success meaningful (which is why real artists also don't bother with AI image generators).
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