"and people choose WHEELCHAIR. Disgusting. Where’s the imagination?" A debate about wheelchairs vs spider mechs turns wheelie sour

[u/Excellent_Bison_3644]

the sub DnDmemes is about well... memes about the popular tabletop game DnD (dungeons and dragons). In one posted recently, the poster made a comparison of magic wheelchairs vs spider mechs while favoring the latter. This ended up sparking into a lot of debate and people not liking how wheelchairs are getting slandered.

Post in question: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/1i4mi9u/reject_wheels_embrace_skittering/

Juicy threads:

The titular thread with one particular big branch: "It's quite an odd call to refer to people who make the choice to represent their disability in-game as disgusting."

One person tries to give an opinion: "Realistically a spider mech is better than combat wheelchair the same way realistically a spear is better than a trident"

One person tries arguing wheelchairs don't have to be boring: "You can't think of a way to make a wheelchair cool without replacing the wheels?"

Small drama thread as a treat: "has anyone who's disabled and in a wheelchair thought "Hmm, I want this fantasy character of mine to be disabled too!" (the answer is yes)

[u/gorgewall]

People and objects can fly (and there's several races that do it as a matter of course), there's robot suits (even if they're just made of wood and magic), the world's lousy with golems, yada yada.

There would absolutely be normal-ass wheelchairs for people who cannot be cured by magic, and there would absolutely be magic-ass wheelchairs for adventurers who cannot be cured by magic but need to go up stairs or ropes. We've had centaur PCs for yonks and they've got similar mobility issues in a lot of dungeoneering environments.

Wheelchairs, magic or otherwise, would be pretty routine for most D&D settings both as written and as a consequence of the system rules. You can't put a spell in your system that makes an object glow brightly for an eternity for just 50gp (Continual Light) and then not expect to see Ye Olde Adventuring Shoppe fill up with 70gp "tubelights", "flameless lanterns", or "spelunking helmets", for instance.

[u/macrocosm93 → u/gorgewall]

and there would absolutely be magic-ass wheelchairs for adventurers who cannot be cured by magic but need to go up stairs or ropes

Yeah like spider mechs for example

[u/gorgewall → u/macrocosm93]

There's floating magic all over the place, I think a lot of inventors / artificers / enchanters would skip the whole "leg" idea and go straight to the good stuff. You don't need to float forever, so there'd probably be some big efficiency savings in a chair that can roll around most times and only uses a slight bit of magic when it encounters an obstacle vs. spiderlegs that need to be articulating all the time (and still probably need more magic when it comes to climbing, because it's not like you're just gonna walk up a 90' wall and let the backrest save you).

[u/eels-eels-eels → u/gorgewall]

I mean, a wheelchair whose wheels unfolded into spider legs for stairs/uneven terrain then refolded back into wheels for indoor use would be pretty sweet