Background Recklessness

Believing that a character's background should consider the decisions the character has made in the past, a number is generated by rolling a d20 and subtracting the character's intelligence.  The result, from +17 to -17, is compared on the "Choices" table of the background generator.

On the whole, the more intelligent the character, the smarter he or she has been and the better the result.  However, I consider it possible that anyone, regardless of intelligence, has experienced a moment of recklessness, which has a 1 in 20 chance of occurring according to the table.  The result gained is a "zero" after rolling and subtracting intelligence.  Here's a copy of the table on the wiki.

As can be seen, most of the results are only slightly debilitating ... with a very low chance that the character will be seriously impeded physically.  For those who may be interested, here are some rules regarding the running of blind characters in my game world.

Is this fair?  No.  There's a chance that a perfectly good character may come around to this table and achieve a 1 in 2000 chance, ending up blind.  There's a 1 in 500 chance that some really serious crippling condition will be gotten.  And if so, that player has a detriment to overcome, until such time as they can increase their status and capital to where they can have some cleric cast a spell and fix their problem.

Of course, if the character joining an ongoing campaign begins with a high-level party, this problem can be solved with a finger-snap.  I find this somewhat disappointing, but I'm satisfied with the game world and I'm not going to change long-established rules for this one background idea.  Perhaps a player will decide to allow their character to give it a try, for the challenge it offers.  I doubt it, but we'll see.

As far as it being fair, yes, this is certainly a kick in the breadbasket.  But to remind the reader: D&D is not a competitive game.  It is a group of characters with varying talents and abilities overcoming a problem together.  Which is to say that the blindness of one character also becomes a concern for every player, if the campaign is run respectfully for every participant.  Jokes will be made, of course; but I would also expect empathy and support from fellow players, as the one without a hand or a leg — together with others — sorted out the best strategies for casting magic, combat, defense and so on.

The conversation about character faults has been going on a long time, so I'm not covering any new ground here ... but as I recently completed the layout for the table, it felt right to give it a look.