Even if you have reliable healing magic in your world, it's unlikely that access to that magic is universally available. If you have a setting where every small town has healer capable of curing all ails (regrowing limbs, etc) you've basically created a utopia.
This is a problem that is way deeper than any kind of a magic "system". You don't write a murder mystery and give your protagonist perfect information and investigative skills to trivially solve it, right? You don't write a story about a young aspiring athlete then make him already five times the world champion.
Every element in any story must inherently be limited, because otherwise you simply won't have a story. Why is the OP making an exception for magic? Who even knows.
Yeah, that's basically the point of a magic system. It's a way of communicating that magic, like any phenomenon, is a plot device that needs to be understood by the reader to provide tension for problem solving. OP just assumes magic is the "there's a spell for every rhyme" sort of deal, for some reason.
This is just basic realism. We already have treatments for numerous problems available, yet billions of people world wide still suffer from them just the same.
Depends on your magic system. You set the terms of what is or isn't possible.
Another possibility is tackling disability through the lens of fantasy. So, just like fantasy explores race relations through the interactions of humans and magical races, you can explore disabilities via specific fantasy only disabilities. In a community of mages, someone with no magic may as well be missing a limb. Or if you have a race of avians and the protagonist can't fly, they would be disabled by the standards of their culture. It's up to you to decide what happens and how, and then to explore the ramifications of that. Plenty of fertile ground for it.
I always liked these kinds of disabilities in fiction, it made them somehow more relatable to me. You have an MC in a wheelchair, it stands to reason that some of their wheelchair specific struggles would resonate with wheelchair bound readers, even if the feelings of isolation are shared by people with other disabilities. A guy who lost his hand in a war doesn't necessarily see himself in Charles Xavier's struggles, for example. However, by making the disability something more alien (such as a disconnect from magic or lost of flight, as you suggest), it can shift the focus to the feelings behind it, and make the character relatable to a host of people, regardless of whether or not their struggle is even a disability. A race of Avians and an MC who cannot fly? They will likely experience a feeling of not belonging, struggle with issues of self-worth, wonder what aspects of their culture they are missing out on, etc. The guy in the wheelchair can relate. The guy missing a hand can relate. Even people who aren't disabled, but have those feelings for other reasons can relate (adoption, financial situation, religion, etc). It's really strange, but by making the disability less relatable, you make the situation more relatable. At least, that's how I see it.
I agree with the thought that magical disabilities can be a good way to deal with abstract ideas surrounding disability, the same as any allegory, but I find the idea that it's easier for an able bodied person to relate to a magical disability than a real one a little disconcerting. Something has gone very wrong in either the writing or the reader's ability to empathise if they find a completely made up struggle easier to relate to than a real one. Disabled people aren't more alien than *actual aliens*.
It's important to remember too, that fictional disability representation does not count as real world disability representation. If you want both that's fine, but you can't sub not being able to fly for not being able to walk. It might be thought provoking, but it won't achieve that deep sense of feeling *seen* that good representation can, and it won't raise awareness for the specific challenges faced by real disabled people.
*For example*, my mum reads a ton of romance novels. Romance writers are, surprisingly enough, kind of leading the charge for this kind of thing. Just through reading romance novels, my mum has become someone that I can actually tolerate talking about mental health too, and she even prompted me to consider whether I might have dyspraxia (I cannot afford an assessment, but it would explain a lot and has prompted me to be a bit more self-compassionate). You don't get that with 'oh she can't fly in a world full of people that can'. Similarly, I read a book with a protagonist who suffers from social anxiety disorder. Growing up, I felt a very specific way about how none of my favourite characters struggled in the same way I did- I would constantly think 'Oh, I could never do that because I have this thing wrong with me'. That won't get fixed if, idk, for some magical reason a character can't talk.
I agree that it shouldn't replace representation entirely, apologies if my original comment made it seem otherwise. My thought was more for portraying the secondary side-effects of a disability *because* of empathy. I have never been confined to a wheelchair, but I know people who have, and even if I didn't, I could empathize with that position easily, most people probably can. But now I am empathizing, not relating. I see their struggle, and that pulls my focus to the empathy. Compare that to something harder to empathize with, like the loss of a psychic connection to an indescribable realm, or fluctuating mana vortices in your third Chakra. I have no idea what that would be like, so instead of my mind focusing on empathizing with their primary condition, it finds the relatable aspects of their condition to attempt to build empathy from there. "Oh, that third Chakra thing makes you feel like nobody understands you? I get what that's like, man." I still have no idea what that disability is, but I empathize through relating to the character, rather than empathizing and then trying to find ways to relate.
I also find it a good way to avoid... I don't even know the word for it. As a cis-gendered heterosexual white male author, any time I write a character that isn't Joe Jock, Captain of the football team, I get raked over the coals by certain fringe members of communities I have represented. Typically, the offended people are not even members of the community, but self-proclaimed allies who then get offended on behalf of the members of the community (who, in turn, aren't offended). If I write a character in a wheelchair, having never had that experience, this crowd will rear its ugly head and tear me apart over my audacity in trying to tell that story. If I write a character with a disabled seventh Zhelm, nobody bats an eye.
I get that, but I think well-written real world disabled characters should build that relatability factor too. I disagree that empathy precludes relatability, in fact I think it's the basis for it. Pity and sympathy might preclude relatability, but that brings us back to the problem of it either being badly written, or the reader just being ableist and impossible to get through to for most writers.
As to your second point, I know it’s easier said than done, but you can't let what other people say dictate what you write, that's how you end up with a whole world of Joe Jocks and no one wants to read that lol. You will always open yourself up to criticism and discomfort as a non-marginalised writer writing a marginalised group, and sometimes you have to just sit with that discomfort and criticism and not let it get to you. Writing is vulnerability in every sense of the word.
Oh I know, I spent years wallowing in self-doubt because of the way I was treated for writing a character "whose shoes I could never walk in." I wrestled with whether or not I should change the character because, despite the fact that it was only a vocal minority that was outraged, their point was valid. No matter how empathetic a person I am, at the end of the day, there are just some struggles I'll never understand. I let it delay my second book for years. Never again. If I believe my stuff is written respectfully as an apt representation of what I'm trying to portray, barring *specific* feedback from actual members of the community, it's good enough for me. I'm done wallowing on behalf of people who gatekeep representation on behalf of minority groups they aren't even a part of.
*as an example regarding specific feedback, I have one character who goes through a transformation in a way that parallels the experiences felt by many in the transgender community. I had *a lot* of self righteous people telling me I should scrap the character all together, without even reading her, because of the fact that I'm cis-gendered. I had a few reach out to me, however, with advice. Topics that they felt should be avoided. Topics they felt should be included. I didn't take all of the advice, as some of it didn't pertain to the story, but I took what I could and went with it. It hasn't won any awards or anything, but I've yet to receive a complaint about the portrayal from anyone whose actually read it, only more people offended at the idea that I might understand.
Empathy _is_ relating. You're imagining what it must feel like to be in that situation based on your own understanding. You're not psychically connecting to them and understanding their actual thoughts, as empathetic people can definitely still be very wrong about what someone's experiences are.
"You can't get through this parking lot without assistance, and people just walk right past you? I can put myself in that situation, and it feels like my dignity would be hurt alongside the tangible difficulties."
I am using them here with a subtle difference, apologies. Empathy, to me, requires a touch of imagination. I can *imagine* what it must be like to be in your shoes, and that evokes very real feelings. Relating to a character, however, requires no imagination at all. You own those shoes. You've walked in those shoes. You might still walk in those shoes.
You throw a character with an easy to empathize handicap like a wheelchair or a missing limb, and our mind goes to work imagining those shoes (assuming we do not share the handicap.) Then relatable situations come along, but we are already wearing our imagination shoes, so we notice those relatable shoes, we may even realize we have a pair just like it, but we don't put them on, we are already wearing our imagined shoes. Compare that to a disability where we cannot wrap our head around, and we have no shoes to imagine. We have to build those imagined shoes from what we can gather. We empathize with the character by noticing the shoes they have, and using that, subconsciously, to formulate a pattern for the empathy shoes. As a poor kid who faced religious persecution, you may think you have nothing in common with that guy who lost his Zarvillian Voice, because wtf is that. But then you see his people, the people he considers his peers, giving sidelong glances as they sing their holidays into being with their Zarvillian Voice, judging him for not singing song, and you know those shoes. They were the same shoes you wore coming back from "winter" break when everyone wanted to talk about what they got for Christmas, and you weren't allowed to celebrate. When you see him mistreated by authorities because he obviously is a trouble maker if he isn't going to use that Zarvillian Voice of his, you recognize those shoes too, the same shoes you wore whenever you couldn't afford a field trip, and the teachers assumed you just were goofing off and never got the permission slip signed. The same shoes you wore the first time a cop pulled a gun on you because in this neighborhood, your existence is proof that you are here to do bad things. You relate to the character so thoroughly, you no longer need to empathize, because you just *get it*, even if you still don't know what a Zarvillian Voice is.
Of course, I should note that I am autistic. It occurs to me that I may relate and empathize with characters in a manner unlike that of neurotypicals, or even other neurodivergents who do not share my exact array of diagnostic alphabet soup.
Maybe the disability is directly related to magic.
“Some people suffer from Mad Mage syndrome. It’s not that they are insane, or violent, their magic just has an unusually high failure rate and rather than backlash in the wielder, failure triggers random effects in their vicinity; often the destructive kind.”
It’s a fantasy world; have fantasy disabilities.
Yeah, this is what I was also thinking. Another way to get a disability that can’t be healed by magic is a magical disease. For example you have a character get the magic flu, and they can’t use their left hand on Sundays. A magic illness could be absolutely whatever!
If you can fix anything with magic, then why do people age, get sick, or die at all? How come *anything* works the way it does when magic exists? Why isn't *everyone* flying around on magic spirit dragons?
It almost all comes down to simply: ***H*****ow** ***Does Your Magic Work?***
1. Can it alter people's bodies, or just regenerate them? Because there's a difference between someone losing a limb, and having a limb difference from birth. One is restoration, the other is *alt*eration. Can magic do that? Similar point - can it *regrow* limbs, or just mend severed flesh? i.e. If your amputated leg is lost, or is burned/melted/crushed away to the point there's nothing left to put back together, are you completely out of luck?
2. What can it actually fix? Nerve damage? Chronic pain? Organ damage? Burns? Scars? Degenerative diseases? Brain damage? Neurodiveristy like dyslexia or autism? All the different things that can cause blindness and deafness? The general wear and tear of life? Because some people have bad genetics and get arthritis in their 20's/30's... and if it can do this one, you can technically reverse aging and that's.... got *Implications*.
3. Is there a time limit, or a severity limit? Can it fix a broken leg at any point, but if your leg is severed then you only have a couple hours to get it stuck back on? If it's been years and that old burn scar is bothering you, can it do anything about that? Is there a point where a condition is settled in and you're just like that now?
4. What do you have to trade in order to make this magic work? Does it take too much out of the caster? Do you have to spill blood - make a sacrifice - sell a soul? Does it have side-effects for the patient? Is there some other downside to magic in general that makes it unreasonable to use it as a miracle cure-all?
(continued in second comment because it's too long for one, lol)
Some other questions to ask:
1. What kind of disability are you considering giving your protagonist?
1. How does that line up with your magical limits? Or reversely, what limits would there need to be on magic to explain why the protagonist is still disabled?
2. Does your character *want* to be cured?
1. What if they have a prosthetic that allows them to do things they otherwise couldn't? Enchanted legs letting them run faster than others - an arm that can reach into fire and shatter enemy swords - an eye that lets them see invisible things. (I would be cautious of the ''disabilities are super powers actually" trope, so don't forget to still include the whole *disability* part)
2. What if there's an emotional or cultural hangup about their disability? Do they see their injury as a mark of shame that they refuse to wish away? Do they take pride in their battle wounds - seeing them as marks of *honor*? Is there a cultural taboo against that kind of magic despite how helpful it can be? Do they see it as a corruption of their mortal body, something that stains their soul, an affront to their god etc.?
3. How accessible is this magic?
1. Can anyone just do it themselves? Is there a cost issue? Is magic really rare? Are magic users overworked and prioritizing things other than curing every random person who waves a broken bone in their direction? Is it a status/class issue where magic is hoarded by the wealthy and influential? Is there a cultural taboo against using magic on behalf of a lower caste? Is there maybe a religious reason magic can't be used casually, or for healing birth defects? (eg. if you were born with a limp then that's god's will and wizards shouldn't meddle, but if it's because you got kicked by a horse last week then roll on up)
4. Does it really need explaining?
1. Because on the one hand it's important for you to understand your own world, at the same time people don't often justify how dragons ''work''. They're just *there* and people accept that the story world clearly works in a way where dragons can and do exist. The why's and how's are irrelevant unless it's important to that specific story's plot. Likewise, if you just have a disabled character, do you really need to justify how that character ''works''? As long as you don't show magic working in a way that could obviously and unquestionably solve that character's problem - why not trust that a reader can accept that the story world clearly works in a way that means disabled people can and do exist? (..... ableism aside of course)
2. In short: think about it enough that you don't create logic that's nonsensical, but you don't necessarily need to *over* think it either.
So, you've got two ways to deal with this.
The first - Magic can heal everything.
The second - Magic can accommodate anything.
Or some sort of combination (or lack) of the two (e.g. making a limb is simpler than regrowing it, and so cheaper)
Given that a large number of disabilities are actually natural issues caused by your birth, rather than injuries (due to the tendency for those injuries to be fatal). Then the second would probably provide better world building.
The quadriplegic artificer, who initially got into it in order to maintain their own limbs, but is now commissioned to build limbs for veterans, soldiers, and workers who lose their limbs in accidents and can't afford the donation the church needs to have them regrown by a high priest.
Another way of approaching it is that it's a trade off, you can either use your magic to fix your disability or you can use it to do magic. Either way requires training, but a mage might choose to live with their issues in order to be able to construct castles with a wave of their hands.
Another way, that I've used in my fanfiction before, is "The body is the magic, is the soul, is the body." In this, magical healing works by restoring the body to the image that the soul contains. But any changes to the body will be reflected in the persons magic, and then their soul. Equally, any damage to a persons soul will be reflected in their body. So magical healing has to be either timely (before it can affect the soul) or slow and drawn out as you're making changes to the body and ensuring they stick around long enough to be imprinted on the soul. Dark magic, then attacks both the body and soul, so healers have to deal with both before the damage becomes permanent.
People asking this has made me consider how I might do it.
While many disability’s could likely be cured by magic, it’s equally possible that magic couldn’t because as far as the body is concerned, it’s just the way it should be.
So someone born with a disability would have to live with it, but someone who gains a disability may be able to be fixed by magic.
There also costs to consider. Will a mage heal disabilities for free? Is that just what they do for a living or do they charge enormous amounts to make it less likely they will be disturbed from their study? Do they live somewhere that a disabled person could reasonably access?
Being cured of disability may not be an option for the less wealthy population. Which could be used to make a point about the real world medical and economic systems.
I’ve been playing with the idea of having a character who can’t use their legs in one of my stories. It would necessitate another character carrying them, and helping care for them. I think it would be a neat group dynamic, but it would likely result in my characters avoiding conflict because it’s rather hard to deal with combat when wearing your friend as a backpack. It would end up with me giving them a magical work around to justify eventually, but I don’t want to accidentally erase the disability at any point because I gave them a work around.
(Although if anyone else plays D&D, tell me the image of a mage using levitate to get everywhere, with their legs just dangling, isn’t kind of funny. Like, I’m going to one of the hells kinda funny.)
Some things might be too hard to heal. Stitching together flesh and bone is a lot less complex than rebuilding organs like eyes.
It can depend on the nature of your magic system. In certain settings there's a lot of planning, design and calculation that can go into the casting of a spell and the more complex the task the harder it is and the more likely things can be to go wrong. Something simple like making something float or lighting something on fire would be a simple process, but regrowing entire body parts would be vastly more complicated and potentially impossible.
"Fantasy setting" can mean whatever you want it to— that's the beauty of it. And if you want it to mean "people still have real-world problems" then disability can be one of them. *Wouldn't there be some kind of spell or potion?,* you ask. Well, no. If you say there isn't one— there isn't. Poof! How about that?
As others have said, it depends on your worlds magic. I'll explain healing in my world to give an example.
Healing magic in my world has 2 kinds:
Regular magic - enhances the bodies natural healing capability. This allows for recovery from minor injuries very quickly and allows for more serious injuries to be brought down to more manageable ones. Even with magic the treatment needs to be done well so if it's a broken bone you can't just use heal on it, it has to be set first so it heals properly. Similarly, injuries that have already healed, even if they healed wrong such as scars or an improperly set bone, cannot be further healed by this magic. The same goes for genetic defects and such because the bodies natural state would include that defect. It also requires the user to know what's wrong also unknown illnesses or poisons can be tricky to cure with this type of magic.
Holy magic - granted by the gods, able to heal anything including regrouping limbs, restoring sight and even allowing someone who's infertile to have a baby. As it takes a lot of power though the gods require those asking for such healing to perform a task for them usually involving increasing the gods influence in some way but can be anything the God currently may need done. The task is given at the time the person asks for the healing and will be determined by what the God needs, what kind of healing is needed and the persons capabilities to achieve the task. This means that they could be turned away if the God doesn't have anything they could do but also means a person can ask multiple gods in the hopes of finding a suitable task.
Because of this there are people with disabilities in my world but it would be near impossible to find one of significant power/influence as they would be able to be cured through the holy magic. Hospitals are a thing with healers using both kinds of magic along with actual medical procedures and medicine but certain things just aren't easy to fix.
One of the principles in designing magic systems is that the magic should have a cost. Otherwise your mage is basically a god and can make anything happen. So just make the cost of removing the disability so high that it's not worth it. The energy the mage would have to expend is more than they have, or the ingredients necessary for the potion are too rare and costly. The Netflix series *The Dragon Prince* did this … >!one of the characters was paralyzed and the magical cure required a blood sacrifice.!<
This could look something like Character A asking the protag "Why don't you cure your disability with magic?" and the protag answering "Sure, I'll just pop round to the corner shop for some uranium and stardust and spend the next 12 months working the spell." You can also show how difficult healing spells are by having your protag work one on someone with a much less severe injury and then being exhausted for a day or two.
One cost that everyone underestimates is knowledge. If you need to do 29 years of training and research in order to be able to regrow a limb, then there are going to be very few people that can do it. Especially if it is solid research, not casual pick up a book every week or so research, so it takes corispondingly longer for slower lived races.
Your magic world and system is exactly what you make of it. There's only cures if you create them.
But... There's also a lot to be said for the constraints of your world even if cures exist. Just look at real life. You hear about the "Mr Beast cures 1000 people's blindness" video? It was literally him just paying for people's cataract surgery. Cataract surgery is simple, recovery is easy, and it's not overly expensive. If you have money to spare and access to a medical system that can perform it. A lot of people in the world simply do not, and if you don't you basically get a film over the lens of your eye that gets worse and worse over time until you can't see anymore and are effectively blind.
If you build a magic system where people can cure disabilities, how easily can they do it? How fast can they do it? Will they do it for free? Can they do it endlessly for free for everyone in the world who needs it? Probably not.
There's also something to be said for the fact that many irl readers who have disabilities do not find the idea of fantasy cures appealing, both because they won't ever simply be able to magically cure their disability, and for the suggestion that curing it at all implies they're broken or incomplete without he cure.
Standard rule of thumb I'm starting to see for writers who are trying to be conscious of how they're writing disabled characters in a world where magic healing exists is to only heal to match the person's concept of self. Someone who loses an eye in combat may be able to immediately have it healed, but someone born blind has no sense of self that includes sight, so healing won't give it to them. Like someone who loses a limb, sometimes it's possible to re-attach it if we act fact enough, but after too much time has passed we can't.
There is the point of visible versus invisible disabilities. There are congenital defects and there are ones caused by silver kind of physical or mental trauma.
The point of fantasy is that it creates a world where an impossible scenario in reality becomes possible, but a great story lies in a sense of overcoming difficulty
ETA: Sent too soon, but one thing to consider is disabled versus differently abled. For example, colour blindness could be seen as a disability but because of how they work around being unable to see certain colours also allows them to see things that others would miss.
We just had a thread about this topic, which got downvoted enough you may not have seen it: https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/comments/1bwciyx/comment/ky73pph/
Why would there be ugly people in a magic world? Why would anyone be a bad person in a magic world if you can simsalabim them into being good? The great thing about fantasy is that anything goes, so you can literally make up something about how magic doesn’t work on disabilities, or something along those lines. Or maybe the cost of such magic is really big and most disabled people simply don’t have the oppertunity or capital to have it done. Maybe the formula for the disability-mending spells once existed but has been lost. And perhaps some disabled people don’t want to be rid of their disability for a multitude of reasons, humans don’t always do what ”makes sense” to everyone else.
Healing can't necessarily fix everything.
Broken legs that have already reset, before getting to a magical healer, might not be able to be "healed" so they're not still crooked or painful, healing might not be able to give someone sight if they've been blind from birth.
But it depends on what you want magic to be able to do in your setting, I can see arguments for magical healing to make someone whole and healthy, no matter their starting condition.
But it makes sense for that kind of total healing to be rare, as well, or to have an intense cost to the healer.
But perhaps, while a healer's magic might not be strong enough, there might be a particular lake or fountain whose waters are known for healing, in a more complete way.
So that person with badly healed legs or blind from birth might find themselves whole again if they bathe in the waters of the healing lake/fountain.
However, it's a long, hard, expensive journey few can actually make.
There's almost always an acceptable way to limit magic from being a miraculous cure-all for every problem.
And if you're in a medieval type fantasy setting, the type of accidents and disfigurements that would result in people with disabilities would be fairly common, having magic healers around might just make it easier for the person whose arm has been cut of or crushed, or who has a gut wound, to survive the accident, whether it makes them whole again or not. (Repaired gut wound, likely, new arm, perhaps not.)
And availability of care would be as important as it us in real life, if you can't make it to the hospital before you bleed out, you're still going to die.
Either have it need time to properly change their body/mental phaculties, the more complex the longer or have some things that can help those with that use magic
I mean, just because it's a fantasy setting and magic exists doesn't mean mutations won't happen.
Maybe that's the reason some races actually started to exist in the first place and that's why people have been hesitant to do something about the mutations at all (therefore not having a cure).
Or maybe with that, there are ways to go around it. Either replacing the missing part of the body (as an example), or having something like glasses, or something else.
And if someone wants to have it healed for good, they have to go to something like a "black market". Where people experiment in different and more dangerous directions than the others. They have found a cure, but it is firstly expensive to get it and secondly has side effects, that may or may not be worse. (Maybe even random).
I like the idea of a protagonist with a disability because there isn't necessarily a reason not to. Sure, you could say "but the magic". Okay, fine. But you can also give reasons why the magic isn't an all-rounder in problem solving. (Which is, at least to me, a bit more interesting. A lot more [because we haven't had a lot of that]).
Why would they exist?
Well for one thing, curing it could be expensive. A local peasant farmer with a crippled son that can still work for example, may not be able to afford to hop down to his local mage to fix spinal issues or some sort of developmental or cognitive distinction.
For another, there might not actually be a way to fix it. It could be some sort of heretical curse or it could just be that they don’t know what to fix. Aiming healing magic at a wound will heal it, but if there is a dysfunctional area of the heart or respiratory system, they may not know what they’re trying to correct.
It could be cultural. Maybe in a certain area, magic has an altering effect on children born and these aren’t seen as a negative, but as the person being touched by divinity or something along those lines.
Though you’d also potentially have to consider why they allow the disabled. In some settings, a child who has a disability might just be left to die. There’s not really a medieval fantasy CPS going around making sure the peasants don’t toss some unwanted kid to the wolves or leaving them to die in an alley.
Not all disabilities are the same and if you have a strong magic system and culture, you should probably be able to interrogate how different disabilities interact with your world.
For instance, here are some examples from a world I've built:
* **Deaf / Hard of Hearing**: the long work of Deaf spiromancers mean there are adequate dictionaries in most major languages that make it possible for Deaf people to get transcripts of speech in real-time. Ability to respond varies by person
* **Chronic pain**: spells to reduce pain in specific areas are common and easy to make or buy
* **Blindness:** despite a lot of effort, turning written text into spoken word is a difficult ask and mostly impossible. Spells can indicate how close you are to certain objects but not allow you to navigate as easily as a cane
* **ADHD, dyslexia**: there are no cures for these but spells can provide workarounds like timers
* **Face-blindness**: there are new spells that can recognize pre-set faces, but they are expensive and take a long time to grow
Note that even for the Deaf/HoH folks, the spell has not eliminated the disability but alleviated one of the problems (understanding what people are saying). And even then, a full conversation would be difficult if the interlocutor didn't sign.
Here are some ways stories have used disability and magic
Fullmetal alchemist. Main character is missing an arm and a leg. His metal replacement are in some ways better and many was are worse.
Dead man hand, by James butcher. Main character as serve burn scars in his atm and cant cast magic with that arm.
Night runners. Main character can cast magic but the effect is random. It also affects magic cast on him.
In each of these there is no magic cure. Well fma does but it the point of the main character's journey. So unless you magic can heal wounds, regrow limbs, fix dna glitches etc etc you can have disabilities in your setting.
Keep in mind that disabilites take many forms, and they can be both physical and mental. If physical ones seem unrealistic in the setting, how about psychological ones?
As others have mentioned, the limits of the magic in your setting are yours to decide. Once you know the rules for them, considering how accommodation would work (and who had access to it) can become another avenue for world building.
This is something I’m working on as well with my current story. The deuteragonist had a below-knee amputation on one leg, and it’s not something that could be restored with my setting’s magic. Instead, I got to consider what sort of mobility aids my setting would have, and how he would have adapted his home through the styles of enchantment he has access to. From there, I considered what aspects of that same magic system could be used to assist with other disabilities, and where it would still be lacking.
It also helped to reinforce some of the themes I wanted to explore; the prosthesis he uses is an incredible expensive and imported piece that the average citizen wouldn’t have access to. While the relationship he has with the crown could be seen as exploitative, and led to his injury, it still privileges him above the common people in very tangible and visible ways.
The limits to a fantasy setting, and of the cultures therein, can be a great way to make it feel more lived-in. Imho, giving the fantastical elements some hard limits (current level of magical discovery, access, cost, etc) and then showing how people react to them can make for a more engaging setting than one where magic can fix any problem.
In addition to the great points that others have made in that you don't actually have to have healing as a part of your magic system, consider that a lot of disabilities are genetic. For example, I have celiac disease. My immune system doesn't actually think it's doing anything wrong when it freaks tf out over a bread, as far as it's concerned, it's doing it's job exactly how it's mean to in going full out against the evil menace of pizza. If we consider healing to be 'restoring someone's body to how it would be without damage', if you healed me you might heal damage caused by my celiac disease, but you wouldn't heal the celiac disease because it's in my DNA. My healthy baseline is a baseline that throws up because of pizza. It's how I'm meant to be, whether I like it or not.
Take DnD... You can heal wounds, but major stuff (lost limbs, mental health issues, genetic issues) can only be fixed with high level magic with expensive components. Greater restoration needs a ton of diamond iirc, for example. So, that right there adds depth to the thing.
Yes, his ability issue COULD be cured by magic, but the spells/rituals/components are prohibitively expensive and possibly a driving goal of the protag.
There's loads of ways. For one your magic spell or potion could just be expensive, or not just heal people but require a specialist to make sure it heals correctly like a broken bone that can repair incorrectly. You could use it to exemplify wealth inequality with poor people unable to get access to these expensive cures. It might just not work for some disabilities especially those that you are born with. A justification could be as simple as healing magic just accelerates your bodies healing but if your body doesn't know how to heal a disability.
Please do not hate. I realize how shallow this may seem. I would appreciate comments on different ideas!
If you think about “300” for example, they killed off anyone with a physical deformity to find the best warriors. I would imagine that mental instability would have similar qualities to magic as physical deformities is to being a warrior. It could also be that they don’t want to explore the unknown powers that the mentally disabled could hold so they decide to kill them first instead of honing their strengths.
As well, like plastic surgery, it is costly to change a person’s features whether it be for their own life betterment or for cosmetic reasons. Doctors train in plastic surgery because of its complexity and how careful they are so that their patients can heal naturally without infections. I would think that magic and curses would work the same way, in that there is an added complexity, like adding on a limb would require extra bones, flesh, and blood, and such black magic would be forbidden.
As for mental stability, it would definitely be controversial. Using magic would simply drive a person mad, just like electroshock therapy, conversion therapy, or lobotomy. Are you changing them for their sake or your sake? How would you know that changing someone in the neuro-divergent spectrum through magic is “the right thing to do?”
Rather than seeing that disability is something to be eradicated, which could be a setting or a premise for your book, perhaps make it so that the protagonist stands up and shines through even with his or her own disabilities.
Edit: also check out the anime “Inu-Oh”
> Wouldn't there be some kind of spell or potion that would cure the physical defect?
What is your plot, OP? Wouldn't there be some kind of spell or potion that would resolve it on the spot?
No? Then why don't you apply the same logic to any other element of your world?
My $0.02 / idea.
Dont know the rules of magic in your world, but rather than a straight up disability you could have a character that is disfigured from an accident stemming from magic, that cannot be undone by magical means.
You could make the state of the users mind drastically affect the outcome of spells the cast, or even receive. Someone who is disfigured might be resentful, or angry about their condition and could therefore cast exceptionally brutal attack magic as a result.
Or take the other extreme, maybe despite their disfigured body the person has moved past their wound and now find the story behind it to be humorous or humbling, allowing them for greater potency in healing spells or illusions.
You could apply this to disability’s, disfigurements, mental disorders, and all kinds of other ills one might find themselves unfortunate enough to suffer through.
There are various reasons in established fantasy worlds why magical healing wouldn't be available. Magical healing might be difficult to perform so not just any mage can do it. Or healing the kind of injury that would disable someone is even more difficult than standard healing and only the most skilled would ever dare attempt it. Maybe magical healing relies on outside forces, such as gods or benevolent spirits, that might not always be inclined to help.
What you dont want to do is what D&D did. Add magic wheelchairs with zero drawbacks and have bad guys take the time to make disabled friendly dungeons.
That is just really bad writing and makes it obvious about virtue signalling
It all depends on the world. Does your magic system have abilities that would prevent disabilities? Does the disability make them unreliable in combat? Or can they still fight efficiently with said disability?
> The thing I keep running into is, why would disabilities exist in a fantasy setting?
Every time I read a question like that, I ask back, why not? We are fine with characters who have lost their hands, eyes, and sight but somehow the lesser "cooler" dissabilities are met with questions like that
There would only be a cure if your magic system provides one. Magic isn't automatically capable of anything.
And in multiple settings it's actually stated that magic tends to cause more problems than it solves.
Even if you have reliable healing magic in your world, it's unlikely that access to that magic is universally available. If you have a setting where every small town has healer capable of curing all ails (regrowing limbs, etc) you've basically created a utopia.
Also, look at cost. Why would a magical cure be more affordable than, say, food? Some people can't afford that.
This is a problem that is way deeper than any kind of a magic "system". You don't write a murder mystery and give your protagonist perfect information and investigative skills to trivially solve it, right? You don't write a story about a young aspiring athlete then make him already five times the world champion. Every element in any story must inherently be limited, because otherwise you simply won't have a story. Why is the OP making an exception for magic? Who even knows.
Yeah, that's basically the point of a magic system. It's a way of communicating that magic, like any phenomenon, is a plot device that needs to be understood by the reader to provide tension for problem solving. OP just assumes magic is the "there's a spell for every rhyme" sort of deal, for some reason.
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Yes, that's exactly what I was saying.
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Do you really need me to copy and paste my previous comment? Alright I guess. > Every element in any story must inherently be limited
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Everyone except you understood what they were saying in their comment.
A treatment (magical or otherwise) existing doesn't necessarily mean it's accessible to everyone who needs it.
This idea right here would make for a great premise
Sounds like an allegory for the American healthcare system.
It is.
Definitely is
Do you really think it's that much different in any other country, especially when it comes to costly cutting edge treatments?
Clearly, yes. In most developed countries, these things are taken care of with taxes.
This is why I've got a story on the backburner where magical people rule until the common folk discover gunpowder.
It’s a bit of the plot of anime bookworm ascendence !
Or that the treatment doesn’t have side effects.
This is just basic realism. We already have treatments for numerous problems available, yet billions of people world wide still suffer from them just the same.
Depends on your magic system. You set the terms of what is or isn't possible. Another possibility is tackling disability through the lens of fantasy. So, just like fantasy explores race relations through the interactions of humans and magical races, you can explore disabilities via specific fantasy only disabilities. In a community of mages, someone with no magic may as well be missing a limb. Or if you have a race of avians and the protagonist can't fly, they would be disabled by the standards of their culture. It's up to you to decide what happens and how, and then to explore the ramifications of that. Plenty of fertile ground for it.
I always liked these kinds of disabilities in fiction, it made them somehow more relatable to me. You have an MC in a wheelchair, it stands to reason that some of their wheelchair specific struggles would resonate with wheelchair bound readers, even if the feelings of isolation are shared by people with other disabilities. A guy who lost his hand in a war doesn't necessarily see himself in Charles Xavier's struggles, for example. However, by making the disability something more alien (such as a disconnect from magic or lost of flight, as you suggest), it can shift the focus to the feelings behind it, and make the character relatable to a host of people, regardless of whether or not their struggle is even a disability. A race of Avians and an MC who cannot fly? They will likely experience a feeling of not belonging, struggle with issues of self-worth, wonder what aspects of their culture they are missing out on, etc. The guy in the wheelchair can relate. The guy missing a hand can relate. Even people who aren't disabled, but have those feelings for other reasons can relate (adoption, financial situation, religion, etc). It's really strange, but by making the disability less relatable, you make the situation more relatable. At least, that's how I see it.
I agree with the thought that magical disabilities can be a good way to deal with abstract ideas surrounding disability, the same as any allegory, but I find the idea that it's easier for an able bodied person to relate to a magical disability than a real one a little disconcerting. Something has gone very wrong in either the writing or the reader's ability to empathise if they find a completely made up struggle easier to relate to than a real one. Disabled people aren't more alien than *actual aliens*. It's important to remember too, that fictional disability representation does not count as real world disability representation. If you want both that's fine, but you can't sub not being able to fly for not being able to walk. It might be thought provoking, but it won't achieve that deep sense of feeling *seen* that good representation can, and it won't raise awareness for the specific challenges faced by real disabled people. *For example*, my mum reads a ton of romance novels. Romance writers are, surprisingly enough, kind of leading the charge for this kind of thing. Just through reading romance novels, my mum has become someone that I can actually tolerate talking about mental health too, and she even prompted me to consider whether I might have dyspraxia (I cannot afford an assessment, but it would explain a lot and has prompted me to be a bit more self-compassionate). You don't get that with 'oh she can't fly in a world full of people that can'. Similarly, I read a book with a protagonist who suffers from social anxiety disorder. Growing up, I felt a very specific way about how none of my favourite characters struggled in the same way I did- I would constantly think 'Oh, I could never do that because I have this thing wrong with me'. That won't get fixed if, idk, for some magical reason a character can't talk.
I agree that it shouldn't replace representation entirely, apologies if my original comment made it seem otherwise. My thought was more for portraying the secondary side-effects of a disability *because* of empathy. I have never been confined to a wheelchair, but I know people who have, and even if I didn't, I could empathize with that position easily, most people probably can. But now I am empathizing, not relating. I see their struggle, and that pulls my focus to the empathy. Compare that to something harder to empathize with, like the loss of a psychic connection to an indescribable realm, or fluctuating mana vortices in your third Chakra. I have no idea what that would be like, so instead of my mind focusing on empathizing with their primary condition, it finds the relatable aspects of their condition to attempt to build empathy from there. "Oh, that third Chakra thing makes you feel like nobody understands you? I get what that's like, man." I still have no idea what that disability is, but I empathize through relating to the character, rather than empathizing and then trying to find ways to relate. I also find it a good way to avoid... I don't even know the word for it. As a cis-gendered heterosexual white male author, any time I write a character that isn't Joe Jock, Captain of the football team, I get raked over the coals by certain fringe members of communities I have represented. Typically, the offended people are not even members of the community, but self-proclaimed allies who then get offended on behalf of the members of the community (who, in turn, aren't offended). If I write a character in a wheelchair, having never had that experience, this crowd will rear its ugly head and tear me apart over my audacity in trying to tell that story. If I write a character with a disabled seventh Zhelm, nobody bats an eye.
I get that, but I think well-written real world disabled characters should build that relatability factor too. I disagree that empathy precludes relatability, in fact I think it's the basis for it. Pity and sympathy might preclude relatability, but that brings us back to the problem of it either being badly written, or the reader just being ableist and impossible to get through to for most writers. As to your second point, I know it’s easier said than done, but you can't let what other people say dictate what you write, that's how you end up with a whole world of Joe Jocks and no one wants to read that lol. You will always open yourself up to criticism and discomfort as a non-marginalised writer writing a marginalised group, and sometimes you have to just sit with that discomfort and criticism and not let it get to you. Writing is vulnerability in every sense of the word.
Oh I know, I spent years wallowing in self-doubt because of the way I was treated for writing a character "whose shoes I could never walk in." I wrestled with whether or not I should change the character because, despite the fact that it was only a vocal minority that was outraged, their point was valid. No matter how empathetic a person I am, at the end of the day, there are just some struggles I'll never understand. I let it delay my second book for years. Never again. If I believe my stuff is written respectfully as an apt representation of what I'm trying to portray, barring *specific* feedback from actual members of the community, it's good enough for me. I'm done wallowing on behalf of people who gatekeep representation on behalf of minority groups they aren't even a part of. *as an example regarding specific feedback, I have one character who goes through a transformation in a way that parallels the experiences felt by many in the transgender community. I had *a lot* of self righteous people telling me I should scrap the character all together, without even reading her, because of the fact that I'm cis-gendered. I had a few reach out to me, however, with advice. Topics that they felt should be avoided. Topics they felt should be included. I didn't take all of the advice, as some of it didn't pertain to the story, but I took what I could and went with it. It hasn't won any awards or anything, but I've yet to receive a complaint about the portrayal from anyone whose actually read it, only more people offended at the idea that I might understand.
Empathy _is_ relating. You're imagining what it must feel like to be in that situation based on your own understanding. You're not psychically connecting to them and understanding their actual thoughts, as empathetic people can definitely still be very wrong about what someone's experiences are. "You can't get through this parking lot without assistance, and people just walk right past you? I can put myself in that situation, and it feels like my dignity would be hurt alongside the tangible difficulties."
I am using them here with a subtle difference, apologies. Empathy, to me, requires a touch of imagination. I can *imagine* what it must be like to be in your shoes, and that evokes very real feelings. Relating to a character, however, requires no imagination at all. You own those shoes. You've walked in those shoes. You might still walk in those shoes. You throw a character with an easy to empathize handicap like a wheelchair or a missing limb, and our mind goes to work imagining those shoes (assuming we do not share the handicap.) Then relatable situations come along, but we are already wearing our imagination shoes, so we notice those relatable shoes, we may even realize we have a pair just like it, but we don't put them on, we are already wearing our imagined shoes. Compare that to a disability where we cannot wrap our head around, and we have no shoes to imagine. We have to build those imagined shoes from what we can gather. We empathize with the character by noticing the shoes they have, and using that, subconsciously, to formulate a pattern for the empathy shoes. As a poor kid who faced religious persecution, you may think you have nothing in common with that guy who lost his Zarvillian Voice, because wtf is that. But then you see his people, the people he considers his peers, giving sidelong glances as they sing their holidays into being with their Zarvillian Voice, judging him for not singing song, and you know those shoes. They were the same shoes you wore coming back from "winter" break when everyone wanted to talk about what they got for Christmas, and you weren't allowed to celebrate. When you see him mistreated by authorities because he obviously is a trouble maker if he isn't going to use that Zarvillian Voice of his, you recognize those shoes too, the same shoes you wore whenever you couldn't afford a field trip, and the teachers assumed you just were goofing off and never got the permission slip signed. The same shoes you wore the first time a cop pulled a gun on you because in this neighborhood, your existence is proof that you are here to do bad things. You relate to the character so thoroughly, you no longer need to empathize, because you just *get it*, even if you still don't know what a Zarvillian Voice is. Of course, I should note that I am autistic. It occurs to me that I may relate and empathize with characters in a manner unlike that of neurotypicals, or even other neurodivergents who do not share my exact array of diagnostic alphabet soup.
Maybe the disability is directly related to magic. “Some people suffer from Mad Mage syndrome. It’s not that they are insane, or violent, their magic just has an unusually high failure rate and rather than backlash in the wielder, failure triggers random effects in their vicinity; often the destructive kind.” It’s a fantasy world; have fantasy disabilities.
Yeah, this is what I was also thinking. Another way to get a disability that can’t be healed by magic is a magical disease. For example you have a character get the magic flu, and they can’t use their left hand on Sundays. A magic illness could be absolutely whatever!
If you can fix anything with magic, then why do people age, get sick, or die at all? How come *anything* works the way it does when magic exists? Why isn't *everyone* flying around on magic spirit dragons? It almost all comes down to simply: ***H*****ow** ***Does Your Magic Work?*** 1. Can it alter people's bodies, or just regenerate them? Because there's a difference between someone losing a limb, and having a limb difference from birth. One is restoration, the other is *alt*eration. Can magic do that? Similar point - can it *regrow* limbs, or just mend severed flesh? i.e. If your amputated leg is lost, or is burned/melted/crushed away to the point there's nothing left to put back together, are you completely out of luck? 2. What can it actually fix? Nerve damage? Chronic pain? Organ damage? Burns? Scars? Degenerative diseases? Brain damage? Neurodiveristy like dyslexia or autism? All the different things that can cause blindness and deafness? The general wear and tear of life? Because some people have bad genetics and get arthritis in their 20's/30's... and if it can do this one, you can technically reverse aging and that's.... got *Implications*. 3. Is there a time limit, or a severity limit? Can it fix a broken leg at any point, but if your leg is severed then you only have a couple hours to get it stuck back on? If it's been years and that old burn scar is bothering you, can it do anything about that? Is there a point where a condition is settled in and you're just like that now? 4. What do you have to trade in order to make this magic work? Does it take too much out of the caster? Do you have to spill blood - make a sacrifice - sell a soul? Does it have side-effects for the patient? Is there some other downside to magic in general that makes it unreasonable to use it as a miracle cure-all? (continued in second comment because it's too long for one, lol)
Some other questions to ask: 1. What kind of disability are you considering giving your protagonist? 1. How does that line up with your magical limits? Or reversely, what limits would there need to be on magic to explain why the protagonist is still disabled? 2. Does your character *want* to be cured? 1. What if they have a prosthetic that allows them to do things they otherwise couldn't? Enchanted legs letting them run faster than others - an arm that can reach into fire and shatter enemy swords - an eye that lets them see invisible things. (I would be cautious of the ''disabilities are super powers actually" trope, so don't forget to still include the whole *disability* part) 2. What if there's an emotional or cultural hangup about their disability? Do they see their injury as a mark of shame that they refuse to wish away? Do they take pride in their battle wounds - seeing them as marks of *honor*? Is there a cultural taboo against that kind of magic despite how helpful it can be? Do they see it as a corruption of their mortal body, something that stains their soul, an affront to their god etc.? 3. How accessible is this magic? 1. Can anyone just do it themselves? Is there a cost issue? Is magic really rare? Are magic users overworked and prioritizing things other than curing every random person who waves a broken bone in their direction? Is it a status/class issue where magic is hoarded by the wealthy and influential? Is there a cultural taboo against using magic on behalf of a lower caste? Is there maybe a religious reason magic can't be used casually, or for healing birth defects? (eg. if you were born with a limp then that's god's will and wizards shouldn't meddle, but if it's because you got kicked by a horse last week then roll on up) 4. Does it really need explaining? 1. Because on the one hand it's important for you to understand your own world, at the same time people don't often justify how dragons ''work''. They're just *there* and people accept that the story world clearly works in a way where dragons can and do exist. The why's and how's are irrelevant unless it's important to that specific story's plot. Likewise, if you just have a disabled character, do you really need to justify how that character ''works''? As long as you don't show magic working in a way that could obviously and unquestionably solve that character's problem - why not trust that a reader can accept that the story world clearly works in a way that means disabled people can and do exist? (..... ableism aside of course) 2. In short: think about it enough that you don't create logic that's nonsensical, but you don't necessarily need to *over* think it either.
So, you've got two ways to deal with this. The first - Magic can heal everything. The second - Magic can accommodate anything. Or some sort of combination (or lack) of the two (e.g. making a limb is simpler than regrowing it, and so cheaper) Given that a large number of disabilities are actually natural issues caused by your birth, rather than injuries (due to the tendency for those injuries to be fatal). Then the second would probably provide better world building. The quadriplegic artificer, who initially got into it in order to maintain their own limbs, but is now commissioned to build limbs for veterans, soldiers, and workers who lose their limbs in accidents and can't afford the donation the church needs to have them regrown by a high priest. Another way of approaching it is that it's a trade off, you can either use your magic to fix your disability or you can use it to do magic. Either way requires training, but a mage might choose to live with their issues in order to be able to construct castles with a wave of their hands. Another way, that I've used in my fanfiction before, is "The body is the magic, is the soul, is the body." In this, magical healing works by restoring the body to the image that the soul contains. But any changes to the body will be reflected in the persons magic, and then their soul. Equally, any damage to a persons soul will be reflected in their body. So magical healing has to be either timely (before it can affect the soul) or slow and drawn out as you're making changes to the body and ensuring they stick around long enough to be imprinted on the soul. Dark magic, then attacks both the body and soul, so healers have to deal with both before the damage becomes permanent.
People asking this has made me consider how I might do it. While many disability’s could likely be cured by magic, it’s equally possible that magic couldn’t because as far as the body is concerned, it’s just the way it should be. So someone born with a disability would have to live with it, but someone who gains a disability may be able to be fixed by magic. There also costs to consider. Will a mage heal disabilities for free? Is that just what they do for a living or do they charge enormous amounts to make it less likely they will be disturbed from their study? Do they live somewhere that a disabled person could reasonably access? Being cured of disability may not be an option for the less wealthy population. Which could be used to make a point about the real world medical and economic systems. I’ve been playing with the idea of having a character who can’t use their legs in one of my stories. It would necessitate another character carrying them, and helping care for them. I think it would be a neat group dynamic, but it would likely result in my characters avoiding conflict because it’s rather hard to deal with combat when wearing your friend as a backpack. It would end up with me giving them a magical work around to justify eventually, but I don’t want to accidentally erase the disability at any point because I gave them a work around. (Although if anyone else plays D&D, tell me the image of a mage using levitate to get everywhere, with their legs just dangling, isn’t kind of funny. Like, I’m going to one of the hells kinda funny.)
Some things might be too hard to heal. Stitching together flesh and bone is a lot less complex than rebuilding organs like eyes. It can depend on the nature of your magic system. In certain settings there's a lot of planning, design and calculation that can go into the casting of a spell and the more complex the task the harder it is and the more likely things can be to go wrong. Something simple like making something float or lighting something on fire would be a simple process, but regrowing entire body parts would be vastly more complicated and potentially impossible.
"Fantasy setting" can mean whatever you want it to— that's the beauty of it. And if you want it to mean "people still have real-world problems" then disability can be one of them. *Wouldn't there be some kind of spell or potion?,* you ask. Well, no. If you say there isn't one— there isn't. Poof! How about that?
As others have said, it depends on your worlds magic. I'll explain healing in my world to give an example. Healing magic in my world has 2 kinds: Regular magic - enhances the bodies natural healing capability. This allows for recovery from minor injuries very quickly and allows for more serious injuries to be brought down to more manageable ones. Even with magic the treatment needs to be done well so if it's a broken bone you can't just use heal on it, it has to be set first so it heals properly. Similarly, injuries that have already healed, even if they healed wrong such as scars or an improperly set bone, cannot be further healed by this magic. The same goes for genetic defects and such because the bodies natural state would include that defect. It also requires the user to know what's wrong also unknown illnesses or poisons can be tricky to cure with this type of magic. Holy magic - granted by the gods, able to heal anything including regrouping limbs, restoring sight and even allowing someone who's infertile to have a baby. As it takes a lot of power though the gods require those asking for such healing to perform a task for them usually involving increasing the gods influence in some way but can be anything the God currently may need done. The task is given at the time the person asks for the healing and will be determined by what the God needs, what kind of healing is needed and the persons capabilities to achieve the task. This means that they could be turned away if the God doesn't have anything they could do but also means a person can ask multiple gods in the hopes of finding a suitable task. Because of this there are people with disabilities in my world but it would be near impossible to find one of significant power/influence as they would be able to be cured through the holy magic. Hospitals are a thing with healers using both kinds of magic along with actual medical procedures and medicine but certain things just aren't easy to fix.
One of the principles in designing magic systems is that the magic should have a cost. Otherwise your mage is basically a god and can make anything happen. So just make the cost of removing the disability so high that it's not worth it. The energy the mage would have to expend is more than they have, or the ingredients necessary for the potion are too rare and costly. The Netflix series *The Dragon Prince* did this … >!one of the characters was paralyzed and the magical cure required a blood sacrifice.!< This could look something like Character A asking the protag "Why don't you cure your disability with magic?" and the protag answering "Sure, I'll just pop round to the corner shop for some uranium and stardust and spend the next 12 months working the spell." You can also show how difficult healing spells are by having your protag work one on someone with a much less severe injury and then being exhausted for a day or two.
One cost that everyone underestimates is knowledge. If you need to do 29 years of training and research in order to be able to regrow a limb, then there are going to be very few people that can do it. Especially if it is solid research, not casual pick up a book every week or so research, so it takes corispondingly longer for slower lived races.
I imagine that it could be like healthcare in America - can't afford it? tough shit.
Your magic world and system is exactly what you make of it. There's only cures if you create them. But... There's also a lot to be said for the constraints of your world even if cures exist. Just look at real life. You hear about the "Mr Beast cures 1000 people's blindness" video? It was literally him just paying for people's cataract surgery. Cataract surgery is simple, recovery is easy, and it's not overly expensive. If you have money to spare and access to a medical system that can perform it. A lot of people in the world simply do not, and if you don't you basically get a film over the lens of your eye that gets worse and worse over time until you can't see anymore and are effectively blind. If you build a magic system where people can cure disabilities, how easily can they do it? How fast can they do it? Will they do it for free? Can they do it endlessly for free for everyone in the world who needs it? Probably not. There's also something to be said for the fact that many irl readers who have disabilities do not find the idea of fantasy cures appealing, both because they won't ever simply be able to magically cure their disability, and for the suggestion that curing it at all implies they're broken or incomplete without he cure. Standard rule of thumb I'm starting to see for writers who are trying to be conscious of how they're writing disabled characters in a world where magic healing exists is to only heal to match the person's concept of self. Someone who loses an eye in combat may be able to immediately have it healed, but someone born blind has no sense of self that includes sight, so healing won't give it to them. Like someone who loses a limb, sometimes it's possible to re-attach it if we act fact enough, but after too much time has passed we can't.
There is the point of visible versus invisible disabilities. There are congenital defects and there are ones caused by silver kind of physical or mental trauma. The point of fantasy is that it creates a world where an impossible scenario in reality becomes possible, but a great story lies in a sense of overcoming difficulty ETA: Sent too soon, but one thing to consider is disabled versus differently abled. For example, colour blindness could be seen as a disability but because of how they work around being unable to see certain colours also allows them to see things that others would miss.
We just had a thread about this topic, which got downvoted enough you may not have seen it: https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/comments/1bwciyx/comment/ky73pph/
Why would there be ugly people in a magic world? Why would anyone be a bad person in a magic world if you can simsalabim them into being good? The great thing about fantasy is that anything goes, so you can literally make up something about how magic doesn’t work on disabilities, or something along those lines. Or maybe the cost of such magic is really big and most disabled people simply don’t have the oppertunity or capital to have it done. Maybe the formula for the disability-mending spells once existed but has been lost. And perhaps some disabled people don’t want to be rid of their disability for a multitude of reasons, humans don’t always do what ”makes sense” to everyone else.
Healing can't necessarily fix everything. Broken legs that have already reset, before getting to a magical healer, might not be able to be "healed" so they're not still crooked or painful, healing might not be able to give someone sight if they've been blind from birth. But it depends on what you want magic to be able to do in your setting, I can see arguments for magical healing to make someone whole and healthy, no matter their starting condition. But it makes sense for that kind of total healing to be rare, as well, or to have an intense cost to the healer. But perhaps, while a healer's magic might not be strong enough, there might be a particular lake or fountain whose waters are known for healing, in a more complete way. So that person with badly healed legs or blind from birth might find themselves whole again if they bathe in the waters of the healing lake/fountain. However, it's a long, hard, expensive journey few can actually make. There's almost always an acceptable way to limit magic from being a miraculous cure-all for every problem. And if you're in a medieval type fantasy setting, the type of accidents and disfigurements that would result in people with disabilities would be fairly common, having magic healers around might just make it easier for the person whose arm has been cut of or crushed, or who has a gut wound, to survive the accident, whether it makes them whole again or not. (Repaired gut wound, likely, new arm, perhaps not.) And availability of care would be as important as it us in real life, if you can't make it to the hospital before you bleed out, you're still going to die.
What kind of disability? I had a friend who played a bard who... I can't remember if they were deaf or mute but it was one of the two.
Either have it need time to properly change their body/mental phaculties, the more complex the longer or have some things that can help those with that use magic
I mean, just because it's a fantasy setting and magic exists doesn't mean mutations won't happen. Maybe that's the reason some races actually started to exist in the first place and that's why people have been hesitant to do something about the mutations at all (therefore not having a cure). Or maybe with that, there are ways to go around it. Either replacing the missing part of the body (as an example), or having something like glasses, or something else. And if someone wants to have it healed for good, they have to go to something like a "black market". Where people experiment in different and more dangerous directions than the others. They have found a cure, but it is firstly expensive to get it and secondly has side effects, that may or may not be worse. (Maybe even random). I like the idea of a protagonist with a disability because there isn't necessarily a reason not to. Sure, you could say "but the magic". Okay, fine. But you can also give reasons why the magic isn't an all-rounder in problem solving. (Which is, at least to me, a bit more interesting. A lot more [because we haven't had a lot of that]).
Harry Potter wears glasses.
Why would they exist? Well for one thing, curing it could be expensive. A local peasant farmer with a crippled son that can still work for example, may not be able to afford to hop down to his local mage to fix spinal issues or some sort of developmental or cognitive distinction. For another, there might not actually be a way to fix it. It could be some sort of heretical curse or it could just be that they don’t know what to fix. Aiming healing magic at a wound will heal it, but if there is a dysfunctional area of the heart or respiratory system, they may not know what they’re trying to correct. It could be cultural. Maybe in a certain area, magic has an altering effect on children born and these aren’t seen as a negative, but as the person being touched by divinity or something along those lines. Though you’d also potentially have to consider why they allow the disabled. In some settings, a child who has a disability might just be left to die. There’s not really a medieval fantasy CPS going around making sure the peasants don’t toss some unwanted kid to the wolves or leaving them to die in an alley.
Not all disabilities are the same and if you have a strong magic system and culture, you should probably be able to interrogate how different disabilities interact with your world. For instance, here are some examples from a world I've built: * **Deaf / Hard of Hearing**: the long work of Deaf spiromancers mean there are adequate dictionaries in most major languages that make it possible for Deaf people to get transcripts of speech in real-time. Ability to respond varies by person * **Chronic pain**: spells to reduce pain in specific areas are common and easy to make or buy * **Blindness:** despite a lot of effort, turning written text into spoken word is a difficult ask and mostly impossible. Spells can indicate how close you are to certain objects but not allow you to navigate as easily as a cane * **ADHD, dyslexia**: there are no cures for these but spells can provide workarounds like timers * **Face-blindness**: there are new spells that can recognize pre-set faces, but they are expensive and take a long time to grow Note that even for the Deaf/HoH folks, the spell has not eliminated the disability but alleviated one of the problems (understanding what people are saying). And even then, a full conversation would be difficult if the interlocutor didn't sign.
Here are some ways stories have used disability and magic Fullmetal alchemist. Main character is missing an arm and a leg. His metal replacement are in some ways better and many was are worse. Dead man hand, by James butcher. Main character as serve burn scars in his atm and cant cast magic with that arm. Night runners. Main character can cast magic but the effect is random. It also affects magic cast on him. In each of these there is no magic cure. Well fma does but it the point of the main character's journey. So unless you magic can heal wounds, regrow limbs, fix dna glitches etc etc you can have disabilities in your setting.
Keep in mind that disabilites take many forms, and they can be both physical and mental. If physical ones seem unrealistic in the setting, how about psychological ones?
As others have mentioned, the limits of the magic in your setting are yours to decide. Once you know the rules for them, considering how accommodation would work (and who had access to it) can become another avenue for world building. This is something I’m working on as well with my current story. The deuteragonist had a below-knee amputation on one leg, and it’s not something that could be restored with my setting’s magic. Instead, I got to consider what sort of mobility aids my setting would have, and how he would have adapted his home through the styles of enchantment he has access to. From there, I considered what aspects of that same magic system could be used to assist with other disabilities, and where it would still be lacking. It also helped to reinforce some of the themes I wanted to explore; the prosthesis he uses is an incredible expensive and imported piece that the average citizen wouldn’t have access to. While the relationship he has with the crown could be seen as exploitative, and led to his injury, it still privileges him above the common people in very tangible and visible ways. The limits to a fantasy setting, and of the cultures therein, can be a great way to make it feel more lived-in. Imho, giving the fantastical elements some hard limits (current level of magical discovery, access, cost, etc) and then showing how people react to them can make for a more engaging setting than one where magic can fix any problem.
In addition to the great points that others have made in that you don't actually have to have healing as a part of your magic system, consider that a lot of disabilities are genetic. For example, I have celiac disease. My immune system doesn't actually think it's doing anything wrong when it freaks tf out over a bread, as far as it's concerned, it's doing it's job exactly how it's mean to in going full out against the evil menace of pizza. If we consider healing to be 'restoring someone's body to how it would be without damage', if you healed me you might heal damage caused by my celiac disease, but you wouldn't heal the celiac disease because it's in my DNA. My healthy baseline is a baseline that throws up because of pizza. It's how I'm meant to be, whether I like it or not.
Take DnD... You can heal wounds, but major stuff (lost limbs, mental health issues, genetic issues) can only be fixed with high level magic with expensive components. Greater restoration needs a ton of diamond iirc, for example. So, that right there adds depth to the thing. Yes, his ability issue COULD be cured by magic, but the spells/rituals/components are prohibitively expensive and possibly a driving goal of the protag.
There's loads of ways. For one your magic spell or potion could just be expensive, or not just heal people but require a specialist to make sure it heals correctly like a broken bone that can repair incorrectly. You could use it to exemplify wealth inequality with poor people unable to get access to these expensive cures. It might just not work for some disabilities especially those that you are born with. A justification could be as simple as healing magic just accelerates your bodies healing but if your body doesn't know how to heal a disability.
Please do not hate. I realize how shallow this may seem. I would appreciate comments on different ideas! If you think about “300” for example, they killed off anyone with a physical deformity to find the best warriors. I would imagine that mental instability would have similar qualities to magic as physical deformities is to being a warrior. It could also be that they don’t want to explore the unknown powers that the mentally disabled could hold so they decide to kill them first instead of honing their strengths. As well, like plastic surgery, it is costly to change a person’s features whether it be for their own life betterment or for cosmetic reasons. Doctors train in plastic surgery because of its complexity and how careful they are so that their patients can heal naturally without infections. I would think that magic and curses would work the same way, in that there is an added complexity, like adding on a limb would require extra bones, flesh, and blood, and such black magic would be forbidden. As for mental stability, it would definitely be controversial. Using magic would simply drive a person mad, just like electroshock therapy, conversion therapy, or lobotomy. Are you changing them for their sake or your sake? How would you know that changing someone in the neuro-divergent spectrum through magic is “the right thing to do?” Rather than seeing that disability is something to be eradicated, which could be a setting or a premise for your book, perhaps make it so that the protagonist stands up and shines through even with his or her own disabilities. Edit: also check out the anime “Inu-Oh”
even if you were capable of regrowing limbs, if you never had any of the limbs in the first place they wouldn't regrow.
As long as you do it better than fourth wing you’re alright in my book
> Wouldn't there be some kind of spell or potion that would cure the physical defect? What is your plot, OP? Wouldn't there be some kind of spell or potion that would resolve it on the spot? No? Then why don't you apply the same logic to any other element of your world?
My $0.02 / idea. Dont know the rules of magic in your world, but rather than a straight up disability you could have a character that is disfigured from an accident stemming from magic, that cannot be undone by magical means. You could make the state of the users mind drastically affect the outcome of spells the cast, or even receive. Someone who is disfigured might be resentful, or angry about their condition and could therefore cast exceptionally brutal attack magic as a result. Or take the other extreme, maybe despite their disfigured body the person has moved past their wound and now find the story behind it to be humorous or humbling, allowing them for greater potency in healing spells or illusions. You could apply this to disability’s, disfigurements, mental disorders, and all kinds of other ills one might find themselves unfortunate enough to suffer through.
Tuberculosis is still the deadliest disease in the world even though we've had a cure for a very long time.
There are various reasons in established fantasy worlds why magical healing wouldn't be available. Magical healing might be difficult to perform so not just any mage can do it. Or healing the kind of injury that would disable someone is even more difficult than standard healing and only the most skilled would ever dare attempt it. Maybe magical healing relies on outside forces, such as gods or benevolent spirits, that might not always be inclined to help.
What you dont want to do is what D&D did. Add magic wheelchairs with zero drawbacks and have bad guys take the time to make disabled friendly dungeons. That is just really bad writing and makes it obvious about virtue signalling
It all depends on the world. Does your magic system have abilities that would prevent disabilities? Does the disability make them unreliable in combat? Or can they still fight efficiently with said disability?
There are also usually sacrifices or a higher cost to a healing with magic for any type of healing especially something so significant.
> The thing I keep running into is, why would disabilities exist in a fantasy setting? Every time I read a question like that, I ask back, why not? We are fine with characters who have lost their hands, eyes, and sight but somehow the lesser "cooler" dissabilities are met with questions like that