D&D Combat Wheelchair

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About

D&D Combat Wheelchair refers to a homebrew wheelchair for use in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns (specifically for Dungeons & Dragons 5E) in an effort to make the game more inclusive towards people with disabilities who wish to properly represent themselves through their character. The chair was created by RPG designer Sara Thompson in 2019. It has received praise from disabled D&D players and mockery from others for being impractical.

Origin

On November 19th, 2019, Sara Thompson, aka @mustangsart, posted to Twitter^[1] announcing a few exciting projects she had been working on, including a "combat wheelchair supplement for 5e." On July 6th, 2020, version 1.0 of the Combat Wheelchair rulebook was released.^[2] On August 7th, version 2.0 was released and announced via a tweet, gaining over 14,000 likes and 4,400 retweets in a year. Version 2.1 was released on February 18th, 2021,^[3] featuring an updated rulebook (announcement art shown below). The opening paragraph of the book reads:

Made with the adventurer in mind, the Combat Wheelchair is supportive and intuitive, designed for daily activity and the pressure of combat. Specifically tailored to its user with a variety of Upgrades, the chair was designed by first-rate artificers and their disabled consultants to ensure high-grade comfort and efficiency. The wheelchair prides itself as being sleek, fashionable, and durable, all at a price affordable for the discerning adventurer. Taking its design from chairs used in sports such as wheelchair rugby and basketball, the Combat Wheelchair can withstand high impact and even work as a weapon, providing the user with a means of both defence and attack. It also comes in a range of sizes for people of any size, from Goliaths to Aarakocra to Gnomes, it is tailored to all. Anyone can be an adventurer.

The Combat Wheelchair has a number of capabilities and features, including:

Giving the user Proficiency in Tinker's Tools
Weighing only 25 lbs and the ability to fold up
A backpack to dismiss carrying capacity penalties
Transmutation/shapechanging causes it to meld into you when transforming
Ignores terrain penalties for grassland, forest, coasts and mountain travel
Has movement of 25ft at all times, 2x movement speed down hills,
Locked to the user, cannot be dispelled, unable to be thrown off the chair
Floats up and down stairs
Guided by a hand magic stone, can craft a magic variant that responds to telepathy
Three different natural attacks built-in
Impervious to damage unless it takes three critical hits, can be mended, still usable for common

Spread

The Combat Wheelchair gained significant support following its first release in July 2020. On August 4th, Dice Breaker^[5] published a piece on the Combat Chair, interviewing Thompson.

Criticism

The Combat Wheelchair has received significant criticism online since its first release from certain groups.

On July 11th, an anonymous user of 4chan's^[9] /tg/ (Traditional Games) board posted the Combat Wheelchair's ruleset to the board, writing, "You are using the combat wheelchair in your games r-right anon?" The post received over 90 responses, many mocking the idea of a Combat Wheelchair, calling it impractical and criticizing it for being an overpowered upgrade with too few disadvantages to balance it out. The chair has also received criticism for undermining the fantasy aspect of D&D, with people suggesting that disabled players should project themselves in the game as more able-bodied people rather than emulate their own existence to play into the fantasy aspect of the game.

The chair has been regularly discussed on the board since with over 850 instances of the term appearing in a 4plebs^[10] search since August 2020.

Continued Spread

On August 15th, Twitter^[6] user and sculptor @russ_charles posted an image of Combat Wheelchair miniatures he created and sold for charity, gaining over 14,000 likes and 6,100 retweets in a year (shown below).

Some fans of the Combat Wheelchair posted artwork depicting their characters over the course of the year (examples shown below, left and right).

The character Dagen Underthorn, played by Matthew Mercer of Critical Role, uses a Combat Wheelchair based on Thompson's design, as confirmed in a tweet^[11] by Mercer (fan art of character shown below).

On August 19th, Nerdist^[4] published an article about the Combat Wheelchair, speaking with Thompson about it. Around the same time, people started to defend the Combat Wheelchair against the alleged hate it was receiving (examples shown below).

2021 /r/dndmemes Combat Wheelchair Moratorium

In mid-August 2021 users allegedly began to post a large number of memes about the Combat Wheelchair to the /r/dndmemes subreddit. They have since seemingly been deleted.

On August 13th, 2021, u/BlindmanDrinking posted a Lisa Simpson's Presentation meme to /r/dndmemes with the text, "If having your character's disability cured 'ruins your character' you weren't playing a person, you were playing a caricature," gaining over 1,500 upvotes in three days (shown below). On the same date, @mustangart responded to a repost of the meme on Twitter^[8] to the @MemsDnd Twitter page calling the meme ableist for implying all disabled people want to be fixed or cured, as well as citing an ableism problem in the D&D community as a whole.

On the same day, @mustangart posted a meme showing the Hindenberg's crash about how triggered the Combat Wheelchair makes some D&D players, gaining over 5,600 likes in three days (shown below).

On August 14th, a moderator of the /r/dndmemes^[7] subreddit u/Dalimey100 made a post reading, "We're placing a moratorium on Wheelchair-related posts until y'all can chill the fuck out. Please reread rule 1 of the sub and act accordingly" in response to the alleged influx of ableist and anti-Combat Wheelchair memes being posted to the forum. A number of memes in support of the Combat Wheelchair were uploaded in the following days (examples shown below).