RPGMemes

I really don't understand what's wrong with people not "curing all illness and disability with magic™" in a world where magic exists and is a thing.

See, in most such fantasy settings, magic not only exists but it has an attitude. Sometimes, a conscience, and not a very ethically nice one (if it allows for eg.: necromancy!). Sometimes, magic even is a god (or gods). Even if they aren't, the people who use magic are still ultimately humans (with leafy ears etc but still ultimately humans with costumes, at worst) driven by greed, envy or a weird righteous idea of how should a woman dress and behave when in public.

Would you trust some rando nutjob, who claims to speak for Evelok the Eternal Coffee Mug of Satisfaction, to up and magically conjure you new eyes, new arms, whatever? To alter your body to such a fundamental level? Normal people in such settings are already afraid to death of werewolves and those are quite normal things. Compare: even in our magicless, relatively normal world, we have the power and the money to cure most illness and to treat disabled people adequately yet Obamacare is not universal and we can not trust that the people who give people implants and prosthetics haven't backdoored them to force those disabled people into corporate servitude.

Your player party may be the goodest bois, but they're only one. The various guilds and churches around quite likely aren't such goodies on aggregate either, or else there would simply be no plot.

I'm gonna devil's advocate this for a second.

Unless you're very poor (which is fair in most fantasy settings there's always poor people) magic kinda negates disabilities.

Like is there no spell that can cure these disabilities?

With that said to have that big of an issue with it just makes you an ass

Depending on the magic it might not make sense because people could heal everything, although you could explain it away by saying that the character could not afford a skilled healer.

I looked it up and the first known wheelchair that you could move yourself in was invented in the 1600s, which was after firearms became relatively common.

Im kind of ambivalent on this.

On one hand, ~medieval times, which are usually the general era and technology level the average fantasy setting plays in, have no concept of disability and people who have one are usually ostracized and/or begging in the streets. Blindness may be on the more tolerated side of things, but deformities or developmental abnormalities are definitely not accepted. Also, if there is magic why wouldn’t they use it to cure it?

On the other hand, it’s a fantasy roleplay setting and the primary function is to be fun. So if everyone agrees it shouldn’t be a problem to have a scenario with it, more power to you

It depends on the tone of the setting. Someone who gets their leg broken in a Forgotten Realms game can usually find a small-time priest to cast Cure Wounds on them, preventing most disabilities that aren't from birth. Someone who gets their leg broken in Warhammer Fantasy has to hope within their gimped traveling distance that there's a priest of the correct faith capable of appeasing the gods for the healing to happen, before their detriments become permanent. As such, having a disabled character in a game with more accessible healthcare requires an extra degree of explanation, on top of the PCs' and players' emotional response to someone being so downtrodden. The circumstances of their ailment, who or what was responsible, how they see their ailment and work around it, all are weights on the players' suspension of disbelief that a GM has to take into account that they generally otherwise wouldn't with John Miller, the able-bodied dude who runs the mill with a wife, three kids, and a problem with rats stealing the grain that he mills. It's like a Chekov's Gun in that sort of way, the GM as a storyteller surely wouldn't spend the effort to decide that an NPC has a trait that is notably separate from the default without it being somehow relevant to the plot. The mage asks the party to do a quest for their magical research, a general asks the party to do a quest for national security, and a person in a wheelchair... what desire do you give them that wouldn't be misconstrued as able-ist or a waste of that character trait? It's very difficult, often comes with an air of making some kind of a statement, either that they're a writer capable enough to wear disabled-face without it being offensive, or taking a preachy high-ground telling people a message about human sympathy, determination, and adaptability that they've already been made well aware of by the existence of popular culture.

I'm dreaming of a VR game with a disabled wizard who is confined to a chair and uses telekinesis or teleportation to move around. That would give the game a lore reason for VR locomotion.

Could magic overcome, resolve or undo a disability?

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someone who chose to no longer be at my table after meeting a blind NPC

Sounds ridiculous to me.
Anything in roleplaying is possible, why not this stuff then?

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I have a metal mini-titan in my chat text roleplay with friends. It got born 2 weeks ago (game lore time). It doesn't speak and understands pretty much nothing when other party members try to communicate.
Still they have been happy with my character and they have played normally.
(I have agreed that if it becomes too boring we can find machinery that helps communicating.)
I told about our game to an acquaintance and she seemed happy/intrigued of my character choice!