Impaired Hearing

A wizard's hearing can be permanently or temporarily impaired as a result of deafness (magical or natural), disease, poison, or physical damage (such as repeated exposure to loud noises). Unlike the vision-impaired wizard, the hearing-impaired wizard has only modest limitations on his spell casting abilities.

Although most spells have a verbal component, it is not necessary for the wizard to clearly hear the words or sounds he utters to cast a spell. These sounds serve to release magical energies which in turn trigger specific reactions; as long as the wizard utters the correct sequence of sounds, it makes no difference if he actually hears the sounds himself. Note that a silence spell prevents the casting of any spells with verbal components, since silence prevents the sounds uttered by the wizard.

Spells that require the wizard to hear, such as comprehend languages (when used to translate speech), are ineffective for hearing-impaired wizards. Spells that create sounds, such as alarm, are able to be cast, but the impaired wizard will not hear the effects.

Hearing-impaired wizards casting illusions with audible elements may encounter the same problems as vision-impaired wizards. The audible elements of such illusions will have to be educated guesses, based on the wizard's memory of actual sounds. As with illusions cast by sight-impaired wizards, the more complex the illusion cast by a hearing-impaired wizard, the more easily the audible element of the illusion will be disbelieved by an opponent. The DM is free to add as much as a +4 bonus to the saving throws of opponents attempting to disbelieve such illusions. A hearing-impaired wizard cannot use his familiar to serve as surrogate "ears" to enable him to cast such spells with more precision or accuracy

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