The Tavern

Here's my suggestion for a blind species. The idea is to have severe drawbacks, but also powerful abilities to cover them up.
Flavor is something that lives deep underground and thus has evolved to be almost blind.

Extremely bad vision
- Unable to read scrolls or books. Unable to study magic or begin as book backgrounds.
- You see only monster base type unless it's next to you (e.g Vault Guard and Ironbrand Convoker are humans, all spriggans are just spriggans). You still see the danger level at full LOS.
Exact monster type is revealed when it's next to you, and remembered from then on, even if distance becomes greater again.
Allies are always recognized.
- Reduced LOS, nightstalker style. 2-3 tiles reduction.

Acute smell and hearing
-> See invisible and smell nearby monsters (larger area than LOS, but not much. See only danger level).

Spiritual
-> Faster piety gain with all gods, to compensate for loss of magic.

Enchanter
- Able to remove curse at cost of slight draining
- Able to identify items at cost of slight draining
- Able to enchant weapons once per every 3rd XL (starting from XL3). Enchant ability can be saved if not used -> Total 8 enchants until XL27.
- Able to enchant armour, same mechanic as with weapons
- Able to brand weapons (as per scroll of brand weapon) at cost of heavy draining since XL18.
- Possibly able to recharge wands like DD, at the cost of max MP.
These might sound powerful, but really aren't compared to how much enchant and brand weapon scrolls are found in a typical game, and applying random brands to a weapon after finding a good one does not make sense.
Also situational scrolls like blink and tele are not covered up in any way (except maybe by the piety part).

Stealthy and good stealth aptitude.

Flat but good aptitudes and possibly +HP/MP.

Despite some powerful abilities, it would definitely be a challenging species, mostly due loss of situational scrolls (and some strategic ones like ?acq, ?recharge).

That's extremely spoilery.

Yep, a species that is basically berserker but requires spoilery knowledge of branch spawns doesn't seem like good mechanics. Try deaf-mute instead of blind.

Just remove ability to use any scrolls and give an unique ability to compensate a bit. For example, haste once per 3 XL like in that experimental branch. No need to be able to remove curses, call it Silent Mummy or something since it is stuck forever with whatever cursed item it equips first. I am serious, challenge can be in having to use spells and UC with bad aptitude or waiting to find any unrandart or shop with preidentified items.

Imo it is not a very good mechanism to take away consumables and then grant the same powers as abilities. If the whole point of forbidding scrolls is to prevent blink and teleportation, we already have Formicids.

A no-scrolls species could be interesting though.

Idea was to only partially compensate for loss of scrolls, mostly for the strategic ones (and no compensation for tactical scrolls).

Just make curses not affect this species and insta-ID instead of giving it an ID/RC ability.

Just make all the scrolls and books written in braille (IE blurry vision 3 level slowness) and focus on the nightstalker aspect