Update: edited for a bit of a grammar mistake and to update number of deaf lions currently on site which is now 13

Update 2: added commenter suggestions

Update 3: Holy cow up to 102 support! Thank you so much everyone!

Update 4: thank you for the overwhelming support so far!

Update 5: there's now 15

Update 6: There's now 36, added a suggestion from the comments, and holy crap 423 support thank y'all so much!!

Similar suggestion by Phantom#145977

I believe deafness should not be a lethal mutation. Sightlessness (bundling blind and eyeless), clawlessness, and toothlessness aren't fatal and arguably would be harder to survive in the wild than deafness. I know it was added with fatal mutations but lord it makes no sense.

Things I can come up with as counter arguments:
"But if lions can't hear threats they'd die, it's more realistic!" If they can't see their threat or have teeth to deliver fatal blows they're not much better off. Also on realism: we have green and multiple other extremely unrealistically colored lions, nephelines, manticores, actual lion gods, demons and access to heaven and hell. Not to mention full sentience on par with humans. We left realism in the dust a long time ago. Also lions have been shown to take care of pride members who are injured admittedly it's uncommon but there is precedent. Best example of this being a male who, as a cub, was caught in a wire trap and for the next three years his siblings fed him prey that they had caught (story here fair warning there are graphic pictures and they are truly sickening)

"Well what about the people who've already used their jellyfish on them! It's unfair!" There's literally only 36 on site. It wouldn't be affecting as many lions as, say, making sightlessness, toothlessness, and clawless lethal.

"But in the wil-" In the wild IRL lions aren't sentient beings with functioning trade, government, language, mythology, and culture. They are capable of taking care of their disabled and really have no reason not to for over arching lore purposes, individual prides will always vary. Even in prehistory there is plenty of evidence that even Neanderthals took care of their disabled despite there not really being any benefit to them. This is the argument I see the most often and I'm not entirely sure why either. Sure there's dangers in the wild but a lot of them are mitigated by pride members just having their back. Taking care of the disabled is not new, not by a long shot, so why can't sentient lions that are basically just "humans: lion edition" take care of their disabled too?

Possible solutions:
Just take off the fatal status. Plain and simple. While I had thought of being able to king deaf lions though with a debuff DarkVenom pointed out that you aren't able to king sightless lions so maybe not. However for it potentially making no sense with the dialogue between kings and NPCs lipreading could explain it. It's not an exact science but this wouldn't be the first time fiction has had lipreading be 100%. Up to devs.

As for females: I think they should be able to be broodmothers since blind and, I'm assuming, eyeless lions can be. Since the examples I'd provided in my reasoning for why deafness shouldn't be a lethal mutation can't hunt I'd say they shouldn't be able to as well. Just to be fair.

If you really want to keep it fatal: make it so that deaf lions can be protected by broodmothers for their entire lives. If taken off protection the fatality rolls are turned back on again.

Other way to keep lethal but have it not be as facepalm inducing: have them die randomly but be able to live full lives if RNGesus is nice. Instead of them just keeling over at 4 if they've made it that far.

I personally believe the first is less annoying to code but I'm not a coder so I could be wrong. I don't know how this suggestion will be recieved but honestly it doesn't seem like it'd be the worst thing in the world. It's the only fatal mutation that really doesn't make sense as one so, if accepted, it shouldn't set a precedent for say extra limbs to be made non-fatal.

Suggestions by commentors:
DarkVenom (#121432): "Perhaps the danger of being deaf can affect cubs by SEVERELY lowering their survival bar to where it would have an extremely low chance of surviving a rollover without a broodmother or hornbill? This would make a lot of sense and be avoidable with good management of the pride and cubs, while also presenting a threat to the cub should a deaf owner forget to protect it. In addition, maybe deaf lions can be prevented from becoming broodmother themselves? A lion who can't hear a cub sneaking off or threat coming shouldn't be the one to look after the crazy children."

Frighteck (#40496): "The brood mother suggestion is cool, but I think if they made it to say.. 3,4, something like that, they would just live until old age. If they've made it that long without being able to hear then they probably have their bearings as much as any other lion." Personally I'd say if they made it to 2 they'd probably have gotten their bearings but I do think this would be a good compromise, especially if paired with an survival meter that went down more quickly making it important to provide some sort of protection to your cub asap."

toddo212213 (#21556): "another addition to this is if a deaf adol is hunting/patroling for experience there would be a significant decrease in the likely hood of bringing food/items back, seeing that when startled they will make a loud noise.

an addition to that would be for deaf/blind/eyeless when/ if they become an adol the survival bar will still be there. except when they are an adol/adult they will no be under to watch of a brood mother, but instead you can assign a lion to be their "caretaker" (sorta like a seeing eye dog but not)
the lion would be pretty much the same as a broodmother (no hunting) and no breeding (seeing that careing for cubs would distract them from monitoring the deaf/blind/eyeless) or alternatively the survival bar would decrease by half of what it would if the lion did not have a caretaker. ex: no caretaker -10% survival caretaker w/cubs -5% survival
the caretaker must not be too old (13 years+ maybe?) seeing that old lions require more sleep and such"

Scenarios for new mutation specific interaction dialogue:
From looking up deaf cats they seem to have extremely loud, almost screeching, meows that can be quite alarming if you aren't used to them.

Forgetting to look at them when you're speaking so they can read your lips (this happens IRL waayyyyy too often)

Forgetting to tap them to get their attention and startling the poor dear

Them just seeming to materialize out of thin friggin air because they're shockingly quiet (I can vouch for this one from personal experience)

Touch and body language are everything when it comes to the Deaf community maybe something related to that?

Lions learning chicken scratch to communicate since some form of signed language is out of the question