I have a player who wanted to do something unusual and basically be Bruce Banner/the Hulk. He wanted to play a transforming character comprised of one smart caster and one brutish tank. I said fine, be a human wizard and we'll say that your backstory is that your wizard went meddling with ancient magical secrets that he didn't understand/ran afoul of some ancient power, and fell under some Jeckyll and Hyde type curse. He said "yeah that's cool, but could I instead be a Kalashtar Sorcerer and a Goliath Barbarian?" Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to let him do it. This meant that I was in for a ton of lore-building legwork.
The Character Backstory:
After doing some research, I decided that I would borrow heavily from the Kalashtar/Inspired/Dreaming Dark lore from Eberron to save myself a headache. I decided that the PC's main story is that he was a Kalashtar Sorcerer who is from a Kalashtar stronghold in a far-off continent that is ruled by the Inspired, where Kalshtar are executed on sight. He was sent on a mission to the continent that we're playing on to recruit help, but Inspired agents of the Dreaming Dark found out about his plans and were there to intercept him when his ship landed. I decided that the Inspired have been experimenting with some technology to separate Kalashtar from their merged Quori spirits, so that they can transfer one of the evil Quori into the Kalashtar and use them as spies. In order to do this, they need a vessel/body in which to contain the removed Quori spirit. Enter the Goliath. So basically they set up a lab in the mountains, kidnapped and killed a Goliath from a nomadic herd nearby, and attempted to transfer the Kalashtar's Quori spirit into the Goliath body. Something went wrong, there was a big explosion, the Quori spirit was successfully transferred into the Goliath, but the side effect was that the two physical forms merged. My PC woke up in Goliath form amidst the wreckage with no memory of anything. Important note, when he transforms into a Kalashtar, he also has no memory of his former life. I also haven't told the player any of this information, so as far as he knows he just randomly transforms sometimes and has no memory of anything.
How I'm running the Character/Story:
Basically I roll a percentile die at every long rest and give him a 15% chance of transforming over the rest. When he transforms, he has no memory of anything that happened while he was in his other form, but the party is adjusting nicely to filling him in after some predictable early standoffs ("what have you done with our friend and why do you have all of his stuff?") Since I didn't tell the player anything about the backstory, I am slowly revealing everything to him through dreams (actually memories), but they're crossed so that the Kalashtar has dreams of the Goliath's old life and vice versa. Slowly, these two dream sequence stories will converge upon each other until one dream results in him seeing his own body in the lab and it all comes together.
The Question:
Everything is going surprisingly well so far. He's transformed twice (goliath --> Kalashtar --> goliath) in about 15 sessions, which seems like a good pace. However, now that the party is starting to face some more serious enemies, I have to start thinking about what happens he dies. So, What do you think should happen if one side of the transformation dies? My gut says that both characters should just be dead and gone and it's time for my player to create a new character. That said, I think there might be some cool options involving playing one half of the transformation given the way I've set everything up with the Quori spirit stuff. Any ideas are welcome.
Sounds like a job for multiclassing a caster with a barbarian. And you could make him turn into the hulk when he rages and even just have him change appearance and grow in size. I would just make it a appearance affect and the bonuses he achieves form rage could be his new forms bonuses.
or you could just have a shapeshifter Druid that only shifts when he gets angry or his life is in danger. But this would limit his shapeshifter to only one form for concept and story reasons and limit him a bit.
As for the "stressfull" encounters have them roll a Wisdom Save against DC15 or 20 if they succeed they don't transform into "Hyde" against their will. If the "Body" dies then the spirit is useless cause they were ripped from their own body. Ie create a new character.
Just say that the pc dies it will prevent the pc from becoming to powerful as they are all ready very powerful (multiclassing for free). One thing to be careful of is that it seems that he is getting more attention then the other players but that is just a thought.
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The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
- I don't really view this as a multiclassed character. He's really playing 2 separate characters and only transforms over a rest, waking up as the new character. So sometimes he's a Sorcerer, sometimes he's a Barbarian, but he doesn't get to be both at the same time and the abilities don't cross.
- My other PC's have their own backstories that we spend most of the time chasing down. the nice thing about this character is that his personal story doesn't have to take up game time because it's basically just dreams, so we spend most narrative time doing things related to other characters and then he gets a nugget of his own story dropped in at random intervals.
I don't know if that changes anything as far as responses go
Background:
I have a player who wanted to do something unusual and basically be Bruce Banner/the Hulk. He wanted to play a transforming character comprised of one smart caster and one brutish tank. I said fine, be a human wizard and we'll say that your backstory is that your wizard went meddling with ancient magical secrets that he didn't understand/ran afoul of some ancient power, and fell under some Jeckyll and Hyde type curse. He said "yeah that's cool, but could I instead be a Kalashtar Sorcerer and a Goliath Barbarian?" Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to let him do it. This meant that I was in for a ton of lore-building legwork.
The Character Backstory:
After doing some research, I decided that I would borrow heavily from the Kalashtar/Inspired/Dreaming Dark lore from Eberron to save myself a headache. I decided that the PC's main story is that he was a Kalashtar Sorcerer who is from a Kalashtar stronghold in a far-off continent that is ruled by the Inspired, where Kalshtar are executed on sight. He was sent on a mission to the continent that we're playing on to recruit help, but Inspired agents of the Dreaming Dark found out about his plans and were there to intercept him when his ship landed. I decided that the Inspired have been experimenting with some technology to separate Kalashtar from their merged Quori spirits, so that they can transfer one of the evil Quori into the Kalashtar and use them as spies. In order to do this, they need a vessel/body in which to contain the removed Quori spirit. Enter the Goliath. So basically they set up a lab in the mountains, kidnapped and killed a Goliath from a nomadic herd nearby, and attempted to transfer the Kalashtar's Quori spirit into the Goliath body. Something went wrong, there was a big explosion, the Quori spirit was successfully transferred into the Goliath, but the side effect was that the two physical forms merged. My PC woke up in Goliath form amidst the wreckage with no memory of anything. Important note, when he transforms into a Kalashtar, he also has no memory of his former life. I also haven't told the player any of this information, so as far as he knows he just randomly transforms sometimes and has no memory of anything.
How I'm running the Character/Story:
Basically I roll a percentile die at every long rest and give him a 15% chance of transforming over the rest. When he transforms, he has no memory of anything that happened while he was in his other form, but the party is adjusting nicely to filling him in after some predictable early standoffs ("what have you done with our friend and why do you have all of his stuff?") Since I didn't tell the player anything about the backstory, I am slowly revealing everything to him through dreams (actually memories), but they're crossed so that the Kalashtar has dreams of the Goliath's old life and vice versa. Slowly, these two dream sequence stories will converge upon each other until one dream results in him seeing his own body in the lab and it all comes together.
The Question:
Everything is going surprisingly well so far. He's transformed twice (goliath --> Kalashtar --> goliath) in about 15 sessions, which seems like a good pace. However, now that the party is starting to face some more serious enemies, I have to start thinking about what happens he dies. So, What do you think should happen if one side of the transformation dies? My gut says that both characters should just be dead and gone and it's time for my player to create a new character. That said, I think there might be some cool options involving playing one half of the transformation given the way I've set everything up with the Quori spirit stuff. Any ideas are welcome.
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
Sounds like a job for multiclassing a caster with a barbarian. And you could make him turn into the hulk when he rages and even just have him change appearance and grow in size. I would just make it a appearance affect and the bonuses he achieves form rage could be his new forms bonuses.
or you could just have a shapeshifter Druid that only shifts when he gets angry or his life is in danger. But this would limit his shapeshifter to only one form for concept and story reasons and limit him a bit.
As for the "stressfull" encounters have them roll a Wisdom Save against DC15 or 20 if they succeed they don't transform into "Hyde" against their will. If the "Body" dies then the spirit is useless cause they were ripped from their own body. Ie create a new character.
Just my 2 cents.
Just say that the pc dies it will prevent the pc from becoming to powerful as they are all ready very powerful (multiclassing for free). One thing to be careful of is that it seems that he is getting more attention then the other players but that is just a thought.
The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
So to clarify a few things based on comments:
- I don't really view this as a multiclassed character. He's really playing 2 separate characters and only transforms over a rest, waking up as the new character. So sometimes he's a Sorcerer, sometimes he's a Barbarian, but he doesn't get to be both at the same time and the abilities don't cross.
- My other PC's have their own backstories that we spend most of the time chasing down. the nice thing about this character is that his personal story doesn't have to take up game time because it's basically just dreams, so we spend most narrative time doing things related to other characters and then he gets a nugget of his own story dropped in at random intervals.
I don't know if that changes anything as far as responses go
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
It only changes my "create a new character" advice.