When I made my split personality character I made it on a war forged so I could have the functionality of completely changing my character on both a physical and mental level depending on the personality in change, the reason for it making sense being that war forged can change their physical armor over night so why shouldn't they be able to alter their entire body too? Here's the link to the sub-race page I made for it: https://www.dndbeyond.com/subraces/140028-split-mind mine has a three way personality but more or less personalities are always an option.
i saw that as well. I actually like the concept of having a PC with DID, it would be an interesting thing to have in a game and to see the other party members responses.
My only concern with this homebrew is that DID happens because of an initial trauma occurring in early childhood; other alters(personalities) can occurring when later introduced to traumatic and/or stressful situations; this homebrew makes it seem like some interaction in their adult life makes it happen when that isn't the case. I guess someone could still use this but it wouldn't be an accurate representation of the disorder. I'm sorry I get really excited on educating people on DID.
Just want to say a big Thank You to everyone contributing to this thread. One of my players has come to me today about making a PC with DID and your discussions of how to balance the mechanics has been a great help :D
EDIT: In response to FinnFarechild, I completely agree about that HB background. I think that if you're making a PC with DID, it's really important to sit down with the player and work it out so that you can be sensitive to the realities of DID and such.
My only concern with this homebrew is that DID happens because of an initial trauma occurring in early childhood; other alters(personalities) can occurring when later introduced to traumatic and/or stressful situations; this homebrew makes it seem like some interaction in their adult life makes it happen when that isn't the case. I guess someone could still use this but it wouldn't be an accurate representation of the disorder. I'm sorry I get really excited on educating people on DID.
So, I'm talking about this with my dm and how to intro this with my existing character. But let me give a small amount of background:
We're in the Curse of Strahd campaign, and my first character died in the Death House. So we had to figure out how to bring in #2, who happens to be a Vedalken Artificer with a dm given back story of being a long since forgotten member of the order of the Silver Dragon, or at least an anti-strahd rebellion of sorts.
Since there are not a lot of 6' tall blue people in barovia, he has, for the last several years, been disguised, literally and via spells, as the town coffin maker who the character found dead in his shoppe.
Now... I took Haunted One as a background, so that is the start for a split personality /personality disorder.
And if you've ever played a dude playing a dude... And tried switching from an over the top stereotyped Slavic man to a posh brit, you'll know that sometimes your accents get on top of each other which kind of makes it a 'normal' way to claim split personality. Or just a lazy way to explain away beer-indused slip ups while gaming.
Two sessions ago I posed the multiple personality to the dm, and then my character threw a firebolt at the Burgomaster of Valakai, then stuff happened, a disguise self spell was cast, and he is now posing as the Burgomaster of valakai. So now he's a dude, playing a dude, dressed up like another dude.
So, now that you're caught up...
I shared this thread to my dm, and here is the way I'm looking at it, using a few of the ideas posed above.
I do think the 'other' personalities (OPs) should have different stats, skills and alignments, as fitting for the OPs. But they don't have to be so drastically different in skills, or even in stats, for that matter. I don't need to go full "Split" here. Just whatever makes sense.
The change would happen on crit fails, serious inebriation, or at the DMs whim. Hell, maybe every time he rolls a 6 also. The personality that takes over would be a dice roll. (I like the 1d4 idea above.) Maybe the primary personality would 'resume control' each morning, quite confused as to what's going on. But that could get "50 First Dates" annoying. So maybe scrap that.
I'm also going to ask the DM for Disguise Self to become a cantrip that happens automatically with each personality change. And that each OP would have advantage on Deception skill checks.
For this character, the haunted one background of a traumatic childhood event, combined with living as someone else and faking a different personality for years, then to be thrust into an adventure where coming face to face with Strahd on a bridge, then a dealing with a pos oppressive Burgomaster, would just be enough stress to fracture the psyche completely.
I was actually looking for something like this for one of my new characters. I'm making them an Aasimar and their would be thre different personalities. Depending on the personality, the sub race would change as well.
All of these ideas are really great, and I’d love to add my own contributions to the mix.
Just a bit of background, my party is going into Out of the Abyss, and one of my friends joked about how it would be funny if Fiend Warlock ended up stuck in the same body as a Life Cleric and VOILA! Meet Torrin Evenstar, a high elf cleric of Corellan Larethian, and Psyon Withakay, a human warlock who is a member of the cult of Asmodeus. How they got tangled up together(pun intended) is that both of their patrons sensed something strange going on in the Underdark with demonic energy, and, since Corellan is a good god, and Asmodeus hates demons, they were each sent down to investigate. While down there, they met each other, got in an argument, and started dueling. In the middle of the duel, the chaotic energy of the demon lords got triggered, and ended with them mashed together as a half elf, two minds in one body. Since then, they have had two goals, to find out what’s happening in the Underdark with the demonic energy and stop it if necessary, and to separate their minds bodies again.
I ran the statistics of it by giving them each an individual character sheet as their original forms, a high elf cleric, and a human warlock. After this, I took the average of their STR, DEX, and CON and made it that for the half elf character sheet. I gave them each their own mental stats(INT, WIS, and CHA) and their own proficiencies since they had different experiences in their previous life. However, their gear, HP, and other things that wouldn’t change with a mind swap stayed the same.
For the specifics, my DM and I decided to give full XP to the mind who earned it, and half XP to the other min d so it wouldn’t be left super behind aft a large session. They both got a full share of boss fight XP. They each have their own half elven character sheet, which I swap out whenever they mind swap. While not in control, the other mind isn’t able to be affected by any magic and can’t be damaged by psychic damage, but they can still make some ability checks(such as Insight checks, Nature checks, or Investigation checks) and communicate with the other person via telepathy. The mind swaps occur when
1.The character in control takes a critical hit.
2. The character in control takes damage equal to half their HP Max.
3. The character in control fails a save by 10 or more.
4. They have a 50 percent chance of swapping during rests.
5. If one wants to take control, the current owner of the body has to make a Charisma or Wisdom save depending on the character contested by the other mind’s Insight or Persuasion check accordingly. So the Warlock has to make a Charisma save against the Cleric’s Insight check, and the Cleric has to make a Wisdom save against the Warlock’s Persuasion check.
6. The mind in control can decide to swap, but when this happens, it takes 2 rounds for them to swap out, making it impractical in combat so that I couldn’t heal our barbarian one turn and eldritch blast the hell out of some Drow the next, but not impossible if we desperately needed the other mind’s skills in the scenario.
7. If the mind in control is unconscious, but not at 0 HP, the other mind can take control. This saved my party’s ass when my Warlock was hit with a sleep spell, but then my Cleric shook it off, hit a Drow Priestess with banishment, and unintentionally permabanned her from the material plane and sent her to Lolth’s layer of the Abyss. (She Nat One’d her save.)
So yeah, this was a really fun character to do, he wasn’t too ridiculously overpowered or underpowered, and it allowed our party a lot of utility and saved our bacon on more than one occasion. I think my favorite was when my Cleric failed a save against Charm Person, and my Warlock said, “**** this, my turn with the body,” used number 5 on the Cleric, and took control. He then proceeded to fireball the hell out of the scouting party of Drow that ambushed us. Anyways, let me know if y’all have any questions, id be glad to answer them.
I’ve always thought of it this way and you tell me if you feel this is balanced or not it works best with two to three personalities. All classes level simultaneously The characters mental stats can be different but the physical must remain the same aside from any bonuses granted by the classes of the personalities. The hitpoints should always be calculated based off of the class of the main personality, so if your main personality is a warlock you’re working with warlock hitpoints even if the personality in control at that point is a barbarian. To do anything different is impossible as otherwise it gives far too many options to extend your health pool as a player. In terms of tracking spell slots you would have to divide the level of each class that contributes to the spellcasting feature by the number of personalities with those classes then after that essentially treat them like a multi-classed character with the spellcasting feature for the case of blending contributed levels into their full caster level. With the caveat that if the total comes out as above their level that you simply reduce their caster level to that of their character level per the multi-classing table set. You then track speeds known by the characters sepereately but they share spell slots as those are part of the bodies magical potential for the day. The one thing that gets weird is mixing pact magic and spellcasting, in that case I would probably tell the player that would take half their levels in the spellcaster table and half their levels in the pact magic table and use those to determine spell slots (assuming only two personalities) with three I don’t see how it could be done. Let me know if there any questions or concerns or things I just didn’t explain well or if you think my system just wouldn’t work at all etc.
it’s not the exact same, but my fiancé and I created two characters that were twins and one was a still born, but the soul was absorbed into the the living sister. We are getting ready to play test in either this week or next.
“Identity switch
At the end of a short/long rest, the player rolls a D 20. On an odd role, the main player character is used. On an even role, the Alter Player Character is used. Once per long rest, the player can use the other PC for an amount of time equal to 10 minutes x their proficiency bonus.”
well i made my own idea where the adventurer dies and becomes a reborn and a dybbuk tried to take control of his body but both lost controll and a new entity takes over being the main character and i thought the each personality has its own class and the dm controlls when the personalities change
I found this while googling options - so forgive me for reviving an old thread.
I’m toying with the idea of my character having a split personality, but I’m not sure how to execute it. It’s dissimilar from these, because it wouldn’t be two completely different characters, just two different personalities that occupy the same body. One is lawful good, one is chaotic neutral.
the “lore” I’m giving this character is that he’s a draconic bloodline sorcerer, and the other personality is the “dragon” where the bloodline comes from who is evil. His family warned him to not use his powers, because it could have negative repercussions but he ran away from home to explore his powers anyway. Recently, it’s been stressful situations that will shortly bring out the alternate personality, who the main player character has no idea exists yet. Eventually I want the two personalities to coexist, but in the beginning there to be a power struggle.
As we progress, I want it to be more of a switch - one is good, one is chaotic and reckless. I don’t want this to be a detriment to the party, but only for character development purposes. I don’t want him to be too overpowered, the only difference between the two is one will have dragon if transformation and one won’t. Otherwise their stats, spells, etc are exactly the same.
Think of it very Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost on The Flash, but they can’t switch without it being an action and it can’t just be Willy nilly. I like the idea at first of a Nat 1 causing the evil/bad personality to take over, and if the situation is stressful he’ll need to pass an insight check. As the character develops I’d have it be an action for the switch to take place and a roll must be passed. Unless someone can tell me how this could be better played.
is this a bad idea? I want guidance to make sure this isn’t too disruptive to my current campaign. I’m just trying to play an interesting character who is kind of unique.
I found this while googling options - so forgive me for reviving an old thread.
I’m toying with the idea of my character having a split personality, but I’m not sure how to execute it. It’s dissimilar from these, because it wouldn’t be two completely different characters, just two different personalities that occupy the same body. One is lawful good, one is chaotic neutral.
the “lore” I’m giving this character is that he’s a draconic bloodline sorcerer, and the other personality is the “dragon” where the bloodline comes from who is evil. His family warned him to not use his powers, because it could have negative repercussions but he ran away from home to explore his powers anyway. Recently, it’s been stressful situations that will shortly bring out the alternate personality, who the main player character has no idea exists yet. Eventually I want the two personalities to coexist, but in the beginning there to be a power struggle.
As we progress, I want it to be more of a switch - one is good, one is chaotic and reckless. I don’t want this to be a detriment to the party, but only for character development purposes. I don’t want him to be too overpowered, the only difference between the two is one will have dragon if transformation and one won’t. Otherwise their stats, spells, etc are exactly the same.
Think of it very Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost on The Flash, but they can’t switch without it being an action and it can’t just be Willy nilly. I like the idea at first of a Nat 1 causing the evil/bad personality to take over, and if the situation is stressful he’ll need to pass an insight check. As the character develops I’d have it be an action for the switch to take place and a roll must be passed. Unless someone can tell me how this could be better played.
is this a bad idea? I want guidance to make sure this isn’t too disruptive to my current campaign. I’m just trying to play an interesting character who is kind of unique.
I'd think that removing the mechanics from it would be a better idea if you're set on this. Just tell your DM how you'd like to play it and rely on them to arbitrate when things become too stressful or calm and one of the personalities take over (or roll a saving throw to do so).
I still recommend against doing it, but that's an Internet stranger opinion. Check your table and if you know it'll be okay, then do it.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
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You could always make the personalitys be in the same class but one one of them looks some of the options but get other benefits.
For example a warlock that when changes fights only with swords and deals an additional 1d6 when hitting an enemy.
This wasn't a balanced example just one to give you the idea
When I made my split personality character I made it on a war forged so I could have the functionality of completely changing my character on both a physical and mental level depending on the personality in change, the reason for it making sense being that war forged can change their physical armor over night so why shouldn't they be able to alter their entire body too? Here's the link to the sub-race page I made for it: https://www.dndbeyond.com/subraces/140028-split-mind mine has a three way personality but more or less personalities are always an option.
I found a homebrew that seems to have a good system for switching.
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Split_Personality_(5e_Background)
i saw that as well. I actually like the concept of having a PC with DID, it would be an interesting thing to have in a game and to see the other party members responses.
Btw its called Dissociative Identity Disorder.
I would hope everyone in this chat would know that
My only concern with this homebrew is that DID happens because of an initial trauma occurring in early childhood; other alters(personalities) can occurring when later introduced to traumatic and/or stressful situations; this homebrew makes it seem like some interaction in their adult life makes it happen when that isn't the case. I guess someone could still use this but it wouldn't be an accurate representation of the disorder. I'm sorry I get really excited on educating people on DID.
Finally someone who knows something
Just want to say a big Thank You to everyone contributing to this thread. One of my players has come to me today about making a PC with DID and your discussions of how to balance the mechanics has been a great help :D
EDIT: In response to FinnFarechild, I completely agree about that HB background. I think that if you're making a PC with DID, it's really important to sit down with the player and work it out so that you can be sensitive to the realities of DID and such.
I'm so happy to have been able to help.
I love jumping on a 2 year old thread, lol.
So, I'm talking about this with my dm and how to intro this with my existing character. But let me give a small amount of background:
We're in the Curse of Strahd campaign, and my first character died in the Death House. So we had to figure out how to bring in #2, who happens to be a Vedalken Artificer with a dm given back story of being a long since forgotten member of the order of the Silver Dragon, or at least an anti-strahd rebellion of sorts.
Since there are not a lot of 6' tall blue people in barovia, he has, for the last several years, been disguised, literally and via spells, as the town coffin maker who the character found dead in his shoppe.
Now... I took Haunted One as a background, so that is the start for a split personality /personality disorder.
And if you've ever played a dude playing a dude... And tried switching from an over the top stereotyped Slavic man to a posh brit, you'll know that sometimes your accents get on top of each other which kind of makes it a 'normal' way to claim split personality. Or just a lazy way to explain away beer-indused slip ups while gaming.
Two sessions ago I posed the multiple personality to the dm, and then my character threw a firebolt at the Burgomaster of Valakai, then stuff happened, a disguise self spell was cast, and he is now posing as the Burgomaster of valakai. So now he's a dude, playing a dude, dressed up like another dude.
So, now that you're caught up...
I shared this thread to my dm, and here is the way I'm looking at it, using a few of the ideas posed above.
I do think the 'other' personalities (OPs) should have different stats, skills and alignments, as fitting for the OPs. But they don't have to be so drastically different in skills, or even in stats, for that matter. I don't need to go full "Split" here. Just whatever makes sense.
The change would happen on crit fails, serious inebriation, or at the DMs whim. Hell, maybe every time he rolls a 6 also. The personality that takes over would be a dice roll. (I like the 1d4 idea above.) Maybe the primary personality would 'resume control' each morning, quite confused as to what's going on. But that could get "50 First Dates" annoying. So maybe scrap that.
I'm also going to ask the DM for Disguise Self to become a cantrip that happens automatically with each personality change. And that each OP would have advantage on Deception skill checks.
For this character, the haunted one background of a traumatic childhood event, combined with living as someone else and faking a different personality for years, then to be thrust into an adventure where coming face to face with Strahd on a bridge, then a dealing with a pos oppressive Burgomaster, would just be enough stress to fracture the psyche completely.
Thoughts?
I was actually looking for something like this for one of my new characters. I'm making them an Aasimar and their would be thre different personalities. Depending on the personality, the sub race would change as well.
i think this is great and could also work for venom (with eddie brock as a fighter. and venom as barbarian)
All of these ideas are really great, and I’d love to add my own contributions to the mix.
Just a bit of background, my party is going into Out of the Abyss, and one of my friends joked about how it would be funny if Fiend Warlock ended up stuck in the same body as a Life Cleric and VOILA! Meet Torrin Evenstar, a high elf cleric of Corellan Larethian, and Psyon Withakay, a human warlock who is a member of the cult of Asmodeus. How they got tangled up together(pun intended) is that both of their patrons sensed something strange going on in the Underdark with demonic energy, and, since Corellan is a good god, and Asmodeus hates demons, they were each sent down to investigate. While down there, they met each other, got in an argument, and started dueling. In the middle of the duel, the chaotic energy of the demon lords got triggered, and ended with them mashed together as a half elf, two minds in one body. Since then, they have had two goals, to find out what’s happening in the Underdark with the demonic energy and stop it if necessary, and to separate their minds bodies again.
I ran the statistics of it by giving them each an individual character sheet as their original forms, a high elf cleric, and a human warlock. After this, I took the average of their STR, DEX, and CON and made it that for the half elf character sheet. I gave them each their own mental stats(INT, WIS, and CHA) and their own proficiencies since they had different experiences in their previous life. However, their gear, HP, and other things that wouldn’t change with a mind swap stayed the same.
For the specifics, my DM and I decided to give full XP to the mind who earned it, and half XP to the other min d so it wouldn’t be left super behind aft a large session. They both got a full share of boss fight XP. They each have their own half elven character sheet, which I swap out whenever they mind swap. While not in control, the other mind isn’t able to be affected by any magic and can’t be damaged by psychic damage, but they can still make some ability checks(such as Insight checks, Nature checks, or Investigation checks) and communicate with the other person via telepathy. The mind swaps occur when
1.The character in control takes a critical hit.
2. The character in control takes damage equal to half their HP Max.
3. The character in control fails a save by 10 or more.
4. They have a 50 percent chance of swapping during rests.
5. If one wants to take control, the current owner of the body has to make a Charisma or Wisdom save depending on the character contested by the other mind’s Insight or Persuasion check accordingly. So the Warlock has to make a Charisma save against the Cleric’s Insight check, and the Cleric has to make a Wisdom save against the Warlock’s Persuasion check.
6. The mind in control can decide to swap, but when this happens, it takes 2 rounds for them to swap out, making it impractical in combat so that I couldn’t heal our barbarian one turn and eldritch blast the hell out of some Drow the next, but not impossible if we desperately needed the other mind’s skills in the scenario.
7. If the mind in control is unconscious, but not at 0 HP, the other mind can take control. This saved my party’s ass when my Warlock was hit with a sleep spell, but then my Cleric shook it off, hit a Drow Priestess with banishment, and unintentionally permabanned her from the material plane and sent her to Lolth’s layer of the Abyss. (She Nat One’d her save.)
So yeah, this was a really fun character to do, he wasn’t too ridiculously overpowered or underpowered, and it allowed our party a lot of utility and saved our bacon on more than one occasion. I think my favorite was when my Cleric failed a save against Charm Person, and my Warlock said, “**** this, my turn with the body,” used number 5 on the Cleric, and took control. He then proceeded to fireball the hell out of the scouting party of Drow that ambushed us. Anyways, let me know if y’all have any questions, id be glad to answer them.
I’ve always thought of it this way and you tell me if you feel this is balanced or not it works best with two to three personalities. All classes level simultaneously The characters mental stats can be different but the physical must remain the same aside from any bonuses granted by the classes of the personalities. The hitpoints should always be calculated based off of the class of the main personality, so if your main personality is a warlock you’re working with warlock hitpoints even if the personality in control at that point is a barbarian. To do anything different is impossible as otherwise it gives far too many options to extend your health pool as a player. In terms of tracking spell slots you would have to divide the level of each class that contributes to the spellcasting feature by the number of personalities with those classes then after that essentially treat them like a multi-classed character with the spellcasting feature for the case of blending contributed levels into their full caster level. With the caveat that if the total comes out as above their level that you simply reduce their caster level to that of their character level per the multi-classing table set. You then track speeds known by the characters sepereately but they share spell slots as those are part of the bodies magical potential for the day. The one thing that gets weird is mixing pact magic and spellcasting, in that case I would probably tell the player that would take half their levels in the spellcaster table and half their levels in the pact magic table and use those to determine spell slots (assuming only two personalities) with three I don’t see how it could be done. Let me know if there any questions or concerns or things I just didn’t explain well or if you think my system just wouldn’t work at all etc.
it’s not the exact same, but my fiancé and I created two characters that were twins and one was a still born, but the soul was absorbed into the the living sister. We are getting ready to play test in either this week or next.
“Identity switch
At the end of a short/long rest, the player rolls a D 20. On an odd role, the main player character is used. On an even role, the Alter Player Character is used. Once per long rest, the player can use the other PC for an amount of time equal to 10 minutes x their proficiency bonus.”
well i made my own idea where the adventurer dies and becomes a reborn and a dybbuk tried to take control of his body but both lost controll and a new entity takes over being the main character and i thought the each personality has its own class and the dm controlls when the personalities change
I found this while googling options - so forgive me for reviving an old thread.
I’m toying with the idea of my character having a split personality, but I’m not sure how to execute it. It’s dissimilar from these, because it wouldn’t be two completely different characters, just two different personalities that occupy the same body. One is lawful good, one is chaotic neutral.
the “lore” I’m giving this character is that he’s a draconic bloodline sorcerer, and the other personality is the “dragon” where the bloodline comes from who is evil. His family warned him to not use his powers, because it could have negative repercussions but he ran away from home to explore his powers anyway. Recently, it’s been stressful situations that will shortly bring out the alternate personality, who the main player character has no idea exists yet. Eventually I want the two personalities to coexist, but in the beginning there to be a power struggle.
As we progress, I want it to be more of a switch - one is good, one is chaotic and reckless. I don’t want this to be a detriment to the party, but only for character development purposes. I don’t want him to be too overpowered, the only difference between the two is one will have dragon if transformation and one won’t. Otherwise their stats, spells, etc are exactly the same.
Think of it very Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost on The Flash, but they can’t switch without it being an action and it can’t just be Willy nilly. I like the idea at first of a Nat 1 causing the evil/bad personality to take over, and if the situation is stressful he’ll need to pass an insight check. As the character develops I’d have it be an action for the switch to take place and a roll must be passed. Unless someone can tell me how this could be better played.
is this a bad idea? I want guidance to make sure this isn’t too disruptive to my current campaign. I’m just trying to play an interesting character who is kind of unique.
I'd think that removing the mechanics from it would be a better idea if you're set on this. Just tell your DM how you'd like to play it and rely on them to arbitrate when things become too stressful or calm and one of the personalities take over (or roll a saving throw to do so).
I still recommend against doing it, but that's an Internet stranger opinion. Check your table and if you know it'll be okay, then do it.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?