It seems that the common answer is the old writers' adage of "write what you know".

That stated and back to the original topic: Optics are everything. If it looks like you're doing a DID character, people will demand respect and accuracy and will accept no substitutes. If it looks like you're doing a character under a spell and not living with DID, people will be more receptive for the separation from the illness.

I'm less receptive because people want to use such a magical effect as a benefit not afforded to others.

If it were me as the DM (and it's not), I would need a much better reason for the magical transformation than "I want a random chance at another character I've created", especially if the intent is to create characters that mesh well in a campaign.

As in the case where two people can never play at the same time but want to play in the same campaign, I would give it consideration.

At this time though, I'm still leaning towards not allowing it (if it were me, and it's not) on a purely mechanics and fairness viewpoint.

There was the mention of a character using a different name for the rage effect but not actually being a different person (kind of like a superhero name I'm guessing). That's something I would lean towards allowing if it were me (and it's not).

In our case it wasn't changing the character it was a cross class with half the classes from each class. we actively chose to only to use the features available to our class. As a result our Character was a little under performing compared to others in the party.

When we swapped out we had no idea what the other player had been doing or what was going on and simply acted on what the DM described.

I recently was in the hospital (story for another day) and made friends with a girl who has DID and is an avid DND player. We actually talked about this. This was basically her take on the matter: gee, that sounds really fun!

If you want to make it realistic to the condition, it's not her body or her past that changes. It's her personality and, to some extent, her memories (yep - her memories don't transfer across identities well). There's a couple of directions you could take this:

• Legitimately change INT, WIS, and CHA stats for these different identities
• Change background/background features, chosen proficiencies, feats, or other things

Completely changing a character's class (and thus major abilities) is a REALLY big shift and isn't consistent with DID. So I'd suggest change more 'minor' abilities, and have it be at random or as determined by the DM. One of the issues of DID is that, for the most part, the person can't decide which personality is in the foreground.

Again, that's if you want to be realistic to the condition. Which you may not.

As for whether it's okay for you to portray a character with a historically disadvantaged characteristic. That's fine. Do enough research to know what you're talking about, but you don't need to be exhaustive. I'm gay, and I find that most media created by straight authors that includes gay characters is actually just fine. At least with the queer experience, a lot of stereotypes ARE accurate to a large portion of the population. I have a lot of LGBT friends who do drag, or listen to Beyonce fanatically, or are feminine and metrosexual males. Those stereotypes don't apply to me (I DO like to knit and cook though), but they're stereotypes for a reason. I also have PTSD. When I saw the first Fantastic Beasts movie, where the bad guy had suffered terrible child abuse (common villain background), and they made him someone you felt sorry for and liked, I appreciated that a lot! It showed that trauma survivors aren't to be hated, but to be loved. We've been through a lot and the good guys have compassion for us.

I'd say that if you plan on recording your sessions as a podcast or something, be really careful. If you're planning on playing this character just at private sessions (much more likely) then you're probably just fine. I mean, the fact you even posted about this suggests you're doing good research.

So yeah. If you represent DID, do some good research and show it in a positive light. And from a gameplay perspective, let the DM or dice control which personality is in charge at any given time. And have the personalities trade only a few features or proficiencies, not major things like entire life stories. It's different personalities, not different people.

I was planning on approaching my DM about doing something like this. But instead of having it be DID or an existing illness, it would be the result of an experiment or magic ritual gone wrong maybe a party got melded into one body or different people from different realities or timelines got fused into the same mind somehow, the experience gave the character amnesia about what happened to them. They will have to figure it out with the help of their party. I was thinking about using the same ability scores, but feats skills and spells would depend on who is in control, each alternate personality could have a trigger to switch to another random one, each time the character sleeps or is rendered unconscious a dice roll would determine which personality would be in control. Everyone brings up a good point about seeing if this offends anyone at the table.

Quote from Giftnova >>

Biggest advice: Talk to someone who *has* Dissociative Identity Disorder and learn how this affects people. If you want to play a character who has a real-life condition then do your best to not portray said condition in an offensive or caricaturing way.

 Just chiming in to say my partner and I both have DID, and we're happy to answer questions about it. Just PM me

i had an idea like this, but couldn't workout how to balance the stats to favour both classes. my idea was a Goliath fighter/barbarian type (melee person) whose other personality was a dwarf or a gnome spell caster. i was going to multi class them (so starting the character at lvl2), and each lvl i would trade off which class got the increase.

i thought it would be funny from an RP standpoint if the two personality's didn't know about the other.

i scraped this and made a changeling character instead, to allow a similar thing of changing "race" and "personality" but easier to track, like when he is fighting he takes on a personality and appearance of a Goliath (albeit a small one) and when he is shopping a personality and appearance of an old wise human.

Eladrin have this already personality wise (although the parameters and handling is a bit different) but not class wise.  RP wise it is a challenge to play someone with what were huge shifts.  Actually it was exhausting.

But that's easy before you add class to the mix;  that just sounds problematic for the DM and the player.  Stats, equipment (hey, why I am wearing platemail?   I should sell this can get more wizard scrolls) and keeping abilities straight.  That and I'm not sure how you want to handle things like feats/ASIs which might be different between classes in terms of numbers granted.

So you want the story without the class baggage read up on the Eladrin.  But I wouldn't do the full class switch.

What of instead of D.I.D. the player was cursed in some way, or perhaps it's two characters cursed to live in the same body? What if the characters swapped at dusk and dawn, regardless of what was going on at the time? 

Social implications aside (which are significant and have been covered well already), I don't see this being mechanically balanced at all. Each class has specific abilities that are only available X times a day and this would massively exploit that. First encounter of the day you're bard and blow all your inspiration. Next encounter you're Paladin and Smite like there's no tomorrow. Then you're a sorcerer and use all your sorcery points to get your slots back (unless you're just getting full spell slots every time which is even worse).

It's just a nightmare, both in-game and out. If you want to play multiple personalities, just play multiple characters. Or make up your own fantasy situation that achieves the same goal like a symbiotic coven of dreaming kalashtar that all share one quori spirit and thus only one can be awake at a time. Something like that seems way more interesting to me and would offend no one.

Quote from Krull_The_Oblivious >>

i thought it would be funny from an RP standpoint if the two personality's didn't know about the other

So, with a DID system, the host can be unaware of the presence of other headmates, but the other headmates (generally) all know each other, and that they're a system. Additionally, if a DID system is still in stealth, when the headmates front, they'll generally try to act like the host, so as to not be caught.

I had something similar to this. But different. They draw inspiration from 'Mort' from 'All hail King Julien', where he changes personality based on what he drinks. So when he drinks coffee he turns insanely smart, but goes relaxed when he drinks tea.

But I decided to make him a gnome alchemist, and when he eats/drinks different potion ingredients (eye of newt, swamp water etc) he takes on different personalities. He knows he is one person, but decides when to change. I decided the best way to do this is to give him dump stat strength, as it's not important. I then made his charisma 10, as he doesn't need to be amazing with people, yet he's not bad with them. Then his intelligence and dex are high, while wisdom and con are ok. 

This allows me to play different personalities, without being rude, and by having fun. But eladrin and changeling are the easiest way to do this.