The title feels vague, and maybe misleading? And this is so long I'm so sorry. 

This is my first time playing Dungeons and Dragons. I'm also going to be the DM because you gotta start somewhere. I'm trying to be fair. Have some fun and let my players go a little wild but also I don't want to overwhelm myself with my knowledge of everything being limited right now. 

I've got 5 players and only one has played DnD for a short time. So we're all trying to figure out everything. One of my players wants to make a homebrew character of sorts, and we're trying to discuss how it should work. There are a lot of levels of curiosity I'm sitting on. 

The premise of the character is that he is an item called the Anaprism, a soul collector. He wants to go about playing this by having a set of three different people in the item of three diffrent classes and roll  a d4 every fight/day to see witch character will pop out to assist. Rolling a 1 a random commoner soul would come out instead and that would he his character for the day. 

I've asked a lot of questions because I want the full understanding of the idea since I want it to work out the way he wants without making him too overpowered. 

Is the prism sentient in any way, or is it just a cursed item bent on collecting souls? His answer was that it probably had a goal to collect as many souls as possible, potentially in a quest to become a God-like being. He says he dosent want it to be sentient though which feels a bit contradictory to me. If it has a goal that means its conscious right?

How does it collect it's souls? He wants it to be by contract, the item grants you a desire within its power and you basically sell your soal to it. I'm thinking this could be like a geanie in the bottle style wish, were if you dont word your request correctly you could get even more ****ed the spending eternity in an object. 

He hasn't quite decided how he wants to go about the origins of the prisme or if it affects his "character" because of what it truly is. I believe if there is a motive and people are still offered a semblance of freedom, then perhaps it's because their actions can be very much affected by the item. Cursed,  sentient or not. 

I guess my main question is what would an experienced DM or DND player generally say to this kind of concept brought up as a concept?

Quote from TheWolfCzar >>

I guess my main question is what would an experienced DM or DND player generally say to this kind of concept brought up as a concept?

My response would be: "That will get old - FAST - and will probably annoy the other players."

It will especially be annoying for the other players if either of the character classes he can end up being match what the other players are playing. He will end up stepping on their toes and it will be a source of frustration.

I've honestly never seen or heard of this type of idea (usually it's people planning to play a horribly insensitive "multiple personality disorder" stereotype) played well.

I know that's not a constructive reply - but that's just been my experience.

If they don't even know how they want this to work then I don't know how you could approve it.  

   Making it genie like where it makes contracts to get souls would mean the player has the power to grant wishes or such and that just would not work out well.

   Having them play a random character class each day would wreck havoc with party mechanics.  Having him as useless as an NPC 1/4 of the time would likewise lead to chaos and annoyance by other players.  Each personality in the thing would need it's own XP and level kept track of and that is just a headache nobody needs...

I would try explaining to this person that part of the fun is learning to play within limits and how to maximize a character within those limits.  By not having limits the character is basically wanting to play his own game at the expense of everyone else and screw that noise...

I am skeptical. Mostly because such concepts have a tendency to become the focus of the campaign. Unless all the other players have equally weird concepts, things very quickly will be about this player - and that seldom works very well.

I also think his concept is kind of boring since he "refuses" to make the character itself into anything meaningful (big warning flag there). Like Emmber said, this is essentially only: I want to play a character with a multiple personality disorder, I've added a cool name and concept to "cover" for that, but I have not defined it yet. That often ends up with your problem, since at some point he would like to add more souls etc, and it's left up to you to find a system for that.

If you want to try to get this to work, I would first of all say that the anaprism needs to have a personality. He cannot play only many different characters in the same body. He needs to have ONE character with different skillsets. Like one soul that has consumed others, he might take on some of their characteristics along with their skillset, but the driving force and character should be consistant.

Further I would consider to simply allow (or force) all the players to be anaprisms. That way it is not a problem that this will be one of the main "mysteries" of your campaign. It would certainly end up with some completely random strange combination of classes in the party from time to time, but that could actually also lead to a lot of fun (and probably some frustration).

I also immediately thought that what happens if simply every intelligent humanoid, living being he kills is added to the anaprism. It could be a great way to have players try to avoid killing people. 

I think this a unique and cool idea however it is far too complicated for something new(er) players should attempt, as well as logistically incapable of performing.

Things you’ll have to consider is how item sharing will work between the classes. Each character may have their own unique items but throughout the campaign, your magic items will be diversified to your classes rather than focused on a single character.

Also think about all the equipment you’d be purchasing for a character. A fighter needs heavy armor and a wizard needs spells, both very expensive but neither can share.

Perhaps your DM would be kind and draft up similar items to be replicated and equalize the currency gain across the other classes to keep character development consistent, however at that point things are still hyper complicated and really shouldn’t be attempted by new(er) players.

If they're a new player, having to learn three classes' rulesets instead of one seems like the first big dealbreaker.

Look, you're all new here. You're going to have to rely on each player to know the rules for how their own class works, what abilities they have, etc. Is the guy going to ACTUALLY put in the work to know three separate sets of abilities, going to remember which character has what spells known, who can do what? Or does that mean that the guy's either gonna spend a bunch of time kind of "winging it" and not knowing what abilities he has and not knowing how they work, because they're gonna change every session? Or that he's gonna spend half each session re-reading the book, being like "wait, today I'm a wizard, how does wizard spellcasting work again and how is it different than Druid spellcasting? Oh wait, at the beginning of the day I had to pick spells to prepare, I forgot to do that because druids don't have to. Oh wait, that roll I made five minutes ago was wrong because I forgot my stats had changed?" 

The potential for the guy to turn out useless is a second big dealbreaker.

What happens if he rolls that 1 on a d4? Does that mean he's actually going to play through a dungeon with no abilities - including the risk of dying in room 1 to the first goblin that shoots at him, because he's got terrible HP and AC? I suspect not - he's thinking that regardless of what he rolls, he'll somehow muddle through the rest of the dungeon and somehow survive the bossfight? What is he going to be actually doing in the dungeon if that actually happens? And is the rest of the party going to have fun if their dungeon turns into an "Escort mission" where they keep this guy alive?

Good catch on the equipment issues, from everyone else.

Third issue - inability of the characters to plan. Like, maybe you guys are planning to infiltrate a mansion. You make the plan, wizard's gonna cast sleep on guard 1 while rogue distracts guard 2... ...what's prism-guy doing? No idea, they'll have to wing it since nobody even knows what class the guy is gonna be tomorrow when this heist is happening.

Overall, I think for this to work, you need two things:

1) Experienced players who will be able to switch classes like this on the fly, and get all the rules and abilities right.

2) A whole party that's bought in to this, because this concept is going to instantly become the center of attention for both the DM and the other players and stay there for the whole campaign.

I recommend that you and the other players learn the game and gain some experience in the rule set before throwing everything out the window and trying to make things up.

I wouldn’t start with something that complex. There are some similar flavors of these concepts in the Rogue subclass “The Revived”, although perhaps more from the viewpoint of those whose souls are being collected? Stick with a single class, cycle a skill, tool and/or language, maybe a weapon proficiency. Fluff the rest as role playing, jumbled memories.

You know how the first time you cook a dish you’ve never made before, you should always follow a recipe before trying to change anything? Cooking is easier than D&D.

I'd say he can play a UA Revived Rogue but instead of past lives it's a consumed soul.

And I wouldn't have it be him granting wishes - rather somebody asks for something and he has to achieve it within his own normal means. This would also be purely RP - it would not offer any new mechanical benefit.

Thank you all so much for all the feedback! It's really helped a lot and given me a lot to think about. I never want to abandon an idea but we're both too new to be homebrewing anything of the caliber for sure. 

All in all it sounded like a fun but we're to unprepared as new players and I've had a good talk with him and we've come to terms with him playing a more simple role. Though as we learn more mechanics of the game and of our party I'm we will keep talking about other options and opportunities for the concept. Even if it's not as a playable character. 

I've mentioned the revived rouge and he seems interested! Thanks you all again so much. This community is awesome. I never expected so much!

On an aside: As for the item having a goal but not a will, it's possible that the item was created with a purpose and there's no conscious thought involved in what the item does. A clockwork toy moves in a pattern but it doesn't have any thought involved.