D&D character with multiple personalities

[Dungannon]

So, how would this situation work and would it even be legal according to the RAW? A character has MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder), the personalities are not aware of each other. They may be of different alignments/genders. Could they also be of different classes? And if so, how would that play out as far as prereqs for feats and such? More questions to come as I think of them.

 

[Tale]

If it had different classes it wouldn't be LFR legal.
Unless you're doing a hybrid or MC character.
If it simply had different alignments, you could put down unaligned on the character sheet.


I've toyed with trying to get a DM to let me do something like this. A Changeling Rogue that occasionally gets possessed by a Tiefling Warlock. The idea would be that they did both have completely different classes.

 

[Oryan77]

One of my favorite characters from D&D novels is Sorak from the Dark Sun novels Tribe of One. He had 9 different personalities that were all different classes, races, and sex. I've always wished I could play a PC like that, but I just don't see it being possible.

I think most players would completely take advantage of it. Maybe there could be some kind of random dice roll to determine which personality takes control and for how long. But it just seems like a lot of work and I can see it being very problematic.

But maybe it would be fun to at least try. But as a DM, I would in no way let the player decide which personality comes out, when, and for how long.

 

[Tale]

One idea I liked for changing between characters is that everytime one of them went to sleep, the other one would be the one that ends up waking up. Extended Rest? Change characters. 0HP and making Death Saving Throws? Change characters. Any sort of attack described as rendering the character unconcious or asleep, such as a second failed saving throw from sleep? Change characters

 

[Barastrondo]

I think most players would completely take advantage of it. Maybe there could be some kind of random dice roll to determine which personality takes control and for how long. But it just seems like a lot of work and I can see it being very problematic.

There are some serious advantages to be gained, but both characters would probably be less than standard effectiveness unless the DM gives this one PC twice the number of magic items that everyone else is getting. Some combinations could elude this (amulets wouldn't have to vary, and the rogue/warlock could use the same armor, for instance, and although a pact blade isn't an ideal rogue weapon it could work for both). But generally if it were me I'd say "You're going to get a weapon for Personality A or an implement for Personality B, but not both."

It could potentially work, but I would only allow it in a game if I really trusted the player. I wouldn't want gameplay to slow down every time the personalities switched, unless all the other players cited dealing with the personality shifts as one of their favorite things to roleplay.

A much simpler hack that one of my players has used is close. Essentially, he plays an elf who's swapped out elven accuracy for one of the shifter encounter powers. When he's bloodied, sometimes (when he activates the power, essentially), the other personality emerges and acts up for the rest of the encounter. Once he's healed back above the bloodied mark, he reverts. The class remains the same, as do the attributes, but we get some of the alternate personality roleplaying in a reasonably elegant fashion.

 

[Marius Delphus]

The RAW (any edition) don't even contemplate this situation, AFAIK. I can't think of a book or supplement that supports a character who can "flip-flop" between classes (etc.) based on what I will call "alter egos."*

* Let's just say I'm very uncomfortable tossing around real-life clinical diagnoses when talking about make-believe characters.

I once played in a "wahoo" sort of 1E game where all the characters were built strangely in some way (DRAGON Magazine races and classes featured heavily in this party). One of the characters had exactly the proposed setup: two alter egos, each with a different class and alignment, and diametrically opposed to boot. It seemed like fun to start out with, but the DM eventually put the kibosh on the whole thing, forcing one alter ego to take over permanently when evidence of the other's existence became incontrovertible through play.

Looking back on it (it was a long time ago), it was just the end result of all us players wanting to have the goofiest build so as to give the DM the most trouble. Even though we were taking up a challenge the DM issued (we were specifically told to crank up the goofiness), in the end the "double character" setup was too much trouble for both the other characters and the DM.

• Each time the character switched alter egos, we all had to pause while the player switched character sheets and the character switched equipment.
• The idea that the two alter egos were unaware of each other in the adventuring environment was completely untenable, given that each one "woke up" wearing the wrong equipment (which happened to be a dead giveaway as to the other alter ego's character class).
  • This was the main reason the DM shut the whole thing down. In the DM's defense, having to do this was discussed ahead of time.
• Switching back and forth was fairly easy (a decision made in an effort to make the setup viable and interesting), but the end result was the player could usually switch to whichever character was "needed" (i.e., whichever was most fun to play) at a particular moment.
  • This necessarily increased the amount of attention the DM needed to pay to this particular player, because the "double character" was at the forefront of events more or less all the time.
  • The alternative, making the switch difficult and/or rare, would probably have just created a great deal of frustration in the player, who would have thus been mostly denied the fundamental "goofiness" of the character.
• The other characters had no good reason to trust the "double character"... at any time. In this case, one of the alter egos was completely untrustworthy and, it turned out, had the other characters' demise as a firm goal. Even if this hadn't been the case, the other characters had reasons to know there was "something wrong" with the "double character" and probably wouldn't have added the character to the party in the first place for that reason. As time went on, these reasons multiplied until we all knew we were throwing RP considerations to the wind in keeping the "double character" in the party.

Some of these notes are idiosyncratic to the situation we found ourselves in, but overall it's left a bad taste in my mouth for the "alter egos" setup, and I have to personally hope you ultimately decide against it.

HTH. HAND.

 

[Dungannon]

Here is what we (DM & player) are thinking. PC has two personalities with slightly different classes (in this case, both classes would be martial) but wildly different alignments. Personality switches would be random, probably based on failing a Will save in stressful situations. Now the question comes, how to track XP. My thinking is, the DM would track what personality was dominant when XP was earned by the PC and that XP would only apply to that personality's class. Any thoughts about this?

 

[Marius Delphus]

I'm biased against it, as I explained above. My specific thoughts based on your latest post:

"Each" character gets half (or so) XP? How far ahead will the rest of the party get, level-wise, and how fast?

Sounds like one Good personality, one Evil one. How long will the rest of the party put up with Jekyll/Hyde style behavior?

 

[On Puget Sound]

If what you want is the rolepalying aspect of this mental weirdness, just play a Kalashtar. Periodically let the Quori soul take over. No need to do anything mechancically that way. If you do want to make a mechanical difference, build it as a hybrid class and choose to use (for example) only the Ranger powers when the "human" side is in charge and only the Warlord powers when the "quori" side is in charge. Or... have the power use actually trigger the consciousness shift.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I once played a character with a MPD, or at least what we think of as a MPD. Turned out to be a one-shot game. It was some homebrew system, but essentially the character was an elementalist and had a different personality between earth, air, fire, and water. Different situations would spark the different personalities coming out.

Basically, the character had the same ability scores and equipment, but had changes in powers. So he could only access one set of powers at once.

Personally, I don't advise it unless you're really good at playing multiple characters.