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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6069276" data-attributes="member: 42582">There's nothing wrong with doing it the way you want, though that may exclude anyone who wants a game that involves a different game world yet maintains mechanical parity between PCs.As for "patching the problem", why? There are whole games based on this sort of parity. 4e is just one example. A simple example: a wizard gets a 1x/day charm person ability; a rogue grants its player a 1x/day "NPC falls in love with me" ability. There's no obvious problem with that approach to ensuring parity of mechanical effectiveness.I don't follow this. If I'm playing a game of chess, and then have to head off and hand my position over to an onlooker to take up, they inherit my position - it doesn't follow from that that the chess pieces, their position on the board etc are anything but a player resource.Likewise if player X plays a PC in place of regular player Y, X inherits Y's position. It doesn't follow that the sheet is a list of PC resources. They are player resources - resources that belong to the player position - though some may also be PC resources (eg equipment lists; but typically not action points or fate points).It's metagame. The ingame narrative explanation - if it matters, which often it doesn't - can be narrated as appropriate.Yes, it can be done more than once, but it isn't. That's the essence of metagame abilities. Here's an analogue: every successful hit could be a crit, but typically is not, because the required natural 20 (or whatever) is not rolled.Suppose the game, instead of die rolls, allowed players to declare their d20 rolls, but forbade repeating a number until all 20 had been used: the number of crits would still be limited, even though in principle they are possible on every attack. It's just that the mechanics would allow a player to choose when his/her PC crits. That's how a metagame mechanic works. Martial encounter and daily powers are metagame powers of this sort.For the reasons [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] mentioned upthread, I would tend to be careful with this sort of situation in my game. But if it came up, I would narrate something appropriate (see [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s post above, for instance.) The easiest narration for the situation you describe is that the possessed PC steps back, his allies step forward to see what is wrong, and he then cuts them down.This particular situation really shouldn't be that contentious, because the players rarely narrate that sort of detail of their PC's behaviour. So the GM stipulating it in response to the player of the possessed PC declaring Come and Get It shouldn't be contradicting any player's narration of his/her PC's behaviour.Why is that the moral of the story? There are plenty of rulesets that differentiate PCs and NPCs - for instance, in Over The Edge players get a penalty to attack rolls if they don't narrate an interesting action for their PCs, whereas the GM has no such rule applied to his/her narration of NPC attacks. And in the typical D&D game a PC cannot start as a super-wealthy noble.What harm are these rules and play approaches doing to the players of these games?</blockquote>

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