D&D 5E How to handle a shapechanging Mermaid

[Umbran]

I'd disallowed it unless I was planning to run way more water related scenarios than usual.

By taking such a character, the player is implicitly asking, "Please make these useful at least sometimes." I generally listen to such requests.

 

[Umbran]

No. Just, no.

Yes, just yes! Why? Because the Sea Witch is an *awesome* Lawful Neutral (or Lawful Evil) villain. She is a villain by way of giving people what they want!

"Hey, they asked for it! They agreed to it! I have the contract right here! You cannot touch me!" is a great place to put the PCs

 

[Sunseeker]

I wasn't aware you liked creating characters with abilities that never come into play.

I like creating characters that fulfill a certain concept in my mind. If you only want the most useful players in your party, there really isn't any need to allow the players any decision making in character 'creation'. Just hand them out regenerated characters whose given abilities will be exactly what fit in your game.

I don't want a DM who'll play to everything I want as a player, I want a lot of silly things. But I don't want a DM who will disregard everything I want to do that is outside his preconceived ideas for his game. There is a reasonable level of give-and-take between player and DM, without that, you might as well be playing a video game.

 

[Minigiant]

"We don't wear pants and shoes and socks underwater. Why would we start doing it on land?" Queen Aqua XXIV of the Merfolk.

Merfolk, male and female, wear dresses and skirts on land and sea. There is no pants problem. Landpeople have to deal with their nudity under their dresses. Unfortunately also they retain the everywhere is a bathroom thing.

 

[S'mon]

I'd think that merfolk wouldn't normally wear clothes and might have some trouble with the human concept, but a merfolk PC on land would normally be started off already used to human customs and have acquired clothes etc. Obviously if they go back in the water, they take their clothes off first.

 

[evilbob]

a druid's shapechanging

That's how I would have handled it. Player chooses what is absorbed and what is dropped; nothing is destroyed. Basically the best possible option.

I'm kind of surprised that so many replies were far harsher than that; to me, being able to change into one specific thing that only is useful in one specific way is basically flavor - it's barely a mechanical bonus, so I wouldn't enforce a penalty. The player wants to be a mermaid so make it cool! If it starts to get out of hand, then you can pull back, but don't trample an idea just because there is a small chance of a power issue down the road. You said this was a new player, so the odds they are trying to "game" you to get some special edge sound like zero.

I think many of the DMs on this board are used to wily players looking for loopholes, so their "danger" flags come up fast (which is totally fair). There's also the desire to make a ruling that can be applied broadly, so you're looking for something that is the most "fair" that can apply to the largest number of situations (like the core rules). This just isn't the right way to approach this situation, in my opinion.

I'd just let the player play what they wanted and make it as cool as they'd like it to be. You'll figure out if the power level needs adjusting later, but it's better to go with it and tone it down than to reign it in before they even get to see their concept in action.

 

[CapnZapp]

"We don't wear pants and shoes and socks underwater. Why would we start doing it on land?" Queen Aqua XXIV of the Merfolk.

I guess it would depend strongly on whether merfolk in your campaign have external or internal sex organs. In blunter terms: are mermen hung like men or are they hung(?) like fish?

If the former, the situation would be no different than an unclad "savage" entering "civilized" (=as in "clothes wearing") lands.

If that society requires the unclad foreigner to cover up its nudity, that would happen to merfolk too.

[/QUOTE]Landpeople have to deal with their nudity under their dresses.[/QUOTE]
Ahem... Not sure how to say this, but plenty landfolk are nude under their dresses too... (especially in historic times where comfortable underwear isn't yet a thing)

By which I mean: why would having to "deal" with this be an issue? If your merfolk wear dresses, wouldn't problem be solved?

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

On the other hand, having such a character may lead to more water-related scenarios, so rather than have the PCs fit the campaign, the campaign fits the PCs.

That said, if I was doing a heavily water-based game (like pirates on the high seas) I'd actually be more hesitant; water breathing is a powerful feature when you're constantly surrounded by water, less so when you stumble upon an underground lake or waterfall.

I'd disagree. Stuff like water breathing just allows you to "go on the adventure", and is traditionally rated very low in terms of using up a pc races benefits. Water Genasi get it, Air Genasi can hold their breath indefinitely, and warforged don't breathe. All 3 races get additional benefits on top of being able to (essentially) breathe underwater.

It all boils down to this. Do you want the party to go on the underwater adventure? How much do you want to punish the party and drain their resources just to participate in exploring the sunken temple. IIRC, water breathing is a ritual, so the buy in for these shouldn't be much more than a 5th level caster and a few minutes.

I say go for the magical transformation option (1). It causes the least amount of problems for a player and doesn't leave them naked. This is a person new to roleplaying, its hardly a powerful ability, and they are unlikely to dominate combat. If that's what she wants, I say make her first character memorable and fun.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Ok, quick update since I just got off the phone with her before game.

I mentioned about the "pants problem" she'd have, and she kinda realized she didn't want to always be bottomsless. So we opted for a compromise; she's going to be a water genasi who is "half-mermaid". That way, she can swim, breathe in water, and have "funky blue hair" but also not have to worry about clothes.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I might keep the concept around for an NPC later, but at least now I don't have to worry about it.

That's a real solid solution. Mermaid-y, without the tail.

But clearly after this campaign you're going to have to do an Aquatic campaign setting, let her be a mermaid, someone can be a sea elf, you'll have an adorable sahuagin barbarian who goes mad at the scent of blood, and maybe a locathah druid who shapechanges into bears "like he saw that one time", and they'll all fight against a Kraken who dwells in the deep, fathomless abyss, where magma cracks through the crust of the earth and blind, albino crabs serve her every whim.....

 

[Remathilis]

[MENTION=9789]evilbob[/MENTION] kinda got what I was concerned about.

It basically came down to what kind of shapechanging the merfolk did: if the merfolk's flesh reshaped then it makes sense anything she was wearing would be unaffected and either dropped/destroyed as she changed. If the change was magical (as in, some form of innate magic or a permanent spell effect) than the druidic model of merging or dropping at will would make more sense. The former seems more "realistic" (as far as such a term can be used in this situation) but the latter is more player-friendly (she doesn't worry about nudity, retrieving lost gear, etc). And since all the tail did was trade out your land speed for a swim speed (something a water genasi gets naturally) the tail was mostly cosmetic.

Furthermore, despite having the idea before this (and just never thinking about the ramification of tail-changing) I realized the issue was coming down to not wanting to bother /her/ as a player. She's new and I didn't want to inconvenience her. If one of my normal long-term players had done it, I'd probably have stuck with the MM definition of shape change (aka lose your gear). That kinda gave me a warning bell this wasn't going to work.

As I said, she is going to go with a water genasi who is half-merfolk, have marid. She gets the kinda cosmetic elements she wants (sans tail), but is equally adept on-and-off land and doesn't worry about needing special gear (or losing it) with a change. She was a bit bummed, but she kinda understood that a merfolk tail would be impractical, so that worked. She's leaning towards either a sea-druid or a bard (heh) so we'll see what happens.