If I did this to you as a DM, would you be upset or intrigued?

[Voadam]

One way to transfer just the personality so that they switch the whole character sheets is to have a meta-game explanation that their souls were transferred and are now in a different person, so now they have the knowledges and powers of the new body as well and loose their old skills and class powers. The mind and memories get left behind as the soul switches to a new body.

They can know that it is wrong and in character say things like "My god! I've forgotten how magic works!" while another one then goes "Oh my goodness! I know how magic works!" Then quest to get it straightened out or perhaps just adventure while this whole thing is only temporary and tied to a temporal event.

 

[Terwox]

Played in a game where I and another character got swapped, he was pretty unhappy about it and we just ended up undoing it.
It could be fun, or it could not be fun, depends on how you do it, and especially how attached to playing one's own character your players are.

 

[derelictjay]

For me no, might be fun, but to the powergamer next to me, he'd hate it, my characters are usually the weakest in the group (I still say bards are the best class in the game, they are not weak, really they aren't, please believe me). Now if you were to do a body swap with other creatures now that might give me a little ire, but I would get over it, and it would probably be fun (so long as I didn't turn into an ogre or other power creature).

 

[Ferret]

Unless you had spent ages perfecting the character I'd be up for it, but you could just express your disgust in character...

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

For me it would all depend upon the circumstances. We played a body swap scenario one time, but it was at the absolute wrong time. It was the first adventure following a fairly long hiatus. Everyone was really looking forward to playing their characters again, had sent many e-mails to the DM describing down-time activities, planning for future development of their characters, etc. Suddenly we are in different bodies with very different abilities - not the ones we were looking forward to for so long. After a couple of sessions we forced the DM to cut things short and get us back to our own bodies. If we had had a little time using our own characters they way we wanted them first, I think it might have been better received.

 

[Mr. Kaze]

If it was just a random out of the blue thing in the middle of a campaign, I'd be annoyed. But if it was either a hook into a new segment of campaign (hook into new campaign would feel dumb) or in some other way forseen, it might be okay.

I did this with a deck-of-many-things sort of encounter. One of the cards swapped physical bodies of two characters: Race, Str, Dex and Con (height, weight, age). Played out pretty well and has provided an interesting conversation piece for the characters involved.

::Kaze (notes that it doesn't work if you've got people with ECL involved in the swap)

 

[Mouseferatu]

Go for it. I've done it, and it's a lot of fun.

But--and this is important--don't do it for any length of time. A single game session, or at most a 2-4 game story, should be sufficient for the PCs to figure out how it happened and reverse the effects. Roleplaying a body-swap is fun for a little while, but ultimately, people want to play the characters they created. That's why they created them, after all.

 

[BSF]

Been there, done that, it was interesting.

There was a story reason for it though. It was a bear to deal with form some people. What the DM did was have us draw lots and if any of us ended up with ourselves, we swapped the lot with another player. *Then* he told us what the whole thing was about. We swapped souls and the mechanic was changing physical stats. Everything else remained the same - though there were penalties for everything since we were in unfamiliar bodies.

Our group is a bit varied, so we didn't experience the same player disorientation that some groups would. As an example our "wizard" started off as a fighter. He has an 18 Str and has finally worked up to a 19 Int (after 16 levels). So, when he ended up in my bard's body, he found himself to be considerably weaker. (Str 12) But he found himself more hardy and quicker (bumps to Con & Dex). My Bard ended up in the Monks body and was stronger and quicker, but less hardy.

If we had a classic archtype party, then I can imagine the 18 Str fighter being really torqued if he ended up with the 10 Str wizard body. Obviously it wouldn't work with each group.

Actually switching all the abilities of the character would be interesting, but again it might not be all that feasible. I have players in a game I run that avoid playing spellcasters like the plague. They simply don't want the overhead, so they wouldn't have much fun suddenly being saddled with a spellcaster.

Know your group before you pull a stunt/story hook like this. It can be fun and interesting, but it obviously will not appeal to everyone.

 

[Gunton The Terrible]

Well, transforming their characters as part of an adventure, as in Nodwick: Cool. Having them switch PCs? Not so much. You get into some risky territory there. Might as well ask them to swap dice.

Take my magic items, take my identity, but never touch my dice!

If it was no longer then a single session it would be fun, any longer it would get annoying.

As a DM I would wait until the characters have been adventuring with each other for a while. By then some of the characters will have developed some intraparty "competition." Seeing them act out each other's characters would be fun...for a while.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The one thing to be careful of is this: you would have to make sure that the characters could still contribute to the party.

For instance, imagine the following party:
Fighter 18 str, 10 dex, 14 con, 10 int 10 wis, 10 cha
Wizard 10 str, 12 dex, 14 con, 18 int, 10 wis, 8 cha
Cleric 14 str, 10 dex, 12 con, 10 int, 16 wis, 10 cha
Rogue 10 str, 20 dex, 10 con, 10 int, 10 wis, 10 cha

Now imagine that the ruling was "swap physical and mental stats but keep your own class and skills."

You end up with the fighter in the wizard's 10 str body. OK, that's pretty rough, but he can hang out at heavy encumberance and still use his sword and armor once they figure out what's happened. Well, he can do OK, until he figures out he's got wizard hit points. So much for that. He's hosed.
The wizard in the fighter's 10 int body, however, can't cast any non-0 level spells. Great, he's got an 18 strength but he can't do anything with it. He's useless.
The cleric in the rogue's 10 wis body can't cast any non-0 level spells either. He's got a great dex, but he can't do anything with it either.
The rogue in the cleric's body is set up all wrong too. But it's not quite as bad for him. Weapon finesse might not work, but at least he's got a strength bonus.

Net result: the wizard is useless, the cleric is next to useless, the fighter is really hosed, and the rogue probably can't use any of his feats (which probably require dex) but other than that, he's the best off in the group.

You can have an even worse result if you were to rule that PCs keep mental stats. Now, the cleric and the wizard are still doing OK but the fighter and the rogue are completely hosed in comparison.

So, if you do it, be careful to keep the characters such that they are still able to contribute to the party.