PC Body Switch: Bad Idea?

[Mengu]

As for game mechanical advice, just make sure there is no more than 1-2 easy combat encounters while they are switched, sprinkle in a roleplaying encounter and a skill challenge. Limit the characters to at-will powers while they are in the wrong body. In the second combat encounter, they figure out something to switch back and after a round or two, they are back in their own bodies, deploying their full power.

 

[RangerWickett]

I did this once in a game. A psychic dreamscape went all wonky, and the party would switch bodies with anyone they made physical contact (or weapon contact) with. The psionic overlord in control of the dreamscape could resist the change, but at one point he decided to swap bodies with a PC so the party would be hesitant to kill him. Meanwhile he hit an NPC ally of the party with a powerful ongoing damage effect, so to save her one of the PCs swapped bodies with her.

I ruled that psionic effects were linked to the person's mind, no matter what body they were in, so the damage started killing the body of the PC (with the NPC ally's mind in him). Very weird all around.

But we handled it very much on the fly. Each PC kept his own class-based powers, but if he wanted to use his new body's innate powers or magic items, he'd ask the body's native player to help out. It was complicated and a little slow, but fun.

 

[superpriest]

And as I started out with, I'd be sure not to drag it more than one episode.

Okay, I'm going to give it a try fairly soon. One game session, plenty of roleplaying possibilities.

 

[superpriest]

But we handled it very much on the fly. Each PC kept his own class-based powers, but if he wanted to use his new body's innate powers or magic items, he'd ask the body's native player to help out. It was complicated and a little slow, but fun.

That sounds like a good session. I've also done a session with dreams, and one with false dreams/hallucinations.

What you describe for mechanics makes me realize that I have to be absolutely clear how things work. With my group, if they have to think too hard about mechanics, they will probably only be thinking about mechanics.

Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

 

[wlmartin]

I thought it might be fun to rip off an episode of Farscape and have the PCs switch bodies. I figured I would seek opinions as to whether this would be fun or not.

Let's say a magic portal or something causes pairs of PCs to switch personalities. The two players swap character sheets. All abilities are exchanged between the two characters, so a dumb barbarian could suddenly find himself becoming a smart wizard, but the personalities are still the same, so the players still get to roleplay their own characters.

I think the main advantage for the player is temporarily getting to play a different character. The disadvantage is having to play another character competently.

The PCs are level 18. They have seen each other's abilities for the past year. Some of the players are really good at the mechanical side of the game, and some not so much.

Good idea/bad idea?

This is a great idea!

Roleplaying should not be an issue here since effectivly the PCs are skins, it is the players that are the puppet masters so you are just giving them a different puppet to play with.

I would make sure your players are OK with this
(ie dont force it on them, make them believe it is a way to sneak past the Mindflayer as since your mind and bodies are not the same it may confuse his powers and give you an advantage) or however you want to sell it but let them say NO if they dont want to and that it not break your adventure

 

[Saeviomagy]

I would recommend
1) knowing exactly how the characters in question work. (recently while playing our party wizard when his player was away, I forgot that wizards only get to use one of 2 dailies at each level, and opened a fight with two top-level dailies. The effects of both dailies were sufficiently profound that when I discovered my mistake several rounds later, it was really too late to do it over).

2) probably pulling the "no character sheet" thing, because it will promote some teamwork and interesting roleplaying. And also avoid scenarios as above.

 

[Delgar]

I say have fun with it, it's a great opportunity for the players to get some good role playing under there belt and see how the other half lives. I say go for it and have fun. Just remember that stuff will slow down as people aren't as well versed with the characters, but IN GAME that makes complete sense because they're not used to being in a different body!

I haven't done this specifically in a home game (played in one LG game that had this twist). But in my home game I did have the players play out the events of a past life of my Deva player in the game, in a dream sequence. The Deva player played his past life and wrote a beautiful story to set the scene and I let the other players make up their own mid paragon level characters for the game. Overall it ended up taking 3 sessions. The players learned a bit about their friends past life, and in stead of XP I gave them all a free multiclass feat of the class they played in the dream (which didn't count against their multiclass feat restrictions). Because the dream felt so real.

All in all the players loved it.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

At our table, we often have some of the players handling some of the monsters. They usually don't handle main villains, but anything else is fair game.

So in a 3E game, we had a climatic encounter where the arch villain, a lich with possession powers, tried to take over party members slowly. It went bad, and ran uncontrollably. The net affect was that every round, a random creature swapped minds with another random creature. If those creatures failed Will saves, they immediately swapped again with another random creature. This went on until the saves were made.

I had character sheets printed up for all the foes and NPC allies. We swapped sheets. It was an insane fight, but lots of fun. Timing was really important. Both sides wanted to kill a foe while it inhabited a foes' body (not necessarily its own). Except the lich didn't care. As long as she ended up with a functioning body, she was ready to go. The fight was deliberately a bit underpowered (without the swapping), but the swapping made it tough. It helps that I can trust the players to handle control of a foe, played to the hilt.

That is a lot more zany than what you are proposing. But my suggestion is to set up a foreshadowing encounter where the swaps happen as you envision, but only for that encounter. Make it a zone or ritual or something that wears off. Then if everyone likes it, you can reintroduce it for a whole session later.

 

[Storminator]

I did this in Mutants and Masterminds once, and it was a good time. As long as your players are good sports and it's a limited run it shouldn't be a problem. As you say, some players are more adept than others, so try to give them the more difficult PCs (I just randomly assigned new PCs, then gave the players an option to swap - none did).

PS