[PLOTS] The classic body-swap episode (and other wacky ideas)

[Sam]

Just played in a Living Greyhawk module that used this.... What really made things difficult was that nobody's character sheets / spell lists were in the best form. A whole lot of "what does that say" and "what ability does that give you"... Same mod also had a form of the tesseract cube that PirateCat talked about in another recent thread. The mod author must have wanted to put all of the "classic" problems in one module.

It was fun though!

 

[Napftor]

Inspired by the Ravager of Time post, I've expanded the scope of this thread. Throw on some more wacky plots!

Not too many modules after the body-swapping one, an adversary of the party used the final wish on his magic ring to rob the characters of their forms, changing them into lower echelon creatures (don't remember the exact phrasing here). Anyway, the wish turned all PCs belonging to a particular group into goblins. We were playing in the Realms, Waterdeep specifically, and Blackstaff offered to reverse the wish's effects if the PCs undertook a mission for him. To make a long story short, they completed the mission and continued the campaign in their original states. But travelling to the Moonshaes as goblins and defeating a faction of Shadow Thieves proved to be a lot of fun in goblin form.

 

[Napftor]

Here's another plot I remember throwing at the same PCs. Their NPC was a priest of Lathander (Napftor, my ENWorld namesake, in fact) who could not be assertive as a party member. He pretty much stayed in the backrgound during combat, healing and bolstering with spells as needed. I decided to write up a background of why he was this way and then introduce it to the PCs in a unique way.

At the module's beginning, an enemy hit Napftor with a psionic dart which knocked him unconscious. There was an unanticipated side effect, however, in that the dart exploded on impact with the priest. Psionic waves drew the PCs into whatever memory Napftor had in mind when he was shot. In this case, it was the memory which explains his unwillingness to lead others. The rest of the module took place in the priest's mind, though he was not aware of it. To Napftor, the past was alive again, and the PCs became the members of his old adventuring band. The story was that a colony of gnomes was being harrassed by a dragon and sent for Napftor's band to defeat the beast.

One thing led to another, as it happened in Napftor's past, and the trail led into nearby ice caves where a dracolich was imprisoned. The dragon they were tracking attacked while its minions attempted to release the undead wyrm. There was a way for Napftor to collapse the caves, which would stop the dracolich from being revived, but would kill his companions at the same time. The point of the story was here, when the PCs needed to convince the priest that his action was the right one. In reality, collapsing the caves brought too much guilt to the priest and he never accepted his decision, believing there was a better way he just didn't see. Once the PCs convinced dream-Napftor to again collapse the caves, the psionic energy released the party from its trip into the priest's mind. Napftor awoke without the constant fear of reliving the past and became that much memorable an NPC.

 

[RangerWickett]

Let's see. I think I'll do something like this for a humorous episode. We've got:

1. Rantle, male human warrior who wants to marry Shalosha, an NPC Elf princess.
2. Fayne, female Elf warrior who hates Shalosha's father, but likes Shalosha.
3. Guthwulf, male human cleric who has a reputation as a vicious torturer. He might actually consider Rantle a friend. He's been hitting on Katrina.
4. Quill Kainen, male human wizard who's a braggard.
5. Shara, female human psychic monk who has an elder god inside her.
6. Rivereye, crystalline psion metacreationist.
7. Diogenes, male human enchanter, really frikkin' pompous.

NPCs include:
1. Shalosha, female Elf fighter-mage, princess, betrothed to Rantle.
2. Katrina, female human fire mage, sister of Rantle. Has a crush on Diogenes.

I think I'll have Shara and Rivereye, the psions, stay normal. Fayne can switch with Shalosha, making it a bit odd that she's in the body of the daughter of the one she hates. Rantle and Quill will shift, because it will force Quill to get involved in more roleplaying. Katrina and Guthwulf get to switch, because Guthwulf's player is the funniest guy in the group, so he'll have the most fun with gender-bending. And Diogenes . . . maybe he'll take turns or something. I dunno.

 

[babomb]

I played in a game where we switched bodies once. It didn't go over so well. I thought it was pretty interesting. (My paladin switched bodies with an evil monk!) To quote the player of the psion (who switched with the fighter), though, "If I wanted to play a fighter, I would have made one!" The fighter's player wasn't too enthused about having to learn the psionics rules either.

 

[evileeyore]

So essentially your not switching bodies but personalities.

IE: Your not transfering skills and abilities.

Hmmm. That would have sucked in my last D&D campiagn. 4 Fanatic male followers of the Emperor (diety of 'man'), one female follower the Emperor (non-fanatic), one male heretical worshipper of the Old Gods of the Wood (druid). As long as none of the fanatics wound up with the heretics body it might have turned out okay... If the druid got a Fanatics body and continued to worship the wrong god, there would have been trouble...

I could see it working out in a more relaxed party...

I just have trouble justifying why my character, a Fighter say, who has spent his whole life fighting, would suddenly be able to cast spells. Or vice-versa. Or why the gods can no longer determine who their chosen are?

Nah, with body swapping should come all their skills and powers, even the ones lost due to stat decreases (Fighter no longer having access to PA because of new wimpy STR).

It would be consistent and make the charaters more hobbled (except the INT, WIS, CHA stat dependent ones any way).

Editted to correct 4 am inability to spell

 

[Hand of Evil]

I did it with one of my players and the villian. It was really amazing how long the other players took to catch on, two ended up poisoned, and one kidnapped and sold into slavery.

 

[Napftor]

So essentially your not switching bodies but personalities...

I just have trouble justifying why my character, a Fighter say, who has spent his whole life fighting, would suddenly be able to cast spells. Or vice-versa. Or why the gods can no longer determine who their chosen are?

Nah, with body swapping should come all their skills and powers, even the ones lost due to stat decreases (Fighter no longer having access to PA because of new wimpy STR).

It would be consistent and make the charaters more hobbled (except the INT, WIS, CHA stat dependent ones any way).

This is true, evileeyore, but taking it literally isn't quite as much fun. Nothing beats a moment when the fighter who's been transferred into the mage says, "So what do all of these spells do, anyway?" You're version of body-swapping is still viable. Using such a plot in the first place depends a lot on the campaign and the players themselves.

 

[Richards]

I've never done body-swapping in D&D/AD&D, but I did do it once in Hero Quest (which I used to train my sons in roleplaying). They were body-swapped into evil bodies to infiltrate a temple of evil and rescue a stolen artifact. Then, after that mission, they returned to find their real bodies had been stolen, so they had to track them down so they could be put back into their "original" bodies.

Johnathan