Same Character, New Sexiness

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Shapeshifters.

That don't know they are because they have no control over it and it only happens when they are unconcious.

And there's no reason they couldn't be the children of (seemingly) normal humanoid parents, giving them a hook to find out (when they realise what they are) where their shifting ability comes from:

Are they mutants (ala X-Men, if you feel so inclined)?
Gifted? Cursed?
Throwback to a time when all creatures were actually of one shapeshifting race?
Maybe they aren't their parents children and they're really some shapeshifting creature doing a cuckoo and tricking some poor humanoid sap into raising their children for them.




Or maybe it happens when they go to sleep because of some connection to the power of the dream realm. Are they inhabited by dream creatures? Are they dream creatures? Has some great dream entity given them this power for a purpose?

 

[Rechan]

Here's an old favorite: Body swap.

For whatever reason, the Bugbear Shaman and the Rogue get swapped into each other's bodies.

To maximize the effect, the BB is a villain or at least a criminal. So bounty hunters mistake the PC as the actual criminal. Cue PCs trying to hunt down the rogue.

 

[Leatherhead]

But I made my character specifically not sexy.

 

[Oni]

How serious is your game going to be? It's just a matter of establishing the rules of your world.

Clothes make the man (or woman): The character fluff remains the same, but switching stats is a simple as changing clothes, literally. Specially designed magical outfits, each one a new mechanical package at the level of the character.

If you want it more serious, simply change up the presentation a bit. Maybe the players are a rare breed that has the ability to access skills that have been stored in whatever magical widget is appropriate to the setting, and can simply change the mechanics of race and class by using/socketing/whatever the widget to their items or even themselves. You could even do quests around finding said widgets.

Thank you j-rpg's

 

[coyote6]

Maybe some kind of artifact, which as one of its effects, can occasionally transmorgify its bearers? Give it a beneficial effect or three, too -- things that work for the group as a whole rather than one particular PC -- and maybe some other drawback (that's more of an actual drawback, as the transform thing is actually a player benefit). Maybe the artifact is a weirdness magnet.

Some kind of contained fragment of Chaos maybe.

 

[coyote6]

Maybe some kind weird delayed double-post?

 

[jmucchiello]

Don't explain it. It's just window dressing. There was a universe where "Fred" was a Human Rogue. There is another universe where "Fred" is a Bugbear Wizard. Somehow these two universes have moved in lockstep with one another where the only superficial difference was What Fred Looks Like and How Fred Gets Things Done. Sure, you remember when The Rogue Fred sneaked into the tower and stole the ruby. In the other universe The Wizard Fred used a scroll of teleport to acquire the ruby. It doesn't matter: one morning the ruby was in the tower, the next morning it was in Fred's pocket.

You, the gamers, are observing Universe 1. Next week, you switch to Universe 2. Nothing has changed except Fred. No one knows there is a difference. After the switch you may occasionally experience those deja-vu-like moments when "Geroge" recommends that "Fred" should sneak up on the enemy. George then shakes his head and proposes something else. Sometimes parallel universes are leaky. Think nothing of it.

The main upshot of this is don't make a big deal about the change in-character. The change never happened. You the gamers have merely changed channels. The people on the television show don't know you've changed stations. Neither should the inhabitants of your RPG.

 

[Skallgrim]

I think that you should really look to your very first idea, and flesh it out and expand it. If the group of players is going to have a stable of characters, and you want those characters to have a shared backstory, so that "new" characters are aware of party dynamics, previous events, etc., it makes sense to actually construct the group that way.

Think of an adventuring company, like "Acquisitions, Inc.". The stable of playable characters is all of the adventurers who work for the company. Some of them can be old hands (and know everybody else) and others, while skilled, can be "new kids", to accomodate an actually new player.

They would need to have a stable base of operations which they can return to fairly easily, and also be expected to fill out "incident reports", or "after-action reports", or "tell the bard what happened reports" after each adventure, so that other employees could be aware of what went on.

That base of operations can be magically accessible, for parties who swap out characters from session to session ("We need a druid!"), or a location that has to be traveled to by mundane means (if swaps occur infrequently, or between adventures). The "debriefings" could be magical recordings by quill and scrying (again, for characters who need to be totally up to speed from session to session), or could be a more mundane storytelling for campaigns where the swaps are not as common.

The "company" doesn't have to be mercenary, either. Perhaps everyone is from the same city, or belongs to the same thieves guild, or adventurer's lodge, or temple of Avandra. What matters is that, in the game, there exists an actual group from which all of these adventurers are drawn. Then tailor that "game world" organization to meet the real world needs of your players.

Some suggestions: thieves' guilds, merchant guards, chartered adventurers, border watch, town guard, royal spies, temple guards, war refugees, expats abroad.

Some more exotic ideas would include people all marked by a particular god, such as Avandra, who feel drawn together by inexplicable feelings and common dreams. Also, perhaps people who were resurrected by a particular god, like the Raven Queen, and are thus forced to serve her in their "second" life. Perhaps even people "fated" to thwart Orcus, or Demogorgon, and gathered intentionally by wizards and other scryers.

In any case, a good option to emphasize this in play would be the "tribe" and "guild" feats in Dragon magazine, or even just a required common background.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think that you should really look to your very first idea, and flesh it out and expand it. If the group of players is going to have a stable of characters, and you want those characters to have a shared backstory, so that "new" characters are aware of party dynamics, previous events, etc., it makes sense to actually construct the group that way.

Think of an adventuring company, like "Acquisitions, Inc.". The stable of playable characters is all of the adventurers who work for the company. Some of them can be old hands (and know everybody else) and others, while skilled, can be "new kids", to accomodate an actually new player.

They would need to have a stable base of operations which they can return to fairly easily, and also be expected to fill out "incident reports", or "after-action reports", or "tell the bard what happened reports" after each adventure, so that other employees could be aware of what went on.

That base of operations can be magically accessible, for parties who swap out characters from session to session ("We need a druid!"), or a location that has to be traveled to by mundane means (if swaps occur infrequently, or between adventures). The "debriefings" could be magical recordings by quill and scrying (again, for characters who need to be totally up to speed from session to session), or could be a more mundane storytelling for campaigns where the swaps are not as common.

The "company" doesn't have to be mercenary, either. Perhaps everyone is from the same city, or belongs to the same thieves guild, or adventurer's lodge, or temple of Avandra. What matters is that, in the game, there exists an actual group from which all of these adventurers are drawn. Then tailor that "game world" organization to meet the real world needs of your players.

Some suggestions: thieves' guilds, merchant guards, chartered adventurers, border watch, town guard, royal spies, temple guards, war refugees, expats abroad.

Some more exotic ideas would include people all marked by a particular god, such as Avandra, who feel drawn together by inexplicable feelings and common dreams. Also, perhaps people who were resurrected by a particular god, like the Raven Queen, and are thus forced to serve her in their "second" life. Perhaps even people "fated" to thwart Orcus, or Demogorgon, and gathered intentionally by wizards and other scryers.

In any case, a good option to emphasize this in play would be the "tribe" and "guild" feats in Dragon magazine, or even just a required common background.

This is all very good advice.

In a long-running Eberron campaign I was part of, we did just this. Our characters became part of a mystical organization which became central to the plot, and each player ended up having several characters. We even reached the point where different characters had different levels of seniority, so that our original characters, who were still the most plot important, were considered the leaders of the organization and other characters had lesser positions. In fact, many DM-created NPCs joined the organization, and as a result became open game for PC use. Also, any cohorts were also part of the organization.

You really only need a few basic rules in order to make this kind of thing work well, which all basically add up to "notify the DM ahead of time whenever you want to switch character". We just told our DM a session or two in advance of switching characters, and it turned out very well. Of course, it is a lot easier if you are willing to accept slightly implausible occurrences to justify why one character is leaving and another is arriving (I had a warlock get deus-ex-machina'd into a lengthy stay in a court trial in the plane of Syrania, among other things), but such things are not necessary (just fun). Things get particularly interesting when you have characters going off to take care of important tasks while the players using their active characters do something else, and they get really interesting when you have multiple player groups with the same DM all being part of the same organization.

Of course, in that same campaign we had no problem with characters going through significant retraining or rebuilding, though always with story justification. One character went through a dramatic (and mysterious) transformation in the midst of an off-screen confrontation with a major villain(?), in which even his name was changed. The same "just talk to the Dm ahead of time" rule worked well.

 

[Wormwood]

Honestly, I'd go with "A Wizard Did It".

Come up with a groovy villain who curses the character with a permanent change (Ethan Rayne comes to mind), and sprinkle some MacGuffins about to fuel your character's quest to return to normal.

Then have fun eating the scenery as he deals with the dawning realization that his new form is a better expression of his inner desires than his old one was.