strange char concept

[SolosAddie]

Ok, this wierd idea occurred to me and I wanted to see what people think.

Disclaimer: I do not mean to insult anyone who struggles with personality disorders or who has to live with others with any conditions that I go into below. I am trying to explore this as an intellectual excercise with potential use in a role-playing game.


Playing a character who has multiple personalities. I was thinking a chameleon bard, or factotum (need more info on factotum like what book) could pull this off well.

The result could be strange and interesting to play. Possibly rolling a die to determine the dominant personality, (essentially, I'd write up several character back stories/personalities) and they could possibly switch during stressful moments.

If anyone is familiar with Terry Pratchett, i think the character arnold sideways had something similiar to what i am envisioning. Multiple personalities, and anyone of them could respond to events in the world.

If people can especially comment if you have suggestions on viability, especially of the bard, it would be most appreciated.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Its viable...if you have the cooperation of the DM- and possibly the other players- to help make it work.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Definitely make sure the other players agree to it. A player in one of my old groups had a multiple personality character. The "base" persona was a cleric of Tiamat. The rest of the group were mercenray types working for her. His most common alter-ego, however, was a loud mouth, boozing jackass who HATED tiamat and constantly referred to her as a bitch. The rest of the party actually hated her, too though (especially my character) and were only using her alegiance to help our own long term goals, so we actually preferred this alter-ego to his normal soft-spoken cowardly self. And he sure was more entertaining. Yet another alter-ego was a crusading knight of bahamut. Whenever this one surfaced, we had to subdue him, because he'd try to kill us for being evil dragon spawn.

I don't know how the player determined when to switch to which persona, or if he had a system at all. But we were ok with it, and let him roleplay it out no matter what. This meant he was utterly worthless in about half our combats. In the one or two fights we REALLY needed the help, we were able to shake some sense into him and get him to revert back.