What do I do now?

[Slife]

So, IYC, is the spell Protection From Evil cast upon the personality, or the body, or on everyone sharing a body?

The range is creature touched, so it could be any of these.

 

[megamania]

IF the created personality is seperated where will it go? Where did it originate?

Could the "created" spirit really belong to a foe of the powerful mage or a child of a foe? The evil mage transferred the spirit into Vargas' body to hide it or make other's think his foe is dead.

This can lead to new stories and plots.

 

[Jesus_marley]

Is the player willing to sacrifice one of the personalities to further the character?

What I mean is.... have one of the personalities (player's choice) remain in the body. The other is removed and believed to be gone when in fact it lives on as a non corporeal being. Everyone is unaware of this, thinking the removed personality to be dead and gone.

The removed personality then becomes an NPC that resents being kicked out and now seeks revenge on the other. The being has no physical manifestation so it can only possess others and interact with the world that way.

Makes for an interesting recurring villain. The best part is that the party won't even know that they are always fighting the same guy.... at least not at first....

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Is the player willing to sacrifice one of the personalities to further the character?

What I mean is.... have one of the personalities (player's choice) remain in the body. The other is removed and believed to be gone when in fact it lives on as a non corporeal being. Everyone is unaware of this, thinking the removed personality to be dead and gone.

The removed personality then becomes an NPC that resents being kicked out and now seeks revenge on the other. The being has no physical manifestation so it can only possess others and interact with the world that way.

Makes for an interesting recurring villain. The best part is that the party won't even know that they are always fighting the same guy.... at least not at first....

That is a really good idea Jesus_marley! I love it!

At the moment we (the player and I) are leaning towards having the 2 characters eventually figure out a way to mutually share the body. However, if we do decide to ditch one of the personalities (almost certainly Cornealius) then I would definitely go with this idea. I can see a whole heap of adventure possibilities coming from this.

Thanks,

Olaf the Stout

 

[Olaf the Stout]

IF the created personality is seperated where will it go? Where did it originate?

Could the "created" spirit really belong to a foe of the powerful mage or a child of a foe? The evil mage transferred the spirit into Vargas' body to hide it or make other's think his foe is dead.

This can lead to new stories and plots.

As I said in one of my previous posts, I had suggested something similar to this to my player. He though it was an ok idea but he like his idea of Cornealius being a completely made-up creation better. Since I wanted him to enjoy playing his character as much as he could I decided to just go with his idea.

Olaf the Stout

 

[lkj]

I don't know if this would work mechanically for what the player wants out of his character, but the following idea appeals to me dramatically:

1) Let it be discovered that the dual personality/possession is the work of a powerful mage. But have it unclear the exact nature of the curse (i.e. that Cornealius is the fake and Vargas the real person).

2) Have it discovered that removal of the curse requires something from the mage, as suggested before. Maybe some minor artifact that was used in casting of the spell. Maybe just the intervention of the mage himself-- only he knows how to use the artifact or some such.

3) The group adventures to find the mage. That can be as hard or as difficult as you like.

4) When they finally find the mage, corner him (capture him?) and try to demand/force him to remove the curse, the mage reveals the true nature of the curse. Cornealius and co. learn that 'fixing' the problem will destroy Cornealius in favor of Vargus.

I just can't help but love what that scene would be like. 'No!!!!! It can't be!!!!!" Hehe.

Anyway, just an idea.

AD

PS: Of course, after the big reveal, you could insert some method for Corny to remain in existence if you like. Or maybe the party just has to decide to live with the existence of Vargus in order to preserve their friend. Then things can continue essentially as is, but you've had a great adventure and learned his true nature.

PPS: And of course the beauty of this is that Vargus would go along with the whole thing, laughing inside as his freedom came ever closer . . .

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I don't know if this would work mechanically for what the player wants out of his character, but the following idea appeals to me dramatically:

1) Let it be discovered that the dual personality/possession is the work of a powerful mage. But have it unclear the exact nature of the curse (i.e. that Cornealius is the fake and Vargas the real person).

2) Have it discovered that removal of the curse requires something from the mage, as suggested before. Maybe some minor artifact that was used in casting of the spell. Maybe just the intervention of the mage himself-- only he knows how to use the artifact or some such.

3) The group adventures to find the mage. That can be as hard or as difficult as you like.

4) When they finally find the mage, corner him (capture him?) and try to demand/force him to remove the curse, the mage reveals the true nature of the curse. Cornealius and co. learn that 'fixing' the problem will destroy Cornealius in favor of Vargus.

I just can't help but love what that scene would be like. 'No!!!!! It can't be!!!!!" Hehe.

Anyway, just an idea.

AD

PS: Of course, after the big reveal, you could insert some method for Corny to remain in existence if you like. Or maybe the party just has to decide to live with the existence of Vargus in order to preserve their friend. Then things can continue essentially as is, but you've had a great adventure and learned his true nature.

PPS: And of course the beauty of this is that Vargus would go along with the whole thing, laughing inside as his freedom came ever closer . . .

I don't know about the idea of keeping the fact that Cornealius is the "fake" a secret. I think that would make for a good teaser and "What do we do know?" sort of problem. The party would have to decide whether or not it was right to sort of "kill" Cornealius.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Small update.

There were a couple of funny moments from last session.

The party are about halfway through Madness in Freeport and are exploring an ancient serpent temple. On a couple of occasions the party would have had an easier time of things if someone could read some Valossan writing (a ancient serpent language). No problem, Cornealius has that on his spell list.

Unfortunately for him (and the party) Vargus was in control at the time. Vargus can’t read any languages (he’s illiterate) let alone ancient serpent ones! [Note: For roleplaying (and I think humour value) the player left Vargus as illiterate even though he has levels in Rogue as well as Barbarian.]

Later on the party wanted to Identify a magic item. Cornealius has Identify on his spell list. However, once again Vargus was the one in control! Shortly after that the party encountered some shadows. Unfortunately for Vargus they need a magical weapon to hit them and he hates arcane magic. One of the other PC’s gave him a rapier to use instead. However he made the mistake of telling him that it was magical as he gave him the weapon.

Clank! That’s the sound of Vargus dropping the rapier like a hot potato once he was told that the weapon was magical. Luckily the PC Cleric had prepared Magic Weapon that morning and Vargus begrudgingly let him cast that on his spiked chain instead. (Vargus is wary but doesn’t hate divine magic.)

Olaf the Stout

 

[Imagicka]

Greetings…

Well, it does sound like the quintessential split-personality character, that has been executed quite well. Of course, pretty much what happens to this character is up to both the player and you the GM. Because so much of the result is going to be effected by the player’s/characters’ reactions.

Once Cornealius realizes the truth about his character, what is he going to want to do? Will he go quietly into oblivion? Will he become resentful and become evil? Will he want to become his own self? With his own body? Will he want to share his existing body?

Now, I’m not a fan of the Hulk, but I think that that comic book would have some excellent ideas on what you can do to this character. Some campaign ideas that come to mind:

• He finds out that he cannot easily remedy the situation with just a simple Remove Enchantment. Perhaps that spell would make things worse. Also, Remove Curse just isn’t going to cut it.
• Rumours and hints that there might have been other wizards who have dealt with this kind of situation. However, they lived in remote locations in far off lands. Getting there is an adventure in of itself. – Do the tomes of Evelyn tres’Cara hold the secret to resolving C/V’s dilemma? (If it’s my game…not by a long-shot.)
• Take a page from the Hulk Cartoons. What had they done to his character? But some of the things you can do (I’d only do them temporarily, just to have fun with the situation):
  • Switch the stats, have Cornelius deal with Vargus’s stats/skills; and visa versa.
  • Have the characters combine into one being/personality. (a la Voyager Neelix/Tuvok - Tuvix) But that would be one hell of a roleplaying feat.
  • Split him into two separate people? This might be an excellent solution in the long run. But I don’t know if you’d want to do that eventually. – To use another Star Trek reference… when Riker was split into two separate persons.
  • Ooo... I just thought of something else. What if Cornelius is the unwitting agent of this wizard that originally 'curse' Vargus in the first place? That perhaps this mage had somehow implanted a 'sleeper' personality within Vargus to do something that the original mage is uncapable of. Perhaps infultrate some magickal location where a magic-hating barbarian would be ideal to perform this task. That this third personality pops up at the right time to do some nasty stuff.

If I were running something like this, I would throw out rumours of some wizard named Evelyn tres’Cara who centuries ago had to deal with her own multiple personality problem, that her writings were extensive on the problem and offers her solutions on the matter. – Allowing the players to go off searching for more information by traveling to where she was purported to have lived, and then run a few adventures about having to collect her tomes.

Getting to the region… one adventure right there. Finding out about Evelyn, and searching her ruined keep… second adventure. Learning that some of her tomes that didn’t contain much in the way of magical information (but specifically dealing with her multiple-personality disorder) were sold off to some merchant… third adventure.

Perhaps that 100 year old tome that the cleric was using was one of Evelyn’s books, and that he (or some eager young cleric-assistant) comes back to the party and says he’s been doing a little more research on the problem, and starts telling the party about Evelyn and her books, and a little bit of her history.

But I would definitely be playing up the whole ‘possessed by a demon’ thing so that the character would attempt to deal with the problem, only to find out that he isn’t possessed. But it would seem that you’ve already done that.

The idea of transferring the personality to something like a golem sounds interesting. But I’d say that that is a temporary solution. That finding a body to permanently inhabit would be more desirable, since it seems that any long term use of a golem or whatever, results in adverse effects… ooo… the possibilities.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I now have a problem in relation to this character. One of the other players thinks that it is unfair for both of the personalities to get full XP. He thinks that the 2 personalities should have to share the XP. I have started a new thread about that here. Your thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

Olaf the Stout