When an NPC spirit ends up inside the PC's dead body...

[Driddle]

Situation: PC dies. Friends put his shell of a body on ice (so to speak) with plans to bring him back to life when they get a chance. Unbeknownst to them, another recently deceased soul/spirit is floating free and expecting *his* friends to magically tie him with a new body soon. Coincidences line up and the wrong guy gets the PC's body.

Work out the details for me, please, and possible follow-through scenarios.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Wow! That sounds cool.

My thinking would be... Take Magic Jar as a starting point. Seems the closest effect I can think of:

You keep your Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, level, class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, alignment, and mental abilities. The body retains its Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, hit points, natural abilities, and automatic abilities. A body with extra limbs does not allow you to make more attacks (or more advantageous two-weapon attacks) than normal. You can’t choose to activate the body’s extraordinary or supernatural abilities. The creature’s spells and spell-like abilities do not stay with the body.

Which could make for an extremely powerful character if it's a wizard posessing a fighter types body. Yikes! If they're sticking around for any length of time. I'd consider shifting some of those things about until you're happy with the balance wrt the other PCs.


Some possible follow ups:

Finding a new body that the NPC is capable and willing to occupy. That'll leave their friend 'empty' so their spirit can get back in.

The PCs spirit returns and the body now has 2 spirits in it. Are they fused together? Who's in charge?

This bizare situation is against the natural order of the universe. A group of modrons wish to put things right... and probably not in a nice way.

The real PC ends up in the other persons intended body. Possibly something the other PCs would have an instant bad reaction to (Mind Flayer? Drow?) Can they convince his friends of who they are?

I'm curious and got some questions:

Is the player of the PC going to be playing the NPC posessed body? Will the other PCs know? Are their abilities broadly similar? Was the NPC a friend or enemy of the party?

 

[Driddle]

I'm curious and got some questions:

Is the player of the PC going to be playing the NPC posessed body? Will the other PCs know? Are their abilities broadly similar? Was the NPC a friend or enemy of the party?

Heck, I'm not sure yet. Still playing around with the idea. Hoping creative input here will steer me in the right direction.

 

[cmanos]

sounds liek fun. Now if you can get the guy who's character's body it is to play the NPC inside his own body and make the party believe it's the other guy, now THAT would be fun

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I guess the first thing to think about is whether the player could play a character like this. Would they enjoy it? Could they resist telling anyone?


To make it easier to slot things in, I'd make it so the new NPC occupant had broadly similar abilities... perhaps with a few obvious differences. Makes the rules bit easier and means the other PCs are less likely to be suspicious. Perhaps they could claim some sort of amnesia to explain why they don't know a lot of things they used to.

If the player is going to be playing this, then I'd sit down with them and thrash out the personality of the occupant - ought to be something they'll enjoy, after all?

Personally, I'd have them not actively hostile to the party. I don't really enjoy situations like that and IME it often leads to bad feelings all round.

 

[Driddle]

My first thought is this: After the "new" guy wakes up and realizes he's not where he's supposed to be, he ... well ... he runs off. Simple as that. After all, why would he want to hang around with our heroes and pretend to be someone he's not -- or worse, get kicked out of the body?

I thought about maybe bumping the real PC's spirit into the mage's familiar until things get straightened out. It would give him a role to play in the party, after all, as they chase down his AWOL body.

 

[Truth Seeker]

Situation: PC dies. Friends put his shell of a body on ice (so to speak) with plans to bring him back to life when they get a chance. Unbeknownst to them, another recently deceased soul/spirit is floating free and expecting *his* friends to magically tie him with a new body soon. Coincidences line up and the wrong guy gets the PC's body.

Work out the details for me, please, and possible follow-through scenarios.

View Freaky Friday movie. And another movie with Chris Rock, in the body of a rich elder caucasian male *name escapes me for the moment*

The forementioned PC that died, will not be the same. The NPC will become the new projected indentity, coming from the body. The player will be have to given new instructions on how to potray the new persona.

 

[Empress]

Well, if you look at "Speak with Dead" (I just did ), you'll see that the body has the "previous owners" memories stashed away somewhere.

So how about letting the player be revived, and the new soul has to gain control of its new environment first? So you as GM could give him visions of past events (old memories being restored) or have him do strange things (like yearning to smoke a pipe when he never smoked, suddenly being left-handed, and so on).
Over time, the true character will gain control of the body but lose the original host's memories. Now what? Will he fake being who his body belonged to until he found his old friends? Will he flee? Enlist the group's help? Maybe the player is even fascinated enough by now that he wants to continue playing the new guy?

 

[philreed]

In the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide a possible drawback to raising the dead includes haunted -- the subject is bonded with a soul.

In my Core Class Variants PDF I created a monk that draws his power from the soul of an ancestor.

Basically, slipping souls inside a PC can be a lot of fun. You've got a neat idea there that should screw with the player's mind for several game sessions.

 

[shaylon]

This is a very creative idea. I would be interested in hearing how this plays out in-game. If you go through with this, let us know!

-Shay