Body Switching

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:25 pm

So this just popped into my head. Every so often, in various media, you have a scene where the characters switch bodies.

Now I was thinking about handling this in a game. Is there any mechanic to that that would be strictly better then just passing your character sheets to the right?

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:53 pm

Any mechanic that lets you mix and match parts of characters is going to fail pretty badly, so just passing character sheets is one of the least abusable mechanics possible. About the only thing that could come close to working is taking all of the ability scores and racial traits of the first character and the class, skill, and feat selections of the second. That comes close to hosing everybody equally because either nobody has the ability scores to do their job or everybody does. That is, switching two melee fighters results in both being reasonably good at their jobs, but switching a fighter and a wizard results in a fighter without the Strength to fight and a wizard without the Intelligence to cast most of his spells.

In general, mixing different parts of creatures together won't be balanced at all. Many players will immediately try to find a way to generate a creature with all the best attributes of both. Simplest case in 3.5: Wild Shape + Natural Spell to create a full caster that's also a bear (and therefore better than a full caster of any starting race).

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 2:24 am

Generally, body-swap episodes involve people's mental capabilities coming with them, so INT, WIS, and CHA would follow the player.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 2:39 am

And this does flat-out result in the Wizard's Mind entering the Fighter's Body, having all good stats, lots of HP and spellcasting, and the Fighter's Mind entering the Wizard's body, granting them... all bad stats, and a body that can't handle the fighting they're used to.

Alternatively you can do what Revolutionary Girl Utena did: Anthy actually became sporty and athletic and strong, because Utena's mind actually forced her body to act at the level she was used to, or something, and suddenly Utena was frail because Anthy's mind basically went "Don't be silly, this body can't hold the weight of another person!"

Which would basically mean "literally swap sheets around, you basically just each have an illusion of appearing as the other, and need to juggle equipment around for a moment".

Come to think of it, Daphne basically does that as well in the joke episode where two characters have personality swaps (due to a magic vending machine that had mutated DNA).

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 3:31 am

The Disgaea anime also did basically the same thing with its personality swap episode.

I guess it would be possible to make a balanced RPG involving body swapping if you were careful about which parts of the character stuck with the body and didn't let people trade physical resources for mental resources, but that doesn't help for existing games.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 5:12 am

Any mix-n-match system is going to end up with the necromancer changing bodies with a troll and then singing "anything you can do, I can do better".

-Username17

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 5:33 am

When we did that once it was mostly MTP, with half the characters trying to prevent the others from abusing their bodies by threatening retribution. We used a "you have the physical stats of the other character, rest stays the same" variant, but I don't remember any serious concern about it - most correctly assumed this was just an evening adventure for laughs.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 5:38 am

Eclipse Phase sort-of has body swapping. It's more "bodies are disposable", though. And the actual rules aren't good.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 1:22 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Any mix-n-match system is going to end up with the necromancer changing bodies with a troll and then singing "anything you can do, I can do better".

-Username17

Or something to that effect, yeah.

Which is why you just kind of can't do body-swap episodes really faithfully in D&D without being unfair. (Unless you do what I think Koumei suggested, which was that nobody changes character sheets, they're all basically just involuntarily disguised as each other)

If you want to be able to do them faithfully and fairly, your system has to make people have the same proportion of their character resources in, "stuff that moves with the mind," and in, "stuff that moves with the body"

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Sep 06, 2013 1:38 pm

It's more fun if you have the players just trade character sheets and assume that mental stats have enough of a physical basis to remain the same. So the Wizard in the fighter's body has all of the fighters stats and skills but the wizard's personality and viva versa.