An odd character concept/ logistics weirdness

[Eura]

So a Friend and I were wanting to play the same two-headed ogre or ogre-like creature (probably going to end up with half-giant) but we both were wanting to have our own class levels to essentially be two pc's with one body. I'm planning on being an arcane caster, he a divine caster. My question is how the flying hell do we do attributes/skills ect. work, I mean hp is probably the average hit die between us but does still spell suddenly become godly if you can't one handed cast, can you get different initiatives, do I use mount rules for movement or do I get two movements because two people? My Dm says he's okay with the concept but we're scratching our heads on how this stuff would work.


P.s. This is like the opposite of a optimization group, monks don't completely suck and wizard shenanigans are unheard of for half the group. I'm ******* around so everyone can have fun.

[Hrugner]

If awkward will be fun, make both players staggered unless they take an action to give their counterpart a full action on their turn.

[ComaVision]

I'd handle the stats like a gestalt character.

You'd have a shared move action, and a standard action each as long as they don't interfere with each other.

For example, you could move and both cast a spell (using the left and right hand for somatic components, respectively) but you couldn't both do a melee attack or do a melee attack & cast a spell (unless the weapon was one handed). I think that makes sense.

[frogglesmash]

This sounds like it should be a sort of pseudo gestalt build, where you take all the best physical traits available from either class and apply that to your body, i.e. Fort and Ref saves, HD, and HP but perhaps not BAB as that represents actual training. I'd say for skills each class should gain and maintain their own separate skill lists, though certain skills should be useable by either of the characters, specifically skills that govern movement i.e. climb, swim, balance, tumble, and jump. I'd also suggest on using a psionic class for one of the heads because their abilities do not require any movement to pull off. Physical ability scores should be shared while mental ability scores should be separate. As for how actions should be handle every round, there's a couple ways you could handle it. You could simply have two sets of actions for your one body, but I feel that this isn't very fun or challenging,you could instead have one set of normal actions as well as another set of purely mental extra actions, similar to how the (iirc) elder brain works, this works particularly well if one of you is psionic. If you really want to give yourselves a challenge you could give yourselves only one set of actions and try to manage all of your tasks in that time frame.

[Kantolin]

Mechanically, I also would treat it as a gestalt character with two standard actions provided one of them was purely mental (or at least had no somatic components). And perhaps 'both of you get feats'.

Similarly mechanically, this resultant character would be a heck of a lot worse than simply having /two/ ogres there (two buckets of HP, two standards a turn without limtiations, two move actions a turn, doesn't need to fight with item slots to boost int and wisdom, more than two hands to hold things, arcane spell failure chance, yadda), so insofar as game balance purposes it seems okay. The ability to use both cleric and wizard buffs on the same character is far less relevant than just having a cleric and a wizard. So you don't have to really worry about being too powerful with it. Not to mention if the single character fails a fort save vs nausea you're basically both taken out, which makes you more overall vulnerable to being surprisecharged by an enemy ogre or something.

Have you considered going with a psion instead of [one of the two classes]? That would help with components issues and prevent you from juggling armour, shield, holy symbols, and spell component pouches.

[Eura]

Being a Psion definitely sounds better than an arcane caster(still keeping an eye on them though) and I didn't know about gestalt characters until now which really helps out. I'm liking all the possibilities for how the action economy will work, probably going to juggle them and see which one we prefer.