Shapeshifting characters

[Tanuki Tales]

Out of curiosity, for those folks who have fielded long term shapeshifters (either as a player or as a GM), how did you feel about the conceptual identity? How did you go about adding your own spins and quirks to them to not have them just end up generic and develop their own unique identity/image?

[Quertus]

Out of curiosity, for those folks who have fielded long term shapeshifters (either as a player or as a GM), how did you feel about the conceptual identity? How did you go about adding your own spins and quirks to them to not have them just end up generic and develop their own unique identity/image?

Well, I only want to play a long-term shapeshifter. But I suspect that, like with all characters, the key is to start with giving them a well fleshed out personality.

For things specific to their power... What forms do they favor? Are there any forms they actively dislike, or are uncomfortable becoming? If they become an X, is it always the same X, or will it look different each time? Are they always the same gender? Do they have a base form; if so, do they default to it, or avoid it? Can they become anything they can imagine, or only "real" things they've encountered; if the latter, what are that familiar with?

[Katrina]

To me, it depends on what kind of shapeshifter. For example, I have an Eberron Changeling that I love to play any time that system comes up who basically felt she had to define herself as she was growing up because nothing was chosen for her. She ended up moving through all three "Philosophies" of changelings (if you've read Races of Eberron. if you haven't, there is a quick rundown in the spoiler.) throughout her life. But one of the most fun things about her was that she had this very quirky idea of who a person was and tended to question even her non-changeling allies on it even though she only actually revealed herself as a changeling once. In five different games, and then only to the Warforged who had displayed similar levels of having to forge an identity for himself. Ironically, because she was always afraid to reveal her changeling nature to her adventuring group, she did the least actual in game shapeshifting of all these characters.

On the other hand, I played a Mutants and Masterminds concept roughly based on the previous concept, but I wasn't able to really get the same feel. Because the character's shapeshifting derived from Mutant powers that activated when she was a teenager rather than something she was born with and had to hide constantly for fear of being murdered, she didn't have the same feel. Also, she had the option of just "not doing it." Still, I ended up forging her into a completely different character who took a different approach on their powers and it was still really fun. Including the part where the GM hit me with a power nullifier and I described her going back to her normal form and her bust being much smaller, which made the guys freak out. :smalltongue: Mainly because her "heroic identity" was a guy, but also because they knew her from school and she was usually a little heavier up top. She treated her abilities like just something she could do.

And for a third example, I played a Lunar Exalted who took the Hybrid Body Rearrangement Knack to augment her normal human form so that she could not only fight but survive better. When she was told she should focus on her fitness so she could become stronger by the Dawn Caste (Warrior), she replied "Why? I can turn into a bear." She used her shapeshifting like a swiss army knife, constantly taking new forms (Lunar Exalted have to hunt and kill the thing they want to turn into.) and shifting forms very frequently to fit what she was doing. Kit had a few lines though. She never shifted gender because she felt it was "strange", even though Lunar Exalted can learn to do so.


In the end, shapeshifting can be a very rewarding power to play because it almost brings your character's personality to the forefront by itself. Because the physical is malleable, the mental must be more memorable. At least, that's my two cents.


Basically, there are three camps.
Shapers are Changelings to basically used their abilities to take one form and built an identity and a life around that one form. They effectively behaved like they weren't changelings, simply working to keep themselves hidden in their normal state.

Becomers like to constantly shift to look like other people, and often tried to become other people just to see if they can pull it off. These were the Changelings that most people thought of when they thought of the horrible face stealing assassins. Becomers shift their form often and typically try to impersonate others to get themselves into luxuries or power they would be unable to normally.

Reality Seekers were a kind of new age changeling who believed that they shouldn't hide their form and instead the true concept of who they were could only be embraced when they had revealed themselves. They were typically the only living changelings that someone saw in their natural state. These changelings focused more on defining themselves than impersonating others or hiding their racial heritage.

[Inevitability]

One of the more memorable characters from my group was a changeling rogue, Jin. His player played him all the way from level 5 to 20, pulling all kinds of shenanigans along the way.

[ElFi]

A minor superhero in an M&M campaign I ran about a year ago was a shapeshifter who went by the moniker Changeling. She got her powers in her mid-teens from the immense guilt prompted by the time period when she bullied her best friend in order to become popular and inadvertently drove said friend to suicide- thus creating the troubling but fascinating metaphor of somebody who can become anyone except a person with a clean conscience. She was intensely quiet and shy as a result of her past and didn't interact much with the PC's, but had a subtle-but-sweet romance with the resident flying-brick NPC, Legendary. None of my players really made an effort to befriend her, though I did have plans to explore her character in that fashion. Ah, well. Maybe next time.

[ellindsey]

In a long running superhero (Champions 4th edition) campaign, I played a character who was a genderless alien shapeshifter who was pretending to be a human with mutant powers. They created an elaborate identity and a human persona which they adopted as their base form, despite not actually physically having a base form in terms of game mechanics. They did eventually come out to the other team members about not actually being human, though they objected to being called an alien. They were born on earth, though their parents were aliens - it was a complicated backstory.

I actually didn't use the games shapeshifting powers all that much in combat, but instead used a lot of martial arts manuevers from the optional martial arts rules supplement re-flavored as minor shapeshifting tricks. We had someone else in the party who also used shapeshifting heavily, though her abilities were all based on turning into various animals via magic, and I didn't want to overlap ability-wise, so my shapeshifting alien ended up as more of a speedster/martial artist/gymnast in actual game mechanics terms.

This character has a long-running relationship with another PC, who was a hive-mind split among five identical bodies, and they got married at the end of the campaign. It was a really weird relationship, but their backstories and personalities meshed remarkably well.

[Solaris]

Once had a player (in an admittedly rather short-lived PbP game, the one where I learned PbP players don't deserve good plots because they can't be arsed to stick around) try playing a changeling character who basically just pretended to be all of these people who were helping the party out with various things because Reasons. Allegedly, the other members of the party didn't know what was going on. It didn't work out quite so well as he'd hoped. The character didn't really have anything to it beyond that one gimmick, even by the dismal standards of D&D characters.