How does race change work? Is there a rule on how DM should act?

[Entessa]

1) I'm a variant human. Imagine the dm decides to make me drink a potion that turns me into a changeling. What's going to happen? Do I lose my additional feat? Is it DM decision?

2) I have a very odd question concerning roleplaying a different race when being born on another race. Does race influence perception? I'm not referring to stats or abilities, I'm referring to the possibility of your race actually impacting the very perspective of your being. Would a changeling feel the same way about loyalty, humanity and why not, even his own family? A little further: would changing race actually impact the character personality?

EDIT: When I say "would it impact the personality" I'm not referring only to a turmoil the character would experience by changing, but to a shift that may (or may not?) happen automatically on his own psyche (Changing from human to changeling), that has an indirect effect also on his own "values".

[Amnestic]

1) Imagine I'm a variant human the dm decides to make me drink a potion that turns me into a changeling. What's going to happen? Do I lose my additional feat? Is it DM decision?

As standard, yes, you lose all racial features of being a v.human (including the feat and skill) and gain those of a changeling. Your DM may decide otherwise of course.


2) I have a very odd question concerning roleplaying a different race when being born on another race. Does race influence perception? I'm not referring to stats or abilities, I'm referring to the possibility of your race actually impacting the very perspective of your being. Would a changeling feel the same way about loyalty, humanity and why not, even his own family? A little further: would changing race actually impact your personality?

I would say so. A human suddenly having an elven lifespan, for example, would doubtless affect their perspective and attitudes. As a changeling they're now permanently 'othered' from society, both their former fellow humans and 'natural' changelings. They might be able to 'pass', but they're not really one of them anymore. Or are they? Maybe they think they are. Maybe they're right. But there's plenty of internal turmoil that could be explored there.

[Keltest]

A human changing into a half-orc might not be too different personality wise, or vice versa. They might change based on how society treats them now, but thats still responding to external factors. A human changing into an elf is dealing with different sensory input and a different lifespan, and it would probably affect them to a greater or lesser degree.

Consider what's different from a perception standpoint and go from there. Even things like having a different metabolism might affect your mood and behavior if you used to be a glutton and suddenly never have an apatite.

[kazaryu]

1) I'm a variant human. Imagine the dm decides to make me drink a potion that turns me into a changeling. What's going to happen? Do I lose my additional feat? Is it DM decision?

2) I have a very odd question concerning roleplaying a different race when being born on another race. Does race influence perception? I'm not referring to stats or abilities, I'm referring to the possibility of your race actually impacting the very perspective of your being. Would a changeling feel the same way about loyalty, humanity and why not, even his own family? A little further: would changing race actually impact the character personality?

EDIT: When I say "would it impact the personality" I'm not referring only to a turmoil the character would experience by changing, but to a shift that may (or may not?) happen automatically on his own psyche (Changing from human to changeling), that has an indirect effect also on his own "values".

2. immediately...no. i don't think there would be much change. in the long term there may be a slow change in how they percieve the world. as a changeling, over time they'd get more comfortable being able to swap identites at a moments notice, that is likely to change a persons sense of identity. i won't say in what specific way, there could be so many.

But overall i'd say that no, unless there's a significant time jump you'd not see any real change in personality outside of them experimenting with their new body. OTOH, especially with such a drastic change of human->changeling, there could easily be a rather sudden obsession with 'playing' around with their new powers, sort of like the hyperfixation you might experience the first time you experience something cool.

[Bobthewizard]

By RAW, you lose the feat. If I were the DM, though, I'd likely let you keep it, thinking a human feat isn't the result of biology but of your upbringing. It's a skill that you get to keep. It's also likely a central feat for your character so taking that away could be devastating.

With Tasha's custom origin, you don't have to move ability scores so having your barbarian turned into a halfling is much less of an issue, except for that disadvantage with heavy weapons if I let you keep your GWM feat. :smallsmile:

As far as personality, I'd let the player decide how they want to role-play that.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Somethings likea human turned into a tiefling or elf into a drow may have more an effect after a bit of time.

Something like, "Man, it is difficult to get a fair shake as a Tiefling."

[OldTrees1]

2) I have a very odd question concerning roleplaying a different race when being born on another race. Does race influence perception? I'm not referring to stats or abilities, I'm referring to the possibility of your race actually impacting the very perspective of your being. Would a changeling feel the same way about loyalty, humanity and why not, even his own family? A little further: would changing race actually impact the character personality?

EDIT: When I say "would it impact the personality" I'm not referring only to a turmoil the character would experience by changing, but to a shift that may (or may not?) happen automatically on his own psyche (Changing from human to changeling), that has an indirect effect also on his own "values".

This depends on how alien the new form is. Changing a mind flayer into a beholder might have a big enough difference in brain/mind structure that it becomes noticeable despite being the same soul/person. It might be worth considering it an "altered mental state". Prolonged exposure to a continuous altered mental state could impact the personality.

However how different is it to change from Human to Changeling? That partially differs based on the edition, GM, Player, campaign, and character.

Personally I think Human and Changeling are not different enough to expect huge impacts on personality directly. Changeling brain/mind is better at handling transformation. This might change how the brain recognizes different people. The Human might have relied on faces or names but finds themselves starting to identify/remembering people by their personality quirks first and faces/names second.

Most of the mental changes I would expect would be result of experience changing from Human to Changeling instead of changes to how the mind/brain works for those 2 species. They are rather similar species.

Another possibility that blurs the line is how do Changelings transform with their thoughts. Do they need to police their thoughts to avoid changing? Or does it take extra effort for a Changeling to even think thoughts about their appearance? Either of these would have an impact on the transformed Human. The former is a reaction to the changed body's behavior. The latter is an altered mental state (a blocker).

Even longer term the personality would change as a result of living a different life with different capabilities that they previously would have. Someone above mentioned if changing identities becomes a habit, it might affect how they self identify.

[Keravath]

It is pretty much up to the DM how much you retain and how much changes if you change races.

As far as I know, there is no RAW on the impact of changing races in general. In specific, you have the consequences of the reincarnate spell.

"The reincarnated creature recalls its former life and experiences. It retains the capabilities it had in its original form, except it exchanges its original race for the new one and changes its racial traits accordingly"

But that applies to the reincarnate spell.

Similarly, there is the text from the True Polymorph spell.

"The target's game statistics, including mental ability scores, are replaced by the statistics of the new form. It retains its alignment and personality."

This only applies to True Polymorph and in this case everything changes to match the statistics of the creature you are transformed into - you lose all of your skills, all of your languages, everything not in the stat block of the creature you are transformed into. It is a DM call as to whether you retain any memory of who you were since the only things retained are alignment and personality and the definition of personality is a bit slippery since by default it doesn't necessarily include memories (it clearly can't in some ways since you lose skills and languages and gain ones associated with your new form ... but it is a DM call on how they want to run it).

However, there is also an example in the published module Tomb of Annihilation that does things a bit differently.


There is a ritual in ToA that can change a human into a Yuan-ti Pureblood. In this case the rule specifically says:

"A human that undergoes and survives the ritual retains its traits and gains the following yuan-ti racial traits: Darkvision, Innate Spellcasting, Magic Resistance, Poison Immunity"


This is just one specific example of different rules being associated with changing races depending on circumstances. So, I'd say it is up to the DM how they want to run the effect of changing race perhaps depending on what process was involved.

[Dienekes]

2) I have a very odd question concerning roleplaying a different race when being born on another race. Does race influence perception? I'm not referring to stats or abilities, I'm referring to the possibility of your race actually impacting the very perspective of your being. Would a changeling feel the same way about loyalty, humanity and why not, even his own family? A little further: would changing race actually impact the character personality?

EDIT: When I say "would it impact the personality" I'm not referring only to a turmoil the character would experience by changing, but to a shift that may (or may not?) happen automatically on his own psyche (Changing from human to changeling), that has an indirect effect also on his own "values".

I think it would really depend on the setting and how different the base creature is form humanity. For example, the PHB states that all orcs and half-orcs have been touched by Gruumsh in such a way that they have an unyielding rage always simmering beneath them. A normal half-orc has lived with that their whole life and knows how to deal with it. A human suddenly turned into a half-orc might be overwhelmed with such a strong emotion. Dwarves as a second example are described as having a sense of order and justice that they can’t let go of, which makes them stubborn grudge keepers. So a human turning into a dwarf may suddenly find that they just can’t forget every minor slight against them, even the ones they know are not important. Even ones they had already forgiven when they were human. Now it’s just always there, at the back of their mind.

But that’s only if your group follows such things. Frankly a lot of groups ignore all that and basically play the races as just people with different stat lines. Personally I think that’s a little dull, but it’s not wrong.

[MoiMagnus]

1) I'm a variant human. Imagine the dm decides to make me drink a potion that turns me into a changeling. What's going to happen? Do I lose my additional feat? Is it DM decision?

The rules of reincarnation says that "it exchanges its original race for the new one and changes its racial traits accordingly.", which include the bonus feat.
However, it's up to the GM to make ruling that help make this transition practical. (For example, the GM might allow you to lose a feat of your choice instead of the first feat you chose)

In general, it's quite a mess since racial traits are part biological (like "Darkvision") part cultural (like "Elf Weapon Training"), and that you might expect to change the former but keep the latter (since you keep all your memories and don't get new ones).



2) I have a very odd question concerning roleplaying a different race when being born on another race. Does race influence perception? I'm not referring to stats or abilities, I'm referring to the possibility of your race actually impacting the very perspective of your being. Would a changeling feel the same way about loyalty, humanity and why not, even his own family? A little further: would changing race actually impact the character personality?

EDIT: When I say "would it impact the personality" I'm not referring only to a turmoil the character would experience by changing, but to a shift that may (or may not?) happen automatically on his own psyche (Changing from human to changeling), that has an indirect effect also on his own "values".

At very short term it would be a shock, obviously. Number one issue would be whether your character eventually recognise their own body as their own, feel that he is in the wrong body for the remaining of their life (or until a Wish to undo that), or at the contrary immediately embrace their new form (like in the many YA novels where the protagonist becomes an elf).

But the life of an adventurer is already full of near-death and other traumatic experience, combined with a fast paced rise to power and wealth. Race changing is probably on par with all of that in how life-changing it might be. Changing of race might be the tipping point that make your character realise that they are no longer the same, but so could realising that they just casually drank a potion for some stupid stuff, potion that they could have sold for enough gold to feed their home village for a full year.

[Eriol]

This is where real-life biology intersects with fantasy, and the impact of biology on "mental state" is both well-documented, and controversial at the same time.

For non-controversial angles, just think of mind-altering drugs, be they as common as Alcohol, prescribed mental health drugs, or even so far as psychotics. The chemicals in your body affect how your brain works. This is not controversial. It seems reasonable that completely different brain structures (this isn't "race" like IRL with trivial differences, it's species), with different hormones, and even magical influences (Kalashtar in Ebberon for example) on one's brain. Who says that you will "process" in anything even remotely similar ways?

Or on the other side, how much does your upbringing affect how you react, no matter what the underlying "hardware" is? Twin studies are fascinating here, and reveal just how much "conditioning" affects reactions, and how much it doesn't as well!

This whole topic gets into everything from nature vs nurture, through to how much agency people actually have versus "chemical machines" that we may or may not be, and to what degree.


At my table as DM? I'd allow just about any reaction from the player, from where it doesn't affect them much, to that their personality is completely different after such a change. Any of that is reasonable IMO, including the same change affecting different people differently.

[KorvinStarmast]

1) I'm a variant human. Imagine the dm decides to make me drink a potion that turns me into a changeling. What's going to happen? Do I lose my additional feat? Is it DM decision?

Is there a rule on how DM should act? Not really, but most of the rulings I've see (which involve the reincarnation spell) change the base race features when the creature goes from one race to another. While I'd leave the feat with the PC if I were a DM, since "you are still you", I can understand the ruling that the feat is lost. The stricter rule interpretation is that the feat's origin was "vHuman" as a prerequisite, and now that the prerequisite is void the feat is void.

It's a kind of complex issue, which you can see a good discussion of here. (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/174121/22566)

[Samayu]

I think that any change in personality will have been brought about by perspective and how the world now treats them. You'll have to decide for yourself how the character reacts to a change in lifespan or hardiness. Either of those things could make a person feel like he is now invincible - or frail. Consider a change in handsomeness, or the fact that the kind of people that used to treat him fairly are now unfriendly or even fearful.

[Demonslayer666]

It depends on the DM and what the potion actually did. No such potion exists to my knowledge, so you'll have to get the details from them.

It should allow you to keep playing your character as is, rather than becoming an average changeling. At least, that's how I would run it. I'd have you change your race to changeling, take the ability score changes and changeling abilities, but not lose anything you already had.