Trying to find multiple personality rulings

[toddex]

I remember either hearing or reading about something that allowed your character to have multiple personalities and you would become two different characters essentially. Id like to do this for a campaign of mine if I cant find the rules ill just home brew it I guess.

[TheCountAlucard]

Keep in mind, that's a very touchy subject, by and large because people consistently fail to get it right; actual "multiple personality disorder" is very different from Hollywood multiple personality disorder, which is what people typically want to play, for whatever reason...

The SRD has it under the variant rules; you might take a look at it, but it's really nothing outstanding.

[toddex]

Well i wanted one of the party to have an evil personality hehehe

[Forrestfire]

One idea for this ruleset is to have two players in the same character. E.g. same race, same Str, Con, and Dex; but different classes, alignments, and mental stats.

The players decide what to do every turn, and if they disagree, roll a die. if odd, one player gets his way, if even, the other player does.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Keep in mind, that's a very touchy subject, by and large because people consistently fail to get it right; actual "multiple personality disorder" is very different from Hollywood multiple personality disorder, which is what people typically want to play, for whatever reason...

It's touchier than that. MPD probably does not exist, as it is almost always a result of therapy with a therapist who's an MPD believer (usually associated with being a Ritual Abuse believer; a much more clearly nonexistent phenomenon, at least on the scale these people claim) and uses techniques like hypnosis, group, and leading questioning to create an acted-out disorder in a patient. Past-life regression is also typical. It's basically a cult (which is ironic, considering the ritual abuse thing...).

The current name for MPD is dissociative identity disorder (DID; ICD-9 300.14, ICD-10 F44.8). Dissociative disorders in general do exist - disorders where one feels a profound sense of disconnection from their body and/or actions and/or an inability to influence them.

The big problem with diagnosing MPD/DID is that "mind" or "personality" are absract concepts, as impossible to observe as the fantastical constructions of id, ego, and superego in Freud's psychoanalysis.

edit: Excellent Skeptic's Dictionary article on the subject. /edit


As far as in-game application goes, I don't know why you'd really need specific rules. Use all the same mechanics, with different personalities (and probably different alignments). You could impose ad-hoc skill penalties for some skill uses if you want, but the game has no precedent for that; there's no -5 penalty to Intimidate for being timid.

Alternatively, you could go all Jekyll/Hyde and give them different ability scores, class levels, skills, and other stats, and just switch sheets. Why not? It's a fantasy RPG.

Well i wanted one of the party to have an evil personality hehehe

Wait, you're the DM? And you want this, no the player?

You never screw with players like this. You especially don't screw with players by imposing on their characters psychological conditions (real or constructed) against their knowledge. (Insanity mechanics don't really count.)

If it's some kind of a curse - like lycanthropy is - that is inflicted, and can be detected and dispelled, go ahead, but be prepared for annoyance just in case.

[Darrin]

The SRD has it under the variant rules; you might take a look at it, but it's really nothing outstanding.

Some other options:

Psicrystal (EPH p. 21): This is a fragment of your personality. If you want to RP it as completely dissociative, go for it.

Synads (CPsi p. 139): These guys have a three-fold mind consisting of the overmind, the collective, and the oracle. Very little detail on how to RP this is given... but if you want someone with dissociative identity disorder, one of these guys would be a perfect excuse. Also the aberration subtype could be very interesting for Alter Self abuse.

Multiheaded Template (SavSp p. 124): Only +2 LA to get 1 additional head, which is almost worth it just for the superior two-weapon fighting, but you also get improved initiative and combat reflexes as bonus feats on top of that. Extra arm for ski-boxing is not included, however.

[Ianuagonde]

My dwarf character, the original Ianuagonde, suffered from this. She had two character sheets: one with wizard levels, one with fighter levels. The DM was of course aware of this. The other players were not.

In combat, the DM sometimes described a hit on Ianuagonde as "he whacks you on the head for 5 damage". The next morning, she switched character sheets. This happened whenever she got hit on the head. As a player I had little control over who to play.

For added fun, the wizard side insisted on being adressed as Ianuagonde, while the fighter always said "just call me Ian, it's easier in combat". None of the other players figured it out.

She was 'cured' after a Suitably Dramatic Experience (a Krenshar or something, trying to scare her by assuming the face of her deceased father). After that, she just had one character sheet with Fighter 2/Wizard X.

Good times.

[artaxerxes]

edit: Excellent Skeptic's Dictionary article on the subject. /edit

Most excellent link.

[Xallace]

OK, yeah, don't mess with players like that unless they know about it and consent to it. Assuming that is the case, though, any of the options presented by other posters are fine and dandy.

So what are you going for? Jekyl/Hyde? Holmes/Moriarty? Legion?

A character with more than two distinct personalities would make an interesting twist on the Chameleon PrC.

Legion would not be a particularly good idea for a player, in my opinion, but if they're a spellcaster or psion an X-Men-style Legion might work.

If you had the character's secondary persona activate while the dominant one was asleep, ala Sigfried/Nightmare of the Soul Calibur series, you could end up having a Holmes/Moriarty relationship between the two sides if the personas were not aware of each other. In this case, just make your own character sheet, always of the same level as the player. No special rules required, you don't influence the player's actions (per se), and you get some nice plot hooks and can put the player in the spotlight once in a while.

And if you go that far, and you're party likes itself the hack-n-slash, the age old "Give Evil A Body" ploy could work and the two personalities could physically (magically, skillfully) duke it out.

[Prime32]

Take levels in this class. Changeling race for maximum effect.

[herrhauptmann]

I can't believe no one has said it yet: "Who is Tyler Durden?"

Anyway, I was in (for a brief time) a 2nd edition game where one of the players was a giant with multiple personalities.
He'd chose an axis of alignment, good, evil, lawful, chaotic, Neutral (on good/evil) or Neutral (on law/chaos). Then at the start of each day, he'd roll a dice. And what number came up, dictated his alignment.
In his case, he was 'lawful' So each day, he'd be either lawful good, lawful neutral, or lawful evil.
He also had 3 specific triggers. Each trigger would force him to a particular alignment, regardless of what he rolled that morning. Ex: Taking bludgeoning damage while within a darkness spell forced him to lawful evil.

[Devils_Advocate]

Don't just fiat away a player's control over his character, if that's what you're considering doing. You probably should avoid usurping characters via legitimate, non-deus-ex-machina means, for that matter. An evil wizard could easily have good reason to want to dominate a member of an adventuring party, and the means to do so, but that doesn't mean that a player is going to like hearing "Well, you don't get to play for now. But, hey, maybe you'll get control over your character back later! Not that there's anything you can do to make that more likely at this point."

[Ponce]

Continuous schism effect? Continuous fusion effect? If all you're looking for is a mechanic. They are both psionic powers.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Anyway, I was in (for a brief time) a 2nd edition game where one of the players was a giant with multiple personalities.
He'd chose an axis of alignment, good, evil, lawful, chaotic, Neutral (on good/evil) or Neutral (on law/chaos). Then at the start of each day, he'd roll a dice. And what number came up, dictated his alignment.
In his case, he was 'lawful' So each day, he'd be either lawful good, lawful neutral, or lawful evil.

In 2nd edition Dark Sun, half-giants got to choose one alignment element, on one axis. They could be Good, something Neutral, Evil, Lawful, Neutral something, or Evil. Then, each day, they'd assume the remaining alignment component from whoever they are currently following.

Basically, they were bred to be followers, to the point that they'd "imprint" onto charismatic individuals and try to imitate them in every way. Basically a 9-foot, half-ton 6-year-old who thinks you're the coolest thing in the world.

[DragoonWraith]

It's touchier than that. MPD probably does not exist, as it is almost always a result of therapy with a therapist who's an MPD believer (usually associated with being a Ritual Abuse believer; a much more clearly nonexistent phenomenon, at least on the scale these people claim) and uses techniques like hypnosis, group, and leading questioning to create an acted-out disorder in a patient. Past-life regression is also typical. It's basically a cult (which is ironic, considering the ritual abuse thing...).

The current name for MPD is dissociative identity disorder (DID; ICD-9 300.14, ICD-10 F44.8). Dissociative disorders in general do exist - disorders where one feels a profound sense of disconnection from their body and/or actions and/or an inability to influence them.

The big problem with diagnosing MPD/DID is that "mind" or "personality" are absract concepts, as impossible to observe as the fantastical constructions of id, ego, and superego in Freud's psychoanalysis.

edit: Excellent Skeptic's Dictionary article on the subject. /edit

Careful with that. I assume you have read more than just the skeptic's dictionary article on the subject?

Yes, there are reasons to have some skepticism, but I would not be so quick to hand-wave it away. The skepticism should be directed at certain psychologists who seem to diagnose patients with DID far more regularly than is believable; the correlation between these and Ritual Abuse believers is not as strong as you make it out to be, however. It is more common for Ritual Abuse believers to jump on any DID diagnosis as evidence for Ritual Abuse (since the understanding given in the DSM is that DID only occurs as a result of prolonged child abuse), but child abuse, as opposed to Ritual Abuse, is unfortunately not that uncommon. Dissociation is an extreme, probably very rare reaction to that abuse, but it is primarily a (very effective) defense mechanism.

[Tsotha-lanti]

I wrote a lengthy response, but the thread is too derailed already and I think it'd get too "political" (it's not really about politics but science, but there you are). PM me if you want to read it, I suppose.

Let's just say that I agree about "very rare." I'm willing to accept that the 200 cases before 1970 may have been mostly real. I'll also accept that maybe 1% of the 40,000 since 1970 may have been real.

[Riffington]

Yes, there are reasons to have some skepticism

Here's the big thing: everyone with "DID" has severe Borderline Personality Disorder. Bad Borderlines are the exact people who would do this sort of thing for attention. So that makes it tough to believe them.