How to Handle Controlling Fused Characters?

[Vrock_Summoner]

In my current campaign, we've had fusion between two of the party members happen twice. (Four people in the party, so two of them fused one session, and then the other two fused this most recent session.) While we've prepared stats for all possible combinations in the party, I hadn't come up with a good method for determining control of the fusion. It didn't end up being a problem, thankfully, since we simply had the fusions controlled via committee, and one only lasted the duration of a fight while the other had players who happened to be pretty strongly in sync during the session.

That said, while it will always be rare, fusion is probably going to become a reoccurring part of the campaign at this point, so I need a better way to decide how a fusion should be controlled just in case the players aren't completely in agreement about courses of action or what they want to say later on. I'd prefer to avoid every disagreement potentially slowing the game down, but I also don't want to do penalize them for having an element they enjoy so much in the game by doing something super drastic, like making them forfeit turns if they take too long to decide what they're doing or something.

You guys got any ideas?

[dascarletm]

This is how I would handle it.

If the players are in agreement with a course of action, everything is fine, this is the preferred situation.

Then I would let the players pick at time of fusion between a few options that would be used only when the players couldn't come to an agreement within X amount of time:

Option A: Roll a dice, the highest roll gets to choose the action. All disagreements alternate players. So if player 1 won the dice roll he would have the first agreement, then player 2 would have the second...

Option B: Roll willpower (or similar) checks at each dispute. Highest chooses.

Option C: As A except you roll every time.

[LibraryOgre]

I like Dasca's suggestions, but I would add, depending on the system, that a disagreeing fusion might find themselves losing initiative.

[Vrock_Summoner]

I like Dasca's suggestions, but I would add, depending on the system, that a disagreeing fusion might find themselves losing initiative.

Well, Mutants and Masterminds, but this is more a setting metaphysics thing than a system thing - technically, fusion disagreement isn't really possible, because a fusion can only be achieved while the fusers are in perfect mental sync and they become one mind while they're fused. Even if personal differences between the fusers' personalities cause the fusion to feel conflicted about a course of action, it wouldn't have any more effect than a regular person feeling conflicted, which I wouldn't normally assign mechanical penalties for unless they wanted to treat it as a Complication.

Of course, that's pretty hard to represent when the players are still very much two separate people. Thus the need for a method of determining control.

And thanks for the ideas, Dasca! I like those a lot.

[ellindsey]

Are you running a Steven Universe campaign?

The rule there seems to be that if the members of the fusion disagree, and can't resolve their differences, they un-fuse. That's it. Alternately, you might allow opposed willpower rolls of some type to allow one member of the fusion to force the other to obey while also still staying fused.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Are you running a Steven Universe campaign?

Good guess, my players and their characters love Steven Universe and, for complicated in-setting reasons and extremely simple out-of-character reasons, their love for that show is the reason they're able to fuse in-game. However, the universe isn't itself Steven Universe, and fusion doesn't work quite the same way.

The rule there seems to be that if the members of the fusion disagree, and can't resolve their differences, they un-fuse. That's it. Alternately, you might allow opposed willpower rolls of some type to allow one member of the fusion to force the other to obey while also still staying fused.

The players actually expected this to be how it worked, due to aforementioned Steven Universe influence. But again, it isn't quite. Start by removing every part of SU fusion that could be a metaphor for relationships and intimacy. Then you'll be most of the way there.

[Delicious Taffy]

Why not give the fusion 2 consecutive turns, and have each participant control them for one of the turns?

[TheRedFox201]

If this is not a Play by Post game, then might I propose the following solution: The DM only listens to statements said in synchronization. If Player A and Player B say "We Are AB! We are here to beat you." Then that can be accepted as something that the fused character is saying or doing. If Player A says "Full attack" And B says ''Full attack'' at the same time you're good, but if you then ask "Who do you full attack?" "The Orc Chief." "The Orc Mage." Then there's an issue. If they cannot fix their issues then they may lose their turn as the Fused character is unable to decide on a single course of action.

"I am niether A nor B, I am AB. It's over enemy C, I've come for you."

[The Glyphstone]

"I am niether A nor B, I am AB. It's over enemy C, I've come for you."

Neither Cat nor Dog, I am CatDog.

[GrayGriffin]

If this is not a Play by Post game, then might I propose the following solution: The DM only listens to statements said in synchronization. If Player A and Player B say "We Are AB! We are here to beat you." Then that can be accepted as something that the fused character is saying or doing. If Player A says "Full attack" And B says ''Full attack'' at the same time you're good, but if you then ask "Who do you full attack?" "The Orc Chief." "The Orc Mage." Then there's an issue. If they cannot fix their issues then they may lose their turn as the Fused character is unable to decide on a single course of action.

"I am niether A nor B, I am AB. It's over enemy C, I've come for you."

This is a terrible idea. Even people with practice at it can't speak perfectly in sync all the time, and if you let them practice what they want to say beforehand the mechanic has no purpose to it anyways. Your idea is basically ruining the fun of having a fused character in the first place.

[Dragonexx]

Probably just do rock paper scissors, or a coin toss myself.

[LibraryOgre]

Heh, I'm reminded of an old Knights of the Dinner Table.

There's a notorious killer dungeon... the Tomb of Horrors to the nth power, where n is an integer greater than 30. Turns out, the "kill everyone" is just a prelude to the REAL adventure, where all of your characters become a combined spirit-entity that has to work together to defeat the dungeon and resurrect your characters.

Well, turns out the GM made a mistake of letting in a Pixie-Faerie (because Gordo always plays a pixie-faerie)... and Pixie Faeries have so much spiritual energy that he could essentially run the entire game himself. Which wouldn't be so bad with Gordo in charge, because he's a nice guy. Nope, Pete had switched everyone's characters around, so Bitter Stevil was running the pixie-faerie, and just spent the entire game using other characters as bait.

What was supposed to be a cooperative game became, in true Black Hands style, Bitter Stevil ruining everyone else's night.

[Knaight]

I'd borrow a bid mechanic from other games. Essentially everyone has some sort of metagame bid pool of ten tokens of some sort (actual physical tokens are ideal here; poker chips and those glass hemisphere marble-things work really well), and whenever the fused character acts they propose their action along with a secret bid (minimum 1). Higher bid goes (ties go to the person with fewer tokens), and the tokens bid are traded between players. This lets people have more influence when they care more while insuring that overall each player has the same amount of influence. The minimum bid and ties going to the person with fewer tokens prevents the issue where someone accumulates all the tokens and then can monopolize the character indefinitely, along with making genuine ties extremely rare.