Shapeshifter Personalities

Anyway, I've got some "new" ideas for you guys. These personalities are general descriptors of how shapeshifters interact with non-shapeshifters in their territory. All are based on multiple "skinwalker" stories popular on certain imageboards. As such, they're more suitable for types of shapeshifters that live in the wilderness (mainly Fey creatures in D&D terms) as opposed to more urban shapeshifters like Mimics or D&D Doppelgangers. The images are ones that I felt fit the general concepts I'm presenting and they come from magiccards.info, a website I highly recommend.

Precocious

Most shapeshifters are at first just truly curious about the strange new creatures that enter their domain. Precocious shapeshifters tend to copy the appearance of a non-shapeshifter and then interact with an individual or the group. They will sometimes temporarily incapacitate the person they are mimicking but they tend not to. When the shapeshifter's trickery is discovered, it will quickly flee. Precocious shapeshifters will avoid combat if at all possible.


Helpful

A few Precocious shapeshifters with enough self-awareness and empathy will eventually develop a Helpful personality. Such shapeshifters help those who travel through their territory by indicating dangers, food, water, and good campsites. Helpful shapeshifters may have good intentions but they are not always well-equipped to communicate with passerbys because they often have an incomplete understanding of common languages. Additionally, Helpful shapeshifters loathe direct mimicry, instead preferring to create a unique shape based on a combination of many individuals. Because of their ignorance, these form can end up quite strange and disconcerting, like a male Dwarf's head on a Human woman's body. Helpful shapeshifters will help their charges in combat and flee if their charges attack them, but they will rarely hold grudges.


Mischievous

For some Precocious shapeshifters, the fear and desperation that non-shapeshifters feel in reaction to their activities becomes intoxicating. These Mischievous shapeshifters engineer situations to agitate and frighten non-shapeshifters as much as possible, often given rise to legends of haunted or cursed woods. Despite their apparent sadism, Mischievous shapeshifters rarely plan or execute plans that may be lethal to their victims. They reason that too many deaths may scare potential prey away and so rein in some of their more destructive impulses.


Malevolent

Some of the Mischievous eventually grow tired of non-lethal pranks; sometimes they merely seek a stronger and more exquisite form of fear. Other times they find the color of their victims' blood and the taste of their flesh to be even more intoxicating than fear. Almost as often, a Precocious or Helpful suffers great harm from a non-shapeshifter and settles into a vengeful demeanor. All these possibilities can create Malevolent shapeshifters. Malevolents always try to kill. Some do so slowly and methodically, relishing the fear they produce in their victims. Others kill quickly, rampaging through campsites and killing as many as possible before escaping into the night.

Roll d% to see if you rise as a Ghoul

One of the things has always bothered me about D&D is how so much of the fluff is segregated from crunch.

"You can fail a resurrection spell and someone back as zombie? That sounds -- oh wait, there are no rules for that."

"You can combine two animals into an abomination like an Owlbear? That sounds -- oh wait, there are no rules for that."

"People can spontaneously rise as undead? That sounds -- oh wait, there are no rules for that."

The last one brings me to today's post. I've been thinking on-and-off about developing my own retroclone-esque roleplaying game (probably something that'll end up an Owlbear-tier combination of GURPS, AD&D, 5e, and Mutants & Masterminds with a dash of Fighting Fantasy but I digress). 

One idea that keeps rattling about is a subsystem that allows the DM (or players, whatever) if a PC can rise as an Undead. Being a spy (or a voyeur) can make your PC rise as a Spectre. Party members near an evil shrine or temple may rise as Zombies. Eat any bit of the flesh of a sapient and you have a higher chance to rise as a Ghoul. Think of it as an earnest if somewhat misguided attempt to make those old adventure hooks into spontaneous self-perpetuating rules constructs. Anyway, on to the rules:

When the character dies, roll d% or 1d100. If the result is higher than the chance of rising then nothing happens. If it is equal to or lower than the percentage then the character rises as a Ghoul  about 24 (4d12) hours after his death. 

The base chance of a dead character rising as a Ghoul is 5% modified by the table below. Modifiers are cumulative. The final percentage cannot be less than 0% or greater than 100% unless you want to homebrew some crazy results.

The dead character . . .	% Modifier
. . . was Evil (if using an Alignment subsystem)	+10%
. . . was Chaotic (if using an Alignment subsystem)	+5%
. . . was Good (if using an Alignment subsystem)	-10%
. . . worshiped a god or power related to death, gluttony, Ghouls, or hunger	+10%
. . . had more than two character levels or Hit Dice (if using a level/Hit Dice subsystem)	+1% for each level/Hit Die beyond 2
. . . unknowingly ate the flesh of a sapient creature within the last 48 hours	+1% and additional +1% for every 5 pounds of sapient flesh consumed
. . . knowingly ate the flesh of a sapient creature within the last 48 hours	+10% and additional +1% for every 5 pounds of sapient flesh consumed
. . . killed a sapient creature within the last 48 hours specifically to eat it, but was in a state of extreme hunger and/or had no other food	+15%
. . . killed a sapient creature within the last 48 hours specifically to eat it, but was in a state of hunger and/or had little other food	+25%
. . . killed a sapient creature within the last 48 hours specifically to eat it despite having plenty of ordinary food	+45%

Here are examples of the system in practice:

Hogni Redbeard was a Lawful Evil (+10%) thief-acrobat-rogue with 3 Hit Dice (+1%). After becoming a devotee of The Great Maw, god of hunger (+10%), he adopted serial killing and cannibalism as hobbies. He kidnapped a Halfling merchant then killed him to make a stew (+45%). In the last 48 hours the only sapient flesh he managed to eat consisted of two hearty meals of Halfling stew which together added up 15 pounds (+10% for knowingly consuming, +15% for the amount consumed) before a band of vigilantes busted in and killed him. There is therefore a 96% (5% + 91%)chance that 4d12 hours after his death he will rise as a Ghoul.

Brother Magnus was a Neutral Good (-10%) Human 5^th-level (+3%) cleric. Trapped underground and without food, he stumbled into the storage room of some Goblins. Inside, he found some bundles of preserved meat. He ate 5 pounds of the meat without realizing that it was Elf jerky (+1% for unknowingly eating, +1% for the amount). Suddenly, two Hobgoblins appeared and attacked! Magnus was victorious but one of the dying Hobgoblins taunted him by revealing the nature of Magnus’ last meal. Distraught but still hungry, he grabbed some more of the meat and continued on his journey to find an exit from the underground hell. Although hungry, he only managed to eat another 5 pounds of Elf jerky (+10% for knowingly eating, +1% for the amount) before his moral repulsion overpowered his gnawing hunger. Alas, in his sleep a leak of toxic gas suffocated him. There is therefore an 11% (5% +6%) chance that he will rise as a Ghoul in 4d12 hours.

Now of course, there are some issues that I still have with my concept. Do the same rules apply to carnivores? What does this mean for creatures like Gnolls that deliberately eat sapients on large-scale? Are they basically guaranteed to rise as Ghouls? Should a mammalian humanoid incur the normal penalties for eating the flesh of sapient avian, insectoid, or reptilian humanoid or should they be diminished or waived? What about eating the flesh of sapient non-humanoids like Awakened Cows, Beholders, and Sphinxes?

I should have plenty of time to iron out the finer details later but a start is a start.