Race: Changeling

[Igrovin]

Changling


+2 Cha
Medium sized

Bonus Past Life Feat: can take a racial past life feat as a bonus feat. If the race can be played without having racial reincarnated before then should have feat made to fill the slot. The racial past life feat allows the changeling to take feats/use items/etc of the past life, except for Warforged.
(If there are past life feats that are not just automatically granted but must be selected in place of a normal feat.)


Core 1:
Core 2: Any Attribute or dex/cha
Core 3:
Core 4: Any attribute or dex/cha
Core 5:

T1
Cabinet Trickster - passive - 3 levels - +1 Intimidate, Bluff, Diplomacy, Haggle - 3rd level ??
Master of Forms - Passive - +1 dc to transmutation spells (Possibly also caster level)

T2

T3
Becoming: 2 AP - Gain the racial Enhancement Tree of the race selected with the bonus past life feat

T4

T5
Visage of Face: Select one - One of You - Toggle - Whenever (event happens) Automatically use diplomacy | Face in the Mirror - Toggle - Whenever (event happens) Automatically use intimidate | Never was on your side - toggle - Whenever (event happens) Automatically use bluff




16 years later and still missing a few chunks out of ebbereon. Hell is there even any NPC changlings?

[Pandjed]

Of course there are plenty of changelings in DDO, you just can't tell they are, which is basically the whole point of the race. :P Oh well, would have been interesting to have Randall Lyric in different races depending on position, because he certainly would be a changeling candidate.


Now to more serious things: Changelings will be hard to implement. The idea of changelings is based on their ability to shapeshift. Lorewise, changelings don't change their form for a short-time benefit (other than magic users that uses illusion magic), but to develop a whole identity (including personality and profession) around a form, not to steal one.

This is actually a fun idea and would work well in DDO, using your enhancement tree to add to one and later 2 different "adventurer personas". However, there is a very hard reason why this will be problematic to be implemented... character models. Even if we take away the choice of the player to have control over the appearance they take on in their shapeshift and code it to their changeling appearance, there are very different variants at work. Like how tieflings and tabaxi have tails and therefore it's unlikely that this variable is re-used elsewhere in appearance.
So with a huge headache how to implement the changeling's most basic and important feature in a game that wasn't designed to have it in the first place, it would mean that either they take the time to make a huge rewrite, they settle with some pre-determined variants and everyone looks too much the same, or they forgo the appearance-change altogether (which would make introducing the race kinda pointless from my perspective).

Would be great to have changelings in a Sharn-like expansion though, and be it as NPCs that further the story.

[archest]

kind of like shifter.

class timelord

[Igrovin]

Of course there are plenty of changelings in DDO, you just can't tell they are, which is basically the whole point of the race. :P Oh well, would have been interesting to have Randall Lyric in different races depending on position, because he certainly would be a changeling candidate.


Now to more serious things: Changelings will be hard to implement. The idea of changelings is based on their ability to shapeshift. Lorewise, changelings don't change their form for a short-time benefit (other than magic users that uses illusion magic), but to develop a whole identity (including personality and profession) around a form, not to steal one.

This is actually a fun idea and would work well in DDO, using your enhancement tree to add to one and later 2 different "adventurer personas". However, there is a very hard reason why this will be problematic to be implemented... character models. Even if we take away the choice of the player to have control over the appearance they take on in their shapeshift and code it to their changeling appearance, there are very different variants at work. Like how tieflings and tabaxi have tails and therefore it's unlikely that this variable is re-used elsewhere in appearance.
So with a huge headache how to implement the changeling's most basic and important feature in a game that wasn't designed to have it in the first place, it would mean that either they take the time to make a huge rewrite, they settle with some pre-determined variants and everyone looks too much the same, or they forgo the appearance-change altogether (which would make introducing the race kinda pointless from my perspective).

Would be great to have changelings in a Sharn-like expansion though, and be it as NPCs that further the story.

Lore wise, there are three different kinds of changelings according to 3.5 lore. In 4e and 5e, I think they just dropped all the other types and just went with the becomer.

Passers are changelings who wish to fit in with conventional society and live life in only one form or at the least suppress their shape-changing abilities to better fit in with those around them. Other changelings will often view passers with contempt and use slang words such as "pretender" or "actor" to mock them.
Becomers believe that to be a changeling is to possess many different shapes and often different identities and lives altogether. A becomer takes the concept of a dual life to a whole new degree and some will successfully live as several "different people" for many years.
Seekers or "reality seekers" are convinced that a great truth exists that only the changelings can discover; they suppress their shapechanging abilities even more than passers and prefer to live or socialize with other changelings.

They have many facets, and can do all kinds of different things. Some are assassins, that use their shapeshifting ability to get close to the target. Some are diplomats. The one I played was a Warlock that took the form of a cheshire cat like catfolk. (Because the actual race wasn't available.) But in the end its all Roleplay, and video games are more about the rollplay. So to facilitate some of the ability of a changeling this is where the idea of having a bonus past life feat, possibly at level 3, to give you access to another (Non-warforged) race's feats (sans Dragon mark), items, and possibly even their Enhancement path. Possibly there should be the ability to pick up a second racial past life feat.

4e introduced a power where the changeling would do a minor transformation to spook a person.. I think 5e also has this ability. This is done Visage of the Face to use the DDO mechanics to mimic something similar to how the effects work, but a little expanded beyond just intimidate.