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Dual-Classed Characters (Geistbound)
All five characters have a secondary class and assorted bonus "race" perks, because each character is the current vessel for a powerful spirit being. This spirit class will stay constant and single classed throughout the character's career. The character's mortal half can multiclass and prestige class, but the spirit class will never change.
The particular imbuing spirit could be a nature essence, a tormented ghost, a lost fragment of the extinct Fae, a tribal totem, a family ancestor, or any other potent spirit. Collectively, these beings are known as geists, and in most cases other than the PCs, they are generally creepy external manifestations of spirit magic that frighten the smallfolk (even benevolent geists are eerie and creepifying, and summoned geists are always so).
The geists infusing the PCs, however, are not possessing ghosts nor demons. They do not overwhelm nor command the PCs. For each PC, they feel like "the other half" of the PC's soul, and the goals of a Great Geist, though murky in the specifics, nonetheless feel natural and desirable to each mortal that has been imbued. In particular, only a bare few mortals are even appropriate to being imbued by any given Great Geist. Being Chosen by a Great Geist can be resented by any given mortal, but on some level it will feel natural nonetheless.
Should an imbued character truly die and not be swiftly revivified, the Geist will relocate to another appropriate vessel and immediately imbue that person. The geist's class and bonus perks will remain constant, but the new vessel can have any acceptable race or class background. The new vessel must be within one step of the geist's alignment, and must not be of an alignment forbidden to the geist's class (a neutral Barbarian geist would not imbue a Lawful Neutral character, for example). Otherwise, any appropriate host is acceptable. A Neutral Good Geist could depart a slain Paladin and imbue a Chaotic Good pyromancer or a True Neutral witch.
Thus, the campaign party continuity will be the continuity of the Geist spirits, regardless of character turnover, until the geists succeed at their quest or are once more defeated and dispersed for ten thousand years. A Total Party Kill need not necessarily end the campaign, unless it is a Total Party Kill by something that can imprison the Great Geists once more. Any Total Party Kill, however, will severely set back the goals of the PCs.
The five geists will each occupy a different one of the five neutral alignments (LN, NG, N, NE, CN), and will all be bound together by some mysterious and unrevealed history. Consequently, none of the geists may be of the Paladin (or Antipaladin) class, though up to two PCs could be Paladins at any one time. Moreover, none of the five geists will duplicate the same character class as another Geist ... while it is possible to have two Fighter-Rogue PCs, for example, one would be a Fighter Geist and the other a Rogue Geist, and no other PC could be a Fighter-Rogue, nor a Fighter Geist, nor a Rogue Geist.
At least one Geist will be a magic-using class, but no more than three Geists will be magic-users.
While imbuing a character, a Geist's alignment will be muted. The character's alignment will be the only relevant alignment for all purposes. A Neutral witch imbued with a Neutral Evil geist will not detect as evil, for example.