Hi guys, I have a player who's building a Ranger Shapeshifter with the idea of building a Werewolf who's losing control or has a chance to lose control.
I admit it is a cool idea with a few possible angles, the player himself is experienced and plays with the mindset of roleplay/interesting over power.
There's plenty of side effects so I'm looking for advice how to GM and balance this idea. What are some of the problems I might run into and how can I run this under pathfinder rules?
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what do you mean by 'lose control' you mean actually submitting control of the character over to you the GM? or will it just be a way for him to start doing whatever he wants at the expense of the other players.
I mean, you have to think about the other characters in the party. how would they feel traveling with someone who would potentially turn on and kill them. even if he has a lot of valuable skills, they'd have to way the pro's and cons and if he isn't contributing more than anyone else and is still a threat to the party, it seems like the smarter thing to do will say. "sorry dude, you're too much of a liability. you're on your own."
I agree. Roleplaying a character 'on the edge' is a cool concept with lots of role playing challenges. Acting out the 'episodes' as blood soaked destructive rages is neither a good idea or in good taste. The DM should take over the character for as long as they are under the influence.
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A way to do this that doesn't involve the player bored whilst not in control of his character, but also not involving everyone else being bored whilst you and the werewolf's player go off and do things is something I saw mentioned on the boards here recently - have them following a 'monster' and they keep finding destruction around them when they wake up after camping. Easy enough to get them to think it's the BBEG/his minions attacking villages and the like near them, and if they don't put a huge amount of effort into tracking down precisely who does this (don't do it to people they interact with for this reason, just rumours of villagers going missing and the like), it can take quite some time for them to realise that the villager-eater is actually their friendly party member - works best if in character, the characters don't know about the werewolf thing. Thought it was pretty cool! :)
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I think if you do decide to go with it you need to tell the player that the people he travels with (the other players) he should identify as 'pack' members and thus even when he loses control he won't attack them, otherwise there is almost no reason for the rest to travel with him, or even not to 'put him down' when he goes crazy and attacks them them. Sure you can have him chase down fleeing enemies, run in terror from fire, etc and act more like an unthinking animal if he loses control but he should never be a threat to the party unless everyone agrees they're cool with that, otherwise you're going to run into problems.
Maybe something like the Vigilante "Hulk" (not the real name) archetype that can attack allies if there are no enemies present?
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A Wild rager dip would be a very close option to giving you something like that. If you kill something while raging you have to make a will save or get the confused condition which can range from attacking an ally, acting normally, doing nothing, or hurting yourself.
Wild Rager sounds pretty close to what we need actually.
What I'm currently thinking is to tweak the conditions of Wild Rager so it works better for the party. On 1 rolls the ranger immediately enters his shape shift (regardless of uses left) and gets confused, 25% of attacking nearest random target/hurting himself/doing nothing/attacking normally.
Then a will save at the start of the next round to end the confusion effect.
I see this as a useful double edge sword, a gamble that is 2 points useful and 1 point dangerous.
Either way it's going to go to party vote, my players can decide if it's kosher or not.