So I'm trying to work with my one stubborn player in my (hopefully) upcoming horror campaign. For the longest time I'd agreed to let him play a squole, but due to his stubborn refusal to even play this already obscure 3rd party race straight (he claimed almost as if it were fact that he would be playing an alchemically created unique breed of humanoid ooze-- played as if it were a squole) and adding various unorthodox characteristics (one relevant one: When asked personal questions about the character that might give her--the squole-- depth, I asked what she considered "home". Despite the fact she'd spent years of her childhood in a monastery and was now an Ex-Monk, he claimed her "home" was a wooden wagon she'd bought. Maybe I'm being a stickler here, but that seems to be a tad too zany and unrealistic for the tone my campaign is designed to have) and I'd argued that perhaps a new character was overdue to be made as replacement so that the character he chose to play could be somewhat realistic (I say this, because even the Ratfolk in the party certainly has more humanity than this heavily-altered squole)
As of today though, he still defends her affinity for the wagon, but had offered to perhaps compromise on the squole being a living vessel for a spirit, one with more realistic former interaction in life (perhaps treated as a Soul Jar possession)
But at the moment I'm considering offering the option to divide his class levels/HD between a Spiritualist character and the former Monk/Druid humanoid ooze/squole acting as the phantom. Could this maybe work? Any advice on good ways to approach this solution?
??????
Or honestly even a simple enough way to personalize the phantom noticeably into an ecto-ooze spirit of a deceased character?
As phantoms in fully manifested form have enough stats to qualify as individual creatures, class levels are an option automatically.
This may have to be the case. What I would most prefer is his character to have been permanently polymorphed into a squole due to some alchemical accident and him play a squole but with background and attitude of another playable race. But he's too up in arms about me "forcing him to do what he doesn't want to do" and while I humored him when he was proposing a NPC of his own creation be the alchemist to have created her with any and all of his proposed uncommon/unheard of traits, he used the minimum amount of effort to refuse me to use said NPC to spice up her role in the plot ("he's dead now" --ppshh, like being dead is an excuse for an NPC to not appear when desired)
So he's likely out and we're down to 4 players.
So what you're upset about is not that the player wants to play a weird homebrew race and argues with you about it even though you've tried to say no... but that they want their character to be a vagrant? And your solution is to convince this player to make an even weirder and rules-straining/breaking alteration to the character? I think your priorities are a little bit scrambled.