OK. Not to derail this thread completely AGAIN, but I have a good mechanical question for you guys. Luckily it has a time limit, and then I can get back to you with how it worked out, and we can move on, assuming another edition war doesn't break out in the next 2 weeks (fat chance).
Y'know when something in
today's adventure combines with something the PCs
brought with them from last adventure in a really bizarre & unexpected way? I live for these little "gotcha" moments, but sometimes they can be hell to adjudicate in the thick of the action. Luckily this one happened right at the end of the session, so I have 2 weeks to come up with something. I thought I'd crowd-source some suggestions from you freaks:
Item 1 - A sentient spellbook, made from the corpse of an ancient sorceror and imbued with his personality (
https://www.incunabuli.com/2017/12/all-are-writ-in-blood.html). The PCs picked it up as a mcguffin in the first adventure and have been putting off bringing it back to the proper authorities.
Item 2 - Three magic statues that allow two people standing between them to trade attributes or skills. (Room U9 here -
https://blog.trilemma.com/2017/02/the-moon-is-mirror.html)
"Three stone crones animate to inspect anyone who stands between them. They discuss the history, weaknesses, and strengths of their subject and wonder aloud whether the subject might like to swap abilities that are no longer useful with someone else. If two people stand between them and declare they wish to exchange skills, it will be done."
The guy who carries this wacky spellbook gets in there, and asks the book what it wants. It replies
"I want a body again." So get this, fucking genius boy says "You can have my body if you want."
Totally idiotic, and totally great, right?? Now he thinks he will somehow get REAL ULTIMATE POWER by doing this, like he gets access to the spell-list and knowledge of an ancient wizard, wheeeee! It can't work that way.
My question is what possible methods could I use here? I'm looking at things like
Magic Jar, or I dunno... maybe those lycanthropy tables in the DMG, like sometimes he wakes up and the sorceror just went on a tear while he was asleep? It could work in a million and a half ways. One player even suggested he would be happy to donate a point of CON to create a new body for the book-sorceror in exchange for a spell or something.
Whatever I pick, it has to follow some kind of law of
equivalent exchange. Nobody can get something for free, the statues allow trade-offs. So if the book gets to use his body, he gets something too. But a
rental is not in the spirit of what the statues do. What kind of permanent solution could there be? The sucker gets trapped in the book? I mean, too fucking good right? To be clear, I think this is a great idea but also it seems like one of those times when a player is committing the sin of Icarus. If anybody has a suggestion, I'm all ears.