Anne

Something a bit different this time. This one is a Versatile Heritage. Expect it to take a bit to get a good suite of feats. I'm going to split those off into a separate post.

Versatile Heritages

Through Versatile Heritages, we are able to expand further on the themes and ideas of our character's circumstances or narrative over time. These are more intrinsic to our character build than a background, updating at regular intervals. Heritages have some staple features common to all of them, but they are also useful for thematic options. These are not necessarily overtly negative mechanically or even thematically, but the implications of what is happening/has happened to our character is really what we're focusing on with these concepts, and they often can have complicated connotations that require.

Host of Many (Versatile Heritage)

Rare Host of Many

Whether by choice, happenstance, violence or accident, sometimes creatures can find themselves sharing their body with a foreign entity, or simply the perfect vessel for future cohabitation.

Cohabitation can occur in a variety of circumstances. Wayward spirits or undead finding themselves bound to a host, both willing and unwilling. The forceful or accidental usurping of control of a host by creatures such as demons or ghosts. Or potentially the incidental shunting of ones soul into another's body as a result of wayward magic. Sometimes, a body simply comes into being inhabited by more than one soul, all of whom must navigate the world together and often all unique individuals onto themselves.

Some forms of cohabitation are able to be maintained peacefully, with the various inhabitants finding ways to divide control and time equally or as they feel necessary. Sometimes, the entity lingers within the shadows of a host's soul, influencing their host subtly and without the true host's awareness of their existence or intent. Not all forms of cohabitation are willing or positive, and in some cases the possessing entity may have been forced into or have forced their way into a host's body with total control, depriving the true host of the ability to act in their own body. The nature of cohabitation of bodies is a complicated matter, and often difficult to navigate or understand.

If you want to play a character, or even characters, who must navigate and adapt to existing while never truly alone in one body, then you should become a host of many.

You Might...

• Sometimes spend more time consulting with your co-inhabitants than with others.
• Exert a great deal of effort to shut out the other beings vying for control over your one body.
• Be constantly on the run from well-meaning but dismissive priests and exorcists.

Others Probably...

• Misunderstand the nature of your cohabitation, and simply assume you are a hapless victim.
• Become confused as to which entity is currently in control of the body.
• Blame you for misfortunes or tragedies, even if it isn't your fault.

Possessed

Multiple entities inhabit this body. You gain the host of many trait, in addition to the traits from your ancestry. You can choose from host of many feats and feats from your ancestry whenever you gain an ancestry feat. When you choose this versatile heritage, you must decide what kind of cohabitation is taking place; Collective, Conduit, Manipulated or Possessed.

Collective: Your co-inhabitants work with you to achieve harmony with one another. You can willingly allow these entities to take control in order to perform tasks or communicate with others, and can shift between these entities (including yourself) at will. Regardless of which entity is in control, you are all treated as the same entity for the sake of effects and abilities, and all entities share the same abilities and statistics. You gain the Collective trait.

Conduit: You seemingly are prone to having wayward entities finding a home in your body, typically during periods of high stress or through deliberate invitation. When you critically fail at a check, you must make an DC 5 flat check. On a failure, you are possessed for one hour by a wayward entity. This is a possession effect. Typically, these entities are related to the location where the failure occurred, such as the spirit of a long dead librarian while trying to research ancient tomes in a forgotten archive. This possession lasts for one hour, or 24 hours if the result was a critical failure. You can also willingly allow these spirits to possess your body. This requires at least 10 minutes of continuous meditation, after which an entity takes possession of your body for 10 minutes. You do not have control over what entity enters your body, nor can you exert control during this period of time. You gain the Conduit trait.

Manipulated: Sometimes, an entity residing within you might choose to hide itself from you and your knowledge, assuming control as it deems necessary or it sees fit. It can do so at will, during which you lose control over yourself. Your GM decides when this effect has taken place, and makes a DC 15 flat check on your behalf to determine whether or not you are aware that there is a gap in your memory, but you are still not aware of the possession. During this time, the possessing entity takes control of your body, and can do so for up to 24 hours. This is a possession effect. Once it has taken control of you, it cannot do so for at least a week. It can also attempt to exert control in what it deems an extreme emergency, at which point you are entitled to a DC 11 flat check to maintain control. It will never act on your behalf or behest. You gain the Manipulated trait.

Possession: This body is not your own, but you have taken it for yourself or have been forced to assume control. You can decide whether or not the true host currently inhabits this body, but if it is, it is unable to exert any control over itself whatsoever and you cannot grant control back. This is a possession effect, but you treat this body as your original body for the sake of spells that only affect the caster. All abilities and statistics on your sheet are available to you even while possessing this body, regardless of whether or not they are purely physical or mental. Your GM may choose to give your true host and their body separate abilities, but you cannot access them while possessing this body. You gain the Possessed trait.

If you die and are resurrected, any other inhabiting entities return to this body along with you.

Another background about mindcontrol!

Dominated Will

Rare
You were the victim of mental domination from some powerful entity or spellcaster. But, due to some twist of fate, your would-be master is well out of reach from you, and most likely forever. Yet still you feel some overwhelming compulsion to carry out their will.

Choose two ability boosts. One must be Constitution or Intelligence, and one is a free ability boost.

You are trained in Deception and Lore related to your master (such as Vampire Lore if your master is a vampire).

You are permanently under the effects of mental domination, forcing you to pursue a general but directed objective. How you pursue this goal is up to you, but you must take reasonable steps to see it carried out. The exact objective is up to you and the GM; examples might be 'undermine the authorities of the land to better prepare for my conquest' or 'gather wealth to fill my treasure troves'. Objectives should generally be tailored so that they do not immediately conflict with the goals of the party while still creating potential for internal or interpersonal conflict in the future. You are unaware of your mental domination, and explain any course of action taken in pursuit of your objective as a lapse of judgement, simple happenstance or a choice done of your own free will, even if that explanation is illogical, contradictory or nonsensical.

Your GM may occasionally force you to follow a single non-suicidal course of action that aligns with this objective. You must attempt a DC 11 flat check, or DC 5 if the compulsion directly contradicts one of your anathema. An anathema that would directly prohibit your entire objective does not reduce DCs; your dedication to that anathema was worn down long ago.

Critical Success You refuse the compulsion and cannot be compelled again for 1 week.
Success You refuse the compulsion, and cannot be forced to take that particular action for 1 day.
Failure You immediately obey the compulsion. You continue to pursue the course of action for 1 hour, until you have completed a finite compulsion, or until the compulsion becomes self-destructive.

You gain the Vacant Stare reaction. Whenever you are compelled to complete a course of action towards your objective, your uses of Vacant Stare resets.

Vacant Stare [reaction] (Fortune, Mental); Frequency once per day; Trigger You fail or critically fail against an effect with the Mental trait Effect Your will is already in the grip of someone else. You become partially catatonic in response to a new source of mental manipulation. Reroll the triggering save. After resolving this second save, you become stupefied for 2 rounds.

Running this Background as a GM

This background has the potential to create possibly disruptive or difficult situations for not only the player who has taken this background, but fellow players as well and for you. It is extremely important that both you and the player interested in this background come to a good understand of what is or isn't acceptable as a command, as well as what actions are okay in order to fulfill that command. It is also important to gauge this with the rest of the players that will have to play in a game with this character.

While the background should remain a mystery to the in-world characters, it is best to establish boundaries with all participating players as to what is acceptable for this background, even if at the expense of losing some of the mystery behind what is happening. You can maintain some of the mystery by establishing what isn't acceptable rather than what is, but you should still be careful to avoid any commands that would be disruptive towards the progression of the narrative, cohesion of the party, and to the overall enjoyment of the game. Consider what reactions could occur to an action if the character is caught in the act.

Forcing the dominated character to rob a minor NPC in a town the group is passing through may be less disruptive if the consequences of that action may take some time before they catch up with the character, such as suddenly finding themself a wanted criminal in the county or the group as a whole suddenly on the run from local authorities (and hopefully in a way that keeps the story moving forward and the group from holding too much animosity towards the dominated character).

Forcing that same character to rob their fellow party members is often going to result in conflict that could result in the narrative grinding to a complete stand still, or the group splintering apart in a way that makes the players enjoy the experience less, or the player that chose this background to regret their decision.

If you cannot come to a good understanding of how to run this background, it would be best to suggest that they take a more fitting background instead and work on alternatives.

Edit: Included some suggestions from others and some guidance for GMs due to the potentially disruptive nature of the background.

The idea here is that these afflictions are meant as character concept guides, plot devices, more interesting character representation, or as means of creating interesting consequences for your players. This borrows heavily from ideas in the prior versions around 'power at a price' concepts, such as body grafts (demon grafts, necrografts, etc), corruptions, curses (particularly, oracle curses) and deliberate acts of self-destruction in order to obtain something. But it also allows for the exploration of disabilities and chronic afflictions seated more firmly in the game setting, which allows for players an opportunity to explore playing characters struggling through a life-altering affliction without actively weakening the power fantasy Pathfinder is known for.

A lot of players are intrigued by the idea of making the game more difficult for themselves for the sake of a more robust roleplay experience and depth to the struggles that their character is faced with, sometimes before any dice are rolling. By providing workable mechanics to assist and guide players and game masters, this also allows for a mechanical representation of the ideas without being forced to operate on abstraction or GM fiat.

Primarily borrowing some prompts from here! https://www.tumblr.com/knives-in-the-dishwater/755097805660569600/ihasafandom-ihasafandom-beleester

Pathfinder 2e has a few methods through which this is possible. We'll make one for a few over several posts.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds serve as a really light-weight method of giving your character a deliberate downside in order to obtain something better in return. This technically will be two different types in one, since we'll be utilizing Afflictions for our example.

This background provides the means of creating a character struggling with a terminal illness without an obvious cure or solution. This is usually a fairly intense subject matter to explore, so it is always best to check with your GM and fellow players before introducing characters that revolve around similar themes. However, for a character motivation, this provides ample ground for the call to adventure, and heroes are rarely the type to give up even in the face of extreme adversity. (You can maybe tell I was recently playing BG3 and maybe a certain character from that comes to mind.)

Threadbare Form

Rare
Your body is no longer capable of keeping itself physically whole. The years of close calls and near-fatal injures held back by the workings of magical healing practitioners has had an unusual and horrific effect on your body. Without the constant application of vitality energy, old wounds and injures start to re-emerge; fresh as the day they happened. You seek a cure to this terrible fate, before your body falls to literal pieces beneath you.

Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Wisdom or Charisma, and one is a free ability boost.

You are trained in Medicine and The Void Plane Lore. You are permanently afflicted by Memory of Injury. This affliction cannot go below Stage 1, even if you successfully save against the affliction. If you are ever exposed to an effect with the vitality trait, and that effect would heal you, then this affliction immediately resets to Stage 1, even if no healing occurred. No mortal magic can remove this affliction outright, and it is dubious what, if anything, the gods can do to help you.

You can cast void warp as an innate occult cantrip. You can use Wisdom as your spellcasting ability for this innate spell. While at Stage 2 or higher of Memory of Injury, add a +1 status bonus to the save DC for this cantrip.

Special If you are harmed by vitality energy and healed by void energy, than the traits of Memory of Injury become (curse, vitality) and all void damage is replaced by vitality damage. Your affliction is reset to Stage 1 and you can only recover hit points from effects with the Void trait,rather than effects with the Vitality trait.

Memory of Injury (Curse, Void) While afflicted, the creature can only recover hit points from effects with the Vitality trait. The creature still recovers hit points from resting. A creature killed by memory of injury splinters into threads of flesh, bone and skin and can't be resurrected except by a 7th-rank resurrect ritual or similar magic. Resurrection does not remove the curse; Saving Throw Easy DC adjusted Fortitude; Stage 1 No effect (5 days); Stage 2 1d4 void damage per two levels (2 days); Stage 3 As Stage 2 (2 days); Stage 4 As Stage 2, but deals 2d4 void damage per two levels instead, return to Stage 1.

Edit: Feedback implemented from @kobold-catgirl, much thanks!