D&D: Five Ways to play a Fantasy Mutant
Magic powers that mutate your flesh aren’t only for Chaos. Here’s how you can be a mutant in good ol’ D&D.
If you’re reading this headling and thinking, “why would I want to be a fantasy mutant?” Just consider for a moment. D&D is a game of adventure, exploration, and most of all power fantasy. Whether that’s seeing meaningful, measurable progress from your direct actions, waking up after eight hours and feeling completely refreshed on a regular basis, or having a cool tentacle arm or extra eyestalk that can shoot psychic laser beams.
It’s a sort of cycle that goes through D&D the more you play it. First you start off with traditional high fantasy archetypes like a Dwarven Fighter or Tiefling Warlock. Then you get into weird little combos like Grung Barbarian or Firbolg Bard. And then, you start thinking in science-fiction terms.
Next thing you know you’re looking at playable, canonical robots. Or. Better still. Being a fantasy mutant, so you don’t break the campaign, but now you’re playing with the genre training wheels off, so to speak.
Anyway, here’s how to be a mutant in D&D.
Play a Simic Hybrid
Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica remainsone of my favorite books in D&D for a number of reasons. Chief among them, the Guild/Patron rules, but also the new player options, including and especially the Simic Hybrid.
Simic Hybrids were once adult humans, elves, or vedalken, only they’ve been genetically altered by the Simic Combine, and nowthey possess powerful mutations that give them extra abilities. Like Darkvision, the ability to glide, to climb nimbly, or even breathe air underwater.
But what’s really fun about a playing a Simic Hybrid is that, even as you level up, you don’t run out of fun times. At level 5, your Simic Hybrid gains an even stronger mutation, which can aid them in combat.
Play a Plasmoid
What if you’d rather be less aquatic in nature? That’s where playing a Plasmoid comes in. These are technically slime people, and their special abilities give them the power to assume any form they want, so long as it’s made out of goo.
And being made out of goo and/or ooze is about as “mutated” as you can get. It worked for Alex Mack who gained the mutant ability to turn into someone who drank a Capri Sun pouch, and it’s a good way to indicate that your character has more going on than meets the eye.
Especially since your form is fairly mutable.
Play a Great Old One Warlock
Now wecome to one of two different classes who has touched a mind from the Far Realm. The Great Old One patron often leaves a Warlock marked in some eldritch way. For starters, in addition to being psionically gifted, you have the telltale signs of contact with something eldritch.
This works doubly so if you flavor your Warlock features, like Eldritch Invocations, as the Far Realm’s influence warping your flesh, giving you mutant eyestalks to be able to see in the darkness you create, or to speak with a beguiling tongue.
Play an Aberrant Soul Sorcerer
Don’t want to hear how your character has “sold their soul to the Far Realm”? Go for the more direct connection instead. Playing an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer means you’re descended from someone whose blood was more directly contacted by an aberration.
The result is you. Psionic powers, sure, but also a whole table of weird manifestations to roll on: from skin that glistens with shiny mucus to a tentacle that compels you to listen to its advice, there’s plenty of opportunities to get real weird with it in the best way.
Play a Changeling
Finally, play a Changeling. They’re basically just Mystique from the X-Men. Wear any face you want. Adapt whatever form you need to accomplish your new goal. It’s simple, straightforward, and a great way to be a fantasy mutant.
Whether or not you were mutated by magic or goo is up to you!
