Changeling (3.5e Race)

Changeling
Summary::A changeling that can actually transform into other things.

Distantly descended from doppelgangers are the shapechangers known as changelings. Many generations of outside breeding have diminished the formidable powers of their doppelganger ancestors, but changelings nevertheless maintain the ability to imitate members of other races in very convincing fashion.

Personality
Philosophically, changelings can generally be segregated into two groups. Passers wish to assimilate themselves into the society they live in, and generally refrain from assuming their natural form in favor of maintaining a single identity as a member of another race. Becomers are very much the opposite, embracing the duality offered by their abilities and coordinating multiple lives at once.

Having several identities and allegiances that they must keep separate from one another can cause an understandable amount of cognitive dissonance and conflicts of identity within a particular changeling. Mental instability is not uncommon amongst those Becomers, while Passers who settle on a particular identity are often much more accommodating.

Physical Description
Anatomically, changelings are highly mimetic. Lacking skin and hair pigmentation and possessing cloudy white eyes, their natural form being very reminiscent of a blank slate. Although they are similar to humans in height, a changeling’s natural form is almost universally frail.

By shapeshifting, however, a changeling can perfectly imitate the appearance of creatures that fit a similar physical archetype, its body chemistry actually changing to match that of the other race.

Relations
Changelings have a deserved reputation for deceit, as their propensity to rarely exist in their natural form makes a great deal of their existence a total falsehood. Those who are careful enough to go undetected, however, maintain as cordial of relations with others as is typical amongst the race(s) they are impersonating.

Alignment
Changelings tend to be of neutral alignment, although their vocations tend to be illicit in nature. Those with multiple identities may be a law-abiding citizen at one time and a lawless marauder at another, but more often the former is a cover to mask the activities of the latter.

Lands
Changelings have no unified land or government; many times they are able to go through life without knowing of the existence of any others of their kind provided they live for all intents and purposes as a member of another race, whose regional allegiances the changeling usually adopts as their own.

Language
Changelings have the ability to speak the language of whatever race they are currently taking the shape of; in their natural form, however, they speak Common.

Names
Because their names can change so regularly, a changeling rarely puts any importance on a particular one, except perhaps to associate each name with a particular alter-ego.

Racial Traits

 * (Shapechanger)
 * : As Medium creatures, changelings gain no bonuses or penalties based on size.
 * Changeling base land speed is 30 feet.
 * Sound Imitation (Ex): A changeling may replicate any sounds it has previously heard with all the limitations of the ventriloquism spell. This ability is useable at will.
 * Morph (Ex): As a standard action, a changeling may choose another ECL 1 race of the same size (default Medium) and effectively become a member of that race, gaining up to two of that race’s racial traits and making an immediate Disguise check. Traits that have a limited number of uses may not be selected, nor ability score modifiers, and the changeling cannot take racial traits from more than one race simultaneously. Lastly, the changeling gains the ability to speak the automatic languages of the race they are imitating. For all intents and purposes, the changeling is treated as a member of that race for the purposes of being affected (or not affected) by race-dependent effects. This transformation lasts indefinitely, but when the changeling dies it automatically switches back to its natural form.
 * +4 bonus on Disguise checks.
 * Automatic Languages: Common.
 * Bonus Languages: Any.
 * Favored Class: Assassin or Beguiler
 * Level Adjustment: +Level Adjustment::0
 * Effective Character Level: Effective Character Level::1
 * Effective Character Level: Effective Character Level::1