How to Build Glitch Characters for Planescape – Posts

In Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, something’s amiss with reality, and you’re at the center of the mystery.

For the adventure Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, you’ll need to create a 3rd-level character and two variants of them, or incarnations. While your character’s incarnations may have different species, classes, and abilities, they are all still one character. Over the course of your travels in Sigil and the Outlands, your character may be replaced by one of their other incarnations.

Here’s how to go about building a glitch character, with a few pointers along the way.

Talk to Your Dungeon Master, Chief

Any time character creation is involved, it’s important to loop your DM in on your plans. They have the final say on how you should approach character creation for an adventure. They may ask for you to wait on creating your two other incarnations until a later time, or that your incarnations only have minimal differences from one another.

What Is a Glitch Character?

Artist: RICCARDO MOSCATELLO

The multiverse is a vast and complicated thing in Dungeons & Dragons, but even it can’t seem to make sense of you. In Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, you’ll be playing what’s known as a glitch character. A glitch character is made up of three incarnations, which are basically different versions of the same person.

Glitch characters are an anomaly in the multiverse; your place and purpose are a big question mark. And that means weird things happen to you, particularly when you die.

Glitch characters suffer from amnesia. When the adventure kicks off in Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, you’ll find your character struggles to remember who they were and where they came from. But, as you’ll start the adventure at 3rd level, it’s clear you’ve been to places and done things. Part of the joy of Turn of Fortune’s Wheel is rediscovering who you are, for better or worse. This gap in memory presents ample opportunity for roleplay and for devious DMs.

When you die, you are replaced by another incarnation. Look, the multiverse doesn’t know what to do with you, so your death gives it an opportunity to set things right. Unless someone acts fast to bring you back from the dead, one of your other incarnations will emerge to take your place. Keep dying, and you’ll find yourself swapping between your three incarnations like a merry-go-round of death.

Luckily, all your incarnations level together, and they’re automatically attuned to whatever magic items you were attuned to in your previous incarnation. But they may be down spell slots or class features, depending on what your DM decides. So, there are certainly pros and cons to being nigh-unkillable.

Incarnations appear in strange places—and at strange times. Dying is rarely convenient, and that remains true in Turn of Fortune’s Wheel. It may take minutes, hours, or even years for your incarnation to show up; the multiverse is hard at work at bringing you back, and that takes time! Luckily, that serves as an opportunity for someone to cast raise dead on you. If they move fast enough, you won’t be replaced by another incarnation.

Chances are your incarnation won’t just waltz into the chamber where you were facing down a lethal threat, either. You may later find them wandering down a desolate alleyway or sitting in an empty room with no recollection of where they came from. On that note, if everyone in your party happens to die, that could spell disaster depending on how long it takes for your incarnations to appear. But we’ll leave those consequences to your DM.

You’re probably going to have an existential crisis. When you die, your corpse doesn’t go poof. Imagine rounding a corner as an incarnation to see your friends surrounded by the bodies of your enemies—and yourself. Roll for panic attack.

Your death could rattle the ol’ noggin. The very fabric of reality may be at threat in this adventure, but aren’t you a bit curious about who you were before all this started? Lucky for you, a fatal blow to the head could be all that’s needed for you to remember fragments of your past.

Building a Glitch Character for Planescape

Artist: KAI CARPENTER

When creating a glitch character, you’ll have a few things to prepare and consider. Most notably, you’ll need to come up with three versions of yourself and decide on a nexus feature, which we discuss below.

Incarnations: The 3 Versions of You

Incarnations are just different versions of the same character. You’ll control one incarnation at a time, and only swap incarnations when you die, or whenever your DM calls for it. As you’re likely to die early on in Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, it’s advisable to go into the adventure with ideas for all your incarnations.

But your incarnations don’t need to be spectacularly different from one another. You and your DM will decide how similar or dissimilar they should be. If the idea of making multiple characters isn’t appealing, don’t sweat it! Perhaps the incarnations of your glitch character are exactly the same except for their eye color or the way they style their hair.

If you’re like me, though, and have dozens of characters and experimental builds sitting in the toybox waiting to be played, you might choose entirely different species, classes, and more for your incarnations.

Of course, your incarnations all could share the same character build but be defined by their different personalities. One incarnation could be the idealized version of yourself, another the worst version of yourself, and the last an average of the other two. Or, your incarnations could be the outcome of a defining moment in your life. One incarnation may have taken that scholarship to Strixhaven University, where another opted to stay at home in Waterdeep as the merchant of a magic shop, and where another sought out an apprenticeship at Candlekeep.

Playing With 2014 and 2024 Character Builds

When the 2024 core rulebooks come out, you’ll have the opportunity to play through this adventure using characters made with the 2014 and 2024 player options (given DM permission). The updated ruleset will be compatible with Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse.

This could make for a fun way to experience the incarnations of your glitch character. But if your table can’t wait to play and everyone is comfortable with playtesting, you could build incarnations using Unearthed Arcana materials.

Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.