Ben is a man's name. But Ben de Blop (Ben “the Blob”), was a woman, played by player Benjamin. She started out as a he, but a magickal cubicle caused a sex change, and the player left it at that. He even seemed to enjoy the idea. His character was mostly silly anyway. And peskering his fellow player character Pirliwi the Leprechaun was just as possible as a female as a male.
Ben was a magic user, with new magic user rules. As a game master I was fed up with endless spell lists to be memorized. And I wanted to give players more freedom. So I introduced a spell point system. Mages had as many spell points as their intelligence score, and intelligence could be raised a point for every experience level. Every spell cost double its spell level in points. And points could be regained by meditation and sleep.
The makeshift system worked fairly well, and held out for a long years campaign. It sure gave more freedom and more creative spell use. Minor annoyance was that Ben de Blop regularly went to sleep in the middle of an adventure to regain points, which was a bit silly at times. Especially as Ben used up many points for show-off cantrips (1 spell point each).
Another thing I then introduced in my home brew was the fumble (roll a 1 on d20). And having to roll for the success of spell effects too. Ben utterly demonstrated these rules by fumbling six times successively, and killing herself by teleporting completely into the ground to negotiate a mere six foot chasm.
That was utterly weird.
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