One of my player characters disguised themselves as a prince to marry a princess in order to steal something. Along the way, the PC and the NPC fell in love for real. The problem is that they are both women, so having children is kind of impossible. Unfortunately, in order to continue the royal line, they need to have a biological child, making things like donors or adoption problematic. Is there a way in 5th edition that enables two same sex characters to have a child?
I've found this Ring of Gender Swapping on Dandwiki but its kind of cursed and homebrew. Besides, neither of the characters really want to change gender to be a man.
Is there an existing way in 5e for two people of the same sex to produce biological offspring?
Best Answer
Starting a family is an issue of world building and character development that is left up to the players and the DM.
There aren't any rules for procreation. Starting a family is generally not something I would expect a D&D 5e game to focus on,1 and this is reflected in the lack of any rules or mechanics about it. That is, it is an issue of world building and character development that is left up to the players and the DM. This question is concerned with changing a character's sex for the purpose of having a child, and while true polymorph is offered as a viable mechanical solution, the rest of the offered solutions rely heavily on working with the DM. The case is the same here.
As a DM, the general solution I use for things like this, that is, major things the players want to do that there are no rules for, is to make it into a quest. For example, I once had a player who wanted to change races in character. Typically, if a player says to me "hey I think I'd be more happy with this character if I were X race", I have no problem just handwaving the race change and moving on, but this player's character wanted to change their race, and the player wanted that change to be a part of the story we were telling. There is a mechanic for this, the reincarnate spell, but the outcome of that spell is random, and the space of outcomes is limited. They wanted to change into a specific race with certainty, one that was not on the reincarnate list. So I made it into a quest. The short version is that they recovered an artifact on behalf of the church of the race's primary religion, in exchange for the high priest performing a rite of transition to change the character into that race.
The idea here is to use the things the party wants to do to make content for them. This is exactly the sort of collaborative storytelling outlined in the introduction to the Dungeon Master's Guide (emphases mine):
Frequent communication with the players about their own ideas for the story and the character developments they want to work toward is great way to both keep the players engaged and to plan your campaign.
Now, that is my "DM's perspective", but if you are a player - what do? Talk with your DM. Tell them what you want to do, that is, find a way for the two characters to produce a child together, and ask them if you can work out a way for that to happen within the world. Explain that this is something you (and ideally the rest of the party) want to do, and would be a good idea for a quest arc. Hopefully, they will be receptive to the free campaign idea and put a quest together.
1 Though there is nothing wrong with this, if that is something you and your table mates want to explore in your game.