How would one create different player models?

This is a problem that has plagued me for a long time now. I have a Player.prefab, which contains all the player-related components and variables like Movement, Health, Death etc. for each of the components contain variables with things like the max health, movement speed etc.

Now, I want to create multiple player models for the user to choose between. How do I do this?

Option 1: Duplicate the prefabs. This is what I did in the past, not only for multiple player models but for AI/human player prefabs as well. However, this makes me lose my sanity fast. Every time I want to change something like movement speed, I need to make sure all prefabs are changed similarly.

Option 2: Write a script that, on Awake(), spawns the models inside a root player object and then connects the references together. This is what I'm using in my newest project, but I fear this is unstable and fragile, and it's also non-visual.

Option 3: Prefab Variants coming in 2018.3. That seems like an ideal solution; create a base player prefab, then inherit from it to create Male Player prefab, Female Player prefab etc. However, this isn't stable yet and I would like to know how people solved this problem before 2018. (Hopefully without using Option 1!)

 

Bump!

 

2 for now. 3 when it becomes available. 1 should only be considered if the rest of the prefab is also significantly altered between the two players and even then it might be best to avoid it.

 

Yeah, I thought so too, I'm using Option 2 currently as well (though my script is kinda like a badly implemented version of Prefab Variants). 2018.3 cannot come soon enough