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Posted by: Bearclaw May 5 2015, 04:00 PM

I was looking at creating a shapeshifter, but aside from the info not being very well organized, it seems like a badly gimped character concept.
The best form is the animal form, but without regeneration or armor, you can never get into a fight. So that's out. You get some powers, but nothing that can't be gotten cheaply by a phys-ad, some cyber-ware, or a couple of spells. So, some roll playing fun, but at a huge cost. Maybe fun for a solo campaign, but not as a member of a team of shadowrunners.
Or am I missing something?

Posted by: Mantis May 5 2015, 04:12 PM

The cool factor, which seems to be the only reason to take any number of gimped gear/concepts/whatever in 5th ed. Rule of Cooooool!

Posted by: hermit May 5 2015, 04:46 PM

Stubbornness. The same reason to play a cybered non-Decker character. SR5 is MagicRun. The decisiveness with which mundanes are gimped suggests that's actually their idea of a good game.

So play a metahuman MysthAd or GTFO.

Posted by: Bearclaw May 5 2015, 04:50 PM

My thought was that I could play a mage, and take the shapechange spell. So when convenient, I could take on the abilities of whatever animal I wanted, but still be able to wear armor in general.
Seriously, the only reason regeneration was cool was because it almost made up for not wearing armor.

Posted by: PraetorGradivus May 5 2015, 06:57 PM

I don't know...how about bovine shapeshifter/minotaur w/ 4 special points at priority C... when normally you have to spend priority B to get a minotaur with no special points

Posted by: Bearclaw May 5 2015, 07:00 PM

So, the shapeshifter is so bad that it's only use is a weird loophole that lets you make the non-shapeshifter part a little tougher?

Posted by: PraetorGradivus May 5 2015, 07:45 PM

as far as I know...both parts are shapeshifter.... just saying.

and the special points are part and parcel of the whole.

people buy cyber hands and feet just for the armor and 'this' is a wierd loophole?

Posted by: Bearclaw May 5 2015, 07:47 PM

Oh, there's lots of weird loopholes. I'm not really a fan of 5th ed so far, but that's what they're playing in the game I'm joining.

Posted by: PraetorGradivus May 5 2015, 08:35 PM

I try not to complain too much...
5th is what it is.
The poster wanted a reason to play a shifter and that popped into my head.
If you rather...how about flight for the falconine.
And how about the age-old reason... a roleplaying challenge.
Instead of complaining, how about we all just enjoy ourselves.
No, no...I'm not going to start singing kumbaya.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 5 2015, 08:49 PM

That's too bad... I was gonna go get marshmallows.

Posted by: Bearclaw May 5 2015, 08:57 PM

I'm the original poster
I didn't start the thread to complain, I was hoping I had missed something, and shapeshifters were a playable race.
I guess it could be, if you did everything that mattered in metahuman form, and the animal nature was just roll playing.
The rules make the animal form close to useless in combat. Regeneration didn't make up for no armor in 4th ed, but it helped. Hell, they're not even dual natured, so to hunt spirits and stuff I'd still have to play a phys-ad. I was hoping to get the stuff I want, without having to be an adept or mage.

So my plan now is to play an aspected sorceror, be REALLY good at manipulation spells, and use shapechange to switch to whatever form is most useful at the time.
I'll pick a totem, probably dog or wolf, just to aid in role playing, take category A for skills and be a detective/face/spirit zapper/first aid kit/all around utility dude. Not as good as a specialist at anything, but good enough to get the job done at most things. And I'll still be able to fly, or turn into a bear for combat or a bloodhound to track someone down.

Posted by: Bearclaw May 5 2015, 10:21 PM

Or mystic adept. I forget about aspected mages getting no free spells.

Posted by: Glyph May 6 2015, 01:24 AM

Yeah, I was just going to point that out. Sorcerers are a bit more viable in Point Buy, but they are horrible in Priority or Sum-to-Ten. 30 Karma to start out with 6 spells? Be a mysad and start out with 6 power points for the same cost.

Posted by: Umidori May 6 2015, 04:21 AM

So wait - they made Shapeshifters in 5E even less worthwhile to play than they were in 4E? That's a hell of an accomplishment.

~Umi

Posted by: Wothanoz May 6 2015, 06:28 AM

Honestly, I really don't mind that Mystic Adepts and Aspected Magicians ain't awesome: I have some bad memories of being pinned into a building, with a citymaster rolling around, and our magic guy could summon spirits to deal with it. Awesome. Or when that wizard can't scout the building for you. Yeah, not a fan of that.

I've never liked the "partial" magic types. PhysAds are tolerable, but generally, I wanna drag every gimped awakened character out behind a tasty freeze and stab'em up with a rusty screwdriver.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 6 2015, 03:48 PM

Mystic Adepts are in no way gimped (they are very awesome) in 5th Edition. They are the only ones who can start with Magic 6 AND 6 Power Points.

Posted by: Medicineman May 6 2015, 04:06 PM

or even 7 both , but than they have no other Pos Qualities ( Everything has a Price in 5th ed Y'know)

Hough!
Medicineman

Posted by: Wothanoz May 6 2015, 06:31 PM

If you can't summon, banish and astrally project, then you're a gimp to me. Sorry.

Magician Superiority an' all. We look down our noses at you.

Posted by: Cochise May 6 2015, 07:05 PM

Well, it all boils down to "lack of astral projection" then as far as Mystics are concerned ... which kind of over-estimates its value ... even when disregarding the precedence of SR3 officially granting "Mystics" access to astral projection / metaplanar travel without aid of spirit entities.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 6 2015, 07:07 PM

Yeah, but SR3. Ick.

Posted by: Cochise May 6 2015, 07:24 PM

Whatever dislikes you may have about SR3 that still doesn't change the fact that Mystics are not necessarily precluded from the "precious" astral projection. It's just that - so far - none of the current writers / developers re-introduced the associated metamagic ... which I find a bit strange considering that "Unified Magic Theory" that they decided to make baseline ...

Posted by: Wothanoz May 6 2015, 07:36 PM

Nah, that's one of the things I hated: being an adept/aspected mage back in the day really was a drawback. Then as time went on, they made it better and better. I never liked that.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 6 2015, 07:38 PM

You do realize that Mystic Adepts can Summon and Banish, right? And can perceive astrally if they have the adept ability.
I have always found that Astral Projection pretty much sucks (It has niche uses, but I have rarely ever utilized it), so your mileage may vary.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 6 2015, 07:38 PM

Magic has become more powerful as the timeline progresses. Why is that weird?

Posted by: Cochise May 6 2015, 08:08 PM

Being a baseline adept or aspected magician also came with reduced initial costs (and do so in form of negative qualities when opting for them these days). Not so much for Mystics / Adepts of the Magician's Way which were full magicans cost wise (and in part within fluff as well). And they certainly do cost more in later editions -including the latest one. So I'm a bit at a loss concerning your line of argument there ... particularly when considering the fact that you do seem to like SR5.

Fact remains: Mystic Adepts in SR4 and SR5 only lack direct access to astral projection and there still is precedence for that kind of magician getting access to it in an earlier edition.

And one of the core elements of the current magic theory (i.e. "Unified Magic Theory") would actually suggest that (re-)gaining that access should be far easier within the current time line than it was in SR3 days. Currently the Mystic Adept is pretty much the culmination of a magician gaining access to adept powers or an adept gaining access to magician's abilities and it looks rather arbitrary that projection is left out there. But then again, nobody ever claimed that consistency of the involved metaphysics was a strong element of SR rules and fluff.

Posted by: Megu May 7 2015, 02:10 AM

How hard would it just be to adapt the rules from 4e for shifters, with regeneration and a single set of stats and so on?

Or if we don't like regeneration for some reason, would Mystic Armor make sense? I just feel like shifters need something to make up for the general lack of body armor.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 7 2015, 04:26 AM

On demand scouting that can't be stopped is niche? Woah. Maybe I'm just really creative with my Astral Projecting, because it's almost always a clutch ability. Heck, we couldn't have pulled off our last run without it.

Posted by: Glyph May 7 2015, 06:45 AM

Personally, I consider SR3 the pinnacle of mage/aspected magician power. That was when they could cast spells at D and kill people with one single net success. SR4 made them weaker, then SR5 gimped them more. Not saying SR5 mages aren't viable (especially considering that augmented mundanes got gimped too), but SR3 was the high point.

Posted by: binarywraith May 7 2015, 06:55 AM

Shapeshifters are intentionally bad because they only exist for Rule of Cool and (like Vampires) because they were introduced when World of Darkness was overwhelmingly popular. They've never really worked well, and are generally a nightmare to GM for because they are both required to be animals with a human form, and are permanently dual natured, and thus very vulnerable to every form of magical defense ever.

Unlike the Infected, shifters haven't benefitted from having a writer with a raging boner for them to rework them into something less punishing so far. Personally, I'm thankful for that, as if I wanted gothic-punk shapeshifting there's a whole catalog of White Wolf games that do it better.

Posted by: Cochise May 7 2015, 07:48 AM

While I'd agree on the "rule of cool" part I'd heavily question their introduction into SR (as NPC and PC) being a result of the popularity of World of Darkness back then. If anything the SR2 Companion introduced them as player characters due to "popular demand" within the Shadowrun player base after a certain female tiger shifter had made quite "impressive" appearances in the novels - which in some cases date back to SR1 days and even somewhat "before".

And history repeated itself for Drakes after the Dragonheart Trilogy - no matter how much Ryan M. was despised by parts of the player base.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 7 2015, 02:01 PM

Maybe you play in a different way than we do... On demand scouting is nice, but with Background count and wards, is not really the end all, be all. And our GM uses both generously. After all, they are controls on Magic, and are meant to be used. Not saying it isn't nice, it just isn't a clutch ability in my mind, and it is one I can do without. If you REALLY need it, there are drugs that can allow it.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 7 2015, 02:03 PM

And yet people STILL complain that Single net success kills with magic are badwrongfun.
I agree that magic in 3rd is powerful, but in my opinion, magic in 4th is more so. The dynamic changed a bit, because the resolution mechanics changed (and they closed a few loopholes that allowed for some interesting applications of magic), but in the end, in my experience, mages are far more powerful in 4th Edition.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 7 2015, 06:25 PM

I don't have street grimoire on me, so I'm not real read up on the current state of rules. Givin i'm nto allowed to play awakened characters, it didn't seem very pressing for me, since I'm not GMing for a while.

But on wards, those ain't a big deal: a team of 10 magic 3 magics can put up a level 1 ward, 3 meters high, aaround a square kilometer in a week. Level 1 wards are the astral equivilent of a "Posted: No Trespassing" sign. Each level of ward up, halves the area that can be warded in a week. And ifthey're not makign it permanent(which is... costly), then they have to re-do that in about a month and a half. So, wards are somewhat limited on how big they can be.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 7 2015, 06:38 PM

They are limited in size, yes, but there is no lack of them.
You cannot just pass through a ward, so they are an impediment. Anything worth anything is generally behind a ward, if there is ANY level of magical security at all.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 7 2015, 07:07 PM

Well, I assume magical security is mostly contracted for non AAA corps: you call up Diogenes Defenders and they'll come ward your place, just like Terminex will come over and kill the bugs. So I assume most magic security is of that nature, maybe backed-up by a house mage or something, but probably not. Magic is expensive, and magicians tend to be raging dicks about getting their way.

And yeah, you can just pas through a ward, atleast according to the main book. It takes a charisma+magic test, but you can slide on through a ward with no problem it's not too high, and you are halfway decent.

And sometimes, the information you need is that there is a ward: we had to run a penetration and extraction of a diseased monkey(don't ask) on a 16 floor tower. The plans accessible to the public gave us a general lay-out, but that was about it, and we didn't know where the lab was. No hacker, and I didn't feel like my single MCT Fly-Spy and Scratch Built Junk of an RCC were going to get that sussed out. So. The mage steps up and gets used to astral scout the building. This shows that the lab is on the 13th floor(it's got a ward around it, a decent one). The mage was able to penetrate the barrier and scout the warded area, including getting tricked by a Spirit of Beasts that looked like a monkey(there were trid phantasms of bananas and everything... sheesh).

But all he had to do for us was find out where the ward was, because that pin pointed where we had to go to get into the lab. Their security layout had the lab access from a highly secure express elevator in the basement. We inserted on the roof(thank you levitation!), broke the lock on the doors, went down the staircase, includign setting up two booby traps using stealth RFIDs and flashbangs on the 16th and 15th floors. A man spirit was summoned and told to watch the stairwell for enemies comign from below, and to use fear to scare them away.

The Mage started the fight by going astral, rolling up on the man-spirit the Corp wage-mage had summoned up and blasting it into the ether. We came in with silenced ARs(two of us), put down the guards. Turns out a semi-auto grenade launcher loaded with Flashbangs IS useful. Extremely so. So we secure the security headquarters for the building(only 6 or 7 kills, which isn't terrible. Some of those guys could be saved if the paramedics get to'em in time. Not the spider. I cut his fucking head off, after he bricked our commlinks. Also, Spiders tend to have datalocks and cranial storage, and I wasn't leaving that behind.

Then we set some explosives on the floor, cut through that into the guard station for the lab, killing the guards(sorry), and intimidating the lab workers to get the specimen ready for transport. I may have had to knee cap somebody. Whatever. Our demo-guy was rigging an outside wall to blow out for our escape hatch. I had a witty moment, threatening a scientist with the line: "If you're not done before my friend is done(the guy settign up explosives), then your friend is done(pointing my M23 at a scientist)". They got the specimen together, we blew our escape hatch, I rappelled down to secure the parking lot, the mage, Demo Guy and specimen floated down from the heavens.

But it never would've worked without that mage's astral projection. And now I have a cyberdeck AND a ford americar.

Goddammit. Street level. Harsh.

Posted by: binarywraith May 8 2015, 12:43 AM

People who think being dual natured isn't a disadvantage have never had a GM who used Watcher Spirits correctly. Magically active people are a very, very minor percentage of the population, so anyone who is visibly active in the astral stands out. A lot.

Posted by: Medicineman May 8 2015, 06:45 AM

Confirmed. Being permanantly Dual can be potentially fatal
SR3 Run; Chars are about 200 Karma ( I was playing my favorite Hobbit Hermetic "Jack McBlack") Main Enemy a Dual Natured Demon/Horror .In the final fight our Streetsam failed and got beaten up, our MA Adept was also victimized
what got him down was my Army of Watchers supported by a bound Spirit.
The Watcher simlpy gnawed him to Death (nomnomnomnomnom) and whenever the Demon killed one, I summoned another one. He had a Snowballs chance in Hell !
Another (short ) Story also from SR3 (but another Group, I was playing "Sgt. Cameo" an Ork Mercenary):
we had an obnoxious Player who insisted on playing a Shapeshifter Tiger ( The Player was full Powergaming Dreams
like him being the Boss of Lofwyrs Bodyguards,etc )
We had to aproach an Island by Boat, but there was a free Spirit residing there who started to harass the Tiger SS
from the Astral...(simply because the Player was such a Jerk)
to make a long Story short, whenever the Char showed outside, he got zapped from the Astral , so the Char stayed in the Boat for the rest of the Run.
ImO The Power of Regeneration is to Balance the Disavantage of being Dual ( and the Vulnerability to Silver)

with a balanced Dance
Medicineman

Posted by: Bearclaw May 12 2015, 04:27 PM

Is there anything in the 5th ed rules that say shifters are dual natured?

Posted by: Medicineman May 12 2015, 04:32 PM

( SR1- 4A Yes )
SR5 Nope

HougH!
Medicineman

Posted by: Umidori May 12 2015, 09:13 PM

If Astral Projecting can't be stopped in your games, your GM isn't handling it properly.

Wards and astral barriers are a thing. Magical security is a thing. Wild spirits are a thing. Even if you're playing a Street Level campaign and you're up against gangers who don't have the resources to hire mages to ward their hideouts or summon spirits to patrol, you still need to worry about wild angry spirits roaming through the astral in the hellholes of the Barrens, feeding on human suffering and especially angry when humans intrude on their astral turf.

Moreover, the whole scouting bit while projecting isn't exactly cake either. If you're trying to not get noticed on the Astral, you still need to Infiltrate. You can't see physical details of the physical world while projecting - just blurred gray shapes - and so you can't do things like read text, see through windows, or even figure out what certain objects are without a Perception test and possibly some Logic or Intuition rolls. Auras of course are bright and vibrant, but you need to Assense them to get information beyond how many there are - and if you only care about getting a headcount, there are Detection spells that do that, and without putting you at risk to Astral dangers and leaving your body slumped over to boot.

There are a few niche benefits of projection, but "automatically successful scouting without consequences" is not one of them.

~Umi

Posted by: Bearclaw May 12 2015, 10:15 PM

So your argument is "astral scouting isn't very useful"?

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 12 2015, 10:19 PM

No, the argument is that astral scouting is not an end all be all, and indeed has plenty of counters to the position that it is unstoppable, as espoused by Wothanoz. It is like any other form of scouting, and is in fact far less superior than others, some of the time, and superior other times. It is a niche thing, more often than not, at least for me.

Yes, it can be useful, but then, so can the right spell, or the right piece of equipment, blah, blah, blah.

Posted by: Umidori May 13 2015, 09:18 AM

...or the right GM?

~Umi

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 13 2015, 02:01 PM

That too.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 13 2015, 04:56 PM

I've already mentioned astral barriers. A ward covers 50m^3 per point of magic on it's creators. That's not particularly large. Consider that a 900sqft house in america has around 50 cubic meters to it. An office building that's the size of an american football field would have around 25,920 m^3 that needs to be warded, per floor. One guy warding that, with magic 6, would take 86 hours to erect a force 1 ward, which is basically a "do not trespass" sign in effectiveness. And unles he has 86 karma to make it permanent, it's only gonna last for around a month and a half before he has to redo everything. A force 4 ward would take 345 hours.

A given in SRs setting is that magic users are a small portion of the population, and as such, those who have considerable control of magic demand very high wages as a result. So, yeah.



It's not without risk, but it's much harder to stop than physical reconnaissance.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 13 2015, 05:01 PM

Mages are more prevalent than Lawyers or Doctors are in our world. Just saying.
And a ward only needs to sound an alarm when penetrated to alert security forces to the intrusion.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 13 2015, 05:14 PM

And a force 1 ward is easy to bypass without triggering a ward. For a Charisma 4, Magic 4 magician, it takes force 3 and 4 barriers to stop them. And those are not cheap to put up, as it takes around 250 mage hours for a mage to put one up on his own.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 13 2015, 05:36 PM

Why are you warding an entire facility with Force 1 Wards... Lunacy. The Secure areas are all that is required, typically, and they can be as strong as the mage is capable of constructing. You are making a lot of assumptions on Ward Strength and Area of Coverage that I have never seen born out in game. Besides Alarm wards are a thing (or at least were in SR4A - Have yet to play a Mage in SR5), and they are difficult to even see, so generally no warning until you have gone through them.

Case in Point - My last Mage could ward his entire domicile in less than a Day with Force 8 wards, should he choose to do so (and he did from time to time). Boost that to a small secure facility and it could be done in a few days. By a single Mage. Which he can keep up, indefinitely, by either just reconstructing them, or spending a bit of Karma (Me, I just put them back up again, It is a lot simpler) to make them somewhat permanent.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 13 2015, 06:02 PM

Well, how big is the facility? I mean, a 120m by 54m facility isn't really large.

Now, of course, if I wanted to secure a facility from astral intrusion, I wouldn't want to ward the whole thing. Well, maybe put a force 1 or 2 ward up over a signifigant chunk of the facility, basically like a fence. But the really secure stuff will be underground, so access to it is limited to a small number of opening. Then put the most powerful wards I can on top of the entrance to the underground. And probablly have barghests roaming the grounds at night.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 13 2015, 06:23 PM

See, now you are talking.

Posted by: Wothanoz May 13 2015, 07:08 PM

See, I'm not crazy man! Well, I might be crazy, but I ain't dumb.

I look at it like this: if mages are about as common as docs or lawyers, they probably charge reasonably similar rates for their time. So, expensive. I'd say that a magic 6 magician can probably charge a whole lot of money an hour, probably something in the realm of $100, to $200 an hour, at the least. After-all, a lot of smaller lawyer tasks can actually be handled by paralegals, smaller doctor stuff can be handled by nurses and PAs. But with magic, there's not a way to diffuse those with talent. You can have an understanding of the metaphysics as a mundane, but you can't actually do any of those tasks. So you have the lowest, weakest mages doing magical research and drudge work, with competent mages doing security, and your elite mages doing whatever the fuck they want.

A typical office building floor is around 4m in height, with a 3.7mx3.7mx3.9m cube being 53 cubic meters, or just about the size of an area a magician can ward per magic point. So that's about a 12 foot by 12 foot square, up to the ceiling in most offices, which isn't really big. And it takes (force)hours to ward that area.

So a magic 4, ritual sorcery 4 "security mage" puts up a barrier, which can be as large as 7.8x7.8m square. He's throwing 8 dice, which means 2.64 hits in general. So, he can reliably ward force 1 or 2 wards that will last for about 2 weeks. So for $100 or $200 you can get a cheap ward put up over your house to keep out roaming magical problems. It's not great, but it's not bad either. A Force 3 ward on the other hand, is gonna be a bit trickier and dicier and he might not always succeed. So he might have do it twice. A force 3 barrier is probably around $600 for your house, because he might not get it on the first go. Or he might bring in an assistant.

Now, a team of 10 of those security mages could ward an area as big as 78mx78m, and the leader's dice pool would be something like 12 dice, due to teamwork, or 4 success in general. Now they can reliably put up force 2 or 3 barriers that last for two weeks. Force 4 and force 5 are worth attempting, though force 5 starts pushing it. Force 1 and 2 barriers can probably be erected one after another until drain starts penalizing the ritual, at which point you rest for an hour. Force 3 and 4 wards are going to require a bit of rest, in addition to more time.

So i do kinda expect lots of places to be secured with force 1 and 2 wards, basically the astral equivalent of a fence with a "private property: no trespassing" sign on it.

Posted by: Lobo0705 May 13 2015, 08:00 PM

Not to mention that since your form is a glowing colorful object, a couple of spirits which take seconds to summon and last until dawn/dusk work just as well in keeping out Astral Intruders - since even if the intruder can defeat the spirits, it only takes them a single Free Action to alert their summoner that someone is there, and now the facility goes on alert.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 13 2015, 08:13 PM

Indeed... Security (Matrix, Physical, and Astral) is a many layered thing.