Shapeshifters and Sustained Spells, Can they do it? Options

[Moonstone Spider]

I was working the other day on trying to make a shapeshifter that could actually compete with metahuman characters when I had an odd notion.

Can a shapeshifter sustain a spell while shapechanging? After all, shapeshifting is not an exclusive action. And what if the Shapeshifter uses a sustaining foci?

With most spells this isn't a problem. Nobody's going to have a problem with a shapeshifter who changes form while sustaining a "Detect Enemies" spell. But there's at least one area that could be prone to heavy abuse here.

Shapeshifters can use sorcery in their animal or human form. So combine that with improve attribute/initiative spells. Now imagine a Tiger Shapeshifter.

Mr. Tiger gets insane initiative in tiger form. He's got +2 initiative die and +1 reaction. Let's assume Mr. Tiger has Intelligence 6. In tiger form he has Quickness 8. In human form? Quickness 1. That means that his reaction, the TN for an improve reaction/initiative spell, is only 3. It's easy for him to get six successes and have his reaction at 9 in human form.

Now, while sustaining the Improved Reaction and Initiative spells, he shapeshifts. In animal form he has Reaction 8. Plus six gives him reaction 14. His initiative is now 14 + 6d6, making even MBW4 look slow. And forget spells, he's put his magic on spell defense because his melee combat skill in animal form is reaction, so he's throwing 14 die and can probably take even a maxed-out melee combat adept without a big problem, particularly when you consider the bonuses to unarmed damage Tigers have. . .

And things get even worse if Mr. Tiger has a bit of experience and bonds himself a nice sustaining Foci or two. Now he cast's improve Quickness on himself with a TN of 2. . .

The thing is, I'm not sure this is really such a doomsday scenario. Shapeshifters are way too gimped as it is and they need a few super-assets to power themselves up to match metahumans.

[BitBasher]

I'd allow him to sustain the spell, but I'd also make him record sucesses and recalculate the results when he changed forms.

[Espiritu]

Righteo BitBasher. I was trying to come up with something and that responce was just it. I didn't want to say the shapeshift cancels the spell, but that makes sense to recalculate success based on the modified attributes to maintain consistancy.

Now would rolling all 1's on the recalculation result in spell failure? Or a default 1 success?

[Kagetenshi]

You wouldn't reroll, you'd record what numbers were rolled and record successes at the new TN. If you then went back to human (providing you had at least one success left as a tiger) you'd go back to successes at the lower TN.

~J

[RedmondLarry]

Agree with BitBasher. Recalculate is good.

[Kanada Ten]

I agree with BitBasher. I do the same in the case of casting Decreased Attribute prior to Increase Attribute, and then dropping the former spell. Or when someone casts Increase Willpower on the subject of a Control Thoughts spell, and similar.