1. Can one use Increase Body (or Decrease Body) to change one's Body so that a wider array of critters is available?
In the Shapechange description, it says that "The subject can only assume the form of a critter whose base Body rating is 2 points greater or less than her own."
Incidentally, if you have a Body of exactly 4, you can become all of the ordinary creatures in the 4th ed book (dog, great cat, shark and wolf).

2. Does anyone have any stats for birds or rats something less obvious than the above?
The free 3rd ed critters book only has paracritters so I'm totally lost.

3. What is the augmented maximum attribute for a critter?
One automatically gets increased physical attributes after casting Shapechange (for each hit), how high does that go?

4. Shapechange doesn't have any affect on the astral, right?
It just looks like one more spell aura on the subject?

1) Yes.

2) Nope, make 'em up.

3) You can get whatever bonus the spell gives you, thats it.

4) Well, and your astral shadow would look like the animal you're shaped into instead of a body.

3) The problem is that there's no indication of what the attribute minimums and maximums are for anything but metahumans. You could assume that every critter is at it's natural maximum already (meaning that their augmented max is 1.5 times that). It's a little harsh, but I think it's probably balanced. Unless you're okay with a mage shapechanging into a kitten with Strength 8. Which is ok, if that's what you're into.

Why wouldn't you assume the average critters in the book are the average value? Thusly, you can derrive the modifiers by how far from 3 they are (metahuman average). This then gives you the base natural attributes for the critters.

Or, you can just start with what the mage has, (since the mage is still a mage, just in a different shape) and use the regular old metahuman rules, since he still (officially) is a metahuman.

No, it doesn't. None of the base critters have a physical stat of 1. Since shapechanged mages use their own mental/special stats, then my point stands.

For example, Dogs would be -1 Body, +0 agi, +0 rea, -1 str. Why? Well, they're smaller than your average metahuman, and as such, their stats reflect that.

As far paracritters go, you can't shape change into them, so they aren't relevant to this discussion.

I would just treat min/max and augmented max like they do the different metaraces. Str of 2 in book means avg. 2 max 5 augmented max 7(or is it 8?)

Chris

We discussed the critter maximums at game last night my GM basically houseruled that the average human physical attribute is 2. Based on that, each critter's unaugmented maximum attribute is the score listed in the book +4, because the average human would need to increase an attribute by 4 to reach 6, the human unaugmented maximum. And the augmented maximum allowable by the Shapechange spell would just be x1.5.

We discussed at length what the average human attribute was, 1, 2, or 3, and finally the GM told us to shut up and that he was houseruling it at 2.

So a animals would have the following unaugmented and augmented maximums:

Great Cat
Body 10 (15)
Agility 9 (13)
Reaction 8 (12)
Strength 9 (13)

Horse
Body 12 (18)
Agility 9 (13)
Reaction 9 (13)
Strength 12 (18)

Wolf
Body 6 (9)
Agility 7 (10)
Reaction 7 (10)
Strength 6 (9)

Great cats and horses get incredibly badass, but only if you're casting at a fairly high force. To hit 18 on the horse's Body and Strength you would have to cast at force 10 and get 10 hits.

That sound right to anyone?

Glayvin34, I've just got to say...

I love your sig.

It sounds as if the likelyhood of that actually happening is quite low, and as such, you didn't need to waste game time to decide that actually hitting the limit was extremely unlikely.

Note, no matter what, the worst you'd have to deal with at chargen is 12 hits, assuming you have magic 6, and overcast at force 12. The force limiter is pretty much enough in this case to have it not matter.