What are peoples view on the Shapechange spells.

Could I transform myself into ANY non-awakened animal? Even extinct ones?

For some reason I find the notion of becoming a Pterodactyl rather appealing if I need to fly and lift something at the same time.

Or become a T-rex when hungry ^_^

Even if it were possible, the spell's Body Attribute limitation would probably put a damper on the whole T-Rex idea.

And this is why the Fomori should have beaten the crap out of the Danaan...

I would think it reasonable that Shapechange be limited to a) non-awakened critters that meets the Body Attribute limitation and b) the PC be familiar with the creature, be it through study or first-hand knowledge. So a zoologist mage would have a slightly larger portfolio of usable forms than a crazy cat-lady mage. And by that logic a metahuman-sized dinosaur wouldn't be unreasonable if the PC were a paleontologist.

My Dinosaur Knowledge is a little weak, but wouldn't that open the door for Velociraptor Trolls that can run really fast?

Velociraptors are actually only like 4 feet tall, the ones in Jurassic Park are actually megaraptors. In any event, SURGE'd Satyr Legs or Raptor Modular Cyberlegs will get you that effect as well.

Is that any different than a human shape-changing into a cheetah or a gazelle?

I think it's fair to say if you have never seen a real version of the animal, you can't possibly shift into it, a trip to a couple of zoos would get you most forms you would ever care to use, but unless you can find someone running Jurassic Park, you probably have never seen a T-Rex and couldn't manipulate magic to turn you into something you have never seen.

Would seeing the bones, and CGI trideo of the animal not be enough?

Well, the bones are not the animal, only part of the animal, and I think it's been established that seeing a trideo of something doesn't count as seeing it for magical purposes. Without having seen the animal, you can only transform into the idea of a dinosaur, not an actual dinosaur, and I personally don't think a spell designed to turn you into real animals could do that. Now if you made a spell to turn you into a creature of your own design...

while we're at it . . with SR's tech and Magic . . WHY NOT MAKE JURASSIC PARK?
well, aside from the obvious flaw with the traitor and breaking out dinos and the such . .

True, but under that line of reasoning you don't see a great deal of an animal on the surface when you see it in a zoo for a few seconds, you don't see its bones, DNA, musculture, etc. Maybe you get at least the DNA, the general shape, etc of the dinosaur?

You see the aura of the animal, which is the important thing as far as magic is concerned. Knowledge of the animal's aura gives you all the info you need to guide the spell that shapechanges you. By this logic, seeing a video of an animal would be insufficient because the video doesn't show the aura. Similarly, seeing a dead animal wouldn't be sufficient, because dead critters have no aura either.

Right right, astral sight. That's a good argument.

I would argue that even with a live tiger to study, when you change into one, you aren't any more tiger than I am in my normal meat body. You approximate a tiger. The more familiar you are with it the more closely you can approximate the animal in question. So, yes, you could theoretically change into something approaching a raptor but it wouldn't really be a raptor. It might not even work well.

As with almost all things on DS, YMMV.

P.S. This viewpoint is based in part on the description of shape changers in the Dresdenverse.

I know people are vaguely hostile to D&D on this forum and I fucking hate 4th edition, but I used to run Druid changings and the like like that. If you were a druid turned into a bear and had sex with your bear animal companion (this came up in a game actually) if somehow they were able to breed (magic) than it'd be a half-goblin half bear not a full bear, where as if you polymorpher you literally turned into a bear. I think for shadowrun the functional approximation without it actually being the case is better.

I like this line of thought. It makes the most sense to me.

By RAW, this is entirely possible - assuming you have the stats for the dinosaur.

I do like the ruling that you must have Assensed the creature you wish to change into, but am hesitant to use it, partially because it hurts Mystic Adepts somewhat, & partially because you would be unable to use it to change into extinct animals (barring recently extinct).

The question should be answered by asking: what is the basis for the spell to work? People have been assuming that it's the user's own knowledge of the animal. That doesn't seem very practical because there's a huge line-drawing issue. How much do I have to know about cats before I can become a cat? Must I meet a cat in person? Is seeing them on the matrix enough? If I'm blind from birth and I've never seen a cat, will shapechange not work for me? Will my cat come out in bizarre colors because I don't even know what colors are? Or maybe it will be monochromatic? If I'm dyslexic, will it say weom instead of meow?

The last one aside, I think these are all big problems with basing the shapechange on the caster's knowledge of the animal. The spell doesn't specify that you must have knowledge of the animal, so why should you? Obviously you have to know it exists, because otherwise you wouldn't know that you wanted to shapechange into it. But other than that, I don't see the caster's intent as being central. If it was, then I should be able to change into imaginary animals too -- if my knowledge of and desire to become an animal makes me become that animal, why couldn't I shift into a cabbit (half cat, half rabbit)? Obviously, you couldn't do that because the spell requires a natural animal, but that begs the question. It couldn't be based on your lack of knoweldge about non-natural animals, because if that were the case then you could genetically engineer a cabbit, study it, and then shift into one.

The best explanation is based on the text. It says that the animal must be natural. But dinosaurs no longer exist -- can something that's nonexistent be natural? The only way for dinosaurs to walk again would be for them to be genetically reconstituted, which would make them decidedly non-natural creates (speaking from the perspective of the Astral, which somehow knows when you insert non-natural DNA into your genes, despite it being made of the exact same chemicals as natural DNA). I think that, per RAW, natural animals must be ones that are naturally animals in the present day, as opposed to being naturally fossilized bones. As for why it has to be a natural animal, and how the astral might know the difference between a living and extinct natural animal, you can chalk that up to the astral not making sense under most circumstances

[[zomg, crazy idea: spirit posesses dino skeleton = undead t-rex!]]

I would rule this by tradition. A Hermetic/Chaos mage really ought to able to /know/ an animal via technological means. A shaman might work with a beast spirit for a while before it is "gifted" with the privileged of shape shifting. Also really don't see anything wrong with removing extent animals. As a matter of fact I kind of like the idea of extinct animal spirits retreating the meta planes of things that should not be and mingling with all the wrong things that are there. A harbinger currier pigeon returning to physical out of vestigial loyalty to physical reality warning of coming horror that even it can't stomach that's a cool adventure seed

Raptor-zombie-Jesus ftw

are there no chances for spirits of extinct animals being around the astral plane able to teach a mage about themselves?
and I personally kinda like the idea with assensing what you turn into. BUT I also really like the idea of turning into a raptor:P

To create the spell, you have to have assensed the creature. After that, it's a simple matter of following the formula. Only hurts Mystic Adept spellcrafters.

Astral Quest!

Step 1: Ostrich
Step 2: Reptile
Step 3: ???????
Step 4: Profit!!!
------------------
Combine Reptile with Ostrich and you're done?
You don't have to actually work like the thing you wanna turn into.
you just wanna get a body that allows you to do the things that you wanna do . .
we've had this discussion once i think.
shapeshifting into anything, extracting DNA from the shiftee and cloning it won't net you the thing that was shifted into . .

For me to change into a chocobo, do I first have to breed a Gold chocobo?

The assensing route is more or less what I was getting at, but if your GM is lenient you don't even need that. It's obvious due to shadowrun rules that the act of seeing someone or something with your eyes(or with eyes you spent essence on) grants you some kind of connection to the target. It's why you can cast a manabolt on someone you can see, even if they are through 5 feet of solid, yet transparent glass, but you can't a spell on someone right next to you in a pitch black room even if you can hear them yelling at the top of their lungs.

You are not seeing the aura of the target, but you still are seeing them, their presence is something you can identify, something you can manipulate with sorcery.

Anyways, just my two Nuyen.

As a GM, I would nix the dinosaurs on the grounds that they're paranormal cirtters.

I strongly recommend that PCs watch Tom Rex: Dinosaur Cop, airing Friday at 10PM on the Ares Broadcasting Company. Notice how Detective Rex throws around Chatoic World left and right? Yeah, all Tyranosaurs can do that; they have Innate Spell: Chaotic World. It is one of the things that makes them so dangerous, but is also very useful for diffusing dangerous situations without bloodshed. And it's all true. One of the consultants on the show is, in fact, an immortal dinosaur shapeshifted into a human form. The whole show is based loosely on his exploits as a police officer during the Cretaceous period.

There is nothing mechanical that would prevent such a thing, I have noticed some people saying "You have to see it, or you need to see its aura"

Actually..

No you don't, nothing in the game rules support this, you don't even need to have ever SEEN one before to turn into it. The only limitation is that we don't know the stats for a T-Rex. That's the only thing stopping this from working, however if you sit down and make some stats then there is no problem.3




I am not sure (by your post) if your playing around or not, but this statement is false. Dinosaurs are not paranormal, anymore that a house cat is. Once again this does not prevent the use of the spell.

But what about the fact that it must be a natural critter? Surely critters that don't exist aren't natural, just because they used to exist. Dinosaurs naturally died off, if they came back it would definitely be un-natural. To me, natural means it exists in the natural state of nature. You might argue that an animal extincted by humans would still be fair game, since they died off through "non-natural" means (since the Astral thinks that humans are unnatural, more or less). But surely ones that disappeared due to a naturally occurring mass-extinction could no longer be considered normal, everyday critters...

Your thinking to Hard Larme, just because they died off does not mean they were ever not natural. Your thinking of Extinct vs Non-Extinct. Also if you want to get technical IIRC we still don't know exactly how they died. Maybe a meteor hit the earth...what that natural? No the Meteor MURDERED them, no different from us killing off one. Your just getting your definitions mixed up.

No

In Shadowrun a Natural creature is defined as not having access to paranormal abilities I.E> "Magic", the second I start seeing T-rex's using the Conceal Critter power (/shudder) then I might see where your coming from. Even then its probably just a freak, and not a representative of all T-Rex's.

Are you saying that Tazmanian wolf thingie is no longer a natural animal, since it no longer exists (to our knowledge)? How about living fossiles, which are animals that are evolutionary identicle to their ancestors from billions of years ago (but I thought evolution was an ongoing process that didn't end...) like the alligator and the frilled shark and the horseshoe crab.

Besides, what about learning the spell from a Dragon that was around when the dinosaurs were, or from an Immortal Elf?

All you need to learn a spell is the spell formula. You don't need to ever see a fireball in order to learn the spell fireball. Nor do you need to see Improved Invisibility in order to learn it from a spell formula you downloaded from the 'trix.

Today on UCAS today, the last bald eagle, held in captivity for years, has now perished, leading to the unfortunate extinction of this proud animal once held as the symbol of American freedom. In related news, every magician capable of changing forms into a bald eagle(presumed to account for 99.9% of all sightings of the majestic bird) have reported that they no longer can change form into this animal, proving that no more natural bald eagles exist. Here is what one local had to say:

"I mean, I know bald eagles where rare and all, but I saw them flying over head all the time so I didn't think much of it, but now that I know they where all shape shifted magicians, and that there really was only one eagle left...well it's just kind of sad."

This news comes as a great shock to most people, especially follow the sudden inability for magicians to take the form of a three-toes sloth last month, signaling the death knell of that species. More on this at 11.

FUDGE! For that matter, I'm going to custom make a Warform Chimera, and, since it's an animal, I'll SHAPECHANGE into it. Or, at very worst, I'll (Specific Warform) Form into it.

LOL

That's not what I said. I said it means that they are not currently natural animals, they can only exist through unnatural means. They used to be natural of course, but they aren't anymore.



I beg to differ. A meteor is a natural entity that had no human intervention making it crash into earth. The astral plane is very sensitive to human intervention. That's why the Astral knows the difference between natural genetic evolution and genetech. Genetech uses the same amino acids to produce DNA that's chemically identical to regular DNA, but the Astral can tell the difference and you lose essence. Presumably, pollution and hunting by humans killing the last bald eagle would also be recognized by the astral as non-natural and might not prevent someone from changing into it. I'm not mixing up definitions, you're missing every subtlety of my argument and attacking straw men that I never argued for.



That's a better argument, but not one that's ever stated in the text. I just don't see how the word natural can fit creatures that only exist through the use of magic. It doesn't matter whether they once existed naturally if magic or genetic engineering is the only way for them to walk the earth today, IMO.



I'm saying if it's no longer naturally occurring without the use of magic or technology, then it's not natural. Though I would allow that animals killed unnaturally by humans might still be shiftable (in response to Ragewind's very polite comment). Again, this is because the astral treats humans and their technology as unnatural. You need to leave your modern understanding of nature at the door to think about the astral. IRL, humans are natural creatures and everything we do is in accordance with natural laws. But the Astral doesn't think so, hence essence being lowered by adding artificial genes which are chemically identical to natural genes.



I never made this argument, I argued against the idea that your knowledge matters. Your knowledge is irrelevant. All that matters is whether the animal is natural or not. And natural is not going to be determined by some dictionary, what matters is how the astral makes the distinction between natural and not. It seems pretty clear to me that animals which naturally died off and could not exist in nature without magic, time travel, or genetic reconstitution are simply non-natural.

now think about what thor shots are . .

I agree with you in principle. What gets me though is wonderinging how 'successful' would a Jurassic Park have to be before they were considered natural again? Nature must have some mechanism for getting essence scores back up to 6 or life would have died out from mutation induced essence loss a very long time ago.

If I had to rule I'd lift the low essence healing mechanics. Shape shifting into a given animal form comes with a penalty equal to 6 minus the average essence of the population.

ok, let's stick with this natural nonsense for a bit . .
a clone did not get created naturally either, but if i clone you a sheep Dolly4.0 you can still shift into dolly . . even if i do decide to give it glow in the dark wool or something like that . .
and what happens, if 2 cloned animals of the same species(one male, one female) reproduce naturally?
is their offspring natural?

Nope Those two sheep are now held by local authorities for copyright infringement, per agreements with our clients we of course can not discuss anything on any case with pending litigation,

i'm sorry, i don't speak legalese O.o

Alpha Centuri is one of the first things i put on a computer. Right up there with VLC and notepad++

contxt?

Grey brother was quoting it.

i do not get it O.o

A thor shot (assuming it's a mass driver, I'm not actually sure) is a human using artificial means to propel an asteroid. According to magic, the things humans do with technology are not natural, they're the opposite of that. I know it's silly, but it's how the game world operates.



I'm not sure I understand where you're going. I don't think reconstituted dinosaurs would have lower essence, neither would vat-grown person. Essence is not something that follows rational consistent rules because a) it's magic, and b) it mostly exists to serve game balance purposes. As long as something is an animal it can have an essence score, but that's unrelated to whether you can change into it.



I don't get it. Are you saying that, under my logic, if you cloned one sheep then all sheep would become unnatural? I don't think that follows from what I've been saying in any way. And no, you couldn't shift into a sheep with glowing wool, because that's not a natural animal, it would have to be a genetically modified animal. Maybe, if you waited 10 million years, you'd end up with naturally evolved glowing subterranean sheep, but I doubt it. It doesn't serve much purpose to decide if clones or their offspring are natural. What we want to know is what can be shifted into. You could be a sheep, but you could not be a sheep with genes that have been modified by humans because from a magical perspective, human intervention is unnatural.

soo . . the rock falling by itself is natural, something giving it a push into the right direction so it FALLS BY ITSELF is NOT natural? @.@

It's magic. It doesn't have to make rational sense Magic knows the difference between natural and man-made, even if they're made out of the exact same stuff, because it's magical and can do whatever it wants.

the astral plane doesn't have anything to do with how essence loss is determined. you lose essence when you get genetically modified because your pattern is being altered, even if it is while you are still nothing more than a fertilised egg. you still have genetic material, and altering that genetic material causes essence loss because it is incorporating something that isn't you into you. it doesn't matter if your arm gets torn off by a bear or chopped off by a surgeon, it matters whether or not someone grafts a robotic limb in it's place. it doesn't matter if your genetics are being altered by natural means or unnatural, it matters whether those wacky bat sonar genetics that got put into you match up with the rest of your genetics, and they don't, whether or not they got there by magical means (such as HMHVV) or technological means (such as genetic engineering) or even by evolution. (i think it's safe to say that there are no precedents for the spontaneous evolution of bat-like echolocation, but hey, you never know...) heck, by the time they get into you, they don't really match up to bat genetics either, because they would have to be modified to attach onto your genetic material.

now i suppose you could steadily alter generation after generation of humans to very gradually reach the point where echolocation actually does match up with the rest of their genetic material perfectly. i doubt anyone's done much research on it though... it's a bit easier and cheaper to just hand someone a radar or ultrasound sensor and call it a day.