Drakes cannot speak while in Drakeform. The book describes dragons as have the same problem, which they overcome with Mindlink. That makes sense for Dragons since they are all considered full mages for purposes of spellcasting, but not all Drakes are mages.

If a pure Adept Drake got the Adept power 'Voice Control', could he then use his adept magic to change his gutteral Dragon noises into understandable English?

I know in the case of Sasquatches, they can imitate any noise, but cannot speak. That seems to me to be a situation where their voice is capable of speech, but their brains developed without normal speech centers, making it impossible for them to learn to speak.

Dragons seem to have a different problem... they have long necks with animal tongues and throats, which make growling and roaring noises, and which cannot form the sounds needed to speak a human language such as english. Now it seems to me that if a Drake was able to shape the sound of his voice with magic, he could become understandable in Dragon form.

Just wondering about the communities opinion on this.

I think I'd allow it, but rule that there was no fragging way that anyone would mistake the sounds as coming from a metahuman, and perhaps even require rolls for people that weren't "used" to listening to the Drake in high stress enivorments...

So you are saying that the voice would be highly destorted, like a deep gravvelly roar that has been twisted into speech. That certainly makes sense to me... there are limits to what a cheap physad power can accomplish...

Yeah, you've got the right of it.

"So I'm in the back of a pickup truck with Bull and a live drake! Bull goes up to the drake and says, 'I'm the best ork decker you've never met! SAY IT!' Then he squeezes the drake in such a way that a sound comes out of its mouth - 'bestorkdeckernevermet' ... It wasn't exactly like it, but it was pretty good for a drake!'"

I suppose you could always try tapping out Morse code with your talons. Or charades. On a completely unrelated side note I wonder how long it would take a Drake to tap out a text message.

Not long, given that they find trodes fitting on their head.

Sr4 anniversary ed. Page 303:


Since dragons are incapable of vocal speech, my initial opinion was that changing the pitch and tone a dragon would not allow them to form words. If this were the case, any shapeshifter (adept) could use this to speak in their natural form. Or a mystic adept who used shapechange/critter form to turn into a Gorilla could still talk.

But then upon some more consideration, I thought about people who have dogs/cats that sound like they are saying "I love you" or whatever. I suppose with enough control you could growl in a way that did sound like word. Same for dogs,gorillas,lions, etc. But I would rule that it would be hard to decipher and would roll for the person you are talking to in order to see if they understand you. Threshold would vary based on how much/what you said.

What does everyone think?

Ok, here are the rules Cloud and I are using in our game:

A drake with Voice control can speak in a gutteral dragon voice. Understanding what they mean requires an Intuition+Logic test, Threshold dependent on the amount and depth of the communication.

Ie. Yes, No, Attack! Retreat! 1 threshhold.

Watch out for the Ork, he is a Shaman! 2 Threshold

Split up into a flanking formation, I will take the middle and initiate the attack. 2 seperate tests, each with 2 threshold.

They are powerful plant spirits, which enables them to conceal the locations of the Heavy Turrets. 3 Threshold.

We would allow bonus dice of +1 if you are familiar with the dragon and his voicecontrol speech.

Also bonus dice if you have Specific software for Interpreting, or Agents etc. that are assisting in the interpretation.

Assuming your 'trode rig wouldn't have to be set up special for a drake's brain (the sophistication of such rigs is up for debate), a voice synthesizer would be an easy solution.

Just use oversized AR gloves.



A drake may learn dragonspeech as a metamagic technique if he finds a dragon willing to teach it to him and let him walk away after that.

I would say you can understand drake fine, if you have the right language chip in place. But then again with language chips you can not only learn the obscure drake language, but also Lolcat and hyena.

All three most likely have very little to say.

If nothing else the drake can use a multi-lingual picture dictionary.

Sign language always works, and its "middle of run" friendly.

I was waiting for that. I can't remember what page it's on. I'd let anyone learn it if they could spend the karma since they all have a magic attribute, but what kind of non magical character is going to make a drake? They're bloody terrible compared to 99% of the cybered/biowared monstrosities non magic players run, and some that magic players DO run, except for elemental attack and flight.

a non magical character isn't going to be a drake. You need at least one magic point to be a drake, iirc.

You get Magic 1 when you become a drake; if you're using the Learning Metamagic optional rule from p.52 of Street Magic, you don't even have to be an initiate.

That's what my character did, or at least planned for. Sometime around the third or fourth session I mentioned to the other players that they might want to learn sign language at some point.

The game disintegrated (differing schedules, and such) before I got to go dragon on something, so it ended up not mattering, but I had fun.

Drakes and Dragons do not speak. The Dragonspeech language is actually Telepathy, and humans can understand it just fine if the Dragon is targeting them.

I would agree though that a Drake with Voice Control could be more easily understood if he had language software helping to interpret him. Even in the 5th world, 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' is software that can learn to interpret accents and speech quirks over time. Dragon Naturally Speaking... he he. If only they knew that their software would someday be used by a Dragon! muahahah

You aren't the first to notice. ;P
And the first person I know (besides the giggle I got out of it) who noticed doesn't play or really know about ShadowRun.

I made a Sasquatch character who uses trodes + translation program + image link + voice synthesizer to achieve realtime communication with out physically signing. Of course if his tech malfunctions he is reduced to charades unless one of the team knows ASL or Perkins-Athabascan Sign Language.

That would work, absolutely. He should have AR gloves as a backup, as the books specifically mention that there is software to interpret sign language from ar gloves into synthisized speech.

A problem for Drakes in Drakeform though, is that the book specifically rules out them using Trodes as their brain works different in Drakeform.

Seems like if you had a powerful dragon contact or some pimp scientist research firm helping, you could probably engineer a Drake trode, but is it THAT important? not to my drake.

Just just the watcher-phone. Summon a watcher, tell him to manifest himself and let him speak for you whatever you tell him over the mindlink between spirit and summoner. Works fine from astral space, too.

Doesn't work for Adepts.
Clever though.

Perhaps make a unique enchanted item that allows you to speak?

Seems to me like that would be too hard to replace if lost or damaged...

Okay, hire a poor ork kid, have a mage create a telepathic mind link between the two of you, and use him as a mouthpiece.

Still seems like it would be easier, cheaper, and safer to simply use tech provided that you are unable to use one of your own magical abilties...

Cheaper than exploiting orks? What kind of dystopian setting do you play in

This is a good idea, and when the book talks about dragons, it explains that DragonSpeech (which drakes can learn as a metamagic) is actually Telepathy, and that most dragons have a human they mentally speak with, who relay's their speech to other people. Though I doubt Lofwyr uses an ork street urchin, the premise is the same.

Touche' TheOOB, touche'.

And Big D had his luscious brown elf nipples.

Or so I hear.

Please, let there be no more mention of the pure horror that is those books...

I loved the Dragon-Heart Saga, and Ryan Mercury is the sweetest of all time! It was also my first introduction to Talon, who is a mage from Chicago with his own book about Ares big flub with nuking the Spirit hive.

How can you speak poorly of such excellent works!?

I was thinking, "how could he/you speak poorly of such luscious brown nipples?"

I have good taste?

We all hope so.