Let's say you are an adept with the following powers:

Critical Strike
Killing Hands
Distance Strike

If you volunteer to receive a Shapechange spell and are turned into, for example, a domestic cat, do any of these powers function in cat form? A cat uses Unarmed Combat by default since it has no weapons, and the above powers all apply to Unarmed Combat attacks.

Semi-related, if you have the Voice Control power, are you able to speak normally even when shapechanged? Or, are you now only able to mimic sounds that a normal cat can make?

I would run it as those powers would work. I see no reason why they would not. You still have limbs that can strike/hit someone. You still retain your original aura when shapechanged so there is nothing different about your magic. Voice Control however would require metahuman type vocal cords and since you shapechanged (say a cat) you no longer have the ability to use it.

Sounds reasonable. Thanks for the reply.

They would work for any normal unarmed melee attacks, but not for using the new form's natural weapons. Need a note about that somewhere.

Why not? "Fists/Elbows" and "Feet/Knees" are a metahuman's Natural Weapons. They're just not called that.

Actually, rereading the entry Natural Weapons are regular Unarmed Combat attack anywho.

Shapeshifting an Adept at significant Force has the potential for really impressive results, since Shapeshift is really a very cheap way of boosting Attributes..



Related to that, we had a discussion about how to handle skills for alternate shapes; do you get the animal's skills?
- For skills that humans don't have, such as flight
- For somewhat-similar skills like Unarmed Combat
- What if your original rating is better?
- What if the animal's rating is better?

Except that it doesn't seem to transform clothing, this really has the potential to turn a mild-manner wageslave into a ferocious tiger...

I would think that you do not get the skills, since skills are things that you practiced and learned, as opposed to being a biproduct of your natural abilities (Attributes, so to speak). Just because you are turned into a bird doesn't mean you know how to fly well. Just because you are turned into a cat doesn't mean you can climb well. However, I can see the GM giving some kind of bonus in the case of a cat climbing, due to having claws to assist with climbing. Maybe a +1 or +2?

That all said, I can see a character being able to learn the Flight skill or any similar critter-only skill after practicing extensively in a shapechanged form.

Hmmmm.... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Or .... Karate Kid.

You do not gain the skills of the new form. You can default, however, and with your "new" attributes you can probably default well.




Looks like someone's been playing a little too much D&D lately.

Interestingly, by a strict reading of the rules, you can use Energy Aura in conjunction with Psychokinesis/Magic Fingers, due to a similar wording situation.

Nice try! Good luck sleazing that one past the GM.

Speaking of, glancing over the Critters entry to see what forms would make a decent candidate for Shapechange, it seems like the BOD stats for wolves and sharks are on the low side. Most physical runners are going to be too tough to be turned into wolves, and it seems like wolves should have slightly higher BOD and STR stats than your average pedestrian. My two .

Because a house cat doesn't have the approximate mass to fight a human being effectively, much less a human being wearing armor which would protect his vitals.

I seem to remember you making a pretty big deal out of common sense recently.

A tiger doing chi strikes, that'd be cool in my book. Flying force lunges and all that. I just don't want to see a finch trying to peck an attack drone to death.

I can see an adept, Attuned to a chickadee, Empowering it with Critical Strike.

Its magic?




"Mikado walks quickly away before someone throws something at him."

I know the original example was supposed to be exaggerated to the point of the absurd, but you could make a drone (or even a biodrone) the size of a chickadee that could do even MORE damage than that, using nanite delivery systems or even simple toxins. Vibrotalons (like the ones on the Arsenal dragonfly drone) or monofilament can cause a substantial amount of damage, on a small, virtually silent killer. Where magic fails, technology succeeds?

True.
I was just using the catch all "It's MaGiC!" to be silly.
The true danger is when you combine both... Tiger Boidrone with an inhabitation ally spirit.

Some of you people go waaay too far in combining and stacking weird stuff.


Shapechange really makes you think about the perfect Body rating; being able to change into a rat (presumably Body 1) has it's advantages for infiltration; great cats with their significant physicals too.

Is Shapechange still limited to a form with two points of the character's BOD stat? (I'm going by my SR4 book, but anything could have happened since it was printed. If it has, ignore this but tell me.) If so, a character who can throw or take a punch is probably already going to be limited in the forms he can take. I would also assume that a phys ads Improved Attribute would be used to calculate which forms he can turn into.

Also, this brings up my old question about shapechanging someone with a cyberarm. Do you end up with a wolf with a human cyberarm, a wolf with wolf cyberleg, a wolf with a normal wolf leg, or a wolf with no leg?

The cyber-arm shapechange question gets brought up alot. The party line is:

You paid essence for that cyber-arm, it is fully in your aura. When you shape change, it changes with you. You become a completely organic whatever on the other side, it has no cyber, obvious or otherwise. Since you paid essence, the magic does not care that you are cybered to the gills, it is making you a stock version of this animal.

It also has the benefit of being the least silly.

Collateral Dynamo, what happened to the "O" in your sig?

C.H.I.C.A.G.O.A.N. - Cannibalistic Humanoids, Indigent Crazies, Annoying Gangers, Anarchists, and Nationalists. Yep, sounds like this city hasn't changed in the past 150 years...