Straight out of Runner's Companion:

"Shapeshifters look mostly human—normally. Through some quirk of magic or paragenetics, some shapeshifters can transform into a form that more closely resembles another metatype, or even metavariants. This is represented by changing their Shift (Human) power to another, as appropriate—Shift (Elf), Shift(Oni), etc.—and spending an additional number of BP equal to the typical cost for that race –10 BP. A shapeshifter with a different metatype GAINS* their standard metatype abilities (see Metatype Attribute Table, p. 72, SR4) when in that form."

*Emphasis added.

Correct me if i'm wrong but the way i am reading this is that if you decide to create a character that is a shapeshifting Eagle who startts with Attributes at:

Body 1/6(9)
Agility 1/6(9)
Reaction 1/6(9)
Strength1/6(9)
Charisma 2/7(10)
Intuition 1/6(9)
Logic 1/6(9)
Willpower 3/9(13)

Then I spend the extra BP to give the character the Shift(Elf) power the base attributes in metahuman form will end up as:

Body 2/7(10)
Agility 3/8(11)
Reaction 2/7(10)
Strength 2/7(10)
Charisma 5/10(13)
Intuition 2/7(10)
Logic 2/7(10)
Willpower 2/7(10)

Am I right or am i just confused?

Confused. For an extra 20 BP, your shapeshifter looks like an Elf and gains Low-Light Vision when in elf form. That's it.

[/edit]Please notice that on that table there are clearly marked entries for "Metatype Abilities."

Excellent, thanks for the speedy reply, I knew those figures looked weird for some reason.

I'm surprised so many people miss that. I heard people raving on this forum a while back about how Bear Shifters that were Trolls were super-powered, and I couldn't understand why a Troll form would be different than a gnome. Both would have ~10 Body and Strength, but the troll would have +1 Reach while in troll form only.

Actually, I was just looking at that the other day and I had an issue with it. While I found the "Metatype Abilities" line and immediately figured out that that was what was meant, the bear has a +1 reach which does not have the * indicating that it's in critter form only, but when using an alternate form they gain the metatype abilities of that form of metahuman. So would that mean that a bear/troll has +2 reach in troll form?

Personally, I think the missing * is a misprint that should be errataed, and so does my GM, so we're going to go with it that way, but what's the RAW on it? (And if this has been discussed in the previous thread you mentioned, could you point me at that thread? I didn't see it in my searches)

Yes.


Dude, you're paying 30 BP for the privilege of getting pulled over by the police for driving while looking like a troll. Having absurdly long arms (+2 Reach) is the least you can gain to compensate. (Well, no. I suppose you could always be an elf).

I think that if you read the rules for the most technical interpretation then yes, you would get +2 reach in troll form just because they put it in the abilities line.

Course, I would interpret it as you're taking the shape of a common troll, unless you surge or whatnot, so you don't get abnormally extra long arms unless you take the surge quality, etc.

It's way too expensive regardless. I'm not entirely sure why Shift (Elf) costs more BPs than Shift (Dwarf) or Shift (Ork) does when all they gain is a new vision mode. Which itself costs only a minute fraction of a BP to get through a pair of Glasses or Contact Lenses. Especially since you're effectively losing +1 Edge for the privilege. I mean, even if you assume they don't get it by default, you could use those optional rules to buy Shift (Human) to get access to their abilities, and the net cost would be 0 BP.

I could see requiring a cost if they want to shift into a troll, but the other base metatypes? Kinda silly. The mechanic makes a bit more sense with the metahuman variants (especially the ridiculous ones like Fomori, Gnome and Dryad that get some potent metagenic qualities for 'free'), but not the base races.

I think just creating a small table with associated costs would have been a better idea.

You're probably right. Hindsight: 20/20.

The corollary to that is that a human-seeming (or dwarf-seeming) bear shifter has just as long a reach as a normal troll, which seems strange to me.

I just had a thought. A nartaki bear shifter. Would the bear then have extra arms?

If by "strange" you mean "completely ridiculous," then it seems "strange" to me, as well. The Shapeshifter + Metahuman rules were done wrong in a variety of exciting ways.

In "human" form, yes.


Agreed. I'd be tempted to go back to review what SR3 did to see if it was adaptable, but IIRC, the shapeshifter rules were so different that it might not correlate at all (and I don't have easy access to the book right now).