I will be running my first SR4 game in quite some time, in fact the last one barely left the ground before life got mixed in, and while I'm not having many issues yet one thing has me stumped. One of my players wants to play a Shapeshifter, specifically either a big cat type or a bear, but I can't find ways to make him as effective as the other players in the group. Every time we built something I found some way to make it better using one of the metatypes. He wants to be a mystic adept, using his adept powers to boost unarmed skills and mystic armor because shifters can't wear armor in their animal form which is the point of being one and his magical abilities in touch based spells and health spells for the extra IPs, buffing, and spirit support. Do you guys have any tips?

In my experience, the metatypes in RC just aren't as powerful as the main book ones. You can play them but you just deal with their relative weakness.

Actually I didnt have that problem for most of them. It was when the shifters and other sapient critters came into the picture that I started to see some real issues. Well if they cant be as effective is there anyway to make em a bit better? I was thinking of letting him get some ware without to many extra costs just because it would put him in the same range as the other players.

Shapeshifters are in fact so much better than normal metahumans as to be close to broken. The trick is to never revert to animal form, ever. A mystic adept with inherent astral vision from being dual-natured, higher base attributes and augmented maximums than a troll, and regeneration of all things is much better than a human of the same kind. There are rather good role-playing reasons for this mindset as well. If the character has any sort of intellect they'll know that shifters are hunted in some parts of the world, or at the very least that a bear walking down Seattle main street is likely to get animal control called on his ass. Shapeshifters should use their human form to its fullest, especially considering that their animal form has so many drawbacks in human society.

I can't comment on SR4. However, with SR2/3, we had a few rules which brought shifters up to speed (and actually made it enjoyable to change forms...)

1) Don't do that crazy SR3 splitting attributes thing. I don't know if SR4 did this, btu in SR3, you had to buy your normal attributes AND buy up the attributes in your animal form. Ridiculous. One set of base attributes, apply one set of modifiers or the other.

2) Permit spells/adept powers/ware/whatever to apply (and stack) with both the human and the animal form.

3) Make sure the animal form makes sense - it should have a natural weapon (usually claws and bite) appropriate to its form, and remember that it's a dual-natured attack, so it will be similar to an adept's Killing Hands ability.

4) You likely will have to find a way to temporarily suppress being dual-natured. Dual-nature will otherwise hose your character the first time he takes an elevator that passes through a ward or is attacked by astral-only casters.

You can't have an elevator pass through a ward, a ward has to be anchored on a physical object like a wall, so unless the elevator is going through a warded glass ceiling your shifter will be fine. Now a mana barrier is something to worry about, but those have to be sustained so they're much less common.

A ward can be anchored to a floor (or a wall). And that floor (or wall) may have windows, doors or shafts. The result is a ward that goes over an empty space, while otherwise anchored at all points. That's how you can ward off a room without the ward being disrupted every time it's anything but air tight.

wards don't work on open spaces. Astral barriers do though.

Except for fomori, ogres, satyrs, minmaxed SURGElings, gnomes, vampires and some of the shifters.

Yes, there's complete crap as well (night ones, for example), but come on...if i would stat out a normal troll instead of a fomori, i'd just feel as if i was intentionally gimping myself now.



Where does it say that?
Wards have to be anchored somewhere, but as has been said before, they can stretch out over windows, doors or elevator shafts.
How would it be possible to ward any normal room otherwise?



Regarding the OPs question, of course the beginning dicepools will be lower in many areas.
Shifters are expensive and this means you have to cut back on some things.
But shifters really aren't that weak.
Regeneration is not nearly as strong as in previous editions, but can still make a huge difference. Of course, lack of armor in animal form is a drawback, but no one forces you to shift into bear form (and there's good reasons not to, see above) and then there's the ability to just regenerate damage (the stuff you cannot regenerate will often not be reduced by armor anyways).

I'd also rather go for one of the cat shifters. Bear works great as a regeneration machine (BOD 12 + MAG 5= regenerates 5-6 boxes on average), but the attributes besides BOD and STR are complete crap.
Jaguar or tiger should work out fine.

Another issue is that he wants to play a mystic adept.
If you want to specialize in close quarters combat and buy magician skills on top of that, it's gonna be a stretch.
Could likely stretch the character too thin.
Besides that, the bigger shifter types usually have poor drain stats (unless you go tiger/lion and pick a CHA-based tradition).
Usually, foxes and especially eagles make way better casters.

If the character seems to be spread too thin, your player should think about going pure adept instead.
Mystic adepts are very, very hard to pull off effectively, especially in a standard 400BP game.
You would have to select powers and spells very carefully and make use of synergies wherever possible.

You could, of course, post the character here.
I'm pretty sure that someone could help you optimize it a bit.

where does it say it can block an open space?

p174 sr3
"A ward must be placed on a non-living thing (walls, a vehicle, rocks and so on)."

After reading the whole thing on wards though even if it can cover an open space I see nowhere any mention of nastiness if a dual natured critter passes through one.

I do see some slight nastiness in astral barriers though. And I see that astral barriers can be on open spaces. I do not see how it is going to screw over a character having to do astral combat to get through or if forced through make a check to see if they take stun damage. Screwed to me means they get squashed dead with no chance of medical help saving them, not just taking some stun damage and alerting the creator of the barrier.

That's what we mean by screwed. They take a stun track full of magic damage that they can't regenerate and pass out for at least the next hour. In a lot of situations that means that they'll have to be carried out of a dangerous situation by their teammates, an ignominous situation for any player at the least. But anyway I'm starting a ward thread to make sure this one doesn't get off track.

For the shifter issue, I agree that the best mystic adept would be jaguar/leopard. Probably the best method for creating a mystic adept is to focus on the adept side for combat, taking critical strike for high damage and letting the shifter's own high base stats stand for themselves. Instead of going the spellcasting route, I would suggest taking summoning and a possession tradition to take advantage of the shifter's high attributes. Because of his low drain stats, he'll probably be forced to rely on force 3 or 4 spirits, but once he's initiated and gotten channeling, that'll translate into an increase of 3 or 4 to his base physical attributes, 6 to 8 extra hardened armor, and won't drop his mental stats by much, probably increasing his lower mental stats. For the spellcasting side of things, a low spellcasting score is fine for spells that don't require more than one or two hits to function effectively, such as Detect Life, Increase Reflexes, Heal, Area Thought Recognition, Animate (useful for causing statues and other rigid structures to be usable for possession), and Elemental Wall. If you want to go a greater spellcasting route, then direct combat spells are excellent for damage dealing attacks and Mana Static for disrupting enemy mages without particularly hurting the shifter's physical abilities. Of course a Power Focus is very helpful on a mystic adept no matter which route you take, +2-4 to all magic tests helps all the magician side tests that get penalized by a lower magic score. It's hard to make an effective mystic adept, but it's not impossible with forethought.

That's the physical anchor.
The actual dimensions of the wards are not restricted to the anchor itself.
When you use a rock as an anchor, you have not just warded the rock.
The rock is just the point the ward is fixed to.
The ward itself is a cube/sphere/whatever stretching outward from this point.
Which means that it often encompasses open space as well.



If you are referring to SR3 exclusively, i can add nothing to the discussion, and matters may very well be different.
But i was under the impression that this thread refers mostly to SR4.



First of all, a ward constitutes an astral barrier.
That's what they are meant for.
Second, wards have a connection to their creator.
Every attempt to breach them, whether voluntary or involuntary (sitting in a vehicle that drives through a ward, for example) automatically allerts their creator.
For an upright dual-natured citizen with a legitimate SIN who really just accidentally stumbled through the ward, that's just an inconvenience.
For a shadowrunner, it's potentially fatal.

If runners encounter a ward and do not want to set off an alarm, they have basically two choices :
-turn off their astral presence while they pass through it (not an option if you're dual)
-learn the Masking metamagic, find the wards creator, copy his aura, cheat the ward

Really paranoid corporations could even rule out the latter option by letting the creator sit inside the ward (or another ward).
Not an option for all security mages, but what if the ward was created by a spirit (as wards can be created by everything that's able to perceive astrally)?
The spirit could be bound and then ordered to sit inside it's ward.
Now your only option to pass through the ward unnoticed is to enter the warded area first.
Potentially problematic for a mage, impossible for a dual-natured being.


@ nezumi : SR4 addresses some of the changes you are suggesting.
Attributes are now the same for both forms.
Adept powers apply in both forms as well (which, strictly speaking, makes it debatable in how far spellcasting and summoning work in human form).
Cyberware, though, applies in animal form only (kinda the reverse situation of drakes, who can use ware in human form only).
Shifters also get natural weapons in animal form.

What i find odd about critters in general is that in spite of the fact that we have so many SURGE traits (like Balance Tail, Camo Fur, Paddle Tail etc.) that serve to mimic physical advantages of animals, no critter in the books receives mechanical benefits from such traits, even though it clearly possesses them naturally.
If i wanted to make a seal shifter (or just a mundane seal) who gains the advantages of having a layer of blubber and paddles that aid in swimming, i'd have to SURGE him first.
I would seriously recommend looking into SURGE if someone wants to play a shifter, and would be willing to allow that such traits are visible in animal form only, if the player chooses so (which would, of course, also mean that the benefits are restricted to that form).

I think that both the human and animal form should have specific advantages and disadvantages- a bear shifter would normally clearly choose the bear form to fight, but the human form to sneak around.
Seperate sets of attributes did something to mimic this if applied properly, but unfortunately also made it virtually impossible to generate a viable shifter under normal circumstances.

Actually... you can set a Ward in the shaft of an elevator and the elevator will pass through it... any Astral Auras will then interact with the ward when they are "Forced" through it... It does indeed work that way... see Street Magic for more details...

Keep the Faith

Actually, pg. 83 of Magic In The Shadows uses a dual-natured being in an elevator that passes through a ward as one of its examples. The basic SR4 book uses the same example on pg. 186 (under the heading PASSING THROUGH BARRIERS that starts on the previous page).

So a beaver shapeshifter in an elevator that passes through a ward will alert the ward's creator at best, and will be unconscious as well if he fails the opposed test.

"Ward, don't you think you were a little too hard on the beaver last night?"

Oh, You didn't.... You should be Flogged Glyph, you are a very bad, bad man...

Keep the Faith