Bears in RL are killing machines, but in Shadowrun they're not that bad:



It rolls 7 dice to hit you, 10 DV when it connects with 1 IP. Any melee character will tear it apart, and even the Mage or Hacker can probably Full Defense and not get hit by it.

Edit: That's from Running Wild.

Maybe you don't *get* to run, Tymeaus. That's what 'don't get to pick your battles' means.

Maybe, But I am sure as hell going to try... There are always options, if only you look for them...

Keep the Faith

Actually, with the shapeshifting spell, the animal form can be much tougher than the metahuman form. You are sort of like a dire or possessed version of whatever you turn into. The only thing you are lacking is armor. The base stats for an eagle are:

Body 2
Agility 5
Reaction 3
Strength 2

Shapeshifted with a Force 2 spell (assuming 2 successes) you get
Body 4
Agility 7
Reaction 5
Strength 4

Those are pretty impressive physical stats for a mage/mystic adept that has to dump a ton of BP into mental stats for drain. Toss in the fact, that the movement rate of the eagle is very high (you aren't outrunning the eagle) and it is very easy for the eagle to be flying around invisibly the target of the eagle probably doesn't get to choose their ground to fight on.

Ah 9 Strength and body doing 10DV. That actually works for me even in the killing machine of RL. Bears frequently do not one hit kill humans so 10ish DV fits after a few dice soak. Now in the future where everyone has 4+impact armor and your cycling outfit with its helmet gives you 8 impact it is a bit less threatening, add in troll with a axe which can have the same body and strength and we got a good tussle, throw in cyber/bioware and the bear doesn't stand a chance.

How do you figure 10DV? Shouldn't it only be 5DV? I don't think their str is added to their base attack - I think the base attack already takes that into account.

Well the real problem it has is the (relative to PCs) low dice pool to actually hit someone, 10 DV is fine but it'll be mostly hitting nothing but air.

Yeah, it's kind of insane how strong shapeshifting can make some critters. The buff should probably be like +10%/net hit (or 20%, etc.), instead of a flat bonus. The flat bonus is simpler, but it makes weaker critters vastly stronger, and strong critters barely get a buff.

This refers back to the law that shapeshifting sucks in all RPGs (okay, Tymeaus, except that one you like).

I'm not sure it works like that, I'd consider the bear's claws to be like cyberware claws and it's mass like bone enhancements. So where a human has, say +3 from the claws +2 from the bones for a total of Str/2 +5, the game just tells us the bear has that naturally from his DV 5 natural weapons.

I don't remember it actually being described in the rules anywhere though so /shrug.

I wasn't aware that claws and bone mods stacked for damage.

Heheheh... I really do love that system's version of Shapeshifters... it is awesome...

Keep the Faith

Well in previous versions of SR losing your armor meant more. Now its just dice, dice you might make up with the increased body from the shapechange. Before losing just your lined coat changed the TN from that heavy pistol from a 5 to a 9, good luck with that. So previously I'd say it worked out a bit better, though other spells were worse so whatever.

That's true. But, a little Mystic Armor or whatever it's called…

i'll play a mystic adept with combat sense, mystic armor and critical strike who will always fight in animal form. most likely a Lion, because "Great Cats" from SR4A get 2 IP and my GM calls IP are physical stats, so you'll get them when shifting. with 2-3 hits on the spell, that's one scary cat...

I don't think it existed in its current form of adding armor in previous editions, also mystic adepts were absurdly rare back then and in my preferred edition they just did not exist. But yes the general rule that shape change sucks in every game usually hold true since it ends up being a way for the players to try and cheese the system. Some of it is so bad I don't know how it got past play test, like the initial 3e D&D polymorph self and other you could become like celestials and gain everything but there magic, lame.

Exactly. D&D's the worst offender.

The big thing keeping animals from having martial arts is a lack of Sapience (as defined by SR), not their forms. Shapeshifters could certainly develop martial arts to make best use of their forms, and a shapechanged magician might be able to learn such arts too. That doesn't mean that the same arts are usable across multiple forms - arts made with the human body in mind would likely be useless in bear form. However, if we want to get realistic, 99% of metahuman martial arts techniques are going to be nearly useless against non-metahuman bodies, so...

Eh, I still say the fundamentals of striking, blocking, balance, movement, etc. don't care *too* much whether the target is a human(oid). Obviously, certain techniques and schools are more specialized, but it's hardly '99%'. But all martial arts care whether the *user* is a human or a bird.

Said from the view point of a human, not an animal who can turn human. If a human can mimic animals in fighting techniques then an animal (sapient) should be able to mimic a human fighting style.

Who said they couldn't? They'll have to develop wholly new techniques for their wholly new body, though.

And human martial arts don't mimic animals. They're (supposedly) inspired by animals.

Sure just define your marital art as shape shifter tiger style, pick a existing martial art that roughly fits and go for it. But for a magician shape changing, I guess it is possible but in any game I ran that would require a very large time investment in shape shifted form and IMO only be for one form type like big cats.

But I'd say the specialization martial art and talents I believe describes that the GM determines when the benefits don't come into play using logic based on the martial art. You are not getting your boxing benefits when kicking and it is hard to box when you are in horse form for example.