In order to not hijack another thread I thought I would ask the same question as for the infected: how easy is it to work out from the aura of someone that they are a shifter. I've just read the Nyx Smith novels on Striper a were-tiger, and I got the impression that shifters looked "odd", but not every one knew what they were. (I understand this is fluff and not crunch...but I quite like fluff).

in astral, you see a tiger-aura. without masking he can't hide it. you don't even need assensing. if you do, you might find out it's an awakened tiger.

AFAIK, their aura looks like their base animal, for one thing. Right?

Yup.

Also, depending on how your GM reads the entry for Masking, a shapeshifter can only do one of the following options exclusively:

• Pretend it is a normal animal
• Pretend it is somehow a dual-natured metahuman
• Pretend its magic is higher or lower while showing the animal aura

Thanks for the replies

Just curious: why cannot the shifter use masking to appear mundane? Even spirits can make them selves look mundane with masking.

They can. They can look like a mundane animal.

which still looks kinda stupid when they assume Human Form

with a ...kinda stupid Dance
Medicineman

I assume that's by design. Play a metahuman character, facrissake.

Then you look like a dual-natured metahuman (like a magician assensing the Astral Plane), and yes, I think it is by design

No you look like what ever kind of animal you are.

It depends on the masking. I agree that the rules aren't very clear, and honestly the GM can just allow what makes sense. On a personal note, shifters are dumb, so it's fine with me if they get screwed.

Hey! No yiffing!




-k

And mages are dumb too cos they magic. And technomancers are dumb because they couldn't exist. And dragons are dumb cos they have too many limbs and couldn't exist... I quite like the fact that you can play a wide range of characters in Shadowrun. The only ones I personally have a problem with are the essence drainers...they are just too evil for me ever to want to play with one. Some of the best shadowrun fiction has shifters in it.

I said, a personal note. I think I made it quite clear. Maybe I like vampires, and you don't (I don't, actually).

I meant, when using masking and shifting to human form, the best thing you can do is to mask your aura as if you were a dual-natured metahuman.
I know that without masking your aura will continue to be of your original self.

how about masking as an mundane human?
Depends on your GM if he allows using all the feature of masking or just one at a time. I didnt found any RAW for this one.
In doubt - nobody cares about a "mundane" stray dog, fox, or the regular dove, now do they? May be quite useful for certain things.

Hence what I wrote before...

That;s interesting in this edition. I distinctly remember a previous edition citing that a shapeshifter in the astral appears as both an animal and a (meta)human. This may be as far back as SR2. Oh well. Chalk it up to yet another edition-change casualty.

EDIT: After checking my books, it seems my memory is the casualty. Checked both of my SR Companions and neither had anything like the above. So yeah, oops on me.

Thanks for the responses. I have come away with the view that every one thinks the astral form of a shifter is pretty obvious: maybe you need 1 success, maybe not.

There is varying views on whether masking would do any good, so I thought I would quote the book:


I think its pretty clear that the masking power would allow a mage to look as a shifter, a shifter to look as a drake, a spirit to look as a mage...etc.

I can see I need to masking for my little shifter

You still have animal features do you not? Or is that a "just for flavor" kinda option?

And that is exaclty my point on how your gm understands how Masking works. My group, for instance, thinks that each option is exclusive and you can't mix them up, meaning that if I'm a magician Elf trying to pass as a mundane human, I can't.

Given that English language uses the same word (and context doesn't always help) for inclusive and exclusive OR its RAW to interpret this both ways. My believe is that the RAI for masking are all about making your self appear as something else, otherwise a fire elemental would only be able to appear as a mundane fire, while they can clearly (RAW under free spirit masking) appear as a human. I think that's pretty QED.

Free spirits are different from shifters, but even if they're not, 'dual-natured human' is one of the listed examples from this discussion already.

Sure. My comment was that in English the use of the word OR can have two means. Both equally valid. And without examples we cannot work out which meaning applies.

The free spirit example is one example of where the use OR was an inclusive-or, and I find it unlikely that the rule writers meant inclusive-or for spirits, exclusive-or for everyone else. I think if they had meant that they would have said so.

I don't think its an important point anyway: RAW is only useful to have a baseline, if a group finds that the game is better with a different interpretation of RAW go to it!