Alright, I'm sure the topic of drakes and shifters reverting to bestial form while wearing clothes has come up before but this happened to me last game and after nearly two weeks of quietly weeping I still haven't figured out what to do with it. I hereby ask you great sages of Shadowrun for help.

"Bob" the drake (not his real name) was put into a police car to answer a few questions, Bob is a SINner and though he is a Shadowrunner he isn't very good at it. One of my "thinking outside the box" regulars decided that he would summon a rating 9 Guardian spirit but I informed him that due to his tradition he needed it to possess something to affect the material world. He chose the drake's underwear....

Logic was there (they won't strip those off will they?) and I allowed this. Later during the game, in a scene the police car is attacked by my 'mysterious villain' and my drake player goes "Full Drake."

Now I'm stuck with, what happens when a Drake tries to expand inside of human sized underwear that happens to be inhabited by a force 9 spirit.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

*Squish* *all men within a 50 yard radius make a Composure check* The Boxers would have an armor rating of 9/9 and Immunity To Normal Weapons. Even if his dual-natured flesh counts as being able to bypass ITNW, can you say uber-wedgie?

This would happen.

I would suggest you stick to the quiet weeping, with occasional outbursts of full on bawling....

...yeah.

Wouldn't the armor rating be 18/18?

Sorry, yeah, you're right. 18/18. A wedgie to end all wedgies and make grown men cringe.

Drake-tears a possible reagent?

Grrr, possession, always causing problems.

I'm going to have to second the "all males within line of sight make a composure check" call simply because it's too funny in the way that only penile humor can be.


That said, it would probably be best for everyone if the Magic Boxers simply expand to fit the new draconic form. The alternative is that you're going to have to calculate how much damage the Drake does with his, um, "magic weapon" when he grows in size and see whether or not the Magic Boxers can take it. They probably can...

I imagine that every male Drake, Dragon, and Great Dragon in the world would feel that full-frontal wedgie through the Astral Plane and immediately be forced to make a composure test or drop to their knees with eyes full of manly, draconic tears.

I think the only way to handle the resulting mess would be with a Flesh-form Drake-Guardian Hybrid: Squish-Bob Tightpants

In that case, expect the player to use and abuse it by wearing armor as heavy as he can and having it possessed so he can transform and keep the armor. Even a crappy spirit will do, but the stronger the better. One way to limit the dabuse could to to impose a spirit force at least equal to the armor's rating.

Of course if the spirit gets kicked out while he's in drake form, that's going to hurt.

He possessed his underware and turned into drake-form.
He is in a world of hurt.
Honestly: No remorse, no repent.

I think the only way to handle it, without opening the door for power-gaming or escalating to draconian measures is to rule, that the drake takes some stun damage (maybe his own magic or magic/2 in boxes) and fails to transform out of pain, so he rips some cloths while changing half way, then srikes and reverts to human!

Yeah, with 18/18 armor, these are the ultimate starched shorts. Technically, unless he has a Body of 9, he should be taking encumbrance penalties...

Honestly, if I were the GM, I'd be telling him to soak between 5 and 9 stun (depending on how generous I was feeling at the time, but probably the higher value) with just Body, that his spirit just mentally communicated something along the lines of "Not comfortable! Not happy with this!" and the aforementioned AoE Composure roll.

I wonder why the hell he didn't have the spirit possess the police officer.

If he really did that, I can only echo Irion.

No Pity! No Remorse! No Hope!

I'm not even sure how '18/18 armor' is relevant. That's the armor the boxer-spirit would use to resist attacks on itself, right? Tearing boxers is Barrier rating, if anything. Does it get 9 Structure/18 Armor? I've never heard of ripping or tearing a flexible barrier, but I assume it's the normal Destroying Barriers rules. So, that just leaves us the rules absence of 'bursting' barriers, which isn't a ranged, melee, or demolitions attack.

I feel like this has come up before ('what if my drake is in a small coffin in human form', like that), and the answer was, 'if you don't have room to shift, you can't'. Obviously, this solution has its own flaws (we'd *want* shapeshifting to burst out of weak things like cardboard, maybe even chain-link), but you might get around that by setting some threshold (WRT Barrier Structure/Armor) based on Magic, Strength, or Body?

It was a different player who sent in the spirit. The Drake might not even be aware of it (in-character) until he tries to shift.

You could just say that in the process of shifting, the undies get stretched and pushed off his feet before they turn into claws.

That's The Other Game and its various size increasing spells. I can't remember reading somehting like this in SR.

I know it's also in that game, but I thought I saw it here (Dumpshock) in the last discussion of drakes/whatever.

Regardless… what's wrong with it? Solves the problem, without autokilling PCs in gross ways.

Otherwise we need general rules for 'squishing' damage and 'bursting barriers/bonds' resolution. Restraints have Armor/Structure 12/12 (and variants), but that's only for cutting them off, right? I didn't think it was possible to rip out. You might think there'd be *some* amount of Strength that'd let you break out of the zip-ties (6/6).

There is nothing wrong with it, there just aren't any rules about that to my knowledge. It sounds like a sensible houserule. Creating a houserule for squishing/bursting would probably be a lot more hassle.

Yeah, I thought I'd heard it as a suggested house rule.

Also… eeeww. 'Squishing'… 'bursting'. I regret everything.

I would definitely take the 'can't shift' option. The shift is powered by the drake himself, so consider the inverse function - a character has the psychic ability to shrink his own underwear. Is it reasonable to say he is strong enough to force the bodily compression resulting from shrinking his boxers by the same factor that a drake's pelvis grows by during shifting? Almost certainly not, though a stupidly high Magic to Body ratio might make it more plausible. Otherwise the shift starts, becomes impossible to complete and the drake reverts to human form.

I guess you could compare the posessed boxer to power armor.



I guess you can do a test similar to the "shapeshifter in an elevator meeting a ward" (opposite test of body*2 against armor*2). If the drake wins, the boxer is crushed. If the boxer wins, the drake's pelvis is crushed: unresisted 8P damage seems fine to me.

No matter what rules you use, the drake is in for a bad bad time.

<squish>



-k

Of these suggestion, I like the 'can't shift, if the container is too strong' version the best. It's less icky and problematic (ew). As the FAQ suggests, a sufficiently strong container/constraint should simply make the shift fail; but we need to define 'sufficiently strong'.

I kind of like Blade's opposed test suggestion (shifter wins, constraint breaks; shifter loses, shift fails), because then we don't have to invent a separate mechanic for 'how strong is too strong'. The Barrier Rating table seems like the best choice for this (armor instead of structure?) but I guess we'd also want to use 'worn armor' Armor rating for things that lack barrier information (power armor, possessed boxers)?

This question should honestly come up a lot with certain characters: worn clothing/armor, restraints/ropes, small rooms/vehicles/elevators, and so on.

What about just ejecting the spirit from the boxers?

That seems like a whole new effect, though. Can you eject a spirit in any similar way (wrecking a car, etc.), or do you actually have to 'distrupt' them via the Condition Monitor?

Destroying the host object effectively disrupts the spirit.




-k

Right, but can you destroy the host *without* some kind of combat effect (filling a Condition Monitor, or inflicting a certain amount of Barrier damage)? It seems like he's suggesting something different from 'the spirit is ejected as soon as the drake wins the opposed-constraint test, which means the constraint is auto-destoyed'. I'm just asking, because it seems like a spirit-beating shortcut (in this admittedly rare situation). I'm fine with that happening, as a secondary effect of the constraint being 'burst'.

Really though? The drake is the only entity that's powering the contention. Under your own power, could you cause yourself much damage by trying to squeeze through an impossibly-tight gap in a railing, say?

It depends if shifting is a slow, controlled process like standing up, or a fast, uncontrolled process like firing a gun. If it's the latter, the drake is just 'pulling the trigger' on the power.

I think you're right that the former is a preferable model. It allows us to say things like, 'if the process can't be completed due to lack of space, it safely fails'.

Composure Test to go through with the 'shift once things get squeezed (at least threshold 3).

If he shifts: A Drake turns dual natured, so the ItNW wouldn't work against the 'astral attack' of the drake's body ripping the boxer-spirit.

Opposed test as for unintentionally passing through barriers: Charisma+Magic vs Fx2.

If the spirit wins, the Drake gets a full Stun condition monitor (and I'd say is still in human form).

If the Drake wins, the spirit is disrupted (and the boxers ruptured).