I've been thinking recently about Wendigos and whether they are playable as characters.

I find Wendigos particularly interesting amongst the infected. They provide one of the only ways (if not the only way?) a mundane can become magical. Couple this with an ork's short lifespan and I can envisage a handful of wealthy/powerful orks nearing the end of their lives actively seeking Wendigohood out of desperation and a thirst for power.

I could never get past the human thralls and cannibalistic eating rituals thing though. That and they are one of the least normal looking of the Infected. There isn't a whole lot of info on them. Does an infected person keep their own conciousness?

Has anyone played as a wendigo or had one in their games, as more than just something to shoot at?

All (or at least most) Infected are "magical". I think you mean "a magician" which can also be achieved through the Latent Awakening positive quality.

The Infected keep their memories so on that level they are still the same person. However such a change will wreak havoc with most people's outlook and self-perception so it depends what you mean by "consciousness".

Yeah, I did mean magician. Latent people aren't really mundane in the same sense as common folk though. Given the small percentage of mages globally, and the high percentage of orks comparatively to other metas I imagine it's something that at least a few would seek out and take their chances with

Why? If you were an Ork living in that world, would you seek it out? I know I would not.

Avoid it if at all possible. If I were to get infected anyway, I'm personally very much "shit happens" about just about everything. I'd deal with it and enjoy the new hotness of being awakened.


All wendigo become full magicians, latent awakening or not.

Personally, no, but then in life I'm not particularly power hungry (though my characters often are) and I believe in god and an afterlife.

However, this isn't gonna be the case for everyone, and I believe that the same eccentric old ork who'd spend all of his fortune on research into cyborg bodies and computerizing his brain is gonna look at this kind of thing too. After all, we're talking about a world that contains Cybermancy. You've gotta think Wendigoness would be better than that.

If an ork was an Adept they become Mystic Adepts.

Nifty

Runner's Companion, page 81, Wendigo, Powers, second sentence, in parenthesis.

Power and immortality, sounds like a nice package deal for some people. Incidentally, a lot of the same people would certainly like the idea of having their own cult...


But as the OP already mentioned, the trouble with Wendigos is that they have to keep a Physical Mask spell sustained at all times, which gives them away on the Astral until they initiate. So as PCs, Wendigos would only be useful if they managed to stay away from everybody who must not learn their true nature

Or until they walk through a Ward. Real Inconvenient that...

Most of the playable infected are not dual-natured. IIRC only the ghoul is.

Off the top of my head (and I really don't have this memorized), he's right. Most Infected aren't dual-natured.

They do not have to be, my argument did not require it... The spells hiding their nature are susceptible to Wards. Ergo, when the infected crosses a Ward without successfully Masking his way through, the spell goes down, and viola... you have an Infected...

It is an inevitability.

There are ways around everything for those who put their minds to it. You could physically disguise yourself as a sasquatch or just a plain old furry, for example.

Judging from the few available artworks, Wendigos seem to have pretty scary fangs. And they can't just get some cosmetic surgery, Regeneration is not always beneficial

Actually, there is a much easier solution than that. Adept powers allowing manipulation of hair, skintone, and facial sculpting are not interfered with by mana barriers, nor do they count as spells. Were you to set out to make a Wendigo PC, I would start as an adept, and go that direction. The rules cover it all as feasible, though I can see some GMs overriding that and tossing it out.

Not like it isn't possible otherwise, through surgery or other sculpting, but I would hate to have to save for Deltaware or equivalent in such things to get around regeneration.

The other possibility that comes to mind is the technological one. Transportations that keep a rigger safe while not exposing can be used even in smaller areas like buildings, depending on GM and creativeness. Once past a mana barrier, you could then recast. This is the most hammy of all the solutions I could think of, but were I personally playing a Wendigo, my Horseman would be my best friend.

As for the last question, all infected seem to have a conversion rate of some whose minds do not survive the transformation, but I've yet to play in a game where the PCs lose their characters from being bitten. The rule of thumb locally is that players always retain their minds in shadowrun.

As far as lifespan problems go, Leonisation isn't that expensive (a mere million). If you're amongst the VIP, it's not exactly cheap, but that's a far safer road to immortality than gambling it all with VVMH - you can fork some extra cash ofr essence restauration after that and even for an ork, it will give you 40 to 60 years to get another million - if the price stays the same.

If yo'ure he sort of guy who can afford that, usually you don't need to be mage as you're the one who pays the mages when he need magic.

The horseman is kind of a moot point. If you are sealed up in a vehicle anyways, you don't need to sustain a spell to maintain a certain appearance. Wendigos probably wouldn't care that much about wards in corporate facilities - it is the wards they would run into at more social or subtle infiltrations that would give them potential problems.

Wendigo used to be described almost like a Monster Manual entry - turn into a wendigo, become chaotic evil and start a cannibal cult whose members you eventually feed upon. Just like all dryads ran off to the woods and worshipped a tree totem. In SR4, you have the freedom to play infected with more individuality. However, wendigos and nosferatu do seem to suffer some personality changes from the infection - a (relatively) "good" wendigo would probably be rare.

Krishach... maybe if you're playing Shadowrun: The Masquerade.

Really that strikes me as just silly though. The book makes it clear that personality defects start cropping up as a matter of infection. Yet like Glyph states... somehow the players are always special and different, with none of these hassles of course. And other silliness like it's just a lifestyle choice with some minor annoyance costs added to the lifestyle... It smacks too much of the pollyanish... the good parts I get, the bad parts I don't.

Oh and all the non-infected PC's are expected to just handwave it away so one player can go nuts and infect the rest of them. Or take down their reputations with him, when he is eventually found out. Or not collect on the bounties out on all of these infected in particular. Or the free distinctive style flaw you get without any bonus BP for it (don't tell me you forgot that one!!!) isn't going to come back to bite them when people are hunting you down.

Some places like Draco foundation pay good money for blood mages... and infected like this. And not so they can send them to club med.

would there be a reason that wendigo mystic adepts could not use facial sculpt to adopt a normal face?

Though, I do GM The Masquerade as well, and I certainly could cross the fluff accidentally. I'm only human... Really.

When youre a member of a group of people who are by definition willing to shoot people in the face for money, suddenly an actual monster isnt that much of a stretch, if at all depending on your teammates. I've seen several metahuman runners who were shoot first and dont even bother with questions types.

When youre a member of a group of people who are by definition willing to shoot people in the face for money, suddenly an actual monster isnt that much of a stretch, if at all depending on your teammates. I've seen several metahuman runners who were shoot first and dont even bother with questions types.

Facial sculpt doesn't really do anything relevant for a wendigo - it's the claws, fangs, fur, and size that make them distinctive.

There are some new powers in Spy Games (control body proportions and hair/nail growth) which would probably be enough to make Joe Average believe he's just seeing a Sasquatch or changeling. That's a little better than the astral light show of a sustained Mask spell, but a fairly average Assensing roll would still show the HMHVV infection.

Precisely the ones I was referring to. In addition, there is one that affects hair growth.

"So, you're a sasquatch?"

"Yep. Damn! Forgot sasquatches can't talk. Um, I mean... woof?"

Which also mean it's not much of a stretch for them to shoot down someone they get saddled with on a job when it turns out the 'guy' is in reality an infected critter as likely as not to munch on them if he gets a chance and who happens to have a bounty on it's head because of it's very nature - which means little questions about how they came to spot and nab said critter, merely that they bring our the corpse.

Amoral and unscrupulous isn't only toward the NPCs...

The sooner the charade got pierced, the more likely the Wendigo will end up bagged for the bounty. Same goes for ghouls, vampires and their ilk. A shadowrunner's life is already edifficult enough without the extra hassles of an infected. Especially when they're of a type that's notorious for nasty behavior.

Shave. Regeneration is for damages done to you - getting a haircut does not cause P or S damage.



This one kinda bugs me. Sasquaches can't talk, but they have Mimicry. All a sasquach has to do is watch a crapton of trideos of the same actor and mimic that actor(/actress)'s voice for everything. This is not just a logical work-a-round, but also an easy explanation for why I want more sasquaches to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Problem is that Mimicry does not a sentence make. What they mimic may be wildly inappropriate.
There are workarounds, they are called Linguasofts. Problem is tghat becasue they cannot speak, tehLinguasofct either outputs text or digitized voice.
Sucks to be a Sasquatch.

...

Mimic appropriate word one. Mimic appropriate word two. So on and so forth until you make an appropriate sentence. It's like a cross between a prank-call soundboard and Bumblebee from the Transformer's movie. SR4A even states Mimicry can be used to replicate speech.

So, you have an Arnold Word, a Pacino Word, A Deniro Word, etc. all blended together in a sentence. Don't see that working at all.
Again, Mimicry is not Language.

Do what you want, but there is already a workaround in RAW for Sasquatches. Just use that one and be done with it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in all his movies and all his speeches, has surely said enough things to be able to make sentences out of. They will certainly be stilted, but there are plenty of examples.

Like I said, do what you want to do. RAW, there is already a solution. *shrug*

RC, page 66:


They simply can't understand the usage of speech as communication.

Thank You Halinn... Knew that there was something about it... Unfortunately, No access to books.

First off, that's idiotic fluff. Secondly, it is not actually reflected in their rules. This would have been accomplished with a note in their Powers section stating something like "Note: Their Mimic ability cannot be used to replicate metahuman speech." Since their entry lacks anything of that sort, the above fluff would in fact be incorrect when compared to their actual abilities, much like the fluff of other sections is wrong when compared to the rules (Dietary Requirement comes to mind, as do other things about metasapients).

You would say that, of course... Which has always been my issue with some of your rulings. You ignore the stuff you just do not like. Bad Form, Neraph...

It is in the rulebook and not contradicted by the racial entry. That it is not also stated in the power is not in error. The power is general, Sasquatches specifically can't use speech. They might make the sounds for speech, but they won't be able to form anything coherent with it. They can't understand speech going in or out.

Indeed, like a talented human creating a bird-call. It might fool humans, but I doubt the birds are equally taken.

They can't figure out how to replicate sounds into the proper order but they can understand freakin' sign language? That's retarded. The language center of the brain has nothing to do with the audio center. It is literally against logic to say that something can understand sign language just fine but has problems understanding speech - especially when that something is mystically endowed with the ability to replicate any sound in existence.

EDIT: It's even worse that they even state that sasquaches freaking use mimicry as a form of communication already, but they can't figure out metahuman speech? Throw logic and reason out the window. It's a terrible shortcoming for a game that's attempted to be fairly realistic (despite magic).

Exactly... Neraph making up house rules again. Ignoring bits he doesn't like and only latching on to some parts and making up others.

That's been canon for Sasquatch for as long as I can recall, their inability to verbally communicate.

It can be canon as much as possible - it doesn't make sense. There is literally no correlation between language and hearing, as evidenced by sign language. To fix this there are two simple ways: 1) Remove speech from the list of things Mimicry can do; 2) Put in a note for the sasquach's Power List that removes their ability to Mimic speech. Their inability to speak is listed in the shadowtalk section of Runner's Companion - you know, the one that's been proven to contain false information (dietary requirement of the Infected). I didn't see it in SR4A either.

This is no different than the other multiple places where the rules do not match up properly.

A Sasquatch can Mimic the sounds of Human Speach just like a Parrot can. Ever tried to hold a conversation with a Parrot? Frustrating beyond belief. Mimicry does not a conversation make.

Right, but the fact that they do use Mimicry as communication and that they can comprehend language (in the form of sign language) makes the fact that for some unknown reason they can't understand metahuman speech and use Mimicry to aid that certifiably retarded. It's really like whoever designed their speech doesn't understand how language works.

Your parrot analogy is interesting, except said parrot would have to be completely fluent in ASL. Even deaf people who use sign language can comprehend spoken language through lip-reading. You honestly expect me to believe that a creature that is as smart (and sometimes smarter) than a human can learn sign language but cannot comprehend how one syllable refers to "ball," yet his natural form of communication is through the mystical ability to replicate any sound it hears (and a whole lot of sounds it just imagines)?

Some Chimps (and other primates) understand ASL, and I do not see you arguing that they can talk like people can.

Your argument is a Stretch, to say the least. I do honestly expect you to believe that very thing, because that is how they have beeen described, time and again, throughout all of Shadowrun. Just because you do not like it does not make it suddenly invalid.

When you're talking about how the language center of the brain has nothing to do with audio, you're commenting on how human brains work. We are not talking about some furry humans. We're discussing a different race, who are explicitly unable to use speech to communicate.

while a fascinating academic discussion as to why this might be, it is irrelevant in the face of direct RAW rules stating they cannot verbally communicate.

Yes, the RAW is lame - apparently a race able to perfectly mimic sounds, capable of understanding the concept of sign language, inexplicably cannot understand spoken language. If it were not for the latter, the former might make some sense - if they use their natural mimicry for an incredibly subtle form of communication, then they might not understand our comparatively cruder and imprecise forms of communication. Comparable to how a race of telepaths might not grasp spoken language (although dragons seem to do fine). But their being able to use and understand sign language - with all of its symbolism and syntax - makes it frustratingly illogical. It is still the RAW, though.

On a complete tangent, how funny would it be for a wendigo to pass itself off as a sasquatch so successsfully... that a bandersnatch tries to eat it.

Doodz. Saskwatch iz majik. Nuff sed.

Rationalize it however you like, but ultimately a wizard did it. Personally I just imagine they're an inverse Babel Fish - instead of being magically able to understand all forms of spoken language, they are magically unable to do so.

~Umi