New Power:
Drink Eye
By consuming one or both eyeballs from a recently (person's Essence in hours) dead corpse, a raven shifter can recover the memory of the person's last few minutes of life. The eye must be extracted without popping it (Agility + Palming [2] if doing it barehanded, Agility + Medicine [2] if using surgical tools, or Agility + Unarmed [2] if using one's beak in raven form), and consumed immediately; any form of preservation renders this power unusable. Having swallowed the eye, the shifter rolls Magic + Intuition; each hit represents one minute of memory recovered. If this test fails, or glitches, the shifter may try again with the other eye. If the first test is successful, the shifter has recovered as much information as he can.

Naturally, the corpse must have at least one natural, intact eyeball for the shifter to attempt this. If the person had cybereyes, or if both eyes are damaged, this power is unusable.

I am amused.

Not sure if a handful of seconds would be useful. I almost want to say double the time period minimum.

Maybe hits, times the original owner's Essence before death, in seconds?

I'm pretty intrigued by this concept. It could be pretty fun to play. Although, the fact that the corpse would have to be 0 hours dead (6 hours - 6 essence=0) for a full essence body doesn't seem right somehow. If anything, I feel like it should be the opposite.

I also agree with Draco18, the time should be at least doubled. _Pax._'s idea could also work. That seems more in line with more essence, more time.

It's a nifty idea... but the shapeshifter metatype itself is not the right place for this. The meta deals purely with the animalistic aspects of the shifter... not with it's 'magical' abilities specific to your concept. All the shifter base animals are purely 'mundanes' animals, not paracritters with innate magical powers like your awakened crow with obvious exception to the purely shifter abilities common to them all.

All the other shifter powers are purely mundane non-magical critter powers representative of their animal form. Even if the shifter had it's magic reduced to 0 it would retain the powers when it reverted to it's animal form and lost it's shifter abilities. Enhanced natural senses, reach, or tougher skin... nothing magical at all. Look in running wild where the normal/paranormal critter powers are broken out to see what I mean or the .

Looking at the stat line and unique power... not sure the fox cost is appropriate either. It's a common trick to 'dump' stats you don't care about or won't need when making your own custom package (so it kinda eliminates the idea of a package discount). And you're only 1 point below a fox.


This would work far better as an adept power taken by the shifter. Not specific to the eyeball.. but in a general... do something to reclaim the memories of his last few moments of life such as stealing his eyeball. A mage could craft a spell to do something similar as well... so no real need for it there. Even some kind of follow-on to psychometry might be able to do this (read impressions left attached to an object)... but that would be an advanced metamagic... so not the kind of thing which would be available early if done that way. But all of those would be far more appropriate ways to express a mystical power like this.

I herped a derp with the time-since-death math; it has now been corrected. A raven shifter can now drink an eye from a person who has been dead up to that person's Essence value in hours (6 for an unaugmented person). I also agree on the memory duration issue; for simplicity's sake, it is now one minute per hit rather than one second per hit.

@Falconer: TBH, I'm a little dissatisfied with the treatment of shifters in Runner's Companion. Given Shadowrun's "all myths are true" take, I really feel like shifters should be more innately magical. What do you think an appropriate cost would be for this metatype? I tried to make the statline make sense for a raven: reduced BOD and STR because, well, ravens just aren't that big, reduced CHA because they're a bird of ill omen, improved AGI due to being a bird, and improved INT and LOG for their mystical association with wisdom.

Tanegar:
It's more the nature of attribute lines... I pretty much never buy body 6 for example... I get body 5 for extra physical damage box and the 10 armor limit (higher with appropriate gear). Same goes for strength... strength pretty much only matters in 'odd' increments. And when you're playing to a concept... custom making your stat line is like freebie points. In this case... you're looking at 50points for 30 free points in attribute raises... and a bunch of lowered caps you probably don't really care about much (the cha 1/4 is the only one which might be a little limiting to some of the character concepts). Which leaves 20 points for regenerations !!! (bigtime plus)... and the little bit of otherwise... then on top you toss on a full blown magical power completely unlike any other 'werecreature' gets.


So I tend to see 'custom' reductions in attributes as not worth a lot in compensation and you're only 1 point below a fox. If you completely removed the paranormal magical ability altogether... I'd say it would be equivalent to the fox... (since raven's fly and flight is a pretty powerful movement cability worth quite a bit on it's own). So without the paranormal ability I'd say you're in the 50-60 area... looking at the eagle and the fox... I'd split the difference at 55bp minus the mystic ability. I have no idea how to price the paranormal ability... and like I said my opinion is the paranormal ability should be more of an adept ability. (say a 1 point adept ability).


The reason I dsiagree with you on the shifters is all the shifters are intended as "were's". Werewolf... werebear, werefox, werecat.... The only magical essence is what the 'shifter' quality brings with it. Otherwise they are exactyl equivalent to a non-magical creature of the same type when in natural form. None of the were's bring any kind of mystic powers with them... merely bringing an base animalistic power into a metahuman form paired with regenerative abilities.


So I'd say if you wanted to pursue this.. the better way to go is to make the shifter... cost it like a fox without the magical... pay 5 or 10 for adept/mystic adept... then price/adjust this quality to be equivalent to a 1 PP adept power. Thematically then it's more in line with the setting.

I've pretty much just repeated myself in different words and hopefully explained a little better my POV and hopefully provided you some constructive criticism.

On the "magical ability" thing - it could simply be a rare Adept power that many Raven shifters take - maybe one that ONLY Raven Shifters take.

Sort of like, they mgiht have their own particular Way.

Or alternately, that could be done as a semi-totemic Way, using the right mythosource, and be something useable by ANY Adept walking that particular Way.

At my table, which is all I can speak of really, I'd say "just use the eagle, and we'll call it a raven".
As for the ability, which I really like, I like the idea of it being an advanced metamagic, after psychometry. I might actually add it to our list of house rules.