As a spinoff from the shifter question thread, as several people here have sucessfully played shifter characters I wonder if you could spare some advice on how to deal with your equipment after shifting. That goes especially for shifters that grow larger and most likely ruin everything they wear like bear shapechangers and drakes.

Did you strip down before shifting or carry a lot of replacement clothes with you? Did you rely on the team or on a drone to gather up any leftover equipment you cant carry while shifted? Or did you invent some other way to transport it while shifted?
Did you even carry equipment into the field or did you rely solely on your shifter powers and possibly magic (how did that work out for you?).
Or did your group ignore this issue completely in favor of playability?

It depends on the additional bulk, I guess. For clothes, you could see if the character wants to bother looking into materials that are very elastic and stretch quite a bit. You could for example also designate a sort of special pouch for a massive shifted form that works as a backpack / big shoulder bag for the human form.
(Funny how we talk about it that way, when technically, the human form is the 'shift into' form most of the time, but lets keep it that way for easiness' sake)

Obviously this will only be good for planned shifts and not for 'emergency' or spontaneous changes.

I always went at the from the direction that shifters are, at heart, animals who can turn into metahumans. Therefore mine never really bothered carrying any gear because 'stuff' didn't matter to them. His team managed to convince him that it was worthwhile to have a wrist-comm on a stretchy belt so it would stay with him and he could call for pants if he needed them, but that was about it.

For the more bashful shapeshifter (one raised among humans perhaps?) tired of the 'where's my pants' game, might we suggest the Wear & Wolf Line from Talbot & Chaney Fashions Ltd which features a new line of shapeshifter friendly apparel.

Using sustainably sourced shapechanger fur specially enchanted and woven into tasteful attire in a range of styles, these Apparel Foci are designed to be bonded to it's owner, allowing these pieces to transform along with the busy shapeshifter on the go (often taking the form of a collar or otherwise woven among their fur/feather/etc in their primal form...).

These outfits have no intrinsic armor value beyond normal clothing themselves (Armor 1-2 tops at GM discretion) and start at Force 3 rating so as to avoid embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions in some of the wilder mana areas like Chicago and similar.

Rumours abound of a projected 'War Wolf' Line, utilizing shifter bone and shells(presumably from a weretortoise or similar) to increase the armor potential of the range, however this still remains on the drawing boards at present as well as being very controversial due to sourcing issues.


>"Sourcing issues?!" One of my good friends, Wang Hai Chao was murdered by Talbot & Chaney for his shell. Anyone who buys this stuff supports the wholesale genocide of turtle shifters and tortoise shifters! I call for an immediate response by the moderators of this dear forum in supporting the boycott of Talbot & Chaney products!
>Namikaze

For one that played a shapeshifter through dawn of the artifacts I can say that I found the need to keep equipment list short, light and untracable and that I had to worry about armor and other things felt more than just.

I had regeneration and the ability to become a badass cool tiger with awesome stats!

I had to pay for that amazing privilege by being somewhat limited on armor and gear but the net gain was massive.

It fits the fluff that a tiger doesn't have the same interest in gadgets and gear and with regeneration you can accept lower armor. And the party hacker is happy to not have to slave your stuff to himself etc.

I'd love to play my tiger in 5e where melee is a thing at all (it is a complete non-thing in 4, broken beyond repair) but I see no reason why I shouldn't have "trouble" with my gear.

I had my teammates help with with a duffel bag for some stuff etc. It worked great! I was a tiger! <3


I did one thing, custom fit for my armor jacket so it had velcro straps that would break away and not destroy my armor when I shifted (but made it tricky to reassemble and the parts would still be left on the ground when I became a tiger and not magically follow with me.


TL;DR; Shapeshifters are already pretty OP, they need no crutch to be amazing PCs. The fluff with gear is a nice niche and limit. Without it shapehshifters are just a cheap way to get better stats, better than trolls etc. It also works great with the fluff and the nature side of 6th world being unfriendly towards gear. And it makes great character concepts.

Has anyone tried a shifter without gear in 5E where they do not have regeneration?

And I suppose you all went mage or adept?

Broken beyond repair? The difference between 5th and 4th ed is that base damage is STR rather than 1/2 STR. Otherwise, mechanically, it's the same. So if you want to 'fix' 4th ed melee just do the same but watch out for the lower Impact armour ratings. It certainly isn't broken beyond repair otherwise they would have come up with a completely different system for 5th ed.

The 4th Edition Melee specialists often did more damage than guns in the long run... At least in my experience.
Had one myself, that I eventually quit playing as he was becomming boring (not quite as good as Bear who walks through walls against Objects, but not that far behind either)... Make way up to target, Punch it, move along. *sigh*

My GM handwaved underwear issues. For armor, the other PC would carry it for me, or I'd hide it somewhere. For cases where I didn't have either of those available... I wouldn't bring anything I couldn't put in my kitty backpack.

A Hello Kitty Shifter? Say it isn't so...

In 4:e you defend against oneshot manabolts with only Willpower, you defend against 15+ damage automatic weapons with only Reaction.

In 4:e you can only move 1/4th of your move distance every action phase or so

in 4:e you defend against melee with reaction+dodge, effectively having double the defence pool compared to the near impossible defence tasks versus spells or ranged weapons not even considering the clunky movements where you often had to waste 1-2 IPs of just moving to get there.

in 5:e you can frontload your movement and the difference in melee defence versus other defences is not there, the pools are streamlined and you get twice the benefit from strength so yes, it is a huge thing.

Melee also didn't have "half armor" cheese and shock in 4:e.

A slightly modded high velocity smg (4e) with stick 'n' shock does 17DV versus half armor (+11 from full auto high velocity and 6 from stick and shock), it requires a quite a big load of house rules to explicity nerf automatic fire and weapons mods for melee to do more damage in any longer runs, even ignoring the movement troubles. And F11 stunball is a whole different cup of tea, almost like the grenades in 5e

But, it is beside the point, it is a completely different topic and I have written melee off in 4e before. It is a much better deal in 5e where strength matters etc.


I think the problem with gear and clothes adds to the darker and grittier fluff where vampires doesn't sparkle and shifters aren't Disney characters with extra cuddles. But, I am a bit unaware of the exact powers they have in 5e but in 4 they were really amazing and I could always just dress up in armor and not become a tiger and have none of the drawbacks anyway.

Basically Shapeshifters lost all magic abilities excpt for shifting. That includes Regeneration which, from what I gather from here, was one of the main things that allowed shifters to operate without armor.
Now its just their natural animal abilities (natural weapon + senses) and shift.

And not becoming a tiger has the drawback of having spend a lot of karma, 25 in 5E plus any karma spend for a different human form besides human and at least priority C, for an ability you do not use.

That puts things under different light when it comes to the 'balance' or gameplay part of it. However it still doesn't feel right in fluff to have actual things (gear) somehow transfer to the astral plane for storage when everything else projects or have forms over the border.

It also feels like a way to be misused as well. I recall pathfinder adventures where druids were used to smuggle things by transforming into draft animals with a boatload of contraband, stolen goods or other items being beyond invisible. Not even true seeing could see that the epic plot device is being carried by the druid in animal form.

Better to go to your armorer and have her help you design some animal armor and some straps, velcro and elastic to get it to work pretty good through shapeshifting for some customzation fee. (In 4:e there was a listing for customized armor for looks and cosmetics so that works here too I suppose).

Do you get any stats in 5:e for your animal form?

Haha, I'm going to have to remember that trick.

Last time my group ever needed to smuggle anything, we piled four character into a portable hole (with a bottle of air) and handed it off to the PC who had a Stone Flight ability (I forget what it was called, some weird obscure 3.5 class that allowed the player to fly...in stone). It's really hard to detect someone who's literally flitting through the castle walls.

(I should note: this was for a ECL 20 one-shot as the prelude to a lower level campaign taking place some years later. Our task: kill the emperor because he'd been emperor for like 400 years because he'd had a prophesy at his birth that said that when he died, the empire would collapse. Turns out that happened because he'd been emperor for so long, if he'd just shuffed off after 60 years or so things would have been fine. Also he was a dragon.)

I don't think that will be feasibly for many shapeshifters as most have an animal form with a vastly different body size than most metahumans.



Yes, mostly an increase in Str and Bod and a lower Log and Ref limit ranging from +1 in a few stats to better than a troll. Although there are some shifters which increase different stats. Also, natural weapons most of the time and enhanced senses, but also uneducated.

We just house-ruled this whole issue away by saying that for Drakes and Shifters, their clothes shift with them (unless they're wearing something like really heavy body armor). But anything like "normal clothes" disappears when they shift to dragon/animal form and then reappears on them normally when they shift back to human form. This approach gets rid of all these nit-picky issues.

Of course, we're still using SR4, so Shifters still have Regeneration. SR5 reallly screwed Shifters - I have no have no idea who would want to play them under the current rules.

What comes to mind is those naked warriors...I forgot if they were celtic or galic, but you know, those guys the romans fought....

Spartans?

Celt Beserkers...

Losing dual-natured, well, that was a mixed blessing, but without regeneration, shapeshifters are pretty underpowered.

Indeed... Not sure exactly why that direction was chosen...