Thaumaturgical Shapeshifting

[ashern]

Hey guys, I've got a game I'm putting together and one of my players who has thaumaturgy was wondering about doing a ritual to turn themselves into an animal for a time.  Said person hasn't read past the first several books of the series, but with the copious examples of a wizard doing it in Turn Coat, it's obviously possible.  That being said, I can't actually seem to find it specifically discussed anywhere.  I understand that it would be biomancy (probably), in a ritual to change into an animal and probably give yourself certain powers temporarily... but I'm stumped as to how to determine difficulty and what you could do with it.

Thanks!

[ballplayer72]

Hey guys, I've got a game I'm putting together and one of my players who has thaumaturgy was wondering about doing a ritual to turn themselves into an animal for a time.  Said person hasn't read past the first several books of the series, but with the copious examples of a wizard doing it in Turn Coat, it's obviously possible.  That being said, I can't actually seem to find it specifically discussed anywhere.  I understand that it would be biomancy (probably), in a ritual to change into an animal and probably give yourself certain powers temporarily... but I'm stumped as to how to determine difficulty and what you could do with it.

Thanks!

pretty sure shapeshifting is covered under "biomancy"

[ashern]

Cool, page number?  Because I'm not seeing it...

[ballplayer72]

Cool, page number?  Because I'm not seeing it...

at the office sorry.  look in the index in the back, find biomancy and look to the right.  Should have a page number for you.  Also try looking up shapeshifting.

[CMEast]

Biomancy only mentions shapeshifting in passing, though it certainly is part of biomancy (YS284).

To cast a shapeshifting spell, you have to create enough power to 'take out' the target, even if it's yourself. It would count as an extreme consequence for such an extreme spell. Assume the time increment for the spell is 15 minutes (perhaps, it could be justified as more, but I think a longish scene is the most appropriate length of time) and then add on further shifts for duration.

[wyvern]

Sadly, biomancy isn't in the index (though, as CMEast posted, it's at YS284), and I can't find any sort of discussion on shapeshifting yourself.

I know I read somewhere, (albeit possibly on this forum), the notion that self-shape-shifting could be done using thaumaturgy to just stack up a whole pile of navel-gazing maneuvers that you could then tag as needed - so a wolf form might give you aspects of "runs like the wind" x2, "hunter's endurance", "claws and fangs" x3, for a total complexity of around 18 (plus some for duration, probably).  You'd then have two free tags on "runs like the wind" - which you could use for moving or dodging; one for "hunter's endurance"; and three for "claws and fangs".  Once those free tags ran out, it's fate point time.  And, of course, the GM could throw compels at these temporary aspects - maybe someone called animal control when they saw a wolf running past outside...

[CMEast]

YS282 covers shapeshifting, though it's fairly vague it can be used as a model for shapeshifting magic.

Of course, if the PC plans to do it a lot, it may just be simpler to take beast change, using magic to justify it.

[Deadmanwalking]

Yeah, it's on p. 282, but the marginalia on p. 283 go into more detail. The basics are:

1. Take yourself Out with the magic. Since you won't be using Consequences to avoid this, it's not hard.

2. Spend Fate Points or Tags you didn't use on the spell to pay for points of powers on a 1 for 1 basis.

There is no three.

As an example, say you want to turn into a Hawk. You want Beast Change, Diminutive Size, Claws, Wings, and Inhuman Speed. That's 6 points of powers.

Now, say you have Good Lore and 4 Stress Boxes. You'll willingly fail your Defense roll, so you only need about Complexity 5 to do this, so you do some prep-work, and accumulate a single Tag, which you'll use to boost Complexity. But you don't want to spend 6 FP on it, so you then go on to accumulate 5 more Tags to help pay for the form's powers. You do the spell, use the 5 Tags and 1 FP to pay for the powers, and you're now a Hawk for a while (one scene by default, hough you can add duration onto that by increasing Complexity).

While not an official rule, iago also said a while back that it would be reasonable to pay for powers with the temporary loss of other powers, so if you can't do Evocation as a hawk, you might need three less Tags/FP. That's at GM discretion, though.

[AsaTJ]

Here's the way I, as a GM handle it- specifically with Listens-to-Wind's relative ease of shifting in mind (which clearly wasn't accounted for in the rules-as-written.)

The complexity of the spell is equal to (Total Refresh Cost of Powers Gained x2) +2.  It's simple, and while it may make shapeshifting too easy for some GMs' tastes, I found the alternatives basically unacceptable.

[Deadmanwalking]

Here's the way I, as a GM handle it- specifically with Listens-to-Wind's relative ease of shifting in mind (which clearly wasn't accounted for in the rules-as-written.)

Yes it was. He has True Shapeshifting and Modular Abilities. Magic that exactly duplicates other powers is purchased as those other powers. Iago and others have explicitly said as much.

Listens-to-Wind's shapeshifting is also pretty much instant, it can't be Thaumaturgy.

[AsaTJ]

Yes it was. He has True Shapeshifting and Modular Abilities. Magic that exactly duplicates other powers is purchased as those other powers. Iago and others have explicitly said as much.

Yeah, he said it directly to me.  I still have GM perogative to overrule it.  

[CMEast]

Fantastic, I'd somehow missed those rules! Thanks DMW. I'm glad I wasn't too incorrect, though I had forgotten that you could just take yourself out without using the consequences which is great! It makes complete sense and works perfectly!

[Deadmanwalking]

Yeah, he said it directly to me.  I still have GM perogative to overrule it. 

True! 

I was mostly just saying that the rules as written could handle it, not that their version of how to do so was ideal for everyone's game.

Fantastic, I'd somehow missed those rules! Thanks DMW. I'm glad I wasn't too incorrect, though I had forgotten that you could just take yourself out without using the consequences which is great! It makes complete sense and works perfectly!

No problem, I'm always happy to help. 

[Tush Hog]

If I'm understanding it correctly, you should be able to have a wizard a lot like Listens to Wind.  

I've got a wizard who has a Lore of Great +4 and three stress boxes. The complexity of changing shape is going to be 4 (how much it takes to take him out). He has a conviction and discipline of superb +5. So generally, he can change shape in a single round.

If you allow a wizard to swap out his powers for new ones, which I think is very reasonable, he can turn into most creatures very quickly. Would you even need to keep thaumaturgy, since Beast change would allow you to turn back? So my wizard could drop all his powers and take the shape of a grizzly (I'm going off of DMW's creature write ups).

One question, though. Are you still limited by your refresh rate when your using tags or fate points to buy powers?

[Deadmanwalking]

By default, even one exchange Thaumaturgy is gonna take more than one round in combat (usually at least a couple of minutes), or the listed ability to use it at Evocation speeds is meaningless. You also need special GM permission to switch around powers, but yeah it's all doable in theory.

And no, those use the Temporary Power Rules on p. 92, and Refresh limits aren't really applicable.