Sorcery: Shapeshifting

While the World of Darkness is indeed home to some shapeshifting monsters, a few sorcerers learn to alter their bodies through magical practice rather than inborn heritage. Perhaps it's a spoken word that calls to the primal animal within or the intervention of an animal-spirit or even a little judicious genetic engineering. This Path is very elemental, often calling upon instinctive knowledge, and many sorcerers have lost their personalities to the beast-side conjured up. Others lose their identity in malleability. For a few, shapeshifting is less an art than a natural talent, but one unchanneled by the callings of the true Changing Breeds. It seems that Shapeshifting comes in as many forms as its practitioners.


System

Roll: Stamina + Animal Ken (mythic sorcery)

Intelligence + Science (extraordinary science)

Cost: One Willpower per use

Modifiers: None

Duration: One scene


Aspects

* A minor cosmetic change: The sorcerer can change eye colors, grow hair, etc.

** Noticeable change: The sorcerer grows small claws, sprouts scales on the hands or the like.

*** Significant change: The sorcerer replaces some body part with an animal feature - a full clawed paw, a nasty shark jaw or an externalized digestive system.

*** Half-shift: The sorcerer can shift half of his body into another form or find some halfway point between human and animal with significant traits of each. The sorcerer might resemble a bipedal wolf (of size somewhere between human and wolf) or could have bird wings and a beak with human legs.

***** Full shifting: The sorcerer can change completely into animal forms.

****** Mythic shifting: Not only can the sorcerer take on animal forms, he may turn into forms that he only imagines.


Subject

***** The sorcerer can only affect himself.

**** The sorcerer can affect a different subject instead of himself.

***** The sorcerer can affect two subjects at once.

****** The sorcerer can affect up to three subjects at a time.


Disparity

* to *** The sorcerer can only affect himself and must take only one animal feature.

**** The sorcerer can make two unrelated shifts: having a wolf claw and a raven's head or changing himself to have fangs and an opponent to have whiskers.

***** The sorcerer can make three unrelated shifts.

****** The sorcerer can freely mix and match shifting traits.


Price of Failure

Shapshifters have a tendency to lose control over their shifting processes; a sorcerer who botches might trap himself in an animal's body or accidentally give an enemy useful advantages. The sorcerer could replace his mental acuity with animal instincts, or his body might start shifting out of control.