Greetings, brethern,

the "Shape Flesh" power (p.170) allows the psyker to "assume the appearance of any one creature". Together with a Disguise skill / skill boni to really "impersonate" this creature.

There is no word about any limit of size difference. By RAW, their is nothing keeping a Psyker to turn himself into a rat. While still having his other assorted characteristic (Strength, Wounds, Toughness). Our into a small bird. Of course, the psyker will not be able to fly (as well as the rat will not count as quadruped) until he uses the power again to gain the trait in question (quadruped, flyer). But this is just a dice role away for a potent psyker.

Does this mean the psyker can change to a much smaller form (rat, bird, snake, cat) while still keeping lots of wounds and the comparable high strength of his human form?

The other way around, will he be able to turn himself into an Carnosaurus (enormous size)? Sure, this will not help to increase wounds or strenght (no changes due to raw), but the scare factor will make many lesser creattures (or simply thugs) run on sight. Not to mention the "crawl up up my back" solution for height differences. Yes, technically their is no "scare factor" since he will not gain a "Fear" Trait.

But I think you what I mean. This seem a little half backed to me.

FFG, any quick solutions?

I play a Biomancer and as such, have personally dealt with this issue. As per the RAW, there is of course nothing to suggest that this is impossible.

We have ruled, however, that since the rules do not say you can change your size category in this manner (they also do not forbid it, but we tend to take a strict constructionist "If the ability does not specifically provide the benefit, then it does not provide the benefit" viewpoint) you are therefore unable to change your size category up or down in this manner. Essentially you could become anything which is reasonably similar in size because your mass should not dramatically change.

Also the name of the talent is "Shape Flesh" so we tend to be of the view that it allows you to manipulate your flesh, move it about and reform it, but not create mass or do away with it in large quantities. You could for example become a very large snake to slip through a small area, (one about as heavy as you are, which wouldn't be TOO huge since snakes are phenomenally dense) with approximately the same mass as a human, under our interpretation, but not a mouse.

This fits well with the other fact of the power, which is that you do not gain the characteristics or special abilities of an assumed creature. If you cannot gain characteristics like Flier, you should also not be able to gain characteristics like Hulking. As stated before this is a rules interpretation, and not a hard and fast RAW.

Hi "At Lastt Forgot",

thanks for the reply first.

I thought about this as well, but still this "appearance of any creature" bothers me. Let´s take you own example: the transformation into a very large snake. As you mentioned yourself, this "feature" in itself would not "give" the psyker any other trait.

You thereby would have a very large snake (let´s say it will look la very big phyton) still moving with the standard stats of the psyker inquestion. Since the "crawler" trait is not applied. Since "if the rules say it is not applied, it is not applied". It will not get any bonus for "moving in rough terrain" [crawler trait] either.

Yes, I am a "rules lawyer" in this point. But isn´t a huge sneak "running" 24m per combat round [assuming an Agility 40 psyker] bothering anyone but me?

Oh yeah, for sure. That is somewhat disconcerting. You might require the Psyker to manifest the power two times and consider it one big manifestation, i.e. "If you transform into a creature with some extraordinary characteristic, you MUST perform Shape Flesh twice in order to become that creature, taking two full rounds, making sure to manifest the special abilities as well." This has the handy built-in expedient of it becoming much harder to become a big wolf than simply a different human being, which definitely seems to make conceptual sense. It also removes the nonsensical issue of having four legs, and not being a quadruped.

from france

isn't it appareance world most important? having the appearance of a bat won't give you a sonar sight. or i have miss read?

Yes, you are right. What we're discussing is instances where not having said special characteristic is extremely counterintuitive (like Gregorius mentioned, a snake moving 24m a round) and also whether such a power would allow a person to change sizes. I'm of the opinion that because size-changing is not granted by the power, it is not allowed.

Maybe my previous suggestion was a little out there. It should be okay I suppose for a psyker to have four legs and not Quadruped, or wings and not Flier. In the case with transforming into a snake... just have the character be unable to move unless he also manifests Crawler. I mean, c'mon, he doesn't have arms or legs any more. If he doesn't manifest Crawler how is he gonna move?

Another way to look at the appearance changing effects of Shape Flesh which would address both the Snake phenomena as well as the issue of size is to append the phrase "Make minor cosmetic changes to your flesh to help" right before the sentence "assume the appearance of any one creature." I think the intent of the writer was for that portion of the power to cover looking like someone else, looking like an eldar, looking like an ork, etc. They, for some reason, didn't consider constrictors and pidgins however. Given how it works and it's general slant, I would hazard a guess that it used to read "Assume the appearance of any one person..." but then they thought "what about Eldar or Orks" and changed person to creature without fully considering the ramifications of that word choice. Likewise, the second sentence should have the fallowing sentence appended to it's beginning: "Once all appropriate modifications have been made to your body, then..."

So, with the addition of the above phrases, the character could make minor changes to his or her body but, in order to make major changes (grow an extra set of arms, claws, nasty horns, fuse their legs and alter their musculature into that of a serpent, etc) they would need to take a bit more time. After all, it should be a lot easier to alter their body to mimic Mrs Smith as opposed to yon python. Without spending the extra time and effort to get the Crawler trait (and thus fuse their arms and legs to their body and radically alter their musculature), they would end up looking like a crazy snake-man nightmare strait from someones dreamscape as opposed to an actual constrictor.

Edit: er, ya, what At Last Forgot said several posts above ... I fail at reading...

Hi

Personaly, I think you are reading the rules right, but no the intentions of it. When the psyker manifests the "crawler" trait, he assumes the form of said snake. If he manifests "quadroped", his arms turn to legs. I don't think the appearance changes and traits are supposed to be seperated. If the psyker wishes to turn into a 4 legged lizard withwings (quadroped and flyer) I'd say; yes, you need to manifest the power twice. Minor appearance changes (look like a weeaboo space elf) will gains no traits as they are purely cosmetic. As for size, +/- 1 size catagory, but this is just our house rule.

Just my 2 bolt rounds

Serialkilla said:

I like this and even would say, the psyker can be any creature of his own size. Per Overbleed of 10 you can go +/-1 size catagory.

Roll your dices ;-)

Tubben said:

Since i cant edit, i quote myself.

Was thinking a bit about his power and size. As i said above.

The Psyker can be any creature of his own size, this could be a big rat, a very small carnosaurus. His stats are the same, a pretty strong rat or a pretty weak carnosaurus. For every overbleed of 10 he can change his size one catagory up or down. This means, with an power roll of 49 he can be a +/-3 sized creature.

49 is hard to do, but it is possible. I think earliest with Rang 5, but an Rang 7/8 could do this. My Psyker has a WP of 71, with Power Well 2, Discipline Focus, Invocation and Corpus Conversion it is pretty possible to achieve an 49.