I'm more familiar with the case of Hsunchen, so realy this is about them in the main, but the only rules example of a shapeshifter we have is a Puma Person
I think the rules on this are not ideal, and here's why.
Hsunchen are animists and they worship their ancestors. Their most important ancestor is their totem spirit, e.g. Basmol for the Basmoli. They have magic to change their shape into their totem animal because of their descent from the animal ancestor. Therefore this magic is inherently a form of animist ancestor worship.
In rules terms I think this would be best represented as a power gained from shamanic ancestral spirits using the normal animism rules. Therefore I wuld say that a Hsunchen who converted to monotheism and concentrated their magic on wizardry would definitely lose their shape changing powers.
Of course player characters can be different. If I wrote up a Hsunchen character and put a shape changing ability into the totem animal in the 100 word essay, then it becomes an innate power . It would not be lost if the character concentrated on wizardry, but I think it could still cause them a lot of grief. After all the magic is still linked to basmol, and so although they nolonger worship Basmol, Basmoli spirits will still be able to sense them from the spirit plane and be attracted to them.
Phil disagrees and thinks that if its either common or animist magic, they should lose it when concentrating on Wizardry. I am sympathetic to this view, but for narative reasons think letting the character keep the ability but give them grief over it is more fun.
I'm new to the Puma People, so they may well differ from the normal Hsunchen way of doing things, whatever that may eventualy prove to be. The way they are presented in the rulebook does seem odd though. Their shape changing magic is listed as beign seperate from their common and animist magic, so maybe it realy is just an innate biological ability, albeit a magical one.
Where does the threshold between innate magical abilities and other magical abilities lie? Is Trolish digestion magical? Intuitively I'd say a slave collar would stop a puma person shape changign, but wouldn't stop a troll's magical digestion ability. Yet I can't think of a realy solid technical justification for that.
Hopefully the rules for Hsunchen will eventualy clear some of this up, at least with respect to them.
Simon Hibbs
Powered by hypermail