Now that's just mean!

Ok you are walking into a Dungeon you know is full of vampires. The martial character has his sword and shield ready. But the guy who prebuffs his weapons and armor can't do anything till the fighting starts. That does not seem logical. I can understand not walking around town with claws that are as deadly as a longswords out. However if I am not in a public place and I am going to be walking in to known danger it would seem reasonable to have a few buffs up and running.

This is one of those things that the GM needs to advise players at the start of the game as to when each scene starts/ends and when pre-buffing will carry over without penalty into the start of the scene. The start and end of a scene are also important if a Binding spell goes down or can't be auto-cast (and the character fails) as to re-Binding again.

For dungeon bashes, the "scenes" are obvious to everyone. "PC: I'm entering the dungeon, I cast x/y/z." and the buff should hold until the party fixes their Stamina damage. "GM: You are now in a new scene".

In such a case the entire dungeon may be a single 'scene' or the spell may just have ended right before you enter the next room... Duration scene represents a set duration, not 'infinate amount of time'

Again, such spells are they way they are to limit prebuffing, look at ways to allow you to cast your spells faster...

At which point my Awakened val'Holyrn (like a val'Delenov) would immediately cast Claws of the beast and Beastial Hide before proceeding further into the abandon dungeon.

which he very much may do....

but he needs to keep recasting the spell due to it's duration...

Scene does not mean "forever" its a abstract measurement of time, and there are times that you may be able to pre-buff (right before you enter a door or turn the corner into a room and so on)

think of "scene" spells as per round spells in 3.X except I'm a nice GM and tell you they last till the end of combat.

I would suggest you add this to the errata and potentially to new sourcebooks that come out that include new spells. Something like:

Scene Duration
A scene is an abstract measurement of time. Spells with a duration of Scene should be thought of having a "real" duration measured in at most minutes. For the sake of storytelling and streamlining game play, you may find that the effective duration may be significantly longer. Because of their "real" duration, it's not practical to keep them up constantly. Depending on the situation there may or may not be time to get spells cast prior to the start of combat. Having any Scene spells up at the start of a scene will either be specified in the mod or at the GM's discretion.

Adding something to this effect within the official errata will help level-set everyone on intent and help avoid confusion and arguments in the future.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Hat, that's a really good idea I'm gonna be using that block of text for my tables

That goes a long way to explaining the thinking of how long these should last, to me. What it means is that in general these spells are difficult to maintain over a long period of time, and generally won't be maintained outside of a "high tension situation" for very long.

That changes my perspective of the lower level "path of.." spells, where I was thinking that wolf and raptor forms may be a key mode of transportation for shamans, since it gives them dramatically faster movement as they travel, and they may not want to own animals, etc. But if they have to stop ever few minutes to cast "Path of the raptor" than there is little to no speed gain from staying in human form. This is odd, to me, since raptors don't have very capable combat stats, so I thought the primary use for these spells might be for the flavor of having these abilities for long distance travel, etc.

Additionally, I'm surprised with the duration of "Heighten Senses" especially, and maybe "Alter Appearance." Heighten Sense's most obvious use is to be ready for surprises, which by their very nature can't be planned/precast for. So, as a scene duration spell this isn't something that can be cast while on caravan gaurd duty and maintained to help prevent ambush. That is important to know. It still has use as a support spell in dungeon crawls and other known "high tension" environments, but I'm surprised the spell can't be used for a longer duration.

Personally, I would question whether the duration of some of these spells could be reconsidered, since I don't really see how having "path of the wolf" last more than scene really breaks anything, and it would be a whole lot more fun.