Help With a Homebrew Shapeshifter Class


Homebrew and House Rules

Grand Lodge

After perusing the General Discussion forum and reading about classes still desired after the ACG*, it seemed like the most common one was a shapeshifting class. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I decided to just try doing a Ranger/Druid hybrid that ditched the animal companion to focus on the shapeshifting abilities.

So here is the basic chassis for The Shifter homebrew class.** I have the mechanics written, although I've not quite figured out how to word the fluff.

I was hoping for some feedback - obviously it's unfinished, and I wanted to see if anybody might have some good suggestions to rearrange the totems or to fill in the gaps where I've not been able to select abilities yet.

The other half of the issue is balance. Because I'm eliminating perhaps the most powerful abilities of both classes (The spontaneous summoning, Nature/Hunter's Bond animal companion, and favored enemy) to preserve a more authentic flavor, I tried to make its replacement - the Totemic Shift ability - suitably powerful. I just want to make sure I didn't go overboard - or perhaps even not go far enough.

*Original thread can be found here.

**Right now it's an open office document. You can download the software for free from http://www.openoffice.org. I'm working on getting it into drive, but unfortunately the formatting goes crazy and I'll have to figure out another way to include the table.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

I can't open the file, even with software that can. Turn it into a PDF.

I personally find it's best to use Google Docs or a simple word processor when doing work. They're easy to export to almost any format. MS Word and OpenOffice have bad habits of not being export-friendly.


I can't open it even with word. There is unreadable content. Word asked if I trust the soarce, and I don't know you at all.

Grand Lodge

OK, I just copied everything into my Google Drive, so I'm hoping this works now. I apologize for the formatting - it didn't really translate perfectly, but it should be readable.

So here is the Google doc version.

As a side note my first thought is to change totemic and totem animals to something else to differentiate it from the Barbarian, I'm just not sure what else I would call it.

Liberty's Edge

You might check out the Skin Changer class in the New Paths Compendium from Kobold Press!

The class works for you as is or you might find some ideas you can use :)


This class has full BAB and a D10 HD? At level 1, the main class ability seems a lot like an infinite use rage for the purposes of offensive capabilities.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

1) I feel like the bulk of the class would be made obsolete simply by the skinwalker race.

2) I agree with Excaliburproxy that the main class feature feels like a slightly weaker, infinite rage.

3) For a class about shapeshifting, there's not a lot of options for customizing your form.

4) I really like how each animal grants a short list of boons, which makes it easy to homebrew new totems.

5) The power level of totem abilities are all over the place. You don't seem to have any established benchmark for how powerful each totem level should be. The wolf gets a bite whereas the shark not only gets a bite, but also a swim speed and the aquatic subtype.

6) You don't need to say someone gets 1.5 Strength mod to damage with a bite attack. Bite attacks are primary attacks, anyway, and you add that much if you have a single natural attack.

7) A minor note, but the language is all over the place and inconsistent.

8) Pack Leader is cool, but you could make the ability much simpler by having it work like summon nature's ally.

9) You need to indicate what kind of abilities these are.

10) Overall, the class feels rather weak. They don't have many interesting class features. Some feel really weak and not totally thought out. Others feel a bit out of the line. The class doesn't have much identity either. It feels like a weak martial with a slightly better version of the skinwalker's change shape ability sprinkled with a few random abilities, most of them stolen from the druid or ranger. I recommend rethinking the class and doing another draft.

Also, I'd like to give you a bit of production advice. When writing content, avoid fancy formatting. Instead, stick to formatting that's easy to read and export. Just use italics, bold, and headers. Don't stress over the way tables look. In fact, some use tab-delimited rows for their tables instead of actually using a word processor's table tools. You want to do all this so you can focus mostly on the content. When making the final version of your work, you can then export to publishing software, which can easily format the entire document.


I have to say, I'm not particularly fond of the totem spirit "partial transformation granting animal powers" thing. This does eventually get Wild Shape, but my preference is for that from the start, instead of the totem spirit stuff.


I would think a lot more about just giving this class the Druid's wild shape ability. While this class's core monster-guy form is granting a paltry +4 strength,wild shape is going to be imparting a +6 to strength and a +2 to con as a large magical beast.

Again: you sort of have an infinite use barbarian rage situation on your hands here (especially considering that getting pounce is somewhere on the table here).

Some clarification on wild shape: can you use that a number of times per day the same way a druid can?

Perhaps these animal forms should be limited to those for which this shifter class has a totem for and those totem forms should be stated up explicitly. You may even have room for a flavorful mechanic here as this class could perhaps first have to shift through the hybrid form to get to their full animal form (that should have additional penalties but should also perhaps have higher attribute bonuses).

Grand Lodge

Well, thank you for the advice (in particular Excalibur and Cyrad)

I'll go back to the drawing board but there's a lot of better ideas to consider now.

thejeff, the more I think of it, the more I would like that, too. But it's hard to translate.

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