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Much as I want to see some decent updates to the Shifter, I'm not holding my breath, and if I do want to play a Shifter in game I'll be asking for some heavy homebrew. I hope we see an update eventually, but I'm not counting on it being soon or for it to actually fix the issues.
Doubt it. Paizo seems to have given up on the current Pathfinder, apart from the books they already had scheduled.
Probably not at present, but maybe once P2e has dropped they might come back.
Didn't they open a discussion about how to fix the shifter? Why would this go unresolved?
They closed the thread about shifter changes saying they'll open it when anymore changes come. That was a month and a half ago and there's been nothing ever since. There's been other threads with suggestions and fixes, the most common of these is to make wildshape a seperate thing from aspects and have it be more open like the druid and give the class bonus feats. Discussion pretty much died when all you can talk about with certainty was what would be surefire fixes to the class and get no feedback.
I'm firmly in the camp believing that paizo has pretty much abandoned the Shifter choosing to focus entirely on 2ed and anything else coming out for the shifter in the remaining 1ed books are at most is going to be cool but you're going to have to deal with the busted chasis the class came with.
Best thing you can do is either heavy handed homebrew or if your table allows 3rd party then get Legendary Shifter, a complete rework of the class. That one had a playtest and it shows. If 3rd party is not allowed then beg and plead for this exception.
I doubt it at this point.
I'm not good at evaluating class mechanics. What's wrong with the Shifter? (Please keep it civil).
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Short version for me:
(1) When it was advertised before release, I perceived the class's purported role to be a shapeshifting specialist, but the class as written is not as good at shapeshifting as a druid, whose shapeshifting ability is only a secondary or even tertiary class feature.
(2) The shifter claws mechanics feel clunky. We really didn't need another bag of exceptions to the usual melee attack rules to add to flurry of blows, brawler's flurry, kasathas with weird loadouts, and so on.
(3) Some other minor things that aren't as big a deal, like "claws" being inappropriate for shifters with certain themes.
This is without getting into archetypes, such as oozemorph. o_O
Thanks, Blahpers!
I'm not good at evaluating class mechanics. What's wrong with the Shifter? (Please keep it civil).
In it's current incarnation, it doesn't come even close to what people were expecting (a better shape shifter than the Druid).
Additionally, some of the most flavorful/desirable Archetypes....are more or less unplayable (unless your a masochist)
Fixes are actually simple and rather obvious....but given the current focus, I don't imagine they will be taking the time to address them.
House-ruled versions are the best option at this point.
Or maybe the Skin Changer from Kobold Press.
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I really like the concept but the current version really needed to be play tested. The current version needs to be buffed.
I disagree. The main problem isn't lack of playtesting, the main problem is that the class was written by someone who doesn't understand how class design works, and haven't even read Paizos own stuff about the topic!
I'm not good at evaluating class mechanics. What's wrong with the Shifter? (Please keep it civil).
*takes a very deep breath*
There's a section in the ACG about designing classes. Some extracts and how Shifter breaks them:
Every single Shifter class feature was copied from another class (mainly Druid, Hunter, and Monk), and it's supposed novelity of spell-less shapechanger was already done by Metamorph Alchemist and Beastkin Berserker Barbarian - the later even has the exact same "select one form each at 1st/5th/10th/15th/20th level" feature.
Shifter is completely overshadowed by Druid (plus the two above mentioned archetypes).
Without a single new class feature in sight, it's no big surprise that the answer is "neither".
Half the levels only grant increases to small bonuses, and sometimes nothing at all, so plenty of dead levels.
The problem is not power level - Shifter is already doing relatively well when it comes to raw damage - but it's versatility. In short, what the Shifter is lacking is what I call Character Shaping Choices™.
Such character shaping choices come in three forms:
1) Daily: Mostly spell preparation and the Medium's spirit.
2) On levelup: Spells known, rage powers, etc., doesn't have to be every level up
3) One time: Domains, bloodline etc., mostly done at first level
I don't count feats, skills, and equipment because it should be obvious that options that literally every class can take have to be relatively weak (otherwise almost every character would take them, cf. Leadership for what happens when this rule is broken). I also don't count choices that don't affect playstyle and only grant minor numeric bonuses, such as a Fighter's weapon training.
Archetypes are technically one time choices as well, if these are included depends on what we want to compare.
Naturally, the more choices you can make, the more you can (in general) shape your character. Also, the more often you can make choices, the more flexibility the character can have. Daily choices don't add power over on levelup choices, but they add a lot of flexibility.
The following classes are generally accepted to be the weakest ones in Pathfinder: Fighter, Brawler, Rogue, Cavalier, Samurai, Gunslinger, Swashbuckler, Monk.
Apart from the Rogue *, you'll notice that none of these classes have a daily or on levelup choice **. Cavalier and Samurai have a one time choice at first level, while the others don't get to make any character shaping choices at all. It's also noteworthy that there are no classes lacking daily or on-levelup choices that are generally considered good.
Now, choices don't automatically contain strong options (few rogue talents are better than feats), some fixed class features are fairly powerful as well (like rage), and there are options that offer choices to make on the fly, like wildshape or a Summoner's SLA (not character shaping by definition, but can be very powerful). But if you look at both power level and flexibility, there's almost no getting around having class features that allow character shaping choices fairly often.
*) Whoever thought that a pure martial with medium BAB, no accuracy increasing abilities, d8 HD, and the worst possible saves a PC class can have was a good idea?
**) Fighter got on levelup choices with AAT and AWT, while Monk got on levelup choices with UnMonk's Ki Powers and Style Strikes.
The Shifter get's to make one such choice every five levels, and quite frankly, it's just not enough. Since many aspects are very similar, after the second (combat form + flying form), you basically only get the minor form bonuses, and those aren't even remotely character shaping. The class description say the Shifter can "fuse [forms] together with devastating effect", so where is the class feature for that? A limited use Skill Focus is not helping me be devastating!
We already have "can turn into one type of creature all day long" with Druid and Metamorph (and Agathiel Vigilante), and "can turn into one of the few previously selected animals multiple times per day" with Beastkin Berserker.
On a side note, the oft heared 'solution' of "just give it Druid style wild shape" leads to a class that is a strict downgrade from Druid, i.e. a class that completely breaks the other class design guidelines quoted above.
It is possible to turn the Shifter into a powerful, flexible, and interesting to play (all for a martial, of course) class that abides by the "designing classes" guidelines even with keeping the current chassis (of pre-selected minor/major aspects). One of the biggest complaints about the Shifter is that it's basically a Druid focussed on Wild Shape, but then Wild Shape got nerfed, without gaining anything in return.
That means that if the choices for Wild Shape are limited for Shifter, the individual choices should be stronger, i.e. granting things not normally aviable to a wildshaping character.
Step 1: Make something cool and unigue out of every major form (like Wolverine's rage+powers).*** There's no reason to limit the major forms to what the Beast Shape spells grant.
Step 2: Make the minor forms worthwhile. Can mostly be done by granting a slightly limited form of the unique thing the major form grants.
Step 3: Grant some cool class feature that aren't copy pasted from the druid to increase versatility.****
***) Abilities could be something like Blindsense (short range for minor, larger range for major) for Bat, Pounce for Tiger's minor form, unique poisons (that are actually worth it) for Snake, and so on. Minor forms could also grant movement types.
****) Example: "At 12th level, the Shifter can turn into a major form not selected once per day. Staying in such a form expands one hour of wild shape as normal, after which the Shifter reverts back to her base form. At 17th level, she can use this ability twice per day."
One could specialize their Shifter according to their campaign, and the new ability can help out for that moment where you really need a burrow speed or something. Might even have a lower version for minor forms granted at 7th level.
There are a lot of levels that could use new class features once you stop counting crap like "+1 average damage to one of your attacks". Even the new Shifter's Fury explicitly made to fill dead levels is useless to multiple forms and builds.
Of course, I would have designed the class to be far less Druid centric from the get-go, focussing more on a "master of shape changing" concept:
Shifter got multiple updates via FAQ in January and February. Some people here know this, I guess, but others might have missed it (I did too, until a few days ago). Note that I am not here to defend these changes, so if you write a "that's by far not good enough!!!" posting, don't expect an answer from me. I am here to point to the FAQ.
Are we going to be seeing more updates to the wrongly unplaytested Shifter class soon? Or are we getting the shaft cause of PF2?
At this point, I'm not even expecting FAQ's addressing simple issues.
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The shifter is why my group has zero hype for 2e.
You can't drop the ball that badly as a company and expect people to assume your new edition is going to be good.
Thanks, everyone. I'll check out the FAQ, too.
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Shifter got multiple updates via FAQ in January and February. Some people here know this, I guess, but others might have missed it (I did too, until a few days ago). Note that I am not here to defend these changes, so if you write a "that's by far not good enough!!!" posting, don't expect an answer from me. I am here to point to the FAQ.
Probably why the thread title had the word "more". ; )
The class still doesn't feel "completed" but the updates are better then nothing.
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It was dying down considerably before Pathfinder 2 was announced.
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If by "dying down" you mean that people accepted that Paizo wasn't going to make any significant changes to address the remaining concerns, then sure. "Resignation" falls a bit short as a desired community outlook, though.
Well, when they locked the thread (23.2.), I think they made it pretty clear that they don't really intend to do any further work on the topic.
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Is the FAQ done with no further updates until 2nd Edition is released?We do have more of them queued up and rough drafted (particularly for Ultimate Wilderness stuff like tyrant totem), and we do plan on releasing them hopefully soonish. We're just coming out of the playtest CRB copyfitpocalypse of long hours and working weekends, but we can see the light at the end of that tunnel!
Considering how chock full the PF2 threads are of people who're all like "the sky is falling!!!!!!!1112", whose posts boil down to "they changed it so it now must suck", or, my favourite, hwo post stuff that basically says "this new thing that I know nothing aboute kinda sounds vaguely similar to some feature gaming system X used, so it must automatically be the same, and as that feature in that system was bad, the Pathfinder one must also suck"...
Oh, and I forgot the "using the same word with different prefixes for two very similar features is too hard to understand, even though we had the whole thing ten times worse in PF1" crowd!
Seriously, seeing as how some people have made literally dozens of posts with content as the above with not a speck of actual constructive criticism or even grounded concern, and don't seem to get banned...
I don't really see it as that large of an issue.
It's one class that failed to scratch the martial wild shape itch. With all the content paizo puts out, some of it is guaranteed to be bad.
I still found ultimate wilderness an excellent and enjoyable book, and will happily accept any fixes paizo makes. Until then I'll fiddle around with other concepts.
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Waiting on another batch of Shifter fixes, Paizo.
Not happening.
They only way you will see any updates on currently existing PF1 content is if PF2 crashes and burns.
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Waiting on another batch of Shifter fixes, Paizo.
Wish I could offer something more official, but I did write up the Legendary Shifter for people who were looking for different options here. It's a complete rebuild of the class which removes the limitations of wildshape, adds new abilities each level, tosses in some bonus feats, and even gives new options that the druid's wildshape doesn't to help separate them thematically.
Again, if 3p isn't your thing, disregard it, but it's an option for groups who were looking for different concepts for the shifter class.
Waiting on another batch of Shifter fixes, Paizo.Not happening.
They only way you will see any updates on currently existing PF1 content is if PF2 crashes and burns.
Part of me is hoping that PF2 does crash and burn just so the stuff in PF1 that needs fixing can actually get some attention.
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Part of me is hoping that PF2 does crash and burnWaiting on another batch of Shifter fixes, Paizo.Not happening.
They only way you will see any updates on currently existing PF1 content is if PF2 crashes and burns.
If that happens, I suspect nobody comes out happy.
Waiting on another batch of Shifter fixes, Paizo.Wish I could offer something more official, but I did write up the Legendary Shifter for people who were looking for different options here. It's a complete rebuild of the class which removes the limitations of wildshape, adds new abilities each level, tosses in some bonus feats, and even gives new options that the druid's wildshape doesn't to help separate them thematically.
Again, if 3p isn't your thing, disregard it, but it's an option for groups who were looking for different concepts for the shifter class.
I highly recommend Jolly's Legendary Shifter. It's the most "why couldn't they have made this!" 3pp content imagineable. Beg and plead for this to be allowed at you tables cause Paizo isn't going to fix Shifter. Bury your hopes and dreams on that.
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If that happens, I suspect nobody comes out happy.Part of me is hoping that PF2 does crash and burnWaiting on another batch of Shifter fixes, Paizo.Not happening.
They only way you will see any updates on currently existing PF1 content is if PF2 crashes and burns.
Which is why I said part of me. I would be just as happy to have one last big hardcover book full of all the miscellaneous fixes and tweaking from across all of PF1 that people have been asking for but thinking we'll never get. They could call it "Pathfinder: Please Stop Asking Us Edition".
If that happens, I suspect nobody comes out happy.Part of me is hoping that PF2 does crash and burnWaiting on another batch of Shifter fixes, Paizo.Not happening.
They only way you will see any updates on currently existing PF1 content is if PF2 crashes and burns.
I suspect this is a "bet the company" move.
Have any of you actually played a shifter? Not play tested but played one?
I vaguely remember two players here who played the class - they enjoyed it.
Just because the shifter isn't the grandmaster of shapeshifting doesn't mean you can't have fun with it...
I mean ultimately, you can see why it isn't a priority.
Obviously, they're focused on second edition. More elegant and better flowing rules should be great.
Financially, fixing the shifter doesn't do anything for them. They're good people, and do the errata to improve quality, but no matter what they lose out time just to get people complaining about how they fixed it wrong.
Part of me is hoping that PF2 does crash and burn just so the stuff in PF1 that needs fixing can actually get some attention.
Isn't "stuff in PF1 that needs fixing" the whole raison d'être for PF2?
What they're doing should help prevent another debacle like the Shifter, for multiple reasons: 1) Forms without pounce are de facto unusuable - PF2s altered action economy should help there. 2) The class is lacking character shaping choices™ - in PF2, everyone gets those with the class feats, and even if a class's original writer screws up and only offers few and crappy class feats, other writers/books could easily fix that (similar to how AWT at least partially fixed some of the Fighter's problems). 3) The Shifter seems to be written by someone who indeed thinks that the caster/martial disparity is but a myth - PF2 is advised to change that.Financially, fixing the shifter doesn't do anything for them. They're good people, and do the errata to improve quality, but no matter what they lose out time just to get people complaining about how they fixed it wrong.
It's their own fault. They don't even need to hire a content editor who actually plays the game, no - all they'd have to do is some people from these message boards and have them look over all new (mechanical) options before they get printed. I'm sure there would be enough people willing to do that for free, or for free PDFs of the books they help edit, at most. It doesn't need to be a whole playtest: Problems with Shifter, Oozemorph, the Monk archetypes, and problems from many other books like the infamous Fighter archetype that says it replaces the bonus feats at 3rd and 5th level, can be caught by simple having people look over that stuff.
The simplest suggestion I made back in the errata thread was to make something like deific obedience feats- allow people to spend a feat in order to get a small selection of thematic spells (example- if there was a hypothetical spider form, then you would get some web spells).
Nice, simple, you can probably add it with 1-2 pages in a splat book.