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I'm not sure how I feel about the Shifter yet. I was disappointed by the lack of hybrid forms because they really talked up the possibility of being an "owlbear" and stuff, but the mechanics aren't there. I thought it would be something like eidolon-lite where you could customize a unique animal or something along those lines, but it's really just druid wildshape restricted to a handful of forms with the benefit of enhancement bonuses for minutes/day.
But it's not all bad. You can use the scaling damage claws in your animal form if the form has claws or, if it doesn't, replace the damage of up to two of the form's natural attacks with the claw damage, which is nice. Even though most of the bonuses from minor aspects don't stack with magic items, it does allow you to save money as they're usable often enough for them to be relied on for most/all encounters throughout an adventuring day. It's true that Hunter gets unlimited duration on their aspects when they don't have an animal companion, but they can't have as many active at a time as the Shifter can. And while you only have a few aspects, they do cover a good range of options from full offense tigers to stealthy mice and flying hawks.
Overall, if you take a druid and a shifter, have them both go tiger form and go all out on an enemy, I'd say the shifter will come out ahead. For general utility excluding spells in a natural environment, shifter and druid are comparable with druid coming ahead slightly. But ultimately the druid has 9th level casting which is really hard to compete with. If you want a shapeshifter without dealing with spells, Shifter is fine. It's not Amazing, but it's not terrible either.

shalandar |

So let me get this strait, the shifter class doesn't get wild shape at level 20, correct? What does it get at 20th level?
What are the shifter's good saves?
At 20, it gains a 5th aspect and the ability to take the minor forms of every animal aspect that it knows at one time.
Good saves at Fort and Ref.

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Details on the Tribal Fighter and Skirmisher archetypes?
Tribal Warrior is restricted to druid armors and weapons in the new "Tribal Weapon" group. They gain weapon training only in this group. The Tribal Warrior also more easily qualifies for style feats by having ranks in skills associated with them.
The Skirmisher is a light-armored fighter that gains resistances based on the climates he's adapted to, has altered class skills and ranks, and a scaling dodge bonus to AC when wearing light armor as well as some other defensive bonuses.
Any new Advanced Weapon or Armor training options?
Nope.
Any cool combat feats?
There are many feats listed, old and new. Some of my favorites are a new Beastmaster Style chain that's focused on fighting with an animal companion, the Wilding Strike chain that lets you improve the damage of your unarmed attacks (similar to monk's scaling damage but does not stack with it), and Nature's Weapon that lets you use whatever random stuff you find in the wilderness as an improvised weapon.

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Morbid Eels wrote:Sad to hear that the Shifter is a disappointment.I would suggest still seeing it for yourself because of the "internet".
I second this opinion. Even though it's not what I'd hoped, it's still not terrible. It's just different than what I was expecting so I'm working with it and trying different builds to see how I'd like to play it. I still intend to take one to PFS once it gets cleared.

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Does anyone know if the 'Planar Focus' feat works with Shifters and their animal focuses? If so that may be some of the scaling and utility that people felt was missing.
Shifter's aspects do not count as the "Animal Focus" class ability and so they do not qualify, sadly. Even if the elemental focuses don't have major forms, it would be cool to have them available as minor forms. But keep in mind a Shifter only has at most 5 aspects unlike Hunters who can freely swap between all of them, so a Shifter would be hard up to sacrifice a possible wildshape form just for a minor buff.

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Shifter's aspects do not count as the "Animal Focus" class ability and so they do not qualify, sadly. Even if the elemental focuses don't have major forms, it would be cool to have them available as minor forms. But keep in mind a Shifter only has at most 5 aspects unlike Hunters who can freely swap between all of them, so a Shifter would be hard up to sacrifice a possible wildshape form just for a minor buff.
So, on top of the limited number of aspects they don't actually count s the 'animal focus' ability so any feats related to that are useless for the class? Despite your positive outlook on the class, you're not making me any more confident in its abilities.

Brew Bird |
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Disappointment about lack of varied shapeshifting aside (something we've known about the class for a while), I can't help but remember the Kineticist. There were a million threads about how the class was terrible when Occult Adventures came out. But people eventually warmed up to the class, and now it's generally regarded as a fun and well-balanced option (yes, I know someone's going to contest this the moment they see it.)
My own experience with the Hunter also comes to mind. I thought the class was a waste of space, a major misstep on Paizo's part, for the longest time. But just within the last few months, having built, played, and witnessed other players using the class, I've begun to warm up to it.
The Shifter could certainly be awful. Sometimes a class is just bad. However, I'm going to be cautious making any judgements too immediately.
And if it turns out the Shifter is bad, we'll probably get a player companion that has some fixes in a year or so.

Alex Smith 908 |
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Morbid Eels wrote:Sad to hear that the Shifter is a disappointment.I would suggest still seeing it for yourself because of the "internet".
The thing is the class is flawed at a conceptual level. The shapeshifting class should be flat out better at shapeshifting than the druid. The druid has shapeshifting as barely one third of its major class features yet a class that has shapeshifting as 100% of its class features is worse. To do otherwise is just obviously bad design.
Disappointment about lack of varied shapeshifting aside (something we've known about the class for a while), I can't help but remember the Kineticist. There were a million threads about how the class was terrible when Occult Adventures came out. But people eventually warmed up to the class, and now it's generally regarded as a fun and well-balanced option (yes, I know someone's going to contest this the moment they see it.)
Well take all the fun out of it why don't ya.

The Sideromancer |
Human Fighter wrote:Details on the Tribal Fighter and Skirmisher archetypes?Tribal Warrior is restricted to druid armors and weapons in the new "Tribal Weapon" group. They gain weapon training only in this group. The Tribal Warrior also more easily qualifies for style feats by having ranks in skills associated with them.
Sigh. Why can't I have a dwarven tribalist using native gold or the guardian of an otherwise nomadic people's single smelter?
How dependant is the Shifter on Wis? Can the full Wis to AC be insignificant compared to wearing real, bona-fide, less-polluting-than-leatherworking steel?

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How dependant is the Shifter on Wis? Can the full Wis to AC be insignificant compared to wearing real, bona-fide, less-polluting-than-leatherworking steel?
The only thing they use Wis for is the AC bonus. There's a feat that lets you add wis bonus to minutes/day of aspects as well. A Shifter that wears metal armor loses most of their class features while doing so and for 24 hours after, though.

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Are there any stand out feats in the book?
There's a lot and everyone has different ideas on what makes a feat good, but the coolest one I saw is one that works as a substitute for Skill Focus for the prereq of Eldritch Heritage and if you use it for that purpose, you can take a Wildblooded version of the bloodline.
What are the new weapon groups and what weapons are in them?
Only weapon group is Tribal which contains club, dagger, greatclub, handaxe, heavy shield, light shield, shortspear, spear, throwing axe, and unarmed strike.
What is the elemental based shifter archetype like?
You can add elemental damage to your attacks instead of grow claws and you wild shape into elementals of your chosen aspects instead of animals.

The Sideromancer |
The Sideromancer wrote:How dependant is the Shifter on Wis? Can the full Wis to AC be insignificant compared to wearing real, bona-fide, less-polluting-than-leatherworking steel?The only thing they use Wis for is the AC bonus. There's a feat that lets you add wis bonus to minutes/day of aspects as well. A Shifter that wears metal armor loses most of their class features while doing so and for 24 hours after, though.
Okay, now I'm in the "should have had a playtest so the devs know what is and isn't needed" camp. Shifter is dead to me now, Antipaladin is more playable.

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Rysky wrote:... the Shifter adding Wisdom to AC makes it dead to you?filgaiasguardian wrote:A Shifter that wears metal armor loses most of their class features while doing so and for 24 hours after, though.Just like the Druid, the other class dead to me.
So no metal armor = Class is dead to you?
This is a curious line of thought, I have to say, especially (presumably) if you haven't seen the Shifter. Though I'm underwhelmed in my initial impressions of the class (and these are far from thorough, admittedly), this is a tremendously bold claim.

The Fool |

Hmm, severals of my players are discussing it, apparently it says that it doesn't have magic item slots and can't hold objects, benefit from armor, cast spells, use or activate any magic item that is held or hold on the body.
So umm, yeah, oozemorph couldn't even use rings it seems <_< Which I could swear I've seen several adventure modules were ooze had survived on consuming someone with ring of sustenance. Or maybe that was my homebrew campaign, can't remember.
I'd personally just house rule it so that they can use magic items that work just by holding them inside their body. But yeah, it doesn't say technically that they can't carry items, but it definitely goes over the mile to say that they can't use any magic item at all. So even if they can carry item, not sure how you are supposed to play a class that can't use any loot you find ._.
Yeah I'm super confused about the archetype as well. So much so I feel that it is necessary to start a discussion on it. Going to be filling in all info I can in this thread below, feel free to join and bring up any points you could think of.

FallenDabus |
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Dark Midian wrote:Painful Bugger wrote:This. By effectively taking their ball and going home on public playtests ("You guys are too toxic and all you do is theorycraft without playing the class!") they're not getting important testing data that could have made the shifter more appealing by having a larger base of testers who are likely more impartial. Not to mention all of the big, important devs besides Mark are incredibly hands-off and distant with their playtests, is it any surprise that people got salty?Thomas Seitz wrote:...that The Shifter could have benefited from a public playtest to at least get the opinion of people on what they expected out of the class. Instead we got someone's pet project. A Druid that dump stats wisdom is a better shapeshifter then the Shifter. I'm certain many would agree with me.Painful Bugger,
IN YOUR opinion...
No, they weren’t getting any useful testing data from the last playtest, or if there was they had to dig through a s@!$fest to find it, that’s why we don’t have public playtests anymore. The Vigilante playtest wasn’t a playtest, it was a burning dumpster fire overwhelmingly made up of people who just hated the very idea of the class. Compare to the ACG and Occult playtests when the Devs were around to answer questions and provide feedback. Compare to when the Devs were around on the Paizo site, period, to answer questions and provide feedback.
The Devs aren’t aloof, they just got sick of getting attacked for everything they did or said or made.
Its the same reason Onyx Path is backing away from Open Development for Chronicles of Darkness. It's a useful tool, the devs like it and the fans love it, but people have started talking about how they are "owed" more frequent previews and information. Layer that on top of a couple of really toxic jerks, and even the most useful feedback isn't really worth digging through all that crap.

The Sideromancer |
The Sideromancer wrote:Rysky wrote:... the Shifter adding Wisdom to AC makes it dead to you?filgaiasguardian wrote:A Shifter that wears metal armor loses most of their class features while doing so and for 24 hours after, though.Just like the Druid, the other class dead to me.So no metal armor = Class is dead to you?
This is a curious line of thought, I have to say, especially (presumably) if you haven't seen the Shifter. Though I'm underwhelmed in my initial impressions of the class (and these are far from thorough, admittedly), this is a tremendously bold claim.
Basically yes. There is so much stuff in nature that uses metallic properties (from the iron core of the earth shielding the planet from radiation, to the requirements of metals in metabolic protiens, to the iron core of a dying star allowing it's products to be spread throughout space) that any notion of a life force, or the energy of nature rejecting that essential group of elements completely destroys immersion. I've tried to play druids with other explanations for the restriction, but I keep thinking "I can't live this lie. This restriction should simply not exist." The closest I've gotten to ever having a druid in a playable state is using deity-specific options and less-than-certain rules interactions, and all I accomplished was a worse Titian Mauler.
That's a core class that has continually gotten options that I have tried to breach two lines of text on ever since I read the CRB. Why would the Shifter fare better?
But really, what did you expect from the guy who puts "master of iron" in his username?

The Sideromancer |
The Druid and Shifter’s aversion to metal armor (note no aversion to using metal weapons) comes from the fact that metal armor represents civilization and production of manufactured armor that “messes”, more or less, with nature. As opposed to wearing hides.
That doesn't hold up to comparison. Stoneplate is druid-legal, despite also requiring quarrying and chemical treatments. Pursuit of quality hides has sure destroyed ecosystems for the sake of industry up here in Canada, not to mention all of the extra chemicals involved in making cow skin offer protection. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gold represents less industry than leather since the former can be found just lying around and only needs to be shaped.