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We made it to the wilderness
Somehow we made it to
Didn't know how lost I was
till that stand of yew
birdies tweet,
blastomycete
Lily Pads , on the waters blue
its the home for eels
yeah it's home for eels
all shiny with goo
Look a sturgeon
digging through the very best slime
Look a sturgeon
... and the site is back up so I can get back to refreshing!
I presume wolf is one of the aspects? I’ve got a friend who’s been looking forward to that.
Hey, the shifter sounds good to me! Will immediately look through that part when I get my notice...when I...when...sigh. Not yet.
So how does the Shifter really differ from the Feral Hunter archetype ? So far it sounds like more or less the same thing....
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I'm not saying the Shifter is a bad class by any means. I think it'll be great fun. What I am sad about is that we already have a lot of options for characters who use natural weapons as their primary form of attacking. What we don't really have support for is a Paizo class whose primary attack option was shapechanging, and that did it better than the druid. I'm still hoping there's a Shifter archetype that does make it a proper shapechanger, but the base class is by no means that, it sounds like, which makes me sad.
Does the feral hunter get at will claws that overcome DR as they level? And monk AC bonuses?And Full BAB?
Oh how sweet this is! Who knows, it may even compete to be my fave Martial class...which is Paladin right now.
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And the Wildshape at level 4 act's as Beast Shape II....so tiny to large forms at 4th.....hmmm.....sounds workable to me :P
How are the Shifter archetypes ?
Are they proficient with shields? If so how does that effect their wisdom to armour? Thanks. :)
Are they proficient with shields? If so how does that effect their wisdom to armour? Thanks. :)
Don’t have the book, but it’d be odd for a claw-centric class to get shield proficiency.
Since the have Wildshape I'm guessing they don't get to keep their armor without the wild enchantment? That's just terrible for a front-liner the class most likely has to be to use its class features.
Is it always Beast Shape II? Does it allow for magical beasts later on? Do they get other other Shapeshifting spells like Form of the Dragon or Undead Anatomy, are do we need archetypes not to be just like spell-less Druids?
I do appreciate, if what is said above is correct, that you get abilities based off the form you take and not the spell if that means you can get abilities that came out after the spells did.
I see that it was mentioned we have a few new witch hexes but are there any new bloodrager/sorcerer bloodlines, oracle mysteries/curses, alchemist discoveries, rogue talents, and/or barbarian rage powers?
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I'm not saying the Shifter is a bad class by any means. I think it'll be great fun. What I am sad about is that we already have a lot of options for characters who use natural weapons as their primary form of attacking. What we don't really have support for is a Paizo class whose primary attack option was shapechanging, and that did it better than the druid. I'm still hoping there's a Shifter archetype that does make it a proper shapechanger, but the base class is by no means that, it sounds like, which makes me sad.
1) shapechanging isn’t an Attack option, Natural Attacks are.
2) I highly doubt there’s going to be an option to make the Druid obsolete.
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I'm not saying the Shifter is a bad class by any means. I think it'll be great fun. What I am sad about is that we already have a lot of options for characters who use natural weapons as their primary form of attacking. What we don't really have support for is a Paizo class whose primary attack option was shapechanging, and that did it better than the druid. I'm still hoping there's a Shifter archetype that does make it a proper shapechanger, but the base class is by no means that, it sounds like, which makes me sad.1) shapechanging isn’t an Attack option, Natural Attacks are.
2) I highly doubt there’s going to be an option to make the Druid obsolete.
1) I never said it was, but there's a big difference between your Skinwalker Barbarian getting a half-dozen natural attacks and a druid turning into a mouse for scouting, then an eagle to fly, and a lion to actually fight. They might both have similar combat options, but one also has the flavor of having a malleable form and lots of out-of-combat utility, whereas the other.... just claws and bites people.
2) I highly doubt another class that's better than Druids at one aspect of their class will make the 9th-level caster obsolete. I just want a martial class that can transform into any kind of animal they want. It's like asking if the Summoner's eidolon will make wizards obsolete because there's now someone better at summoning Outsiders in the game.
In any case, I imagine it's a great class, just not the class a lot of people were hoping for when they announced a "Shifter"
The Shifter is sitting in a very difficult design space as a Tier 4 Full-Bab non-caster. It might be a great dipping class or be a good class for a player not wishing to manage the complexity of a Druid. Once we have all the details we will know for sure.
I am really looking forward to this book. Hopefully there will be lots of goodies for my Druid PCs.
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The goal was a shapeshifter where you didn't need to have the druid page, the polymorph section of the magic rules, the particular polymorph spell you were using, and the critter in question you were turning into all open with pins and yarn connecting all the parts like a conspiracy theory tracker in order to determine what abilities and stats you have.
Another goal is not obviating the other martials. Which is REALLY hard. Because if you're proficient with a druid you can make a really nasty fighter that comes with their friend almost another fighter. Right now at least half the reason that doesn't happen every game is the fact that you can do that is hidden. Put all of those bonuses up front and easily accessible (a goal of the shifter) and you have an easily accessible better melee fighter than the fighter.
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2) I highly doubt another class that's better than Druids at one aspect of their class will make the 9th-level caster obsolete. I just want a martial class that can transform into any kind of animal they want. It's like asking if the Summoner's eidolon will make wizards obsolete because there's now someone better at summoning Outsiders in the game.In any case, I imagine it's a great class, just not the class a lot of people were hoping for when they announced a "Shifter"
OK from my perspective, I wouldn't allow this to happen at my table. I just can't imaging allowing a class to transform they want. I just imagine a player frozen with choices. Granted, it's my opinion, but there it is.
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I think its hard to balance making something a better shifter than the druid without making them a better fighter than the fighter.I don't think that should be much of a concern. While the Shifter and Fighter are both melee combatants, Fighter's "thing" is using weapons. Either lots of different kinds or being really good at a specialized few. Shifters, presumably, only use natural weapons. Even if Shifter does more DPR than a Fighter (which isn't the only thing that matters, of course), people will still play/favor Fighter because they want to use cool weapons/dislike nature-themed classes/prefer being a humanoid/etc. Besides, looking strictly at tiers, Fighter is pretty bottom of the barrel so I would hope the Shifter ranks higher than that. No offense, Fighters.
I think the balance here should be something closer to what we get with the kineticist, where the shifter's combat potential visa vi wild shaping is hopefully tempered by the diverse utility that comes with the diversity of shapes, lack of spells, and maybe some limitations on how many forms you can have. Like, how turning into a hawk allows you to fly and scout other areas, or turning into a cat gets you scent and an inconspicuous form in urban settings, or turning into a rat to sneak into places and then crack the place open. Giving them like a d8-d10 hp and a 3/4th's BAB and making it so you have to be more strategic with your forms than, "turn into biggest thing and hit them" that we often see with the druid wild shaping. Give them a limited pool of different options to turn into with some varying options that they might get to use so you can maybe do stealthy burst, tank sustain, or maybe other utility and make them or mechanically encourage them to invest in this stuff. That way it can take up the role of the tank or fighter in the roster but not absolutely replace them which I think is what a lot of people worry about when it's more of a fighter but better rather than a better wildshaper.
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2) I highly doubt there’s going to be an option to make the Druid obsolete.
Is there an archetype that gives Shapeshifters 9th level spellcasting and an animal companion? No, it's still spell-less and no companion? Huh. Hard to see how it having at-will Shapeshifting is going to obsolete one of the strongest classes in the game then.
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OK from my perspective, I wouldn't allow this to happen at my table. I just can't imaging allowing a class to transform they want. I just imagine a player frozen with choices. Granted, it's my opinion, but there it is.
2) I highly doubt another class that's better than Druids at one aspect of their class will make the 9th-level caster obsolete. I just want a martial class that can transform into any kind of animal they want. It's like asking if the Summoner's eidolon will make wizards obsolete because there's now someone better at summoning Outsiders in the game.In any case, I imagine it's a great class, just not the class a lot of people were hoping for when they announced a "Shifter"
Well the Druid gets this and spellcasting and an additional character to build and play, not even counting the Summons antics
That makes for far more options to manage and yet people do play them without too much trouble IMO
It seems to me that Paizo designed the Shifter to be the natural attacker. In spite of its name, it is not the fluid shapeshifting martial some people wish for. Maybe some 3pp out there will hear their call to design :-)
So...any updates?
Whoa wa...strength based kineticist!!!
Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
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1) I never said it was,What we don't really have support for is a Paizo class whose primary attack option was shapechanging, and that did it better than the druid.1) shapechanging isn’t an Attack option, Natural Attacks are.
Ah, my bad, then. I both misunderstood your statement and forgot the wording of my previous statement. What I meant was there isn't a class whose primary class feature is shapechanging, in the way a caster has spellcasting, a Rogue has sneak attack, an Investigator has inspiration, or a Kineticist has blasts. Before the shifter, all we had was the druid (who could, for most intents and purposes) turn into any animal they wanted as one of their class features. What I had hoped is that we would get a class that gave the option to wild shape at least as well as the druid and its flexibility, possibly with additional options to make it the true master of shapechanging (additional uses per day, expanded forms to take, etc).
That being said, I could easily see an archetype that would do what the base class, in some ways, should have: grant an ever-increasing library of new forms (based off of the spells, not 'choose one animal and that's all you can use for now'), perhaps starting with Alter Self, building up to animal forms, plant forms, giant forms, dragons, undead, and all the other polymorph spells until the capstone, which grants an effect similar to a constant Shapechange, except with even more forms possible. What I am worried about, though, is that if the base Shifter is balanced around only having a few forms to choose between, any archetype that removes that restriction would be way more powerful than the base, regardless of what else they traded away.
Another archetype, the terrakineticist, can use all of the elements but depends on their location on which element they use.
Color me intrigued
Doc the gray
But since the druids wildshape already lets them do that, how do you make something that does that better than wildshape without making the faux fighter better than the fighter?
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Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
You can be supermuscled, or you can be surprisingly non-muscular looking with crazy energy that makes you way stronger than you look. But come on, who doesn't want to be Gargantuan?
You can be supermuscled, or you can be surprisingly non-muscular looking with crazy energy that makes you way stronger than you look. But come on, who doesn't want to be Gargantuan?Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
No one wants to not be Gargantuan!!! ;)
Is there a difference between the two mechanically?
Curious does your character actually gain weight or size categories? Or something?
And do you have a way to temporarily reduce your size so you can fit into a five feet wide hallway if you have to?
That sounds very cool! Makes me actually want to play an Oread kineticist. I've always disliked that there's no a very good option for the planar races for kineticists...
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And do you have a way to temporarily reduce your size so you can fit into a five feet wide hallway if you have to?
That does seem like something I'd consider when writing the archetype ;) (consider a jacked up kinetic form and you're on the right track)
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Mark. Just curious but what's the burn mechanic on this archetype? How does it work? I've been rattling my head all day trying to figure out how you would balance this...You can be supermuscled, or you can be surprisingly non-muscular looking with crazy energy that makes you way stronger than you look. But come on, who doesn't want to be Gargantuan?Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
Eh, burn is something for all those silly plants and baby rabbits around you to deal with.
EDIT: Anyway, back to the word mines. Still too busy to post on the forums for long. Have a great day everybody!
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Mark. Just curious but what's the burn mechanic on this archetype? How does it work? I've been rattling my head all day trying to figure out how you would balance this...You can be supermuscled, or you can be surprisingly non-muscular looking with crazy energy that makes you way stronger than you look. But come on, who doesn't want to be Gargantuan?Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
Eh, burn is something for all those silly plants and baby rabbits around you to deal with.
EDIT: Anyway, back to the word mines. Still too busy to post on the forums for long. Have a great day everybody!
Word mines? Those are environmentally unfriendly!
I’d recommend trying locally sourced organic words. Good for the wilderness and for the soul!
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Mark. Just curious but what's the burn mechanic on this archetype? How does it work? I've been rattling my head all day trying to figure out how you would balance this...You can be supermuscled, or you can be surprisingly non-muscular looking with crazy energy that makes you way stronger than you look. But come on, who doesn't want to be Gargantuan?Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
Eh, burn is something for all those silly plants and baby rabbits around you to deal with.
EDIT: Anyway, back to the word mines. Still too busy to post on the forums for long. Have a great day everybody!
LOL That's EXTREMELY vague! ;)
It sounds like, to me, that burn is being used offensively while simultaneously being buffed up.. which not only removes the harsh burn effect, but provides me bonuses for using burn. So... what's the balancing part of this? The give and take?
Correct me if I'm wrong which I have trouble seeing how that's balanced. ;)
Maybe one more post: The balance, and this'll sound a bit puckish at first but is actually serious, is that once you kill the plants and baby rabbits, you can't kill the plants and baby rabbits because they are dead. It's still pretty strong especially in the right game.
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Mark. Just curious but what's the burn mechanic on this archetype? How does it work? I've been rattling my head all day trying to figure out how you would balance this...You can be supermuscled, or you can be surprisingly non-muscular looking with crazy energy that makes you way stronger than you look. But come on, who doesn't want to be Gargantuan?Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
Eh, burn is something for all those silly plants and baby rabbits around you to deal with.
EDIT: Anyway, back to the word mines. Still too busy to post on the forums for long. Have a great day everybody!
Word mines? Those are environmentally unfriendly!
I’d recommend trying locally sourced organic words. Good for the wilderness and for the soul!
Ugh, verbetarians.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Maybe one more post: The balance, and this'll sound a bit puckish at first but is actually serious, is that once you kill the plants and baby rabbits, you can't kill the plants and baby rabbits because they are dead. It's still pretty strong especially in the right game.Mark. Just curious but what's the burn mechanic on this archetype? How does it work? I've been rattling my head all day trying to figure out how you would balance this...You can be supermuscled, or you can be surprisingly non-muscular looking with crazy energy that makes you way stronger than you look. But come on, who doesn't want to be Gargantuan?Yeah. One of the kineticist archetypes has, "a towering juggernaut of strength in which he gets as much strength as possible while his burn mechanic damages the environment around him" or some such.
That's not worded exactly, but it's close enough.
Win win!!! With any luck it's as awesome as I'm imagining it could be.
We do need some feats to make characters excessively muscled. I have some ideas but this thread is not the place.
Now I'm much more pumped for this book. :)
Eh, burn is something for all those silly plants and baby rabbits around you to deal with.
EDIT: Anyway, back to the word mines. Still too busy to post on the forums for long. Have a great day everybody!
LOL That's EXTREMELY vague! ;)
It sounds like, to me, that burn is being used offensively while simultaneously being buffed up.. which not only removes the harsh burn effect, but provides me bonuses for using burn. So... what's the balancing part of this? The give and take?
Correct me if I'm wrong which I have trouble seeing how that's balanced. ;)
Anyone else getting some Dark Sun defiler vibes from this archetype?