Hello fellow pathfinders,
I could use some advice with picking the best race, class, fears, traits and items for a PCs I want to play, hope someone can help...
I want to play a sword fighting hunter like pc (tracking, sneaking and fighting) of all things unnatural. The character was selected to become a Druid but a demon wiped all elder Druids out but he somehow survived. He was thought in the principles of wildshape and uses the shapes to track, scout, sneak, spy, infiltrate etc. He joined a group of Rangers tasked with defeating all things unnatural (monsters, demons, ghosts, undead etc) by the King, these rangers found the pc after the demon incident.
Things I want in my PC:
Fights with a blade and in rare cases wild shaped if the shape is better for a situation..
Uses wild shape mainly for utility.
Is prepared to take on all kinds of unnatural enemies, be it with items, spells, or class ability.
Is able to detect and disable traps.
Is able to set traps or spells for the creatures he hunts.
I was thinking a Druid/trapper ranger multi class with the shapeshifting hunter feat and the
Shifting focus feat... I like the skin waker race, but half elf is maybe better??
An other option is to play a feral hunter?
Last option is the skinwalker race with the way finder 13 feats which grand a wildshape into 1 animal... Class is open..
What do you think?
Any character can get the Learn Ranger Trap feat (if not in PFS), and there's a Trap Finder trait for disabling traps. It's not a problem getting proficiency in at least one blade. This means your requirements reduce to 1/wild shape (but isn't incentivised to fight in wild shape) and 2/capable against 'unnatural' creatures.
Characters which get wild shape or something similar include druids (except nature fang), lunar mystery oracles, totemic skalds, feral hunters. Most druids really do have an incentive to fight in wild shape; there are some exceptions like the wild whisperer which have a reduced ability to wild shape which might fit. The lunar mystery oracle is the one I like best for this concept though; it can learn glyph of warding to create magic traps, it can buff to fight unnatural creatures better than most, and as a spontaneous caster it lends itself well to being self-taught.
Ranger might be a better fit for what you want just because full BAB and favored enemy bonuses (which you can expand on with the spell to pick up other "unnatural" enemies as needed). There is a shapeshifter archtype for Rangers that gives a minor shifting ability that might be what your are looking for. I know there was a third party publisher who made a wildshape variation of the ranger as well (it gave up spells I believe), but not sure if that is something you can use (PFS etc).
Traps are pretty useless sadly, mostly because of the way things work in a typical game. You are going into someplace unknown. Setting traps up can be tricky and force the rest of the party to do what you need with little to no real benefit overall. And limited number of times per day. It just ends up being a headache normally. Great idea, poor resource for the investment.
Also you might need to define unnatural. Usually that comes down to undead and abberations. A skinwalker could theoretically be "unnatural" to some.
Otherwise, you might also want to look into an eldritch knight build as strange as it might seem. Wizard spells for buffs/utility (various Polymorph/Detect/etc spells) which you can customize to what is needed per opponent. Need different spells, buy the scroll to learn it. Maintain decent BAB and do what you are looking for. It would also fit the whole "study unnatural stuff to combat it" idea.
If you are dead set on Wildshape that really limits your options.
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I would look at Druid 4/Fighter or Barbarian or whatever you want X.
The blade wielding side depends entirely on what type of blade wielder you want to be.
Druid 4 offers you Wild Shape 1/day, add Shaping Focus and 4 levels of another class you get 3/day, 8 hour duration, Tiny - Huge animals, Small/Medium elemental and Plants. This gives you a lot of versatility.
I would consider a Barbarian for a number of reasons, one you get a lot of nature type skills, you get Rage and rage powers and most of these will stack with your Wild Shape. Grab Extra Rage to make up for the lost levels and possibly the Berserker of the Society trait to increase rage rounds and Focus on killing stuff with a big sword and when you need to shift for utility, go whatever creature you need among animal/plant/elemental.
You can also if you want to at 8th level run around as a medium earth elemental, humanoid shaped and wielding whatever sword you want. Rage and you are up 8 strength which more than makes up for the lower BAB of druid.
Thanks for the interesting options, some I haven't looked into... When I do and have more questions I let it know here :-) any other ideas are always welcome :-)
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Check out the Skin-Changer, an alternate of the popular Spell-less Ranger class in the New Paths Compendium from Kobold Press. I suspect this is what an earlier poster was referring to. The Skin-Changer would be *perfect* for what you are looking for!
Check it out here: New Paths Compendium
From Endzeitgeist's review:
The Spell-less ranger also gets a variant class herein, the skin-changer - this one's interesting: Learning to change into the forms and animals and specializes in better natural attacks. No animal companion, though, and a different list of talents. The skin-changer also gets natural armor etc. - per se a concept none too complex in what it tries to do, but remains very evocative in its versatile options - the variant class remains one of the more iconic ones I've seen and makes for a great addition - once again - fine work indeed!