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Should probably just focus on the Shifter here...
Anyone else notice that NOBODY is arguing in the Shifter's favour?
I've seen a couple people arguing in the Shifter's favor. In fact, I'll say that from a purely numerical perspective the Shifter is reasonably sound. D10, 4+int skill points with full BAB, decent damage and has a couple utility options pretty much hits all the T4 checkboxes it needs to.
My biggest issue is that it's kind of boring. Thematically making the class a spin on the druid feels like you're retreading old ground pretty heavily because there's already a lot of wildshape based content and mechanically... it feels like a 3.5 class: Lots of nearly-dead levels and very few choices (and many of the choices you do get feel trappish, some of the major forms feel pretty weak compared to others).
Paizo has done a good job with various talent-like class features in giving classes a broad base of customization options and they've become a pretty consistent mainstay in Pathfinder class design, so it's kind of weird to see those completely gone on the Shifter in favor of a much more static chassis.
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I don't want to sound cliché but what we have here is a failure to communicate... by Paizo.
Censure doesn't work. When you say, "Talk to the hand!" to someone, it doesn't generate a warm fuzzy feeling.
The best strategy here would be for those who wrote up the Shifter class to come out openly and address the questions one by one instead of hiding behind the PR buffer of customer service. I know it would be hard for a few days, but if you all remember the good old days of Paizo at the beginning, that's exactly what the Paizo founders did on an ongoing basis and it's the reason why they converted a huge flock of D&Ders to Pathfinder.
Yeah, and there’s a reason we don’t have those good old days any more.
Oh, some people would be able to get their complaints and criticisms of the class in, but it would soon get drowned out by all the bile and insults, as the product thread demonstrated. Even this post which accuses them of “hiding” for not immediately jumping in and submitting themselves to this, “a hard few days” acknowledges while trying to underplay how exhausting and morale killing this is. It wouldn't be “please come and answer our questions”, it would be “we demand you come and take our abuse”.
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So meaningless question that it may, it may be of use in the long run....
To be comfortable in the direction they chose to take the Shifter, what are your minimum fixes, and what would you need to see to make you willing to play a character of this class...what are the minimum changes you would need to see ?
I don't think there is anything other than a complete rework that could get me to play the base version of the class. The ooze and lycanthrope archetypes on the other hand I could definitely see myself playing. I'm not sure what changes I would want from the ooze one exactly, but for the lycanthrope I would like to see better scaling on their claws as well as some bonus feats, and maybe more uses of the hybrid form.
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Should probably just focus on the Shifter here...
Anyone else notice that NOBODY is arguing in the Shifter's favour?I've seen a couple people arguing in the Shifter's favor. In fact, I'll say that from a purely numerical perspective the Shifter is reasonably sound. D10, 4+int skill points with full BAB, decent damage and has a couple utility options pretty much hits all the T4 checkboxes it needs to.
My biggest issue is that it's kind of boring. Thematically making the class a spin on the druid feels like you're retreading old ground pretty heavily because there's already a lot of wildshape based content and mechanically... it feels like a 3.5 class: Lots of nearly-dead levels and very few choices (and many of the choices you do get feel trappish, some of the major forms feel pretty weak compared to others).
Paizo has done a good job with various talent-like class features in giving classes a broad base of customization options and they've become a pretty consistent mainstay in Pathfinder class design, so it's kind of weird to see those completely gone on the Shifter in favor of a much more static chassis.
Well, looks like I failed my Diplomacy check to alter the subject (slightly). Curse you, negative infinity Charisma modifier!
I feel that when they wanted to design the Shifter, they didn't want to invalidate the Druid class as a result. In the same vein that the Warpriest steps on a lot of toes for the niche it fills (though it has gotten better after the dust has settled), I think Paizo was a little scared of making it better than the Druid in terms of Wild Shaping, primarily because Paizo doesn't want to destroy all of the 3.5 legacy choices.
The former of which is ironic, since a Druid, even having the worst 9th level spell list in the game, is still a 9th level spellcaster that's capable of all kinds of crazy stuff that no martial can even dream of doing, and can be just as nasty as any melee in the game with proper buffs and building. Even barring that, Caster Druids having Wild Shape will be vastly different than a Druid who wades into melee, meaning the most obvious way for a Shifter to use Wild Shape will probably not share the same sort of choices that certain Druids would take.
It could also be a factor of them once again overvaluing Full BAB like they have done with certain classes, when 3/4 BAB classes are just as effective due to class features shoring up that weakness, while still possessing multiple features that offer even more versatility than what most Full BAB classes get.
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I don't want to sound cliché but what we have here is a failure to communicate... by Paizo.
Censure doesn't work. When you say, "Talk to the hand!" to someone, it doesn't generate a warm fuzzy feeling.
The best strategy here would be for those who wrote up the Shifter class to come out openly and address the questions one by one instead of hiding behind the PR buffer of customer service. I know it would be hard for a few days, but if you all remember the good old days of Paizo at the beginning, that's exactly what the Paizo founders did on an ongoing basis and it's the reason why they converted a huge flock of D&Ders to Pathfinder.
Yeah, and there’s a reason we don’t have those good old days any more.
Oh, some people would be able to get their complaints and criticisms of the class in, but it would soon get drowned out by all the bile and insults, as the product thread demonstrated. Even this post which accuses them of “hiding” for not immediately jumping in and submitting themselves to this, “a hard few days” acknowledges while trying to underplay how exhausting and morale killing this is. It wouldn't be “please come and answer our questions”, it would be “we demand you come and take our abuse”.
So they didn't playtested it with the community because too much negative feedback?
Well, I guess that the Vigilante got away with it then. It was the last class to be playtested and yes, people didn't like some of the aspects. Paizo changed them in respond to this. Remember the long changing them between identities? Gone. Remember the spells as talents? Gone, now as archetypes.
Maybe they couldn't do so with the shifter due to having some people work on Starfinder, reducing staff, but still... they could have given it a try, at least once.
Like I said earlier, IMO, a few changes need to be done to make the class viable without breaking it:
- Major Form not being a simple Wild Shape, but additional traits/abilities
- Chimeric Aspect being applied to Major Forms, not just Minor Forms.
- Selection between claws or slams, and those being available in Wild Shape.
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It could also be a factor of them once again overvaluing Full BAB like they have done with certain classes
Don't forget, it is the official Paizo position that the Caster/Martial disparity is a myth and does NOT exist.
The only way that can possibly be true if is full BAB and d10 hit points is worth a WHOLE lot more than most people here on the forums think.
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It could also be a factor of them once again overvaluing Full BAB like they have done with certain classesDon't forget, it is the official Paizo position that the Caster/Martial disparity is a myth and does NOT exist.
The only way that can possibly be true if is full BAB and d10 hit points is worth a WHOLE lot more than most people here on the forums think.
See, if I was a Druid, I could summon an Elephant (or have an Elephant companion) who wouldn't forget that kind of stuff for me.
Shifters can't do that. All they can do is most everything a geared up Fighter can do, except differently.
Oh, the irony...
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I loved the playtest. I playtested the Bloodrager, I playtested the Spiritualist, I tried to playtest the Vigilante. While all the threads in the playtests got heated they got worse one after another to the point that I and a bunch of other people gave up on the Vigilante playtest due to how toxic it was. It drove away people actually wanting to playtest and give feedback.
But it wasn’t an isolated incident. Yes they were able to salvage criticisms and suggestions from the Vigilante playtest. But it also showed, when you looked over the playtests previously, that they were getting worse, that they were doing less and less to justify themselves. So with the gradual increase in toxicity and lack of useable feedback it’s pretty obvious why they didn’t continue.
Maybe the community would have surprised us and been mostly positive and helpful, but all the signs pointed to the exact opposite of that occurring.
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Yes, they've cited that they don't do public playtesting anymore because people were big meanie jerks in the Occult Adventures and Vigilante playtests. This is the reason the Shifter is the new Core Rogue. Except the Core Rogue can still do their thing as much as they want.
You might be onto something with when it was being designed, since Starfinder is also a mess, meaning a lot of attention may have been divided.
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Perhaps looking forwards then, individuals in the playtest be held accountable to the playtest AND the community, and individuals who violate this trust are bounced from the programme?
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Speaking of archaic systems, I just had a thought:
When Paizo put the Barbarian in Pathfinder they changed Rage from having uses/day with a fixed duration to instead having rounds/day that they Barbarian could rotate between.
Feels weird to still have Wild Shape on a uses/day with a fixed duration per use by comparison.
What if instead of 1/day 4 hour wildshape a level 4 shifter had, for instance, 3 hours of wildshape that could be broken up into increments? Might have been better.
It could also be a factor of them once again overvaluing Full BAB like they have done with certain classes
It's possible. I feel like if anything what they did was overvalue simplicity. A stated design goal of the shifter was to be a way to run a polymorphing character more easily and that's what shows through for me.
If power were purely the issue I doubt we'd see the class get stuff lke being able to choose between Pounce or a 60 foot(good) flight speed at level 4(and then pick up the other at 5 and get the extra wild shape to use both in the same day 6). The class can get some nasty natural attack routines too.
To reference your earlier post:
I don't know what exactly the Shifter all does, or if people are just jumping the gun (because none of the "ZOMGOP" builds have come to light yet), but I am curious how close the class is to this Ranger Archetype I designed a while back...
Replace Favored Nature with scaling damage dice on those free claws you gave them (capping out at d10 and then bumping the crit mod up to x3)... and the ability to ignore material DR, culminating in the ability to ignore DR/-.
Replace Therianthropic Gift with hunter's animal focus and move it to level 1.Limit Therianthropy to Beast Shape 2 and only with the animals you picked with the first class feature.
Get rid of evasion/camo/hips, but give them a monk's AC bonus.
That's basically the Shifter.
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I have my gripes with decisions made in Starfinder but system wise it seems to be playing nicely with itself with what all the classes get and the consolidations/tweaking of the feats.
Back to the Shifter.
The one that did surprise me, locked into Claws. Having a suite of attacks to choose from (I don’t know how’d you separate that out, 2 Claws/2 Slams/1 Bite???) would be nice.
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I'm not sure if the context will help or not, but in a just few days the Ultimate Wilderness Product thread had generated nearly 4 times the number of flags than what I usually see for a contentious thread.
Reviewing it, everything flagged was focused around the shifter, with people arguing and talking about rules that most people (including some who were bickering in the thread) hadn't seen or even played yet. Posts (which have been removed) suggested people should be fired for it, called it garbage, and plenty of others jumped into fight with one another about the semantics of their posts. None of that is acceptable. After trying to bring the thread back on track, it became clear very quickly that it wasn't going to happen. I loathe the thought of locking a product thread, and I had hoped that if people took some time to reflect on what they wanted to say (in either direction regarding the class) that we could come back and have a more respectful discussion. I did not want to lock the thread as it there were still people who were posting about and wanting to reflect on other portions of the book so I attempted to leave it open for folks who wanted to discuss other parts of the book. Obviously that didn't work out; it's the first and last time I am trying that. I'll reopen it on Monday morning. Until then, have a great weekend.
Agreed....it's one thing to have an opinion that a class feels...."half baked" I believe the term was....and actually I think that's a very valid analogy. People crying for people to be fired, claiming Dev's are "lazy" and that Paizo is simply pumping out half baked ideas deliberately....I can't and don't agree with.
The Shifter is going to be the focus....period....because that's what people have been focused on for over six months. Reflection is not going to change peoples minds. What they felt was promised (right or wrong) is far off from what they got.....so at some point Paizo is going to have to either deal with it and try to come to a mutual agreement with the class....or say this is what it is...suck it up and deal with it. Speaking only for myself....I don't expect a total re-write to meet my expectations....but if Paizo expects me to see this class to be of value...they will probably need to make some erratas. As it stands now....neither it or many of the archetypes are anything I would bother to use.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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Man, I really don't get the negativity. I read the shifter and on first reading I was super excited... Then I went back and read through it again after seeing all the anger-posts, and I still think it looks like a really great, solid class.
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I and a bunch of other people gave up on the Vigilante playtest due to how toxic it was.
This is probably going to sound insane then but I guess I wasn't active enough in the right places at the time.
I was surprised when I first heard something like that because I had always though the Vigilante playtest was one of the best ones Paizo had done. A lot of ideas got really polished, mechanical holes got fixed and the baseline Vigilante (plus the archetypes that were spun out of the playtest) turned out incredibly solid because of it.
The one that did surprise me, locked into Claws. Having a suite of attacks to choose from (I don’t know how’d you separate that out, 2 Claws/2 Slams/1 Bite???) would be nice.
Someone earlier suggested a choice of Claws or Slams, and that worked out fine. It even gets by the problem of if you give the option of Bite, Gore, or Tail, then you can still use manufactured weapons in your hands.
Of course, a Kobold Shifter can make iteratives with a Kobold Tail Attachment, and any Shifter can make iteratives with a Blade Boot.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Personally, I don't care if there is a public playtest or not as long as Paizo doesn't start to believe they can do no wrong. I think they missed the mark on the Shifter, but not by an unsalvageable amount. I don't think the lack of a playtest was a guarantee that they'd make a class that falls a bit short either.
If we as a community can get them to recognize its problems, there's a chance we could get them to release a fix. It's a long shot, especially since they can always shrug amd say "homebrew something" instead, but I'd like to think a consensus could make a difference.
And I *do* think it's important to make an official fix of some kind because otherwise it's only going to harm their reputation with the new players they're targeting with the Shifter. Simplicity is good to balance out the really complex classes, sure, and that's the reason I like the Slayer, but if you sacrifice higher level viability for simplicity you're going to frustate a lot of people. One of the most common new player requests I hear is for a character like a WoW feral druid, which Shifter would appear to deliver. Should we really be funnelling these players into a class that they'll eventually read online about and find out is widely regarded as a newb trap?
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I and a bunch of other people gave up on the Vigilante playtest due to how toxic it was.This is probably going to sound insane then but I guess I wasn't active enough in the right places at the time.
I was surprised when I first heard something like that because I had always though the Vigilante playtest was one of the best ones Paizo had done. A lot of ideas got really polished, mechanical holes got fixed and the baseline Vigilante (plus the archetypes that were spun out of the playtest) turned out incredibly solid because of it.
The end result Vigilante is gleaming, the actual playtest leading up to that was a nightmare. You may have been active at the right times but I was active at the “wrong” times, since I only saw a handful of posts hammering out the ideas while every other post was some version of “This is stupid and silly/Everyone could already play a vigilante, we don’t need a class around it”, the class’s very existence incensed people.
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“Everyone could already play a vigilante, we don’t need a class around it”, the class’s very existence incensed people.
An entirely valid and correct complaint, even with the much more polished and improved final result. That isn't a problem with the Shifter, though. In this case, it's not any sort of concept; it's all mechanical.
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The end result Vigilante is gleaming, the actual playtest leading up to that was a nightmare. You may have been active at the right times but I was active at the “wrong” times, since I only saw a handful of posts hammering out the ideas while every other post was some version of “This is stupid and silly/Everyone could already play a vigilante, we don’t need a class around it”, the class’s very existence incensed people.I and a bunch of other people gave up on the Vigilante playtest due to how toxic it was.This is probably going to sound insane then but I guess I wasn't active enough in the right places at the time.
I was surprised when I first heard something like that because I had always though the Vigilante playtest was one of the best ones Paizo had done. A lot of ideas got really polished, mechanical holes got fixed and the baseline Vigilante (plus the archetypes that were spun out of the playtest) turned out incredibly solid because of it.
That sounds like a solid argument for playtests with tolerance of the sometimes rude people who get involved in those. If it takes dealing with those people to get the class done well, that's what it takes.
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I don’t think it’s worth shovelling through stables full of ... nerd entitlement, insults and arguments to find useful playtest feedback. The Shifter might not be the most exciting class, but it’s functional, combat capable and easy-to-use.
Every GM, player and board reader considers themselves a game designer. But the sad truth of the matter is that playtest forums were usually incredibly vitriolic spaces, and not worth the emotional cost for the return of feedback.
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I just hope if Paizo ever designs a class again, they don't 'oversell' it.
I feel like I've been 'oversold' at this point, and that is not a good feeling to have.
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I don’t think it’s worth shovelling through stables full of ... nerd entitlement, insults and arguments to find useful playtest feedback.
You say that, but that seems contrary to the results we have.
I just hope if Paizo ever designs a class again, they don't 'oversell' it.
The impression I've gotten is that the Shifter itself actually changed quite a bit as development progressed. The whole 'turn into a bearowl' thing might have actually been what the class looked like at one point. Sort of like how early versions and the final versions of the Medium ended up looking radically different.
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@ Squiggit: It might have changed, but the real question is if it was really for the better, and based on what we've gotten, it's not unlikely to say that it hasn't. Unfortunately, we can't really say for sure if it is the case, because we haven't seen the previous version(s) of the class due to lack of playtesting. Which is fine, but for the purposes of answering whether it's changed or not, is uncertain, especially since we do not know what the base was, or what it may have evolved into instead; all we've been given was the final product, and none of the important behind-the-scenes activity which got them to the final product.
But what we can say for sure, is that we have a thread dedicated to trying to understand a single Shifter archetype that, while we got the developer of the archetype to step in and offer insight, it (still) falls short of being a character who is "functional" in a given party based on what's been expressed thus far, and that we got this thread created whose responses thus far have garnered reactions on the levels of "Meh" to "Why would I play this if I can just be X and do the same thing, just better?" the latter of which is basically the Core Rogue debacle, primarily because the original topic thread contained too much negative response.
The only things I can say that the Shifter has done that other classes or creatures haven't done is make enhance claws by themselves in ways that nothing else in the game ever could, with the ability to bypass all kinds of DR, have damage dice scaling that stacks with other kinds of damage dice scaling, and have a X3 critical multiplier (the latter of which I'm guessing is a capstone ability).
The problem with that is that, in the grand scheme of things, it's claws. Which means you're only getting two attacks at the most, and its benefits don't apply to any other forms of attacks you might get, which means you're going to be weaker than a typical Full Attack Two-hander (which can be any class) by the endgame, who gets all of his bonuses across every attack he makes (or can make). Early game, you'll be more reliable and have potentially more damage than most characters since they won't have as many attacks or means to enhance their abilities, but an optimized Barbarian or Fighter will outpace you before long, and Rangers/Paladins will outpace you against certain enemies (for Rangers, it may be up to 50% of the time, and for Paladins, it's about 90% of the time).
Another significant problem is that the Shifter, as a class, was meant to be wild and different compared to most anything we've been given as a class before, treading new ground and having some very unique stuff, and based on what has been said thus far, has only been a mish-mash of several features poached from other, existing classes that have been minorly tweaked, with only a couple of lesser features whose power or definitive ability simply isn't enough to make it a uniquely functional class.
That isn't to say that the Shifter should tread new ground on every aspect of its design, but on the stuff it should've been absolutely unique at compared to every other class it was close to, it just wasn't. Or if it was, it became unique in a negative light that very easily showed itself in the original discussion thread.
As it stands, there are two extremely polar opposite ways to look at the Shifter: At best, it's a Druid/Monk Hybrid class that falls short on the mark across the board. At worst, it's not really a class, and could've just been made into a Druid or Monk archetype instead.
**EDIT** Added important clarifications and an extra paragraph. Reviews are hard...
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I skimmed the class briefly. Then, because I am a lazy gamer, I waited for the ultimate wilderness herolab update to try to do anything with the class. I almost immediately realized how underwhelming the class is and do not see myself bothering with it as is. Furthermore i'll be rebuilding any NPC shifters into different classes or races as I doubt they could pose any real threat to a party of PC's. How did professional game designers design a class that doesn't do anything better than any other class? I find myself disappointed. The class designers should feel embarrassed. Fix it. On the plus side I enjoyed the other content in ultimate wilderness!
Meh. I'll stick with SmiloDan's Evolver.
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I wish there was more clarity on how multiclassing druid and shifter would work. Is it possible a dip into shifter would get the comparison druid access to shifter's edge, early beast shape II *and* normal druid wild shape progression?
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I loved the playtest. I playtested the Bloodrager, I playtested the Spiritualist, I tried to playtest the Vigilante. While all the threads in the playtests got heated they got worse one after another to the point that I and a bunch of other people gave up on the Vigilante playtest due to how toxic it was. It drove away people actually wanting to playtest and give feedback.
But it wasn’t an isolated incident. Yes they were able to salvage criticisms and suggestions from the Vigilante playtest. But it also showed, when you looked over the playtests previously, that they were getting worse, that they were doing less and less to justify themselves. So with the gradual increase in toxicity and lack of useable feedback it’s pretty obvious why they didn’t continue.
Maybe the community would have surprised us and been mostly positive and helpful, but all the signs pointed to the exact opposite of that occurring.
What people who are saying "it's worth encouraging a toxic environment if the critique is good" are missing is that a toxic community is every bit as harmful, if not moreso, as a badly-built class. Paizo needs its community, and Paizo can't afford to dedicate time and resources to sifting through (and moderating) a toxic landscape when they're crunching to finish a book before the next convention. Moreover, a toxic playtest can bleed into and corrupt the overall messageboard community, creating lasting problems for the company.
Personally, I think an application-based playtest would be the best way to curb these problems going forward. Create a closed forum that only posters who've been accepted into the playtest can post in (if this hand-cranked radio we call the messageboards can handle that, I mean). I think that would create a much stronger motivation to stay civil—if you act like a dick to anyone, you're out.
Sadly, as the shifter will likely be Pathfinder's last class, this shift has probably already sailed.
Sadly, as the shifter will likely be Pathfinder's last class, this shift has probably already sailed.
That's an interesting perspective. What prompted that chain of thought?
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Starfinder aside, I've heard that Paizo is pretty much done with new classes. I couldn't link you the source off the top of my head, though. Can anyone confirm?
Aside from a few hybrids maybe I can't think of another class I need. well maybe some unchained ones.
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Maybe the community would have surprised us and been mostly positive and helpful, but all the signs pointed to the exact opposite of that occurring.
I have a few theories as to why the class has ended up the way it is, and why it doesn’t possess the vast shapeshifting it promised. And, additionally, how a lack of playtesting has seriously hurt it (and by extension Starfinder, though only in a few areas due to easily fixed problems rather than fundamental system flaws that would have been caught with more rigorous external math-checking, and has been and conveyed to the design team)
I am pretty sure we were never going to get the fluid form shapeshifter simply because Paizo was probably turned off from earlier examples of similar mechanics. The biggest and most frequently derided example is actually the Summoner. People really, really disliked that the eidolons, a class feature, could outpace a proper martial simply because of it’s ability to change it’s form when needed and switch into incredible martial prowess through having an utterly ridiculous amount of natural attacks at its disposal. This could be done without expense to the eidolons own utility either (besides the inherent benefit of a deathless extra fighter). Eidolons are pretty much what people wanted, which makes Synthesist summoners actually the original Shifters, doing literally everything people wanted from the hype of the shifter. And Synthesist summoner is hated more than vanilla summoner. People really did not like Synthesist.
Since Paizo recognised that this was a problem and reworked the summoner to fix it, I don’t think they were going to then turn around and release Synthesis Summoner 2.0. The reason we simply weren’t ever going to get that kind of shifter was because there was so much previous, public backlash against something like that already.
Was this entirely, like, justified? Not really. Because it isn’t hard to take what the Synthesist summoner was doing and strip out the flaws and keep the bits people want. That’s literally your shifter right there. Closer to the core aspects of the content and more versatile as a result.
But that isn’t what happened with the shifter. So what we got is less than it should have been. And these are problems probably easily fixed if we had a look at what they were doing in the first place. There is some serious value in a public playtest, or even just a closed playtest out of office, and a lot of it is a managing design expectations from internal perceptions and external expectations from the hobbyists themselves who enjoy and consume that content, particularly since they’ll pull apart content with a collectively keener eye that an internal analysis might provide. (The same could be said of all art, actually, critique is such a powerful and fundamental requirement for fixing and correcting flaws in your work)
But obviously since a portion of these hobbyists couldn’t keep themselves from being rampantly toxic, we’ve lost that opportunity all-together. I don’t even think this is even a wise decision either from Paizo, since I have to wonder if all the harm that’s been done thus far would have been avoided if they kept the playtesting, but I guess that’s a bit late now.
Personally, I think an application-based playtest would be the best way to curb these problems going forward. Create a closed forum that only posters who've been accepted into the playtest can post in (if this hand-cranked radio we call the messageboards can handle that, I mean). I think that would create a much stronger motivation to stay civil—if you act like a dick to anyone, you're out.
This is definitely what they should do. Lol I was going to suggest it myself, but you’ve pretty much hit the nail on head, KC.
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Personally, I think an application-based playtest would be the best way to curb these problems going forward. Create a closed forum that only posters who've been accepted into the playtest can post in (if this hand-cranked radio we call the messageboards can handle that, I mean).
It can and does.
with the ability to bypass all kinds of DR
The shifters claws strangely can't bypass DR/magic...
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What people who are saying "it's worth encouraging a toxic environment if the critique is good"I love it when people address statements nobody actually made.
I love it when dudes get sassy without tryin' to stay classy.
That sounds like a solid argument for playtests with tolerance of the sometimes rude people who get involved in those. If it takes dealing with those people to get the class done well, that's what it takes.
Also, thanks, TOZ! They don't let me on those private forums, so I had no idea. Clear anti-kobold bias. ;D
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I feel that when they wanted to design the Shifter, they didn't want to invalidate the Druid class as a result. In the same vein that the Warpriest steps on a lot of toes for the niche it fills (though it has gotten better after the dust has settled), I think Paizo was a little scared of making it better than the Druid in terms of Wild Shaping, primarily because Paizo doesn't want to destroy all of the 3.5 legacy choices.
The former of which is ironic, since a Druid, even having the worst 9th level spell list in the game, is still a 9th level spellcaster that's capable of all kinds of crazy stuff that no martial can even dream of doing, and can be just as nasty as any melee in the game with proper...
That's the thing though, this should have "invalidated" the druid if when all you looked at was shifting.
Like the WP crushes the cleric at fighting "invalidating" it by fighting better and faster than the cleric.The shifter should have as well, it needs to be the clear winner at shifting since that's it's entire thing while it's like 1/3 of the druids potential things.
If you're looking to make a shapeshifter and the class called shifter loses to the druid at being a shapeshifter then there's an issue.
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I have no wish to sidetrek this lovely little thread griping about a bunch of numbers in a made up fantasy storybook we can buy for $40-plus-shipping, so let me just say: Nah. There are many ways to encourage a toxic community, and one of them is to tolerate toxic posters, sending a signal that toxic behavior is acceptable if it results in "getting the class done well".
If you'll read the post I quoted a bit more carefully, you'll see that Avr (with all due respect to them, of course) called for tolerating those posters you have just acknowledged are "toxic". Tolerating a toxic chemical poisons the whole forest, just like in my favorite cartoon about young animals getting killed by poisonous gas. One bad apple can spoil the bunch. If Paizo says, "Yeah, Jackjoe the Screamy Roguehater can stay," all the other posters come to the conclusion, "Oh, cool, so that's the guideline to go by." It sets a tone for moderation.
Naturally, shutting down "spirited debate" can also be harmful, as long as it's spirited debate and not debate infested with actual evil spirits out to ruin everything for everyone. Sadly, engaging in a debate with so-called "toxic trolls" can often feel like the latter.
Mind you, I'm sure we're both fully aware that I haven't said anything for or against closing the playtest—as a matter of fact, I think that the playtests are helpful, as long as they're coupled with actual meaningful accountability for bad behavior (we have seen over the years how badly the "lock-em-and-forgive-'em" tactic works on this lot). But tolerating those ugly elements because they give good critique is just bad business. :)
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I only have so many lookalike aliases, though! :(
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I loved the playtest. I playtested the Bloodrager, I playtested the Spiritualist, I tried to playtest the Vigilante. While all the threads in the playtests got heated they got worse one after another to the point that I and a bunch of other people gave up on the Vigilante playtest due to how toxic it was. It drove away people actually wanting to playtest and give feedback.
But it wasn’t an isolated incident. Yes they were able to salvage criticisms and suggestions from the Vigilante playtest. But it also showed, when you looked over the playtests previously, that they were getting worse, that they were doing less and less to justify themselves. So with the gradual increase in toxicity and lack of useable feedback it’s pretty obvious why they didn’t continue.
Maybe the community would have surprised us and been mostly positive and helpful, but all the signs pointed to the exact opposite of that occurring.
I think one of the reasons that the playtests threads get toxic is because people feel unheard and ignored. When you get lots of people talking about how this feature is bad or clunky and then get no response or worse comments saying that their concerns aren't valid and worth addressing since it was just "armchair theorycraft" then people get toxic as a way to express their feelings. If in the playtest there was more flow of info, more explaining of thoughts. More sharing of the direction they are trying to go with and actually give the "armchair theorycrafters" the attention and respect of addressing their concerns then I doubt you'd have as much toxicity.
I propose the reason the toxicity of playtests have increased overtime is because the flow of info from the devs and their interactions with the playtests, including the armchair ones, have decreased.
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It's worth noting that playtesters tend to be a lot more toxic when they don't think they'll be heard. Just ask poor Mark Seifter, upon whom I once unloaded all my ill feelings about an Unchaining—only for him to pop in and graciously make me feel like the garbage I was! No excuse, of course. And don't forget, having Paizo staffers get active in Paizo threads costs money and time Paizo doesn't necessarily have.
The one that did surprise me, locked into Claws. Having a suite of attacks to choose from (I don’t know how’d you separate that out, 2 Claws/2 Slams/1 Bite???) would be nice.
I believe the reason is that they want to force your hands to be used so you can't combo them with weapons as easily.
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I have no wish to sidetrek this lovely little thread griping about a bunch of numbers in a made up fantasy storybook we can buy for $40-plus-shipping
$10 if you wanna go the PDF route instead... and now for some griping about made up fantasy storybook numbers:
I meant to post this a while ago and I realize the subject has shifted but I got distracted and then spent a bunch of time rechecking things...
How do the shifter archetypes look? Any of them look like an improvement? The version that trades the animal theme for a fiend theme really interests me
Obviously just my opinions here but kind of a mixed bag.
To preface this (and I might repeat it a few times). One thing that really stands out to me looking at these archetypes is that a lot of them end up not having very many class features.
For instance, the Verdant Shifter archetype has thirteen levels where it gains nothing but numerical bonuses to an already existing class feature and the Weretouched gets its last new class feature at level 5.
Neither of them get capstones either (in fact, most of the archetypes don't). Capstones aren't super important obviously but it still bears mentioning.
Not the end of the world, but wanted to say that.
Anyways, the archetypes:
Verdict: Boring and simple, but functional.
No pounce though, which sucks. So does losing the ability to speak most languages in elemental form.
It's also unclear how the capstone interacts with that combining elements feature.
If you're looking to play an archetype that lets you turn into an elemental to fight baddies though... this isn't it, because your elemental forms are trash in combat.
Elemental Strike at level 4 is +2d6 to all melee attacks. Works with AoOs, TWF, iteratives (though you don't have those at 4 obviously) etc. Elemental Form removes that and replaces it with a 1d6 slam attack. That's it. Your whole attack routine. 1d6 damage + 1.5x strength. At level 15 (8 if you use Fire) that bumps up to 1d8. 1d8 damage with no iteratives at level 15. Just use Air to fly around really fast and otherwise stick to human form with minor aspects
Verdict: Actually pretty decent, albeit with some odd design choices. Probably my favorite of the bunch.
Also kind of weird because despite being an evil, fiend themed archetype that doesn't give a damn about nature, it still has a shifter's code of conduct.
Verdict: You can feel the pain of its book space reading the archetype with how limited it is. Overall it's usable, but doesn't give you a lot or anything all that fancy.
I want to like this archetype and it gives you some cool things like compression and DR and unlike the base shifter its polymorphing actually progresses. Instead of claws you get undefined natural weapons with variable damage types. Instead of scaling damage they scale in number (2 at 1, 3 at 6 and 4 at 15).
But despite the name the Archetype is actually about not playing an ooze more than playing one, as ooze form prevents you from speaking or carrying/using most items. Consequently low levels suck, since shapeshifting time is hour/level with half level/day of uses. So you get one hour of humanoid form at level 1. You can take a fort save to extend it, but it's still shaky.
Pounce at 15 via beast shape 2 so that's better than nothing I guess.
Verdict: I'd play one, but not in a campaign starting earlier than like, level 6.
Instead of Wild Shape or Shifter Aspects you get a Barbarian's Rage. Except it takes a full round action to activate and provokes. On top of Rage's normal effects it increases your size by one category, though not the size of your gear of course.
When you want to leave Rage you have to succeed at a scaling will save (DC10+Level) or stay in rage for an extra round. If you don't have any more rounds of rage when you fail the save, you instead become confused.
Being forced to waste rounds of rage when you fail the save is actually really painful, because your rounds are incredibly limited. The Rageshaper gets only one round per level of rage with no way to boost it.
Consequently that means a level 1 rageshaper spends a full round action to enter rage, spends one round of attacking and then is done for the day (and also has to roll a DC11 will save vs confusion on the following round, yay). All while probably not wearing any armor (and taking a penalty to AC for being large!)
On the flip side, as your rage upgrades you get bigger too, so while at level 1 you may be a shitty barbarian with a worse enlarge person and no other class features, at level 10 you can be huge and at level 20 you can go up to gargantuan. So those slams hit pretty darn hard. Provided you can leverage that size increase, of course. Enclosed spaces are a drag for the Rageshaper, though luckily you can choose to only grow to large or huge (though if the space is too small for large characters you're SoL).
So far that's... not great, but having some giant-ass natural attack routines can be pretty cool.
But then for some reason the archetype goes on to nerf a bunch of other stuff, like replacing +wis to AC and +level/4 to AC with a flat +2 natural armor and DR 2/-. The bonus works with medium armor, but wearing armor is kinda hard as a rageshaper.
It also replaces your ability to bypass various DR on your slam with the ability to ignore some hardness.
Woodland Stride gets upgraded to simply ignore all difficult terrain while raging and gives you immunity to the entangled condition, so that's cool. You also get to jump your movement speed once per day.
If you're gonna play one, try avoiding starting at low levels and pick a race that'll give you extra natural attacks. No clue how to solve that AC problem though.
Verdict: I want to be optimistic, but this is... not good. A huge chunk of the features are just punitive and the low levels are especially rough, because the downsides come online long before the upsides do and I'm not sure the upsides are ever really up enough.
The defensive change is the one that stings the most to me though. Losing Wis to AC on an archetype that's going to have trouble with armor and really cares about its will save feels like a misstep while DR 2/- only matters for a short window across a long campaign.
You effectively get locked into a single aspect that gives a scaling enhancement bonus to con and some crit resistance. The cool thing though is that it's always on.
Your AC bonus gets replaced by natural armor that scales from +2 at 2 to +7 at 20. Hey Rageshaper why doesn't your NA bonus scale? Kind of a mixed bag here. It works with medium armor and being able to throw an extra +7 on a breastplate is pretty sweet.
Speaking of. Last feature is scaling plant shape instead of wild shape. You get full plant shape, which is cool, but I find plant shape to be less good than beast shape in general. Not sure it actually plays nice with your other two class features though
Verdict: Not great. I like the idea, getting a free con belt is pretty cool and you can be fairly tanky, but it suffers from not having a lot of class features left over afterwards. Plant Shape also doesn't really play nice with the other two features the archetype gives you, while not having enough utility to really serve as a backup option either like elemental form can.
BUT you get a hybrid form instead of an animal form. This means you get to wear your armor, use your weapon and always have your claws. You also get +2 to STR and AC. Size bonus to strength so Enlarge loses some value, which is a shame. But hybrid forms are awesome.
Verdict: Again, basically dead on class features but hybrid forms are seriously awesome. If you pick Tiger or Dino (and you should) you get an unrestricted pounce for four hours at level 4, way earlier than anyone else does. Pretty sure Dinos have five natural attacks when weretouched too. Maybe. DR/Silver is also pretty cool...
Those are literally the only two things the archetype has going for it though. I don't mean that facetiously either. The sum total of your class features as a Weretouched are one animal aspect, hybrid wildshape, wild empathy, track, trackless step, DR/silver, woodland stride, defensive instinct and claws. That's the whole class.
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$10 if you wanna go the PDF route instead... and now for some griping about made up fantasy storybook numbers:
Very true! And no shipping if you visit your FLGS, which you absolutely should do (with all love to many Paizo employees, send the bulk of your money to local businesses, not distant Redmond corporations with questionable internal ethics). And zero dollars if y don't pirate kids, blackbeard got shot five times and cut about twenty and his head hung from a ship's mast like a fun pinata don't hit severed heads with sticks kids
So what will happen when someone multi-classes a Shifter with a Monk or a Brawler?
