Wild Walker (Druid Archetype) - The Better Shifter?


Homebrew and House Rules


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I wanted to make a Druid archetype that focuses on wild shape and does not have spell casting.

Replacing Spellcasting with Something Equivalent:
Spellcasting is exceedingly powerful, and scales as you level up.

The Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain class features from the Ranger is both powerful and scales, however it is not as powerful. The buffs to wild shape (which scale) took care of the rest of the power discrepancy.

Since the first option of Nature Bond modifies their spell casting, I replaced it with the Ranger's first option in order to retain a choice as it works well with the other Ranger abilities they have received.

To keep with the Druid's nature-based theme I gave them the Orisons as spell-like abilities, which I believe doesn't effect their power level dramatically. They retain their ability to use summon nature's ally, however they can not do so as often as their base druid counterparts.

Buffing Wild Shape
I gave Wild Shape to them at 2nd level, made it unlimited at 4th, I gave them the ability to change into vermin, oozes, and magical beasts, and a few other benefits (such as the wild armor special ability and quick wild shape feat modifications).

I gave them built-in ways to access wild shape class feature feats.

Since this archetype focuses on martial combat I have given it a d10 hit die and full BAB progression.

Other Notes
I wasn't able to solve their wild shape not scaling past 12th level, though the expanded types of creatures available and the extra feats they get might be good enough.

I allowed the Bonus Wild Feat to grant regular feats if there are no more wild feats available because the only way for that to happen is if the player selected wild feats using their normal feat allotment, so in the end there is no net gain.

This should be able to work with any of the ANIMAL Shaman druid archetypes.

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