I don't expect to be playing anytime soon, but I thought others might be interested in the answer.
Is it possible to make a character like Michiru from Brand New Animal?
At first I thought the answer would be yes. The Beastkin heritage from the Lost Omens Ancestry guide handles the everyday element of the character (including a tendency for the hybrid form to be the default).
However, the more I looked, the more I kept running into the same problem: all the animal-themed abilities eventually assume full animal forms.
Druid's Wild Shape is all about becoming an animal. I thought about Barbarian, but when I looked there the higher forms of their animal instinct also have you turn into an animal.
The Beastkin heritage itself isn't much better. While you can obviously skip it, one of the highest feats is a full animal form. The only feat that changes the hybrid form makes it permanently larger rather than giving you more hybrid choices.
Even when I looked at people speculating about a 2E version of a Shifter class people were assuming an ability to change between various full animal forms.
Is there a way to have a varied hybrid shifting character without eventually just turning into the actual animal?
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You don't have to take those feats. Animal Shape and Animal Rage are available, but there are plenty of other feats that you could take instead.
I guess my question is: are there any alternatives?
Michiru transforms, but each transformation is just a different hybrid form. She gains aspects of different animals depending on the situation, but she remains humanoid.
I didn't get the idea from her, but I thought she'd be an easy way to explain it.
I guess another way to put it is, is there a way to basically have multiple "were" forms rather than having animal forms?
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So basically you want Wild Morph without also getting Wild Shape first.
... I vaguely remember something like that. Not sure I can find it again though.
Edit: Animal Feature from Ranger. I think you can get that with nothing more than needing Gravity Weapon first.
Okay yeah, those are both pretty close.
If we got a 2E Shifter I'd love to see something more dedicated to it, but those two options are close to what I was trying to find. Thanks!
Taking Druid dedication and the wild order Spell at level 4 will give you wild morph without wild shape.
Alternatively, you can do the same as a Druid of another order taking order explorer.
If you're going the dedication way, wil morph will advance as any focus Spell, but you'd be stuck without wild shape foe the feats that add options to the Spell.
Taking Druid dedication and the wild order Spell at level 4 will give you wild morph without wild shape.
Correct.
If you're going the dedication way, wil morph will advance as any focus Spell, but you'd be stuck without wild shape foe the feats that add options to the Spell.
Correct.
Alternatively, you can do the same as a Druid of another order taking order explorer.
Not quite.
When you take Order Explorer, you are also given a level 1 feat that requires the new order as a prerequisite. For Wild Order, the only option is Wild Shape.
But like with the other shapechanging ancestry and class feats, you don't have to ever actually use it.