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Sure, but Untamed Form is not the only thing Druids have going for them. I was talking about a martial shapeshifter, they won't have any spells. Try playing a Druid without casting any spells other than Untamed Form, ever, then tell me how great UF is.Will have to let the like dozen plus wild druids I've played with know this. They had no idea and spent most of their campaigns being extremely competent and effective characters
Ugh no way, Untamed Form is terrible; extremely restrictive and underpowered. It just doesn't work as a character's "main thing".
A martial with untamed form is a lot stronger than a druid using only untamed form. How bad can a Fighter with a permanent +2 to attack rolls really be?
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Personally I found the shifter to be pretty great when I played it... though to be fair, that was the adaptive shifter, which just from looking at the base vs adaptive archetype, is way better. Frankly if shifter came back I would want it to be that. Of course in a party with a bloodrager, it didn't always feel like it we were playing the same game, but other then that it was really cool. Sadly my attempts to get a decent build for that character in pf2 has failed(wild druid shapeshifting from the archetype just sucks), but maybe with the upcoming wild mimic plus the natural weapon archetypes I can piece something neat together?
If I were to make the simplest shifter druid archetype I would do something like...
* lose access to spellcasting.
* replace caster progression with martial progression.
* You have to be an untamed druid. The untamed form and untamed shift focus spells become focus cantrips instead.
That's it. It likely is broken AF though.
I think if they do the Shifter as a class archetype they'd not do it on a Druid - the only thing you really want are the two focus spells and maybe the feats that tie into it, but you'd want to revamp the entire progression to be martial-like, add more feats that do martial things and so on and at that point you're probably better off picking a class that has the progression and feats you want and working from there. It's easier to transpose two spells and five feats.
I mean, they literally just announced a class archetype for clerics that turns them into a martial. The same thing could be done for druids.
Howl of the wild looks like it'll throw a lot of shifter bones. Not the class, mind you, but many mechanics that will give you portions of it
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the community at large keeps telling people to just use a warrior muse bard or a warpriest cleric if they want to gish (yet are not satisfied with people not being satisfied with these solutions).
I fully agree. In fact, it's nearly your bin 2 that causes me issue, because building a gish from a caster perspective doesn't really work. It's not a gish, just a caster with weapon proficiency (which is nice in some circumstances).
How bad can a Fighter with a permanent +2 to attack rolls really be?
Really bad once you realize the +2 doesn't apply to Untamed Form attacks unless you also have Martial Artist Dedication.
A martial with untamed form is a lot stronger than a druid using only untamed form.
That really depends on the interpretation on additional damage. Because if you don't count Rage, Sneak Attack and all the damage bonuses martials get you end up with not much left to beat the Druid (you're still slightly better, but nothing impressive).
How bad can a Fighter with a permanent +2 to attack rolls really be?Really bad once you realize the +2 doesn't apply to Untamed Form attacks unless you also have Martial Artist Dedication.
I suspect Arachnofiend refers to the +2 status bonus from Untamed Form, not the Fighter's heightened proficiency. On the other hand, it's fair to point out that, while the unarmed attacks granted by Untamed Form could very easily be in the Brawling group (and thus subject to the Fighter's weapon mastery feature), technically it doesn't seem like they do, leaving them at their baseline unarmed proficiency (Expert until 13, Master until 19)...
Neat
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Hot Take: Shifter should be a class archetype for the Exemplar class. You know, go full Maui demigod with the shapeshifting.
Hot Take: Shifter should be a class archetype for the Exemplar class. You know, go full Maui demigod with the shapeshifting.
Not sure why a class archetype would be better than a standard archetype. Whether it is a Druid class archetype or Exemplar class archetype.
If it is a standard archetype, then your Exemplar can still get it. But so can the Druid, the Fighter, the Bard, the Inventor, ...
I would make it a focus spell centered archetype. Level 2 Dedication gives something similar to Animal Feature (yes, I am aware that this is a Rank 2 spell - that is why the 'similar to'). Then Level 4 gives a focus spell like Untamed Form. Maybe a different Level 4 or Level 6 feat to extend the duration of the shifting. Some other feats of various levels that add more options to the forms available so that they don't get stagnant and sub-optimal at high levels.
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Hot Take: Shifter should be a class archetype for the Exemplar class. You know, go full Maui demigod with the shapeshifting.
Lukewarm Take: A character shouldn't need a shard of divinity to be a flexible shapeshifter, especially when the class already canonically exists before the War of Immortals.
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So part of the issue with shifters is that there are a lot of different slices at that fantasy.
- There's "I want to have someone who has a legit, terrifying battle form." Well, Animal Barbarian has been hooking these people up from Day 1. There's also the mutation form of this... which basically involves the mutagenist alchemist looking over at the barbarian with a feeling of profound envy.
Like, seriously, give us a "your special schtick is chugging mutagens" barbarian instinct, and those people are set.
- There's "I love playing a druid and fighting in beastform. I just wish I was *good* at it." These folks just need a class archetype for druid that makes you a wave caster and gives you baseline martial proficiencies. That's basically it.
- There's "I want a hat that will let me say that I'm an X, but I don't actually care about the stats". There are a bunch of ancestries that will hook you up, here... and more coming soon.
- There's the one about the person who's slowly modifying their body over time, becoming less and less human (or elf or dwarf or whatever) but more like whatever their preferred form is. Well... I hear grafts are coming? Also, there are at least a few interesting prosthetics. Also, there are some kind of fringe archetypes. There's not a lot to work with here, but there's at least something, and it looks like it's coming in forms other than "character class". So... okay on that one.
- Finally, there's the one we *don't* have - the person who uses the mutability of their own flesh as a profoundly flexible tool to address life's problems - who shifts into new shapes in response to new challenges, who can be expected to shift multiple times over the course of any given battle, with each new shape offering new options. That one, we don't have. I think it would be interesting, though. In particular, there are aspects to it that somewhat resemble the exemplar, where the decisions you make this round affect the options you have available to you next round.
I mean, saying that you have to be a demigod to shapeshift because a demigod from myth does it when in this game shapeshifting has existed from even before the system was a thing is certainly a hot take.
I doubt shifter would be a generic archetype since we are getting werecreature in Howl of the Wind like, next month I think? I'm mainly mentioning shifter as a class archetype for druid because PF1e shifter was literally a spell-less druid with martial progression and, for some reason, Wisdom to AC that unlike monks could be used while armored.
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I mean, I'm down with calling Beast Boy a demigod.
Certainly makes the shipping with Raven spicier.
How bad can a Fighter with a permanent +2 to attack rolls really be?Really bad once you realize the +2 doesn't apply to Untamed Form attacks unless you also have Martial Artist Dedication.I suspect Arachnofiend refers to the +2 status bonus from Untamed Form, not the Fighter's heightened proficiency. On the other hand, it's fair to point out that, while the unarmed attacks granted by Untamed Form could very easily be in the Brawling group (and thus subject to the Fighter's weapon mastery feature), technically it doesn't seem like they do, leaving them at their baseline unarmed proficiency (Expert until 13, Master until 19)...
Neat
I did actually forget that Untamed Form natural attacks do not naturally work with Fighter's legendary proficiency. My statement that wild shaped martials are good works under the assumption that the martial damage bonuses that a druid doesn't get work with the forms. If they don't then obviously that's pointless.
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I have had a high level Druid who Best shapes often in the Fist of the Ruby Phoenix campaign I run. He casts spells on himself before major fights and then spends much of the fight in a dragon form that is useful for the damage types it can do.
The problem with his character suddenly having martial proficiency is that the flexibility he has to take on forms who have a lot of special attacks is amazingly useful and something most martials just don't have access to. Having only focus spell form shifting is pretty limiting because you can't really change things up that often in a longer, or collapsed encounter, and having some form spells beyond your focus spell shifting gives you a lot more options.
So a focus spell based form shifter would end up with a lot less of the flexibility, but could also easily end up shut out of being useful at all if they only start with 1 focus point.
I think at this point the Kineticist is a better chassis for a shifter type character than any type of spell casting battle form.
Just get attacks and options from feats that can be balanced around "always on" and not 1 minute out of 10 awkwardness.
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But the reason the Shifter wasn't particularly popular was that it was kind of a missed opportunity in terms of the flavor being cooler than the mechanics.Let us all observe a moment of silence for the awesome, but also incredibly bad, Oozemorph Shifter.
I worked *really* hard to make the Oozemorph work well in PF1, but by the standards of the CharOp stuff in PF1, it just was not possible.
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The shifter also suffered imo from having a really weird flavor baseline.
Like pre-shifter one wish I kept seeing crop up was having a shapeshifting class that wasn't restricted in the way wild shape druids were, because wild shape druids were/are very good but thematically specific.
To take that and then deliver a class that, baseline, did not meaningfully differentiate itself from druids at all, was really strange (there were archetypes to branch out but because they were limited space archetypes none of them really delivered fully).
Which is a good reason for any PF2 approximation to be something similar but completely different, imo.
I would make it a focus spell centered archetype. Level 2 Dedication gives something similar to Animal Feature (yes, I am aware that this is a Rank 2 spell - that is why the 'similar to'). Then Level 4 gives a focus spell like Untamed Form. Maybe a different Level 4 or Level 6 feat to extend the duration of the shifting. Some other feats of various levels that add more options to the forms available so that they don't get stagnant and sub-optimal at high levels.
This is a reasonable approach, but a bit of a red flag to me because this is a character defining concept. A dedicated shifter wants to spend as much time as possible using their shapeshifting powers.
Having that be something you can't even do until level 4 makes an archetype kind of untenable for the specific character concept.
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Yeah, what people want (at least what I want) from the Shifter is a class that shapeshifts without all the Druid baggage. No edicts/anathema, no spell slots, just someone who is very good at turning into animals.
Precisely. The D&D movie hit the nail on the head with the film's mechanical depiction of their "druid".
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Yeah, what people want (at least what I want) from the Shifter is a class that shapeshifts without all the Druid baggage. No edicts/anathema, no spell slots, just someone who is very good at turning into animals.
Yes exactly. However, Battle Forms would need to be considerably buffed as well to make a Shifter useful. Right now, they're pretty underpowered, slightly better than an Animal Companion. The reason they're so weak is cuz they're balanced to be used by full casters. Take away the spellcasting and Battle Forms will really underperform.
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A shifter class built around feats instead of battle form spells wouldn’t need to worry about how they balance with battle forms outside the class. So if you had a basic transformation ability (similar to a beastkin now, and then could add feats to it that let you gain different abilities, a bit more like the Eidolon Summoner feats, you could could have a pretty intensely martial class chassis. You could have a path that let you trade out feats regularly, for the more shapeshifter type shifter, and then a more narrowly focused path about developing one form.
This would probably let your class chassis be close to an animal barbarian with no rage ability, but with more cool kineticist adjacent utility feats that could be active as long as you were shifted, with no timers.
A shifter class built around feats instead of battle form spells wouldn’t need to worry about how they balance with battle forms outside the class. So if you had a basic transformation ability (similar to a beastkin now, and then could add feats to it that let you gain different abilities, a bit more like the Eidolon Summoner feats, you could could have a pretty intensely martial class chassis. You could have a path that let you trade out feats regularly, for the more shapeshifter type shifter, and then a more narrowly focused path about developing one form.
This would probably let your class chassis be close to an animal barbarian with no rage ability, but with more cool kineticist adjacent utility feats that could be active as long as you were shifted, with no timers.
I like the way you think!
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I have had a high level Druid who Best shapes often in the Fist of the Ruby Phoenix campaign I run. He casts spells on himself before major fights and then spends much of the fight in a dragon form that is useful for the damage types it can do.
The problem with his character suddenly having martial proficiency is that the flexibility he has to take on forms who have a lot of special attacks is amazingly useful and something most martials just don't have access to. Having only focus spell form shifting is pretty limiting because you can't really change things up that often in a longer, or collapsed encounter, and having some form spells beyond your focus spell shifting gives you a lot more options.
So a focus spell based form shifter would end up with a lot less of the flexibility, but could also easily end up shut out of being useful at all if they only start with 1 focus point.
I think at this point the Kineticist is a better chassis for a shifter type character than any type of spell casting battle form.
Just get attacks and options from feats that can be balanced around "always on" and not 1 minute out of 10 awkwardness.
I paid very little attention to the Shifter during PF1. New classes take time to enter my multi-year campaigns. The players already created their characters before the new class was published, and likewise for the NPCs in the adventure path. Sometimes I convert an NPC into a new class, such as rebuilding the vigilante Mockery in the Iron Gods adventure path from a rogue to the new Vigilante class, and sometimes I welcome a public playtest character into the game as a temporary second character of a player. I became involved with PF2 before a shifter could enter my PF1 games.
So I did not read the Shifter description before this week.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A shifter is proficient with the following weapons: club, dagger, dart, quarterstaff, scimitar, scythe, sickle, shortspear, sling, and spear. She is also proficient with the natural attacks (claw, bite, and so forth) from the shifter claws class feature and of forms she assumes with wild shape.
Shifters are proficient with light and medium armor but are prohibited from wearing metal armor....
Shifter Claws (Su): At will, a shifter in her natural form can extend her claws as a swift action to use as a weapon. This magical transformation is fueled as much by the shifter's faith in the natural world as it is by inborn talent. The claws on each hand can be used as a primary natural attack, dealing 1d4 points of piercing and slashing damage (1d3 if she is Small). If she uses one of her claw attacks in concert with a weapon held in the other hand, the claw acts as a secondary natural attack instead.
A shifter can deal 1d4 damage with claws or 1d6 damage with a scimitar. That seems discouraging. The advantage of claws is that they can be used in a full-round natural attack that allows an attack with each claw, which combines well with the damage from high Strength.
Wild Shape (Su): At 4th level, a shifter gains the ability to turn herself into the major form of one of her aspects and back again. This ability functions as beast shape II, except as noted here. The shifter can turn into the major form of only one of her aspects at a time. Using wild shape to change to a major form or back is a standard action that doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity. Often a particular aspect's major form grants abilities beyond the normal effect of beast shape II. Each major form details the abilities the shifter gains with that major form and at what level; she gains these instead of the form abilities from beast shape II, but she still gains beast shape II abilities that are size dependent.
A shifter loses her ability to speak while in animal form because she is limited to the sounds that a normal, untrained animal of that form can make, but she can communicate with other animals of the same general grouping as her form. She can also communicate in nonverbal ways with allies.
A shifter can use wild shape for a number of hours each day equal to her shifter level + her Wisdom modifier. It need not be consecutive but must be spent in 1 hour increments. For abilities that function based on ‘uses of wild shape,' each hour of wild shape counts as a use.
So at 4th level and Wisdom +3 (the shifter invested in Strength rather than Wisdom) the shifter could spend most of the day as an animal. Shifting to the most appropriate animal for each encounter would cut down on that time drastically, perhaps to just seven encounters. At first glance, this looks more like a way to roleplay as a hardy animal companion than as a shapeshifter.
Yes exactly. However, Battle Forms would need to be considerably buffed as well to make a Shifter useful. Right now, they're pretty underpowered, slightly better than an Animal Companion. The reason they're so weak is cuz they're balanced to be used by full casters. Take away the spellcasting and Battle Forms will really underperform.
A PF2 shifter relying on a Wildshape focus spell would be even more limited than the level+Wis times per day PF1 shifter. And as HeHateMe pointed out, the battle forms from spells are designed at the power of spells rather than designed as the whole schtick of the character.
On the other hand, Unicore's suggestion of the Kineticist chassis has a lot of potential. The shifter invokes an aspect and gains morph abilities with no limits on usage. A shifter who learned Mammalian aspect could conjure claws that are as good as agile weapons. A shifter who learned Avian aspect could grow wings at higher levels. Combining claws and wings would allow griffin form. Further adding Reptilian aspect and Energy aspect would allow dragon form. Reptilian aspect at 1st level would give just a jaws attack. Each aspect could be carefully balanced to provide level-appropriate attacks and movement. The fun would be in finding the right ability for the current situation.
Shifter could have a one-minute time limit on shifting to explain why the shifter returns to humanoid form. They can always re-activate an aspect (no cooldown required) as an action to shift again. Some feats might permit keeping an aspect for an hour. A battle form could be sustained.
Combat could be amusingly progressive. "First action, I call on Avian form for wings. I Fly over to Strike with my Mammalian claws which haven't faded yet. Next turn, I add Energy aspect for flaming claws and make two Strikes. Third turn, I add Reptilian aspect into full dragon form and hit them with my breath weapon."
Back to the topic of importing Pathfinder 1st Edition classes into Pathfinder 2nd Edition. To me, each class serves a roleplaying purpose. Originally the purposes are borrowed from fiction. A wizard is Merlin, a fighter is Sir Lancelot, a rogue is the Gray Mouser. Later, the PF1 hybrid classes were born of the desire to play features of two classes fit together decently in one package.
Moving the remaining PF1 classes to PF2 is more about nostalgia.
Sometimes I give in to nostalgia. I like cameo appearances of characters from previous games. If the character is from PF1 and the character's class is not in PF2, then I have to port the charatcer over. This was much easier, yet not easy, whenever the class was already in PF2.
The main example of this is the overlap between my PF1 Iron Gods campaign and my PF2 Ironfang Invasion campaign. in the second session of my Iron Gods campaign, the three-member party invited the daughter of the missing wizard into the party as a fourth member. I had told them they could recruit a 1st-level NPC into their party, because they needed more martial support. I did not expect them to recruit Val Baine. She was the daughter of a wizard, so I had roleplayed her already as knowing a few cantrips, but they wanted her to embrace her Kellid heritage as a Savage Technologist barbarian. I compromised with the bloodrager hybrid class with a homebrew archetype based on Savage Technologist.
Compromises are a good use of a hybrid class.
At the end of the 1st module, Val's father wanted her to stay home rather than leaving on another adventure. The game had recruited a fourth player so it did not need Val Baine anymore. The PCs talked the father into letting Val remain in the party. They liked the optimistic, helpful NPC. She remained with the party for the entire campaign.
Many years later in the middle of my PF2 Ironfang Invasion campaign, I realized that I had to make a major change in the direction of the adventure path: How can I remove slavery from Ironfang Invasion? My first attempt at a change was introducing interference from Numeria. An android built from the downloaded memories of historic android Casandalee was trying for a cultural change. Eventually I had Val Baine show up from Numeria, too: PF1 Bloodrager Val Baine Converted to PF2 At the end, an Iron Gods skald PC joined in, played by her original player.
Converting Val Baine to PF2 was easier than I expected. I invented a Bloodrager Instinct for PF2 barbarian. Skald, on the other hand, required building a new class. The skald Kirii in Iron Gods had added more and more enhancements to her ragesong, but the PF2 bard uses only one composition at a time. The style of a PF2 bard did not fit Kirii.
Ironically, the Iron Gods involvement in Ironfang Invasion ended up not necessary. I managed the anti-slavery cultural change through fantasy methods rather than futuristic methods.
I had my reasons to put PF1 classes into a PF2 campaign. But does Pathfinder in general have enough reasons for the effort? Are players eager for the return of Skalds and Shifters? Do they have roleplaying reasons for hybrid classes? Is nostalgia alone a good enough reason?
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The obvious justification for Shifters is precisely the "borrowed from fiction" thing. People who turn into animals are a common fictional trope, and most of them are not generalized "nature wizards."
That was kind of my problem with Shifter in PF1, though. They still kept the Druid's flavor and restrictions. While they weren't "nature wizards" in terms of spellcasting, we were still getting the same thing we'd had for the better part of the decade with some number tweaks, rather something that worked better for all the non-druidic shapeshifters.
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A shifter class built around feats instead of battle form spells wouldn’t need to worry about how they balance with battle forms outside the class. So if you had a basic transformation ability (similar to a beastkin now, and then could add feats to it that let you gain different abilities, a bit more like the Eidolon Summoner feats, you could could have a pretty intensely martial class chassis. You could have a path that let you trade out feats regularly, for the more shapeshifter type shifter, and then a more narrowly focused path about developing one form.
This would probably let your class chassis be close to an animal barbarian with no rage ability, but with more cool kineticist adjacent utility feats that could be active as long as you were shifted, with no timers.
I think making it an impulse class is how I’d want to go. Perhaps make the various shapes stance feats? There’s a lot of potential ways to design it, now that we have the druid, monk, animist, and barbarian each being an example of how it could be done.
But I am inordinately fond of the impulse mechanic, so I’ll admit straight up there could be better mechanical implementations. Especially given what’s been says about the page space impulse classes use up. The idea of an impulse shifter just pleases me.
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I think a shifter class with impulse-like feats could be a lot more compact than a kineticist. You don’t really need 6 distinct class paths with full level 1-20 support for each path to make a base class that is all about shifting in to animals. Other, more specialized creatures, can easily come later in 3 or 4 new feats, like in an AP’s back matter.
I doubt the class would take up more page space than the summoner. The key to its design, I think, would be in trying to keep the class from getting static, (the issue with it being based on battle forms, in my opinion). The exemplar offers some design ideas for that, and overflow impulses offer another. I think something like “you regain temp HP every time you switch your form” could work for a many forms path, but having a blow out option on forms that kick you out of them for a cool special ability would probably be even more fun/class defining.
Also the Summoner's focus spells, particularly boost eidolon, could be fun to draw inspiration from.
So I've got a dynamic brewing in my head that I think would be *interesting*... but I'm not sure it *quite* fits for shifters. It almost does?
You start out, and this thing is stance-based. The first thign you have to do in every fight is get into stance, and everything else requires a stance. There are multiple stances to choose from, though, and they give different things.
You have a bunch of different things that get charged up, and they're based on bodyparts. You can adjust your hands, your feet, your chest, your back, your head, and so forth. You've got multiple options for each slot. Reshaping a part is something that can be done with a single action, but there are also a bunch of action efficiency boosters a la gunslinger reloads that let you do that thing and also something else. There would totally be a feat that let you get one for free for stepping into a new stance, for example. Each thing that gets charged up has some ongoing benefit that it gives you while you're shifted.
You also have specific powers that include specific shifts as part of their thing. In my mind, these are generally going to be two-action abilities, and you're generally going to want to try to pull off one of these per round whenever you reasonably can. They may have some extra benefit if the appropriate bit is already shifted in the appropriate way.
Finally, when you take an action shift stances into a different form stance, you lose all of your shifts... but each of them lets you do some small cool thing. Make a simple claw strike, fly half your move distance, gain some quantity of temp HP, take a step, whatever. No one of them is all that impressive, but if you've built up a number of shifts, then you get a frenzy of motion all in a single action... and still have two actions free for another specific power to start the shifting up again.
Possibly have some sort of capstone "apotheosis form" power that requires that you be in a stance with all of your bodyparts shifted in order to use it.
I'm sure this coudl use some tweaks to improve fun, but the basic idea is a character who's encouraged to constantly be shifting, and constantly be shifting in different ways and figuring out timing on when to trigger the built-up awesome.
Also the Summoner's focus spells, particularly boost eidolon, could be fun to draw inspiration from.
...so could the summoner's evolution feats.
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The obvious justification for Shifters is precisely the "borrowed from fiction" thing. People who turn into animals are a common fictional trope, and most of them are not generalized "nature wizards."
Okay, you have convinced me that PF2 needs a Shifter class.
So I've got a dynamic brewing in my head that I think would be *interesting*... but I'm not sure it *quite* fits for shifters. It almost does?
You start out, and this thing is stance-based. The first thign you have to do in every fight is get into stance, and everything else requires a stance. There are multiple stances to choose from, though, and they give different things.
Stances can be used only during encounters.
Stance: A stance is a general combat strategy that you enter by using an action with the stance trait, and you remain in for some time. A stance lasts until you get knocked out, until its requirements (if any) are violated, until the encounter ends, or until you use a stance action again, whichever comes first. After you take an action with the stance trait, you can’t take another one for 1 round. You can enter or be in a stance only in encounter mode. You can Dismiss a stance.
I myself prefer that shapeshifting can be used during exploration mode, too, such as growing wings and flying for an hour, or shifting into bloodhound form for tracking.
You have a bunch of different things that get charged up, and they're based on bodyparts. You can adjust your hands, your feet, your chest, your back, your head, and so forth. You've got multiple options for each slot. Reshaping a part is something that can be done with a single action, but there are also a bunch of action efficiency boosters a la gunslinger reloads that let you do that thing and also something else. There would totally be a feat that let you get one for free for stepping into a new stance, for example. Each thing that gets charged up has some ongoing benefit that it gives you while you're shifted.
If this were a stance, shaping a second body part would revert the first body part to normal. Thus, we don't want the morphing to be a stance, though it could copy some aspects of stances.
Furthermore, while I agree that shapeshifting should take an action during combat, requiring multiple actions, one for each new feature, would mean that the character would give up morphing the hands, feet, chest, back, and head during combat, because five actions would leave the character inert for too long. Thus, we need to bundle the morphs into polymorphs, such as one action to become a wolf.
Finally, when you take an action shift stances into a different form stance, you lose all of your shifts... but each of them lets you do some small cool thing. Make a simple claw strike, fly half your move distance, gain some quantity of temp HP, take a step, whatever. No one of them is all that impressive, but if you've built up a number of shifts, then you get a frenzy of motion all in a single action... and still have two actions free for another specific power to start the shifting up again.
Would this be like the swashbuckler's finisher actions, which end the swashbuckler's panache with a dramatic effect? I can imagine it being like,
Ultimate Wolf Lunge [One Action] Feat 4
Shifter, Normalize
Prerequisites Wolf Form
Requirements You are in wolf form
You make a Trip and a jaws Strike on the same target, each using your current multiple attack penalty. If the Strike fails, but not critically fails, you deal half damage.
And "Normalize" trait means all your shifts revert to normal form at the end of the action and you cannot shift again until your next turn.
I'm sure this coudl use some tweaks to improve fun, but the basic idea is a character who's encouraged to constantly be shifting, and constantly be shifting in different ways and figuring out timing on when to trigger the built-up awesome.
That would be dramatically cinematic. But we would also want to enable a Shifter character who roleplays with only one animal shape, like a werewolf as a class rather than an ancestry.
Also the Summoner's focus spells, particularly boost eidolon, could be fun to draw inspiration from....so could the summoner's evolution feats.
Boosting spells would make the Shifter look more like a spellcaster than a natural shapeshifter. I agree with Silver2195 and QuidEst that Shifters should not appear as nature wizards like the Untamed Druid. If the focus spells could be described as more like a monk's ki powers, then I am okay with the idea.
I don't think that the shifts should be coded as stances, chiefly because you've either got to give a potential shifter some way to be in multiple stances at once, or make it so shifts are stances, but you can have multiple of them, which feels clunky. At that point I'd instead make Shift its own trait akin to Impulse and call it good.
Other than that though, that's pretty much exactly how I was imagining a shifter would work too. You call up your shifts for battle, probably with some action compressing feature that lets you do a couple at the start of the battle, and then you shift into more as you go. Shifts could be somewhat like the Incarnate spells, giving you something when they show up, a Strike at minimum I would think, maybe some small benefit when they're on your body, and then something like Overflow where you get a bigger benefit, but lose your Shift.
To extend the kineticist comparison even further, you could also have some feats that specifically reward you for having a number of Shifts from the same family, whether those families are split up by animal type, or creature type if you can also morph yourself into plants and elementals and whatever else. Or perhaps you pick a creature type initially to transform into, and you can pick up another family or two as you move along.
Honestly sounds a lot like SF's evolutionist.
Ah... I'd been seeing the larger "stance" shifts and the smaller shifts as being distinct, but I can see how the stance idea winds up being a bit tacked-on.
The idea of building up smaller shifts over the course of a round or two in order to trigger specific awesomeness is pretty cool too... but the trick is to make ti both interesting thematically *and* interesting tactically. Basically, if we have a class that's all about setting up a number of smaller shifts and then either exploiting or consuming them, we want to make sure that we don't fall into the 3.x/4e trap where a well-designed character has one dug-deep rut of a path they want to go blitzing down every time. If every combat is going to be a matter of "Shift 1, shift 2, shift 3, trigger big power, repeat" or something similar, then it gets pretty samey. Of course, we also don't want to just make it incredibly complicated. Page space is a limited resource.
So maybe something like...
- By default, you start a fight with no shifts. There are feats/gear/classpath/feature/whatever that can maybe fix that for you to dome degree, but by default you start with nothing.
- Individual shifts come with some small-but-nice ongoing effect (like, say, having claws) and some immediate boost that you get when they are replaced by a *different* shift (like, say, a small but nontrivial bonus to damage on all attacks that round)
- Aforementioned idea of your meat-and-potatoes being two-action powers that do some cool thing and also give you some shift. Noteworthy here that hitting the same one over and over again is wasteful - you don't get the immediate boost and you also don't get the accumulation of shifts. You're going to want to switch it up.
- A few powers that consume multiple shifts in specific configurations, leave you unshifted in those areas, and do something Particularly Cool. Ideally, a given character would have more than one of these.
So you're basically juggling around your two-action powers and reload-style limited-action-and-shift powers to build up the passive effects that you want, exploit the immediate overwrite effects that you want, and possibly set up for doing The Cool Thing, hopefully balanced so that the decisions to be made here are interesting.
Personally, I could see shifter being either a general archetype or possibly a barbarian class archetype (basically an enhanced/more versatile Animal instinct). With the barbarian getting a bloodrager class archetype, I suspect a general archetype is more likely.
IMO, "shifting shape into one or more animal forms" is really too narrow to make a separate class.
Boosting spells would make the Shifter look more like a spellcaster than a natural shapeshifter. I agree with Silver2195 and QuidEst that Shifters should not appear as nature wizards like the Untamed Druid. If the focus spells could be described as more like a monk's ki powers, then I am okay with the idea.
To be clear, I did not mean for the class to gain focus spells, simply that we could draw inspiration from the effects of that spell to think up new, preferably non spell, abilities.
...so could the summoner's evolution feats.
I don’t particularly like the evolution feat mechanic itself, but yes.
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I'd quite like both the Inquisitor and the Shifter to return to Pathfinder in updated form. With regards to the Shifter, I've posted a brew to the subreddit; my take on the class is the following:
So hopefully I've made the case here for the Shifter. I think the fantasy behind the class is really cool, and if done right could really enable some character concepts and gameplay that currently just isn't served well enough by existing options.
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Personally, I could see shifter being either a general archetype or possibly a barbarian class archetype (basically an enhanced/more versatile Animal instinct). With the barbarian getting a bloodrager class archetype, I suspect a general archetype is more likely.
IMO, "shifting shape into one or more animal forms" is really too narrow to make a separate class.
How about "Shifting into myriad animal forms?"
Granted, that was not the execution in the original shifter, but I think the desire for such a playstyle exists.Plus, a lot of the theoretical advantages of having a character which can at-will (or at least frequently and often) shift shapes, is the ability to do so outside of combat.
In 2e, very few of the barbarian's most notable feature are usable outside of rage, which means they cannot be used outside of rage. Just look at the Elemental Barbarian, which, as written, can't use their impulses outside of rage. That sucks and I'd be sad to see our shifter-equivalent suffer the same fate.
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Personally I'd like a 'shifter' to not just be limited to animal forms. That was one of the problems with the PF1 version and already something there are a handful of ways to do in PF2. A big appeal of having a dedicated class is opening up more options.
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A number of the remaining PF1 classes are hybrids, I doubt we will see them because they don't seem to be doing hybrid classes. Hybrid is being taken care of by the archetype class feat feature.
I would love to see a full martial shifter. I could see something along the lines of one action to shift a body part, shift fully with two actions. Class feats would give you access to different forms or different benefits depending on your form, maybe also some fighter feats like attack of opportunity. I don't think they will give it to us since we have shift focused druid and animal barbarian. Although these options don't full scratch that itch, at least for me, and it sounds like for many others as well. The developers may also be a little gun shy, the pf1 shifter was not a success story.
I think if they ever make a shifter class they would try to merge as much archetypes of the original PF1e class into the PF2e class as possible. Kinda like how barbarian instincts incorporate the flavor of some bloodrager flavors from PF1e. In the case of the shifter, I see them having an animal subclass, dragon subclass, elemental subclass, fey subclass, fiendish sublcass, celestial subclass, probably swarm subclass too, etc.
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Personally, I could see shifter being either a general archetype or possibly a barbarian class archetype (basically an enhanced/more versatile Animal instinct). With the barbarian getting a bloodrager class archetype, I suspect a general archetype is more likely.
IMO, "shifting shape into one or more animal forms" is really too narrow to make a separate class.
Personally, I hope not. I really dislike the vast majority of archetypes I've seen to this point. They seem to be created mostly for flavor text and are pretty weak mechanically. Taking an archetype is like being penalized for wanting a certain flavor for your character. There are some exceptions of course (I like Sentinel, Bastion, Dual Weapon Warrior) but they're mostly bad. Also, Barbarian is one of the most restrictive and limited classes in 2E.
A martial shapeshifter needs to be it's own class and not dragged down by archetype or Barbarian baggage.
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The big thing for PF2 Shifter if one is in the works is to allow folks to stay in forms indefinitely from the entry gate without putting too much of a malus on the character.
Claws? Big deal. Ancestries have them, as do multiple classes.
Martial DC? Eradicated with Class DC.
Flight hamstringing? Not needed with three-action economy. It's a problem that has been erased.
And the list goes on.
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I would love to see them constructed similarly to kineticists, with various abilities being granted by feats that are usable at-will or in a persistent manner.
That way you can build the kind of shifter you want, focusing on a specific theme, or branching out in order to be more versatile (like how a kineticist must choose between one element or many).
In lieu of Channel Energy, maybe allow the shifter to partially transform (such as growing bear claws and making a Strike*) as a single action. Then, if they want to fully transform (into a bear in this example) they could spend a second action (immediately or later) to complete the transformation. If the shifter were in their normal form, and wanted to transform fully into a bear immediately, they could do so as a two-action activity, but as part of it they would also get a free bear claw Strike*.
Like the kineticist, this could all be easily managed with new traits similar to Composite, Impulse, Infusion, and Stance.
This would allow for the concept of fast changing action shifting, or slow methodical shapeshifting, give tons of varied abilities to players to tinker around with, and allow Paizo to control the class balance more easily.