| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This could be maybe solved with a general class archetype, but I don't like that every dedicated skill user (mainly rogue and investigator, tome thaumaturge, inventor and commander to a lesser degree) is a martial. I would really enjoy playing a full caster who trades some casting power for being an actual skill monkey.
This kinda makes me want to have a bounded caster that's a rogue-ish skill monkey too. Funnily enough, a mesmerist could fulfill that role since the mesmerist (like bards in PF1e) were fairly skill monkey-y too, though I'd say bards were better in that regard (not like that means anything, if it ever happens that mesmerist is ported over they could just ignore that. Much like how the bard was more martial-y than the mesmerist but we are kinda assuming the mesmerist would be the one with more martial capabilities in an hyphotetic conversion to PF2e). I really would want to see somenoe do a take of this idea.
Maybe this hypothetical Mesmerist could get skill increases like Inventor? (getting a boost at 3rd, 7th and 15th to a social skill or occultism?)
I think that'd be almost good enough without going into full rogue/investigator territory.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree with the idea of a shifter class. But divorced from the idea of "nature as the source". A class that embraces shapeshifting. They'd have free shape shifting among their own speceis, and becoming other species, especially larger or smaller ancestries, would require a focus point. They would be able to shapeshift body parts, making their hands or legs (unarmed attacks) have the versatile B,P,S trait, and maybe become a D6.
They would also have a certain number of "memorized forms". Any other time they try to pretend to be someone else they get a +2 to their deception checks, but if they use a memorized form, it's a +10, number of memorized forms increase as they get higher level.
Subclasses would revolve around HOW they Shift
The Bone shifter, who's biology contorts and visibly changes from one form to another, allowing them to regain some HP as they change shape.
The Ooze Shifter, you are actuall a fluid/ooze, and gain some resistance to precision damage, and/or can deal acid damage back to melee attackers.
The Cloud Shifter, your ability to shift is arcane or fae in nature, and you simply vanish in a puff of smoke and reappear, giving you access to the broadest range of forms.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I want a Mesmerist, someone who can deal *okay* damage but also debuff the enemy at the same time. The only class that can really do that niche is the Rogue with their Debilitating Strikes.
Bomber alchemist also does this thing, though it may not be in the way that you'd prefer. Some bombs have direct debuff effects, and then Debilitating Bombs lets you apply more with an additive.
The problem here is that if you give a class +10 on a skill check, then basically that eliminates the game's ability to say "there are many builds, many character concepts, many choices a player can make and still create a competitive [skill] person." Now, there's only one. You want to be good at deception? You must be a 'shifter. No other class, build, or choice can ever come close.
It's not as bad as you think it is. The Deception check here is very limited in scope. It essentially gives you a limited number of identities, and the ability to switch between them very, very convincingly. There's a lot of situations where it won't apply, and a lot of useful things you can do with deception that have nothing to do with it.
That said, it's still pretty severe. +10 is effectively a full shift - failures become successes, successes become crits, and so forth. You essentially find yourself doing whatever you can to twist your plans and strategies so that you can leverage this one power as much as possible because it really is that good.
I mean.. I'd like to be able to play a shifter who isn't a weirdly overspecialized deception build, you know?
For context, Illusory Disguise grants:
"ignores any circumstance penalties the target might take for disguising itself as a dissimilar creature, gives a +4 status bonus to Deception checks to prevent others from seeing through the disguise, and lets the target add its level to such Deception checks even if untrained."
That said, it's still pretty severe. +10 is effectively a full shift - failures become successes, successes become crits, and so forth.It's better than a full shift because it also offsets other mechanical penalties. PF2E has 'full shift' feats, e.g. "treat a failure as a success" feats...but you still gotta do a regular roll. A feat that does not provide any numerical bonus, but instead lets a shifter 'treat crit fail as a fail, fail as a success [etc]...' on deception checks to disguise themselves (and, uh, ONLY to disguise themselves) would probably be fine. I still wouldn't stick it in the class at L1 though.
I'm honestly perplexed as to what you see as the practical mechanical difference between a full shift (like the kind that you suffer from when throwing incapacitate attacks at higher-level creatures) and a +10, with the implication that the +10 is the stronger of the two options. You seem to think there is one, and that it's significant, but I'm just not seeing it. I'm pretty sure that one of us is confused, and I don't actually know which one.
I mean, there's stuff about how if you're getting a +10 status bonus then you can't also get a +2 status bonus or whatever, but that would make the +10 weaker rather than stronger. Other than that?
The more I see people talking about shifters the more I want to see them in the system lol. I agree the whole concept should probably be divorced from its nature / primal theme (which likely means it would get renamed similar to thaumaturge) but I don't think it should be tied to focus spells. The only other class (that isn't a caster) that has its main gimmick tied to focus spells is, kinda, the inventor, and we know how troublesome that is. I think it should work more like an at-will action that allows to change between a couple of forms, with the more spicy "You gain a +4 bonus to impersonate a particular person" being things you gain through feats.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'd love to see a pure-Occult aberration-themed Shifter. I think there's space for it.
Thus far, though, Paizo hasn't really leaned in on the "creepy" in any of their classes. Witch is about as far as it got, really... so I'm not sure how likely it is
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I could see shifter as a mix between the build a bear-ness of an eidolon and the branching out and picking of themes (and ideally at will-ness) of kineticist. A shifter could pick the type of creature they can change their body into, then at later levels add in more creature types. At the beginning of the game you might pick aberration and be able to grow tentacles or turn into ooze, then at level 5 or what have you, you branch out into angels and can grow wings or a halo. Just full on chimera in the craziest ways.
I could see shifter as a mix between the build a bear-ness of an eidolon and the branching out and picking of themes (and ideally at will-ness) of kineticist. A shifter could pick the type of creature they can change their body into, then at later levels add in more creature types. At the beginning of the game you might pick aberration and be able to grow tentacles or turn into ooze, then at level 5 or what have you, you branch out into angels and can grow wings or a halo. Just full on chimera in the craziest ways.
I love the idea of it, but kineticist was expensive, and I just don't think that Shifter has the kind of throw weight you'd need to justify a branching feats structure.
I'm also not convinced that it craves the kind of balance-math games that a structure like that is designed to support. I feel like most shifters are going to be falling into a fairly tight wedge of roles.
- Pure martial
- relatively light armor by default
- fairly mobile
- probably pretty resilient in general. Some sort of self-healing focus power wouldn't be off-base
- Optional builds that are particularly good at playing around with athletics maneuvers in interesting ways.
- Mostly but perhaps not exclusively using natural weapons.
That's pretty much the "Default shifter" role and...
Oh. Huh.
Honestly it looks an awful lot like the monk. Sure, there are ways to make it more interesting, but I do't really feel like we need "monk, version 2".
So, there's a pretty easy win in giving some sort of class archetype for the druid that drops back to wave caster in return for making you a better fighter in Untamed Form. It's not the thing I want, but there are people who want it, and it's an easy win. Thing is, once you have that, and also monk, and also animal barbarian, there's just not that much space left for "primal shifter" to carve out for its own. At one point there was the idea of "relatively low-damage high-utility all day caster" propping it up, but kineticist ate a big chunk of that while also completely demolishing the "but elementals are part of primal too" side dodge. Now on top of that stuff we have a whole bunch of things coming out of HotW that aren't shifter but that do eat off more nibbles here and there... and that's before we get to the point where we're kind of expecting to actually get a synthesist some day. Oh, and just now we have Commander showing up and claiming the "prepared martial" schtick, so that isn't really a solid claim-to-fame either.
"What makes you special?"
"I'm a primal shifter!"
"Okay, but what makes you special?"
"Uhhh...."
It's like that.
On the occult side... well, if you're channeling aberrant transformations, you can get into debufs and reality-warping and weirdness in a way that the primal side just can't, and that can be the schtick that you get that no one else really gets. There's a pretty deep vein to mine there.
I mean, I'm not saying that I hate the idea of a primal shifter. I don't. I just don't see what space they have left, really.
The commander class shows us an example of how you can essentially build a class halfway between a rogue/inventor and everyone else. You can give one skill automatic progression, then you can have feats that really let the class exploit those skills and have a feat around level 8 that gives additional skill boosts. It would eat into a casters' bag of goodies to get that added to their chassis, so the real question is what you expect the class to do with spells, because the only real point of wave casting is to have spells heighten to a rank that you can use them offensively.
The commander class shows us an example of how you can essentially build a class halfway between a rogue/inventor and everyone else. You can give one skill automatic progression, then you can have feats that really let the class exploit those skills and have a feat around level 8 that gives additional skill boosts. It would eat into a casters' bag of goodies to get that added to their chassis, so the real question is what you expect the class to do with spells, because the only real point of wave casting is to have spells heighten to a rank that you can use them offensively.
You seem to be responding to things here - multiple things, I think, but I'm not at all clear what things you're responding to.
I made my own shifter homebrew that is a class archetype for druids that turns them into a bounded caster, changes te KAS to Strength or Dexterity, and gives them magus progression on weapons and spells. I also took the untamed shift focus spell and turned it into a focus cantrip for them. I haven't playtest it yet, but I feel is very in-line with stuff Paizo is likely going to do with that harbinger archetype that will make clerics into bounded casters too.
Holy cow on a cracker that's strong. At least IMO. I don't think PF2E is designed with that sort of specialization in mind. The problem here is that if you give a class +10 on a skill check, then basically that eliminates the game's ability to say "there are many builds, many character concepts, many choices a player can make and still create a competitive [skill] person." Now, there's only one. You want to be good at deception? You must be a 'shifter. No other class, build, or choice can ever come close.
That said, it's still pretty severe. +10 is effectively a full shift - failures become successes, successes become crits, and so forth. You essentially find yourself doing whatever you can to twist your plans and strategies so that you can leverage this one power as much as possible because it really is that good.
I mean.. I'd like to be able to play a shifter who isn't a weirdly overspecialized deception build, you know?
It's better than a full shift because it also offsets other mechanical penalties. PF2E has 'full shift' feats, e.g. "treat a failure as a success" feats...but you still gotta do a regular roll. A feat that does not provide any numerical bonus, but instead lets a shifter 'treat crit fail as a fail, fail as a success [etc]...' on deception checks to disguise themselves (and, uh, ONLY to disguise themselves) would probably be fine. I still wouldn't stick it in the class at L1 though.
So going by the way Paizo sort-of designed the kineticist, an 'all day, any time, requires feat investment' version of that should only become available at L3. Something that gives a better bonus than that, at L1, on all deception checks, as a class feature...maybe no? At least, were I a GM and a player suggested it, I'd send it back for a rewrite. :)
So uh, that really overpowered +10 to deception checks to maintain a specific identity you have to choose in advance. The one that is so far out of bounds Paizo would never allow anything even close to it, and the best you could hope for is maybe a roll shift as a mid level feat?
It already exists.
More than that, it's a bad level 2 feat. Nobody talks about it. I hardly ever seen it get taken.
Actually, the feat is even more wild than that. It doesn't just give you a +10, or a roll shift. It gives you a +∞ to your deception checks to maintain the disguise.
Normally when you interact with someone with a disguise, you make a secret Deception check. Even with a +10 like our shifter enthusiast suggested, someone with a high perception has a chance to see through you, or you might roll bad and bungle the disguise. The vigilante sidesteps the check altogether. A vigilante with a deception of +0 (someone with 8 Cha, trained, who's been stupefied 3), effectively auto-succeeds against someone with a Perception DC of 40. Or 90. Or 900.
So not only is there precedent for "gets to hang out in a specific predetermined identity without being easily exposed", but it's vastly stronger than what the poster in question selected and even then is still a shit feat from any kind of optimization standpoint.
The vigilante doesn't impersonate a specific person (like, for example, a king or other important figure) it literally impersonates an identity (i.e a person that doesn't exists) that you yourself create. That's way different than someone polymorphing themselves as the king of a nation, kill them, and take their place forever.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As much as I'd love to see a Shifter class in 2E, I've given up on ever getting that. If Paizo didn't introduce it in Howl of the Wild, then we're never getting it. Too bad, because I think Kineticist provides the perfect template for a Shifter class. Obviously they'd have to replace the elemental powers with body morphing type abilities, but it's very feasible.
Since Shifter obviously ain't gonna happen, the other thing I'd love to see is a Synthesist Summoner. I'm more optimistic we'll get this one than the Shifter.
|
|
Okay, so Things I'm hearing that I agree should change: the +10 on memorized forms. Okay, I can understand that's a bit high. I think I must have read the vigilante feat that was just referenced because I was going off of something I half remembered. But I can accept +10 is too much.
I also heard someone mention it might be best to move this to a level three ability, which makes sense. Also, I do want to clarify the limitations. You can only have two memorized forms. To memorize a form you must spend at least 1 hour around someone to memorize not just their appearance, but their movement, their voice, their mannerisms. this represents not just you looking exactly like them, this represents you behaving like them too. Maybe lower the bonus to a +5, and which type (circumstance or Status) would be best?
And As to the "it's just a monk" No. While all of those are also things I want the shifter to do, they are also a shapeshifter. able to take on new faces at a moment's notice.
As much as I'd love to see a Shifter class in 2E, I've given up on ever getting that. If Paizo didn't introduce it in Howl of the Wild, then we're never getting it. Too bad, because I think Kineticist provides the perfect template for a Shifter class. Obviously they'd have to replace the elemental powers with body morphing type abilities, but it's very feasible.
Since Shifter obviously ain't gonna happen, the other thing I'd love to see is a Synthesist Summoner. I'm more optimistic we'll get this one than the Shifter.
So the Kineticist was a lot more work for Paizo than any class before it, but one of the reasons that work was worth doing is that the Kineticist was extremely popular in PF1. So you had an existing base of players who were very fond of the class or its themes, which is going to make a playtest more useful and it's going to make selling a book where that's the only new class more palatable.
The same is less true about the Shifter, which was probably PF1's least popular class, and almost every other way of "shift into battle forms" worked better in PF1 (like the metamorph alchemist.)
I think in PF2 they were very careful to make sure that players don't just sift through the bestiary to find the best stuff to transform into, as battle form spells are fairly limited (and not, like, automatically better than martials). It seems like might be hard to balance that so that Wild Form druids are still playable, and you're not better than the Animal Barbarian, while also making it interesting.
Shifter and Synthesist Summoner could be combined into a single Summoner Class Archetype, perhaps?
Lose Act Together, Share Senses and Manifest Eidolon. Give it martial progression and a 1 action focus cantrip 'Shift into Eidolon Form', gaining its armor, attacks, evolutions, etc. Gear would be absorbed into the form, but it wouldn't count as a battle form.
In return for losing Act Together and the Eidolon as a separate entity lets reduce the action cost of Evolution Surge to 1 while shifted and give it the additional option to grant an evolution feat of a level up to spellrank.
And because it might still need something to not be a downgrade from a regular summoner perhaps something like the fighter's Combat Flexibility class feature, but for evolution feats.
That wouldn't work. The Synthesist Summoner merges with his/her Eidolon to become one being. That has nothing to do with shapeshifting. Entirely different concepts.
I mean, the 'problem' with shifter is that there's three concepts people want that can't really be the same class:
1. The 'wild shifter', drawing heavily on the untamed druid and animal barbarian, that shifts into forms with strong unarmed attacks and widespread mobility options, at the cost of no hands. Most of the power budget is going towards the attack options and mobility, and feats largely enhance these. At later levels, might unlock elemental damage or breath attacks, but still firmly in the realms of being a single kind of physical attacker at a time.
2. The 'aberrant shifter', focusing on flexibility and bizarreness. Wants to be able to mix-and-match features from forms, and early access to 'weird' things like resistances, ooze immunities, 15ft reach tentacles and the like. Ability to pull defensive and utility tricks out of a hat means anemic base attacks.
3. The 'doppelganger', focused on being to imitate anybody. Heavy skill focus, retains ability to use weapons and spells, likely have extremely weak combat morphing ability to make up for that (possibly an expanded untamed form that includes more form spells)
Needless to say, they can't all be the same class, power budget wise. And no, class archetypes aren't the solution either, each one wants to chop up forms in a different way. Probably the issue with commiting to a shifter is that although the combined voice calling for one is large, it's split across mutually incompatible concepts, so the actual audience is about half that size.
The Doppelganger was never part of the 1E Shifter's skill set, so I have no idea why that would need to be included in a Shifter class. The first two options you mentioned are more than feasible in one class, they would just be considered subclasses. That said, it really doesn't matter cuz we're never getting an actual shapeshifter class.
It's pathetic imo that 2E is so inflexible and restrictive that it can't support as common and popular a concept as "shapeshifter". I mean, almost every genre of fiction, not to mention RPGs, has shapeshifters. Everything from fantasy to superheroes to sci-fi has shapeshifters.
It's sad that 2E limits that concept to those awful battle form spells.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
2e has shapeshifter. Untamed druids and any caster with a polymorph spell does that. You don't like them, and most people don't, but that's far from "PF2e is so inflexible and restrictive that it can have a shapeshifter".
2e has shapeshifter. Untamed druids and any caster with a polymorph spell does that. You don't like them, and most people don't, but that's far from "PF2e is so inflexible and restrictive that it can have a shapeshifter".
Those are just spells that most casters have access to. That's not the same as a character whose main ability is shapeshifting, in the same way that a character doesn't have the ability to "control fire" just cause they know the Fireball spell.
I mean, that's how it was in PF1e too AFAIK (I'm probably misremembering though). Even shifters without wild shape were only "half-shifting" or just shifting only parts of their body (mostly their hands). I also don't remember how it is in 5e, though I do remember it is bonkers lol.
But anyways, the only example in a well known ttrpg of a class which whole thing is shapeshifting is the PF1e shifter. Druids are nature casters first, shifters second, even back in 3.5 only PrCs were built around shapeshifting (which, to be fair, isn't that surprising since there was PrCs for literally everything in 3.5). I also find the argument of "if its a spell it doesn't count" to be really weird when literally untamed druid's focus is to be a shapeshifter. Its like if elemental blasting wasn't a thing before kineticist. Yes, that's the class that does it the best, but there were blasters before too.
The various monster/shifter class concepts are solvable problems, which I'm actually fairly deep into a homebrew effort on. Paizo has more than enough talent and 2E is an extremely good toolset to build with, and even the lore is quite perfect for it given fleshwarps, grafts, and transformation and body mod features. It's just a matter of them deciding it's a concept they want to spend resources on.
From what I've seen, the biggest challenge is limiting unintended interactions, such as blocking attacks from battle forms, followed by striking the right balance between customization and readability.
It's pathetic imo that 2E is so inflexible and restrictive that it can't support as common and popular a concept as "shapeshifter". I mean, almost every genre of fiction, not to mention RPGs, has shapeshifters. Everything from fantasy to superheroes to sci-fi has shapeshifters.
Why do you think it's a 2e limitation? It's not like PF2e lacking this kind of class is somehow missing something essential to the fiction, D&D lineage games have never cared much for dedicated shapeshifting.
Like, shapeshifters are really cool and I wish there was more mechanical support in PF2e, but it's bizarre to talk about the failures of PF2 and "common and popular" concepts when the thing people in this thread are asking for has literally never existed in any edition of Pathfinder or D&D.
It's sad that 2E limits that concept to those awful battle form spells.
This is an especially weird take, imo, since battle form spells are probably one of the best implementations of the mechanic we have in d20. It solves the SRD problem of relying on innate physical statistics for shapeshifting, which undermined both the mechanics and the fantasy of the concept, without running into the overhead and jank that something like 5e's shapeshifting does.
The numbers on battle forms are generally tuned to only be pretty good rather than full martial, but that's a mechanical concession to the nature of the spells, not some fundamental systemic failing.
|
|
I would NOT say that PF2e Is limited in concept and inflexible. It has structure, which any class or other material must build on, but from that structure, like the structure of melody, so much variation arises.
So, I never played PF1e, I don't know the PF1e Shifter, BUT I do know that they have changed a lot of mechanics on what they did bring forward. And I'm describing the Shapeshifting class that I want. Not necessarily the Shifter 2e class.
I would leave the combat shapes similar to the Untamed druid to be a limited feature of the subclass I called the Bone Shifter, maybe coppying the Untamed Druid's use of the focus spell, giving Temp HP and maybe even some healing whenever you use shifting.
There would be feat trees to focus different ways you can form unarmed attacks, giving them different properties, but nothing would ever allow your unarmed attacks to go above a d8.
While shape changing is at will, it only gives you a +1 or +2 bonus to deception at first (not including Memorized forms) because you still have to sell who you are through your own skills.
This build is more about deception and disguises, and unarmed attacks in it's base kit.
Monsters typically have some basic attacks, a combat style to use them a certain way (e.g. Draconic Frenzy) and some limited-use big whammy gimmicks (e.g. breath weapons with 1d4 round recharges). This is comparable to a martial character with focus spells. Kineticist's Weapon Infusion is a good example on how to add granular shapeshifting to a character.
I mean, the 'problem' with shifter is that there's three concepts people want that can't really be the same class:
1. The 'wild shifter', drawing heavily on the untamed druid and animal barbarian, that shifts into forms with strong unarmed attacks and widespread mobility options, at the cost of no hands. Most of the power budget is going towards the attack options and mobility, and feats largely enhance these. At later levels, might unlock elemental damage or breath attacks, but still firmly in the realms of being a single kind of physical attacker at a time.
2. The 'aberrant shifter', focusing on flexibility and bizarreness. Wants to be able to mix-and-match features from forms, and early access to 'weird' things like resistances, ooze immunities, 15ft reach tentacles and the like. Ability to pull defensive and utility tricks out of a hat means anemic base attacks.
3. The 'doppelganger', focused on being to imitate anybody. Heavy skill focus, retains ability to use weapons and spells, likely have extremely weak combat morphing ability to make up for that (possibly an expanded untamed form that includes more form spells)
Needless to say, they can't all be the same class, power budget wise. And no, class archetypes aren't the solution either, each one wants to chop up forms in a different way. Probably the issue with commiting to a shifter is that although the combined voice calling for one is large, it's split across mutually incompatible concepts, so the actual audience is about half that size.
I feel like #3 is better as an archetype, and possibly one with a bunch of skill feats. Basically all of its awesome is bound up in noncombat things, and I could totally see it as a powerset that would fit on a wizard, a witch, a rogue, a bard....
I've already spoken on my position on the other two. I don't feel like relentless reiteration really benefits anything.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would agree that a basic doppelganger works best as an archetype. The toolset is mostly Deception buffs and some basic mind reading powers, maybe with some illusions or light conjuring.
It's pathetic imo that 2E is so inflexible and restrictive that it can't support as common and popular a concept as "shapeshifter". I mean, almost every genre of fiction, not to mention RPGs, has shapeshifters. Everything from fantasy to superheroes to sci-fi has shapeshifters.Why do you think it's a 2e limitation? It's not like PF2e lacking this kind of class is somehow missing something essential to the fiction, D&D lineage games have never cared much for dedicated shapeshifting.
Like, shapeshifters are really cool and I wish there was more mechanical support in PF2e, but it's bizarre to talk about the failures of PF2 and "common and popular" concepts when the thing people in this thread are asking for has literally never existed in any edition of Pathfinder or D&D.
It's sad that 2E limits that concept to those awful battle form spells.This is an especially weird take, imo, since battle form spells are probably one of the best implementations of the mechanic we have in d20. It solves the SRD problem of relying on innate physical statistics for shapeshifting, which undermined both the mechanics and the fantasy of the concept, without running into the overhead and jank that something like 5e's shapeshifting does.
The numbers on battle forms are generally tuned to only be pretty good rather than full martial, but that's a mechanical concession to the nature of the spells, not some fundamental systemic failing.
I'm not entirely sure why you would say no edition of D&D has ever had a shapeshifter when 1E had the Shifter, as well as Wild Shape options for several other classes, not to mention Strength-based Druids who actually benefitted from Wild Shape, unlike 2E Druids who can't use Strength. And Wild Shape in 1E was really flexible and actually worth using, unlike the 2E Battle Forms which are underpowered, restrictive and limiting.
Thing is, I can understand why they'd make battle forms so bad, since they're being used by full casters with many other abilities. What I don't understand is why there isn't a viable non-caster shapeshifter class option when so many people have been asking for one for years. Instead they're developing the Guardian, which almost nobody asked for and most people hate *sigh*.
I think the design point tension is that in terms of game design, the druid should not be more powerful in combat than the fighter just because the druid turned into a T. Rex. We're talking about one character who invested their entire budget on "fighting" and another who took two feats and used a focus point, the latter should never obviate the former.
But in terms of selective realism, it feels like "turning into a T.Rex" should make you much more dangerous than the guy with the cool sword, even if the guy with the cool sword kills T.Rexes with it.
I'm not entirely sure why you would say no edition of D&D has ever had a shapeshifter when 1E had the Shifter, as well as Wild Shape options for several other classes, not to mention Strength-based Druids who actually benefitted from Wild Shape, unlike 2E Druids who can't use Strength. And Wild Shape in 1E was really flexible and actually worth using, unlike the 2E Battle Forms which are underpowered, restrictive and limiting.
Thing is, I can understand why they'd make battle forms so bad, since they're being used by full casters with many other abilities. What I don't understand is why there isn't a viable non-caster shapeshifter class option when so many people have been asking for one for years. Instead they're developing the Guardian, which almost nobody asked for and most people hate *sigh*.
The 1E shifter was lousy. It just wasn't very good. Also, the post you're responding to never said "no edition of D&D has ever had a shapeshifter". They said "D&D lineage games have never cared much for dedicated shapeshifting." and "the thing people in this thread are asking for has literally never existed in any edition of Pathfinder or D&D"
It's clear that "the thing people in this thread are asking for" isn't just "a shapeshifter". After all, we *do* have the druid, and "druid who fights in Untamed Form a lot" is a viable character. It might not be what we want it to be, but it's not awful.
...and no, we haven't really had a dedicated shapeshfter. The PF1 shifter was basically a standard martial with a few tricks, and generally disappointing. The wild shape ranger still had a fairly solid set of non-shapeshifting ranger skills. The 4e Warden couldn't shapeshift without blowing a daily slot, and even then it was more a consolidated set of buffs than a real shapeshifting. The 3.x warshaper was cool, but, again, it was more about leveraging shapeshifting to buff standard melee combat than about using shapeshifting to replace it. There was the 3.x prestige class that would turn you into a bear while raging, but that's basically just the animal barb. The totemist out of incarnum was pretty cool, but they were very much the "you design a single warform" type, rather than being someone who'd take on different shifts depending on the situation. An egoism-focused psionic, maybe? I mean, they got close in some ways, but they'd still be doing a lot of their schtick in something that was pretty darned close to the form they were born in. SF1 evolutionist?
Also, you're flat wrong about the Guardian. "Please could we have a defense-focused martial who isn't religious-based" has been something that people have been asking for pretty hard for a while. Shifter's been on the list, sure, but I'm not convinced that the clamor has been greater for the one than the other... and I really wouldn't call it "most people hate". The current form is undertuned, and it needs a bit more work, and the playtest has indicated that... but that doesn't mean that people in general hate it, and also that's what a playtest is for. Playtest classes are supposed to be undertuned (a bit). That's how they get the best feedback.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's worth looking how the 1e Shifter actually worked. You only got the ability to "shift into a specific form from a curated list" at 5th level, and you got another form every 5 levels. A lot of the Shifter's power budget was from "minor forms" that just gave you thematic buffs related to the animal (e.g. bat gave you darkvision, bull gave you +STR) for a limited number of turns/day.
From where I sit, the 1e version of the Shifter is kind of like a more defensive version of the Animal Instinct Barbarian who is less invested in a specific animal, but can only really turn into one animal from the first half of their career.
It's also pretty clear that the reaction to the Shifter left a bad taste in Paizo's mouth, since they instituted the "we're not going to release a class without playtesting it" rule shortly after its release. This was also partly motivated by how toxic some of the PF1 playtests got, so they needed to think about how to run these things better since PF2 was right around the corner.