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Hello! I’m playing an Animal Instinct Barbarian Beastkin in a game that uses the Free Archetype house rule. So far, I’ve taken the Wrestler archetype for the first seven levels, and it’s been awesome! However, I want to dive deeper into my character’s Bear Beastkin background since it's a central part of his identity, especially with all the werecreatures in our campaign.
I know there’s a Werecreature Archetype, but I don’t want my character to actually be one. Instead, I thought it would be cool for Beastkin characters to embrace their animal nature more.
Below is my attempt at expanding on this idea. I’d love your feedback—I see this as a starting point, not a finished product. All the abilities I’ve included are inspired and directly copied from the Werecreature, Claw Dancer, Wild Mimic, and Martial Artist archetypes, with similar levels and mechanics. The flavor and names for some of them were changed. Not sure if it’s cool to post that published material here.
Unlike the weak werecreatures, shackled by an ancient curse to shift under the full moon’s gaze, or the lesser beastkin born from accidents, fleeting gifts, or the fickle magic of gods and fey, you are something greater. You are the true child of the wild. Your beastkin blood runs deep, and instead of resisting its primal call, you revel in the raw power coursing through your veins.
While many werecreatures struggle for control, helpless against the animal within, you are no diseased werecreature. You are something rare and untamed—a Beastkin Ascendant, the apex of your beastkin lineage. Unlike the cursed werecreatures, whose very essence teeters on the brink of disease, only the strongest of their kind can even dream of what you are—a true master of both beast and self. You are what they aspire to be and what society fears most: the wilderness, embodied in humanoid form, with full dominion over your transformations.
This level of mastery is rare. Many like you are hunted down in cities as if they were common werecreatures, while others fall to the were-curse, desperate for a place to belong. Long ago, Beastkin Ascendants roamed the earth when mankind was still new and the wilds ruled supreme, before people spoke of the beastkin as they do today. But now, those capable of achieving such power are either too enamored with civilization or too terrified of the beast within, fearing—out of ignorance of the old ways—that they are no different from the cursed werecreatures.
Only the bold, those who refuse to be confined by the werecreature community or the trappings of society, possess the heart to ascend. You are one of the few—a master of your wild nature, untamed, unrelenting, and unbreakable.
Beastkin Ascendant Dedication - Feat 2
Rare Archetype Dedication
Prerequisites: Beastkin ancestry; Dexterity or Strength 4; trained in intimidation
You have ascended to the pinnacle of your kind, surpassing the natural limits of ordinary beastkin. You gain a 1st-level Beastkin ancestry feat of your choice. Your hybrid form's bite attack improves to 1d8, and you gain a claw attack (1d6 slashing, agile). Additionally, you become trained in Nature or Survival (your choice), or Occultism if you're already trained in both.
Beastial Pounce - [Two Actions] Feat 4
Archetype Flourish
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Requirements: You are in hybrid form and have two free claws.
Channeling your primal instincts, you surge forward with blinding speed, ready to strike with lethal precision. You Leap, and if you end your movement next to an enemy, you deliver two ferocious unarmed claw strikes. These strikes follow normal multiple attack penalty rules. However, if both strikes miss, your momentum carries you off balance, causing you to fall prone at the end of your Leap.
Apex Speed - Feat 4
Archetype
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
You’re adept at using your hybrid shape’s natural means of locomotion. While you’re in hybrid form, your speed increases by 10 feet. This is a status bonus.
Apex Senses - Feat 4
Archetype
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
The eyes and noses of Beastkin Ascendant are naturally sharper than most humanoids. While in your hybrid shape, you gain low‑light vision and imprecise scent with a range of 30 feet.
Cornered Animal [Two Actions] - Feat 8
Archetype Flourish
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Requirements: You are in hybrid form and are flanked.
You become more dangerous when surrounded by enemies. You make unarmed Strikes against two different creatures flanking you. The attacks take a –2 penalty if the unarmed weapon is not agile. Both attacks count toward your multiple attack penalty, but the penalty doesn’t increase until after you’ve made both of them.
You Don't Smell Right - Feat 8
Archetype
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
You have an unparalleled connection to your primal senses, allowing you to detect other shapeshifters and impersonators alike. You gain scent as an imprecise sense with a 30-foot range, or extend your existing scent range by 30 feet. When a creature that has transformed or is impersonating a specific creature passes within your scent range, the GM makes a secret Perception check for you to detect the deception, even without taking the Seek action. If you actively Seek within your scent range, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Perception checks to identify disguised or transformed creatures.
Savage Takedown [Two Actions] - Feat 10
Archetype
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Requirements: You are in hybrid form and using natural attacks.
Tapping into your primal instincts, you pounce on your prey, aiming to drag them to the ground. Make a bite unarmed Strike. For this Strike, your attack gains the fatal d12 trait. If the attack hits, you also knock the target prone, overpowering them with raw beastly force.
Apex Form - Feat 10
Archetype Primal
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Your hybrid shape is a hulking beast. While in your hybrid shape, you gain the effects of enlarge. At 18th level the effect acts as enlarge heightened to 4th rank.
Relentless Attack [Reaction] - Feat 10
Archetype Flourish
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Trigger: A creature within your reach uses a move action or leaves a square during a move action.
With the instincts of a natural predator, you quickly strike to keep your prey from escaping. Make a claw or bite unarmed Strike against the triggering creature. If you score a critical hit and the trigger was a move action, you disrupt that action. If you hit and the creature leaves a square adjacent to you, you may Step into that square, keeping your prey close at hand.
Ascendant Roar [Two Actions] - Feat 12
Archetype Primal Sonic
Prerequisites: Beastlord Ascendant
Frequency: Once per 10 minutes
You unleash a roar that reverberates with the raw power of the apex predator. All creatures within a 15-foot emanation take 8d6 sonic damage and must attempt a Fortitude save against your class DC. The damage increases by 2d6 at 14th level and every 2 levels thereafter.
Critical Success: The creature is unaffected.
Success: The creature takes half damage.
Failure: The creature takes full damage and is stunned 1. If adjacent to you, the creature is
also frightened 1 for 1 round.
Critical Failure: The creature takes double damage, is stunned 2, and if adjacent to you, is
frightened 1 for 1 minute.
Your roar embodies the strength and authority of the wild, marking you as the undisputed master of beastkin.
Predator's Charge [Three Actions] - Feat 14
Archetype Flourish
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Frequency: Once per minute
Drawing upon the raw power of your beastial heritage, you unleash a feral burst of speed and strength, tearing through your enemies with savage precision. You Stride, and this movement does not trigger reactions. During your movement, you may make up to three claw or bite unarmed Strikes, each against a different enemy. Each Strike counts toward your multiple attack penalty, but the penalty does not increase until you have made all your attacks.
As its own, I think this is a solid archetype for someone looking to make their beastkin heritage a bigger part of their character, and all of the feats included are appropriate too, with the dedication feat looking balanced. If someone took a beastkin and wanted to take this archetype, I'd allow it without issue.
If we're comparing this to the Clawdancer, however, I do think there's room still for a slightly different archetype that caters to shapeshifters in general, with feats that would provide benefits while polymorphed like action compression, better offense and/or defense, and so on. There's a huge demand for these kinds of benefits, whether it's players wanting a stronger beastkin or more out of their battle form spells, and an archetype that simply had some kind of self-polymorph effect as a prerequisite could cover all of those bases. One of the benefits of the Clawdancer archetype in my opinion is that although it meshes perfectly with the catfolk ancestry, it's open-ended enough that anyone with the right unarmed attack can opt into it as well: something similar could be done here for a shapeshifter archetype that expected you to be able to take on a different shape, which would obviously work well for a beastkin but also be able to accommodate other builds and character concepts.
As its own, I think this is a solid archetype for someone looking to make their beastkin heritage a bigger part of their character, and all of the feats included are appropriate too, with the dedication feat looking balanced. If someone took a beastkin and wanted to take this archetype, I'd allow it without issue.
If we're comparing this to the Clawdancer, however, I do think there's room still for a slightly different archetype that caters to shapeshifters in general, with feats that would provide benefits while polymorphed like action compression, better offense and/or defense, and so on. There's a huge demand for these kinds of benefits, whether it's players wanting a stronger beastkin or more out of their battle form spells, and an archetype that simply had some kind of self-polymorph effect as a prerequisite could cover all of those bases. One of the benefits of the Clawdancer archetype in my opinion is that although it meshes perfectly with the catfolk ancestry, it's open-ended enough that anyone with the right unarmed attack can opt into it as well: something similar could be done here for a shapeshifter archetype that expected you to be able to take on a different shape, which would obviously work well for a beastkin but also be able to accommodate other builds and character concepts.
Dude, thanks so much for the feedback! I'm really glad to hear you think the archetype feels balanced! It means a lot that you'd allow it in your game without any hesitation, because that’s exactly what I was aiming for when putting this together. Great to know I’m not way off on the power level!
As for your point about a broader shapeshifter archetype, I think it would be super cool to have something that gives shapeshifters a bigger toolkit to work with. The idea of action compression and better offense/defense while polymorphed is awesome. Do you think we could achieve that within this archetype by adding new feats at 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and so on to target that concept? If so, what existing abilities could we re-flavor into it?Alternatively, I’ve been thinking this could actually lead to a couple of archetypes. This one I posted for beastkin ascendant land, another for beastkin ascendant aquatic, and maybe a separate shapeshifter-specific archetype that focuses on more fluid transformation mechanics? Dude, that would mean players would have a beastkin option (for land or sea), a dedicated shifter option, and a werewolf option covering most bases! It might not hit every player's vision perfectly (because let’s be real, nothing ever does), but it’d get pretty damn close to hitting all the major archetypes people want with these concepts.
The idea of an archetype where you can shift into different forms is super exciting to me. It’d definitely make players feel like they’re getting the most out of their transformations.
Thanks again for the insight! You’ve really got my brain going on new ideas. I appreciate it!
An absolute pleasure, I'm very glad I could help! I think there's definitely room for a variety of shapeshifting archetypes depending on what players want out of them. With respect to the Beastkin Ascendant, here's what I'd say:
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An absolute pleasure, I'm very glad I could help! I think there's definitely room for a variety of shapeshifting archetypes depending on what players want out of them. With respect to the Beastkin Ascendant, here's what I'd say:
If the aim is to make the archetype open to more shapeshifters, you could change the prerequisite to "you have a single-action or two-action polymorph ability that affects yourself", and then change the dedication benefits a little to accommodate any shapeshifter, with the improved attacks coming in at level 4. This would allow both beastkin and non-beastkin shapeshifters to opt into the archetype.
I'll have to see if an existing ability does this, but one suggestion I'd make is to include a free action triggered when you roll initiative that lets you immediately shapeshift with a polymorph action (with the caveat that it can only ever target yourself, and if it takes 2 actions to use then you become stunned 1). This could even be one of the dedication benefits, and would offer instant action compression.
One ability that'd be useful to have for some shapeshifter builds is to let you use your own AC when transforming into a battle form if yours is higher.
Aerial and aquatic forms are likely benefits you could enable with feats within the archetype, perhaps even feat chains if there are multiple benefits to be had for a committed player. Feats like the Summoner's Amphibious Form and Glider Form could probably be used as inspiration here.
For something more specific, like lycanthropy, I'd definitely recommend implementing a different archetype, since at that point shapeshifting would be one subset of what that theme sets out to fulfil, with the curse and its implications being another major aspect that a beastkin or other shapeshifter wouldn't necessarily want to take on.
I do agree as well that a shapeshifter who specifically wants to transform into as...
Awesome. Since it doesn’t look like my DM is going to allow this for now, I think I’ll tinker with it in the future and build off some of the things we’ve talked about to make it even better and balanced. I actually didn’t include the free-action transformation in the archetype because there’s already one in the Beastkin heritage and archetypes like the Werewolf’s Pouncing Transformation, which lets you shift and put someone flatfooted, which is less powerful then an attack though. Both of those could totally be a scaffold for a reskinned ability to fit here.
For the AC boost, I like the idea of a lesser version of the Barbarian’s Animal Skin ability. Maybe just a +1 to keep the Barbarian’s version as the gold standard, but still give shapeshifters a solid defense boost. And yeah, I’m leaning toward making a full aquatic Beastkin archetype so every ability fits perfectly in that environment, rather than trying to shoehorn aquatic stuff into the general Beastkin Ascendant. I will be using both of your suggestions as the start of that idea though because those are great. And as we said, a separate archetype for fluidly shifting between forms sounds like the best approach for players who want that versatility. The archetype I’m building can stay focused on combat-shifting, while the other would give more variety in transformations.Here would be my attempts at some of the additions you mentioned:
Primal Hide - Feat 8
Primal, Transmutation
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Trigger: You enter hybrid form.
Your hybrid form enhances your natural defenses. While in hybrid form and unarmored, your skin transforms into a thick hide. You gain a +1 item bonus to AC, and your Dexterity modifier to AC is capped at +3. This item bonus stacks with armor potency runes on explorer’s clothing, mage armor, and bracers of armor.
Savage Shift [One Action] - Feat 12
Flourish, Primal, Transmutation
Prerequisites: Beastkin Ascendant Dedication
Requirements: Your hybrid form has a land Speed only.
You seamlessly blend movement with transformation. You shift into your hybrid form and immediately make a Strike. Any creature adjacent to you at the end of your transformation can be the target of this attack.
Not sure about Savage Shift, might be too good.
Thanks again for all the ideas, you’ve got my creative gears turning!