Arelith

So, I've been playing a shifter in the UD for a while now, and although it's not awful, it's certainly not.. Great, especially early on. The roleplay is really fun, but here are my suggestions for how I think it could be rebuilt to put it in line with more conventional classes - feel free to add or criticise to what I put here.

Greater Wildshape 1 -

I honestly think that these are in a surprisingly good position as being balanced. They're not really powerful, but their free true seeing and infinite breath ability, along with immunities allow them to still be useful at pretty much any level in specific circumstances.

Greater Wildshape 2 -

The main issue with shifter starts showing at this point, that being their incredibly lacklustre stats are way below both what the druid shapes get, and standard characters who have access to the full benefits of enchantments - the only thing that really excels with non-epic shifter forms is their AC - and that's assuming you take monk.

Harpy:

Pretty trash, though their captivating song can be useful in certain situations. I would personally ramp up their dex and strength to make them the 'middle' between the DPS-based minotaur and AC and DR-tanky gargoyle. If possible, I would also change the captivating song ability to something similar to curse song, or some kind of minor party buff that can be used to make them a mini 'support bard'.

Minotaur:

It's clear that this shape is supposed to be a DPS, but it's honestly not worth using once you get Greater Wildshape 3. The merging of weapons is a neat little addition, but the god awful AC and relatively crappy strength don't make up for it. Vamp up the strength, and give them a small boost in AC and the health bonus that they get.

Gargoyle:

The most useful shape out of the Greater Wildshape 2 set. The 15 DR they get is incredibly useful, and fully warded in non-epic levels you can easily get AC nearing 70. The damage is non-existent, but that's alright because of how damn tanky they are. The DR nears ridiculous when it reaches 25 in epic levels, and I honestly wouldn't touch it much as it's in a pretty good place right now.

Greater Wildshape 3 -

Basilisk:

... Why bother using it? A DC 15 petrify attack you get to use a few times each time you shift into it, that runs out after less than a minute, and with pretty crappy stats and health, there's honestly no point in using it in combat. Boost the petrify attack, or give it some kind of infinite or limited ability to cast stoneskin. It generally just needs a boost in everything.

Manticore:

The stats are.. Alright, from what I've seen. I wouldn't use it over the drider, and its main draw being the manticore spikes don't appear to scale with level and also target party members. Buff and change the way manticore spikes work to only target enemies, and this could be a pretty decent shape to take.

Drider:

A really useful shape once you get it at around level 10 or so, but after that it gets outshined by the more powerful Humanoid shapes. The darkness they get is utterly useless and not worth using. A boost in stats, and infinite darkness could make this worthwhile to use even after you get access to humanoid shape. The poison is a nice bonus, too, as well as the weapon merging.

Humanoid Shape -

Drow:

Now we're cooking. The drow shape is similar to drider with the poison and weapon merging, but has more strength and without the big clunky model that the drider possesses. When you recieve it, the stats are perhaps a little low but still definitely workable. The great weapon the epic form of the shape gets is amazing, and it just needs its stats tuned to fit with what other builds can achieved to make it on par.

Lizardfolk:

My personal favourite. A whip with 1d6 electric enchantment that has a small chance of stunning the enemy. Stats are pretty good, maybe needing a little buff, but it's genuinely one of the best shapes. The free freedom from movement and immunity from poison is great, too - and the epic form is just as good. They also get DR, partially assisting with the shifter's lack of survivability.

Kobold:

... Woah, what? Free HIPS, +10 Hide and MS, and a decent dex save for its normal form? The utility of this one is already good enough, but the bonus sneak attack and great AC really make this one. The epic shape is.. Meh, the dex doesn't increase much but honestly if the HIPS is kept in a future possible rework of the class then this really doesn't need much more than it already has.

Greater Wildshape 4 -

Diretiger -

Woo, finally! Decent strength! And it stacks with monk attack progression! It needs more work to get in line with what a pure druid could achieve, but it's in an ok place right now - just like the others, a little tweaking with the stats would make a world of difference.

Medusa -

Suffers from what the basilisk does. Awful stats, awful petrification ability. I'd give it a similar treatment to the basilisk, but giving it some small boons so that you still have reason to use the lesser form in certain circumstances. Poison's alright, I guess - but it's not useful in comparison to other forms.

Illithid -

Weird. Really, really weird. The bonus it gives to mental states instead of overrides is definitely useful, and I'm curious as to see whether or not the int bonus stacks with learning languages, if only temporarily. The abilities are bizzare, but pretty useful, all things considered. Expand the psionic abilities to carve its own niche in the shifters repertoire, and increase the amount of uses in abilities, and you could really make this a unique and useful shape.


Now, I haven't actually reached epic shifter levels on this server yet, but outsider and undead shape really do change the game. The regen and immunities undead shapes give, and the ridiculous nature of the rakshasa with its infinite abilities and immunity to level 8 and below spells could need a tune-up. I'll hopefully continue to add my impressions as I play shifter more, but generally I think the class has a lot of potential.

Minor gripes:

Creature weapons don't stack with weapon focus: unarmed, but do with improved criticals and others. Change this somehow, or somehow give artificial bonuses from taking these feats to the shapes.

Kobold shapes get skills to use traps, but can't use traps while shifted. This is annoying, along with certain other shapes getting use poison, but being unable to use poison.

MAJOR GRIPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE:

The lack of ability to use healing kits. This really is the biggest issue with shifter on this server and really contributes to their lack of survivability. It wouldn't be as big a deal and could be the shifter's weakness if the class actually had any survivability save for the gargoyle shape in the first place.

Thoughts?

I've played a shifter to epic levels before (pre-dragonshape nerfs), and I can add on a little on Undead, golem and Outsider shapes.

Undead Shape:
Risen lord is pretty much the best shape you get for a long, long time. Its DR combined with a straight up 50% immunity to piercing and slashing (the two most common physical damage types) makes it tanky enough to be on the front-line of most epic dungeons without much worry. I'd honestly reduce its tankiness a little as a risen lord in -guard mode can trivialise a lot of encounters in the higher levels, but the damage could stand to get an increase.

Vampire is garbage unless you're a monk. If you are a monk, it's decent but in that case you probably want to stick to the golem shapes because they're way, waaaay better. It's a fantastic RP tool though, since it lets you assume a human looking form. (You also don't suffer from traditional vampire weaknesses, sunlight does nothing to you.)

Spectre is garbage. No way around it, just a bad shape. Gives nothing worthwhile offensively or defensively (the DR is good on paper, but it's still squishy as heck). The only reason I ever used this was because I put ranks in hide/MS and the +15 to them makes it an excellent stealther.

Outsider Shape:
Rakshasa is probably the best all-rounder shape, with formidable DR, a +5 weapon and immunity to all spells level 8 or lower. The spell-like abilities are garbage unless you build specifically for them, at which point you're useless at anything else, and the instant death effect of bless weapon on crossbow bolts that more savvy players will employ is a huge glaring weakness. I wouldn't change anything on this shape however, as it's potent without being OP as is.

Death slaad is largely useless. It's good if you know you'll be facing a rainbow of elemental damage or need to regen a lot of HP relatively quickly, but its combat viability is overshadowed by Rakshasa and Risen lord. If I were to touch it, I'd make chaos spittle more useful, possibly give it some disabling effects.

Azer is trash garbage. The only reason to use the form is if you want fire immunity where it's better for the spot than red wyrmling is (until you get red dragon form). It's far too fragile to be a frontliner and its spell-like abilities are a joke (Burning hands as an epic shape? Ye wot?)

And finally golem shape:
All of these are useful in different niches, I'd say they're pretty well balanced to be honest.

A note on Gargoyle. It needs nerfing. The mere existance of DR15/+1 as a 3rd level shifter ability (Potentially 8th level character) trivializes a large chunk of pre-epic content due to the lack of magical weapons among mobs on Arelith. Using a gargoyle shifter in -guard together with someone who can DPS you can breeze up to the epic levels without ever being in any danger.

All the other shapes except humanoid forms could stand with some buffs, as there is 0 reason to use any of them except for very niche scenarios (Elemental immunity on wyrms, manticore spikes for hitting enemies stuck on cliffs etc) whereas gargoyle will carry you as a tank with its DR, and lizardfolk/drow as semi-decent frontliners.

My own major gripe being that Shifters still don't have access to the reduced WIS requirements for the nerfed dragonshape, pigeonholing any shifter build into pure WIS since dragonshape is the only really good endgame shape.

I agree that the shifter's general problem is that many of the shapes are absolutely useless once you acquire them, and the limited selection of shapes that are viable only a select few scale well as you progress. I agree with the above breakdown of the shapes.

Those that scale well are mostly the shapes with weapon because you can use the merging mechanics to make some real powerful weapons. Merging mechanics are a double edged sword as Arelith's focus on gear with +1 +1 and numerous sources of AC will make it hard to make up for the weakness of your shapes.

Another issue is that most shapes only change two out of three physical stats so in any one shape you will have either a horrid str, con or dex.

If one were to attempt a balancing act I'd focus on making all the basic shapes useful and viable. The shifter's main power should be flexibility and adaptability. They should have shapes with above-average DPS, shapes that are above-average tanks and above average utility. The epic shapes should be strong as they are only 3/day.

The current state of dragon shape is not worth it at all for a shifter I'd say. Don't have it on my shifter so haven't tested it but based on its performance on my druid character I'd wager I'm right. Druids have powerful summons, buff spels and wards to make the dragon semi viable.

Right now you'll find yourself using only a few shapes.

I would not balance around monk lvls. Without monk the dire tiger shape is not on par.

On Amia (another great server, probably dead now though), the design team followed up on the theme of Shifter being a jack-of-all-trades, being able to assume multiple roles through the shapes, and while it was eventually balanced quite nicely, after playing the class I felt the overall purpose the class was assigned made it very very meh. It was like playing a bad anything and playing a bad something is seldom a fun experience, so the class, with all its shapes and quirks designed to keep me entertained, kept me equally bored from the start. I think the philosophy of "being a little adequate at everything" can carry through if the way in which the class is adequate somehow differs from other classes, making it a unique and entertaining experience. Shapeshifter holds promise of a great class, for combat and RP to match, but it probably requires a great deal of work hours and good ideas to be hammered into something that actually works.

In my opinion it's quite bad to more or less force shifters to take monk levels. I have a shifter who cannot take monk levels due to RP reasons and it sucks. (Also due to alignment restrictions).

The second skin armor is a nice boost but it's far from enough. My suggestion would be to grant shifters spell progressions 1:1 for druid, -Just- for the time beeing until the class is somehow reworked. But I think I already suggested that once.

I have no idea how hard it is to improve the shapes coding wise but a boon would certainly be appreciated.

(also maybe more items with high UMD DC that can only be used by shifters)

Classes can be concieved in a lot of ways but on is on a spectrum of burstiness vs. stable performance.
Stable performance (tanking, damage, healing, debuff, utility etc.) vs. bursts of power (tanking, damage, healing, utility, debuff etc.)

The shifter doesn’t score well on either parameter save for those niche situations where a particular shape fits just right.

The regular greater wildshapes should be able to give a stable performance. For instance GW II: Minotaur (tank/bruiser), gargoyle (tank), harpy (debuff/utility), GW III: Dride (bruiser/dps), Manticore (tanky), Basilisk (utility) etc.

The epic shapes with their 3/day could be upgraded to be the bursts of power.

If the prospect of editing all shapes to fit Arelith’s balance doesn’t seem appealing (I can see why not) the easiest fix in my book would be:
•Give shifters a totem shape (with all animal shapes available to totems/via druid wildshape but with identical stats). This will be the bread and butter shape

•Give them monolith shapes 3/day somewhere in epic levels as “bursts”.

I also made this list of assorted suggestions a while ago.

Shifter probably needs a complete revision to fit Arelith’s specific balance. That is a lot of work for a class that hardly anyone plays. But for the few that do, a few tweaks could really go a long way:

- access to a shape with totem stats. Starting at shifter lvl 3 (5 druid + 3 shifter = 8 like starting stats for totem, progressing every 2 shifter lvls after that)
- access to rebalanced elemental shape at shifter (at lvls 6, 11 and 17 or something). Maybe avoid infinite elemental shape to keep it as a trump card
- dragonshape at lvl 11 or any shifter lvl after this if meeting req of 25 wis.
- at lvl 12 gain shapechange as spell-like ability 1/day with an additional use every 2 lvls.

*edit*
- Give shifters the benefit of monk AC without monk lvls
- Let shifter levels count (partially) towards animal companion lvls