I've been waiting to get 10lvl of shifter before I post it, to check last things. I've asked other shifters, to make sure I am not wrong, but they agree.
I will mostly compare shifter to druid, as it is closest thing and he is natural extension of it.
1. Shifter doesn’t receive bonus feats, contrary to druids.
2. Elephant’s hide and Oaken resilience – Druids can adopt it’s body, but shifters can’t. Even if they could, they lack of wildshape usages to use it effectively.
3. Low abilities DCs – Most monsters and players can beat 20DC without effort.
4. Gargoyle – at the beginning it may be usefull, but quickly becomes useless – literaly everything has at least +1 weapon and pierces his DR.
5. Harpy – no dmg, captivating song does literaly nothing. In theory it charms enemies so they lose hostility, but gain it back as soon as you touch any unaffected enemy anyway, or they will swarm your allies instead. In reality, didn’t manage to trigger it even once while I still tried to make any use of it. - usefull if you want to kill your own allies.
6. Manticore – not sure what to think about this one. Highest STR when you get it, but still much lower than a regular bear, with a bit higher AC though. Spikes are cool, but they hit random targets, allies and objects included. - I see no point in using this shape over Drider aside of RP.
7. Basilisk – Only point in using it is pretrification gaze, but it has 17 DC at max level. - Is there anything that can’t pass it? It has limited casts of gaze per shift as well, which isn’t removed even at 10lvl shifter when you get unlimited number of shifts per rest. So you have potentialy unlimited number of gazes, but you have shift back and forth every three casts of gaze.
8. Large Dire Tiger – 10lvl shifter(which means at least 5druid/10shifter) gets the same shape as druid can get at 12. To compare it to other animal shapes(No wards, but with primeval wild shape feat):
Bear - 29STR, 21AC, 1-8+9 or 2-16+9 dmg
Large Dire tiger - 29STR, 25AC and 2-8+9 or 2-12+9 dmg
And it’s just bear. Not even dire one.
9. Illithid – Three casts of aoe DC20 stun every shift. So up to 9 per rest. Lower DC than any mage spell with comparable level. Again issue either of limited casts or low DC (probably both for „caster” shape)
10. Medusa – Higher stats than basilisk, but lets bo honest, you will use it to turn things to stone as well, it’s medusa afterall. Same DC of gaze as Basilisk at this level, but 3 casts per shift(9 per rest) instead of potentialy unlimited.
11. Every shape is weaker than Druid’s elementals or dire bear(We do not even talk about Polar Bears) and unlike them, you can barely self-ward.
12. Whole class is rather weak compared to others. At most non-epic level servers Shifter is picked only 1lvl for Wyrmling’s True seeing, which is changed here (and I do understand why)
It’s mostly balance things up there.
Of other things:
He is shifter, master of many forms who on Pen’n’Paper can shift into anything. Here every druid overpowers him with his shapes. At the point you get to Dire Tiger shape(10lvl), arcanists are almost able to shapechange into adult dragon or Slaad. Not to point out that, since you can pick verdant wild shape feat, druid gets it at 12lvl instead of 15.
He isn’t supposed to be better than dedicated classes like better frontliner than fighter or barbarian, but at least fill gaps with alternatives. For now he pays high price for geting more shapes, but it doesn’t pay back in other ways than ability to RP. Most PrCs extends base class with new abilities, or gives you more specialised powerfull ones, but shifter gets them taken away without paying back with other things.
Shifter is as well completely not adapted to PotM realm. You learn shapes you never had opportunity to even see in this realm.
To make shifter look good, probably complete rework would be needed, but that's probably not real for now.
My suggestions:
- Bonus feat progression as with druids.
- Non-combat humanoid shapes(!!!!)
- Additional shifter shapes feats( plant, aberration, vermin, magical beast, giant).
- Change shapes to those natural to server.
- Gods, remove those mustaches from drow shape. Elves do not have facial hairs in D&D...
