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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lorehead" data-source="post: 2819103" data-attributes="member: 40086">Four out of five posters agree: adaptable crunch plus an example of fluff give us the best of both worlds.  That's what the shapeshift alternative class feature gives us.  As you point out, the predator form can look like a wolf or a panther.  I fail to see why this is less flavorful than telling us to use any Medium creature of the animal type with 5 HD or less.  What "flavor" does wild shape have that this lacks?What I particularly like about this alternative is that it removes the biggest headaches of arbitrary-form effects.  It's simpler than wild shape.  The effects are right there in the stat block.  They're additive, so they scale intelligently with both class level and character level.  You don't need to look through the eleven books listed on page 41 to compare the game statistics for every possible form.  The ability no longer becomes unbalanced the moment any designer publishes an animal that synergizes too well with it.  (It needn't even be overpowered as an encounter; it only needs relatively low HD and good abilities that the wild shaping druid gets to use.)  Physical stats are no longer dump stats from level 5 on up.  And the druid finally gives up Natural Spell for the sake of balance.This is a very elegant replacement for polymorph-style shapeshifting.  In fact, it's a lot more like <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=161608" target="_blank">what I came up with</a> than the polymorph-subschool spells in the book.</blockquote>

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