What do you want in a shapeshifting class?

[aramis erak]

I never had an issue with the shapeshifter druid. It does what I expect it to as a GM, and my players weren't complaining about it. Including the one playing one.

As a GM, I don't want to deal with partial shifts - they're a hassle in every implementation I've encountered them in.
I don't want uses per day - that's just one more thing to track and enforce.
I don't mind half-transitions as long as they're a stable form - WWG's Werewolves having 3 forms — Human, Wolfman, Wolf — and them being long term stable, leads to them being prefigured, and thus readily used.

But my issue with the D&D 5 is that players have so many choices that it creates some analysis paralysis, and that it's limited to ones previously encountered leads to a "Pokémon" mode - gotta get 'em all! (Literally, player had a list of eligible monsters, and ticked off the ones encountered.)

Anything that sets limits requires GM mental effort to enforce/police. Or the limits will often be ignored, and that raises the question of suitably within the power limits for level... do you base it upon the low-fidelity-to-RAW GMs, or to the RAW using GMs?

 

[CreamCloud0]

probably the best description i could give is 'if you combined teen titans' beast boy's fluidity of shifting with ben 10's variety of specialised alien forms, and throw in a little partial shapeshifting too'

building up a variety of mini-statblocks for creatures specialised into certain things, each with their own strengths and perks you also can access while still humanoid, but probably somewhat limited outside of their dedicated niche, and swapping between them turn by turn: dash up to the enemies 100ft away as a jaguar and shift into a ogre to slam the leader with your giant fists, turn around to incinerate their minions with your dragonbreath before teleporting away as blink-dog, a jaguar is fast but lacked offensive might, the ogre is powerful but is also slow and would've been pincushioned by a dozen ranged attacks before it even got there, the dragon had a powerful AoE but with limited sustainability, and the blink-dog managed to escape without AoO's but is fundamentally weak(at least for the purposes of this explaination, i haven't looked at their stats), but together the shapeshifter manages to pull them together and make something greater than the sum of their parts.

the worst thing about the druid's shapeshifting is that it's too limited, you commit to a handful of big transformations each day and then that's it, a proper shapeshifter shouldn't 'run out' of shifting capability

 

[Starfox]

What do I want from shapeshifting? Madame Mim vs Merlin!

In a class system like DnD, shapeshifting abilitets have to be layered depending on class. 4E did try by basically making a variant "druid" for each of the four roles, I liked that idea. A ranger might be able to turn into a travel form, or a single totemic shape, such as a wolf, goose, or swan. Most druids should be able to take on varied forms, but mainly for utility. Specialist (Moon in 5E) druids should have fighting forms. I'm actually pretty happy with the OnDnD druid conceptually as it is pretty close to my ideas. I would love a more shape-change based class with less spells but higher utility and combat-worthy shapeshifting, but I think that would be very hard to balance and keeping complexity low. I did a subclass of the Pathfinder 1 summoner that built a variant form using the eidolon rules, but that would be WAY too rules-heavy for 5E.

Mechanically, should the shapes be based on actual creature statblocks, or be template-based, like the Tasha's ranger. I think the best mix would be to use an existing stat block and then apply some minimum values based on the character. Like in whatever form you are, your Hp, AC, and attack bonus has a minimum value that improves as you level. I think it would be ok for druids to cast spells in animal form, and would make the class easier to play.

I really like the the 5E Polymorph spell that ends when you run out of Hp, returning you to your normal form, effectively giving you the shape's hp as additional hp. I think that would be better done using temporary hit points, but the basic concept is very nice. Its how things work in NetHack. But it works less well for weaker forms, it feels like a bit of a waste to Polymorph into a dove or rabbit, so some kind of hp minimum might work out

 

[aco175]

I'm not seeing how to balance unlimited shifting with the other classes. The earlier example of turning into a cheetah to move 3 times the speed of more others to again turn into an ogre to attack. Then turn into a dragon to breath before blink-dogging out if Dodge. Even if spread over two turns of moving and attacking, then attacking and moving is a lot. The character would have over other characters; triple speed, power slams, breath weapon, and teleport. The fighter in contrast would get to double move, then move and attack on the second round.

Can it be offset by taking longer to shift? I might stink for a player to have a shifter and the DM says to roll initiative and the first round or two is "I'm shifting." Which would lead to "Whenever we are walking around or in a dungeon, I'm shifted into X all the time." (Similar to the "I'm always using Perception.")

Do we require more XP to gain levels? This was done before by saying that playing medusa was like playing a 12th level PC, so you need the XP from 12 to 13 before going up to the next level. While watching all the other PCs gain 6-7 levels before you gain one. Does not sound as fun either.

Just saying some classes are more powerful and that is ok?

 

[Corinnguard]

A Shifter class for 5e ought to take a page from PF1's Shifter class by having archetypes that focus on a particular kind of shapeshifting.

 

[bedir than]

Enough variety in choices that the shifter isn't another example of North America and Europe being centered in fantasy

 

[CreamCloud0]

I'm not seeing how to balance unlimited shifting with the other classes. The earlier example of turning into a cheetah to move 3 times the speed of more others to again turn into an ogre to attack. Then turn into a dragon to breath before blink-dogging out if Dodge. Even if spread over two turns of moving and attacking, then attacking and moving is a lot. The character would have over other characters; triple speed, power slams, breath weapon, and teleport. The fighter in contrast would get to double move, then move and attack on the second round.

Can it be offset by taking longer to shift? I might stink for a player to have a shifter and the DM says to roll initiative and the first round or two is "I'm shifting." Which would lead to "Whenever we are walking around or in a dungeon, I'm shifted into X all the time." (Similar to the "I'm always using Perception.")

Do we require more XP to gain levels? This was done before by saying that playing medusa was like playing a 12th level PC, so you need the XP from 12 to 13 before going up to the next level. While watching all the other PCs gain 6-7 levels before you gain one. Does not sound as fun either.

Just saying some classes are more powerful and that is ok?

to be fair i was imagining it taking place over 3-4 turns rather than 2 turns, something like
turn 1: BA-shift to jaguar, Move-40ft, Action-dash 40ft, end turn.
turn 2: BA-shift to ogre, Move-15ft(take enemy AoOs), Action-hammer fists, end turn.
turn 3: BA-shift to drake, Action-breath weapon, Use class resource-quickshift to blinkdog, Move-blink 30ft

and while all the forms i've picked were relevant to the combat at hand i wouldn't expect this to always be the situation, with only a limited number of shifting forms you'd need to be careful about what you decicate yourself to and potentially leaving yourself lacking in other areas you don't have forms for, sure you might've picked that high perception form but what does it do besides have high perception? if shifting takes action economy starting your first turn changing from your weak sensory form might leave you with the choice to either approach in a vunerable shape or shift to something sturdier but slower that will not be able to capitalise on the opportunity best, like i said, specialised forms that have their niche, but commiting to one form leaves you weak in other areas that can be capitalised on by the enemy.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Enough variety in choices that the shifter isn't another example of North America and Europe being centered in fantasy

Dean Spencer did art of a shapeshifting druid that goes outside of those regions. Dean is awesome. Seriously. And he has over 1500 stock art images he sells for cheap. I wish he was around 25 years ago when I started publishing

 

[nyvinter]

I'm not seeing how to balance unlimited shifting with the other classes. The earlier example of turning into a cheetah to move 3 times the speed of more others to again turn into an ogre to attack. Then turn into a dragon to breath before blink-dogging out if Dodge. Even if spread over two turns of moving and attacking, then attacking and moving is a lot. The character would have over other characters; triple speed, power slams, breath weapon, and teleport. The fighter in contrast would get to double move, then move and attack on the second round.

For unlimited shapes, the extra hitpoints need to go of course — or at least be offset to spendable resource. So let's use WildShape for that, and I think that could also be a thing you use to get direforms or have to spend for creatures with breath weapons and similar. Unlimited regular beast transformations, limited mythical ones.

I feel in the versus fighter example the shapeshifters purpose wouldn't be as a striker but as someone keeping the foe there until the fighter catches up.

 

[GMMichael]

Seems like no matter what happens in D&D, no one is happy with the druid shapeshifter subclass. So what are you looking for in a shapeshifter class, keeping mind it would have to balance with other classes? Meaning, "I want to change into a flying griffin at low level" might not be an option. This is not D&D specific (thus the ttrpg general forum).

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A good rule for druid-shape-shifters is no armor . . . on the torso.

I'm a fan of basic shape-shifting being basically an illusion; the character's appearance changes, but that's about it. So the shifter can turn into any creature of similar size, but hit points, damage, AC all stay the same. Keeping the impact minimal keeps the "imbalance" minimal. Then, additional abilities can add on the cool-creature stuff: extra stength, flight, tiny size, etc. These abilities are easier to measure when they don't appear as a wildcard feature / at PC whim.