Shifter Small Changes

The original set of traits looks great for the most part, though there as a few changes that would make a lot of sense. I will embolden the traits I think need 1 adjustment and explain the reasoning behind the change.


Shifter traits
Each shifter has one of the following special traits, which is selected when a character is created and cannot be changed thereafter.

Beasthide (Su): While shifting, a beasthide shifter gains a +2 bonus to constitution and natural armor that provides a +2 bonus to AC.
Longtooth (Su): While shifting, a longtooth shifter gains a +2 bonus to strength and grows fangs that can be used as a natural weapon, dealing 1d6 points of damage (plus an additional +1 for every four character levels the shifter has) with a successful bite attack.
Cliffwalk (Su): While shifting, a cliffwalk shifter gains a +2 bonus to dexterity and has a climb speed of 20 feet.
Razorclaw (Su): While shifting, a razorclaw shifter gains a +2 bonus to strength and grows claws that can be used as a natural weapons. These claws deal 1d4 points of damage (plus an additional +1 for every four character levels the shifter has) with each successful attack.
Longstride (Su): While shifting, a longstride shifter gains a +2 bonus to dexterity and a bonus of 10 feet to her land based speed.
Wildhunt (Su): While shifting, a wildhunt shifter gains a +2 bonus to constitution and the scent ability.


Since there is no climbing in the game, cliffwalk only gives +2 dexterity. Why would anyone waste a trait choice on this when Longstride gives the same +2 dexterity AND +10 movement speed??? So Cliffwalk is stupid than! How can we fix that, so its actually an intelligent choice?

If we add +5 jump and +5 to the jump limit of 40, suddenly cliffwalker becomes very interesting to choice. +5 is a LOT, enough to make one consider especially if it allows the limit to go up to 45. This mimics cliffwalk, as the ability to jump over edges and from cliff to cliff is increased. An alternative to giving the +5 to the jump limit is to give a +5 to jump AND +5 to balance. Growing up on steep slopes, running up and down them, and jumping from cliff to cliff would require more than just jump anyways, and would require more balance than the usual for flat land walkers.

The rest of the traits look fine.

Now on to the feats.

Shifter feats
The following feats are available only to shifter characters.

Beasthide Elite Passive While shifting, your natural armor bonus increases to +4.
Race: Shifter, Trait: Beasthide

-Add a little scaling to this to make it more useful. +4 AC, +1 every 5 lvls thereafter, for a total bonus of +7 AC at level 20 and +9 AC at lvl 50


Cliffwalk Elite Passive While shifting your climb speed improved by 10 feet. This improvement stacks with the increase for the cliffwalk trait, for a total increase of 30 feet.
Race: Shifter, Trait: Cliffwalk

-Since there is no climbing in the game, this has no point currently. We can mimic climbing by jumping sorta, so adding a +5 to jump that stacks with the previous +5 is one option, having the first prerequisite trait add +5 and this feat increase the LIMIT by 5 (bring the limit up to 45 on Jump Skill) is another great option, or adding a +3 to balance and jump that stacks on top the a +5 from the trait is another option (if that trait option gets used). Without doing anything to this feat, it has no point and does absolutely nothing in its current state.


Extra Shifter Trait Passive You manifest a second shifter trait while shifting. You manifest all the benefits of the second trait except for the temporary bonus to an ability score.
Race: Shifter, two other shifter feats.

-Awesome!


Great Bite Passive Your fang attacks now have a critical multiplier of X3
Race: Shifter, Trait: Longtooth, +6 base attack bonus

-Awesome!


Great Rend Passive If you hit with both your claw attacks in a round, you deal an extra damage equal to 1d4 + 1/2 your STR modifier, plus 1 additional point for every four character levels you have.
Race: Shifter, Trait: Razorclaw, +4 base attack bonus

-Awesome! Though not sure how it will work in the game.


Shifter Defense Passive While shifting, you gain damage reduction 2/silver
Race: Shifter, two other shifter feats.

-This is not enough to make it interesting for a feat, if it was 3/silver, that would actually tip it over and make it interesting.


Great Shifter Defense Passive While shifting, you gain damage reduction 4/silver
Race: Shifter, Shifter Defense, three other shifter feats.

-This should stack another +3 on top of the first one, bring the total up to 6/silver. Its almost nothing in epics anyways, though it is enough to make it optional. At 4/silver for TWO feats, its far off the radar of anything usual at all.


Healing Factor Passive When your current period of shifting ends, you heal a limited amount of damage. When you stop shifting, you immediately heal a number of hit points equal to your character level. This benefit does not occur if you die (at –10 hit points) before the period of shifting ends.
Race: Shifter, CON 13.

-This needs more. Perhaps make it: equal to your character level + your constitution. This somehow makes more sense too!


Longstride Elite Passive While shifting your base land speed improves by 10 feet. This improvement stacks with the increase for the longstride trait, for a total increase of 20 feet.
Race: Shifter, Trait: Longstride

-Awesome!


Shifter Ferocity Passive You are a tenacious combatant, continuing to fight when others would succumb to pain and injury. While shifting, you continue to fight without penalty if you are disabled, helpless or dying.
Race: Shifter, WIS 13

-Awesome!


Shifter Multiattack Passive You are adept at using your natural attack in conjunction with another weapon. Your secondary attack with a natural weapon only takes -2 penalty.
Race: Shifter, +6 base attack bonus, and either Trait: Longtooth or Trait: Razorclaw

-Awesome!



Signed,
-Player Feedback

I'm kinda confused. In ddo there will only be beasthide and wildhunt, so the climbing issue is irrelevant, and there won't be any special feats for shifters except at level 1 when they choose to either be beasthide or wildhunt. Are you suggesting ideas for what shifters should have available in ddo or for how to adapt them from dnd?

By the way, the bonuses while shifted for these two will be a little stronger than the bonuses you mentioned (they kinda need to be for them to work in this game) and there will be slightly different bonuses.

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Originally Posted by SpittingCobra

Great Rend Passive If you hit with both your claw attacks in a round, you deal an extra damage equal to 1d4 + 1/2 your STR modifier, plus 1 additional point for every four character levels you have.
Race: Shifter, Trait: Razorclaw, +4 base attack bonus

-Awesome! Though not sure how it will work in the game.


Shifter Defense Passive While shifting, you gain damage reduction 2/silver
Race: Shifter, two other shifter feats.

-This is not enough to make it interesting for a feat, if it was 3/silver, that would actually tip it over and make it interesting. In ddo this is worthless enough that it still wouldn't be something anyone took, when the game was new maybe but people don't take adamantine body on warforged for the dr--they take it for heavy armor.


Great Shifter Defense Passive While shifting, you gain damage reduction 4/silver
Race: Shifter, Shifter Defense, three other shifter feats.

-This should stack another +3 on top of the first one, bring the total up to 6/silver. Its almost nothing in epics anyways, though it is enough to make it optional. At 4/silver for TWO feats, its far off the radar of anything usual at all. Same problem as before, 6 dr is not worth two feats, even if they are extra feats it might not be as good as other stuff.


Healing Factor Passive When your current period of shifting ends, you heal a limited amount of damage. When you stop shifting, you immediately heal a number of hit points equal to your character level. This benefit does not occur if you die (at –10 hit points) before the period of shifting ends.
Race: Shifter, CON 13.

-This needs more. Perhaps make it: equal to your character level + your constitution. This somehow makes more sense too! The only issue with this is shifting will last a REALLY long time so this wouldn't really do much for you.


Longstride Elite Passive While shifting your base land speed improves by 10 feet. This improvement stacks with the increase for the longstride trait, for a total increase of 20 feet.
Race: Shifter, Trait: Longstride

-Awesome! Would be cool if a race had a way to get bonus move speed, but alas this isn't exactly how shifters are being implemented. No feats or anything.


Shifter Ferocity Passive You are a tenacious combatant, continuing to fight when others would succumb to pain and injury. While shifting, you continue to fight without penalty if you are disabled, helpless or dying.
Race: Shifter, WIS 13

-Awesome! I highlighted a portion you said above in green because it's applicable here. How would this be implemented in ddo? If it let you fight while helpless/unconscious then it would be absurdly overpowered because people wouldn't need to worry about will saves at all when they play shifter. If you are backline and horrid wilting or disintigrate would one shot you anyway you can also dump fort saves.


Shifter Multiattack Passive You are adept at using your natural attack in conjunction with another weapon. Your secondary attack with a natural weapon only takes -2 penalty.
Race: Shifter, +6 base attack bonus, and either Trait: Longtooth or Trait: Razorclaw

-Awesome! Since ddo doesn't have "multiattack" functions this doesn't really make sense, the most sensible thing here would be to
reduce the penalty for fighting with two weapons but we already have that.



Signed,
-Player Feedback

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I'm just saying that ddo doesn't really try to translate dnd stuff perfectly anymore because it's sort of its own game now, and while it keeps the concept of new classes or races it just can't keep every function. Some would be totally useless and some would be totally overpowered. You also mentioned a x3 multiplier with the fangs and I didn't respond to it above because I'm not entirely sure how, but what would be fang attacks? If they just made you get a +1 multiplier with all weapons it would either be op (extra mult op) or useless if they made it a type of bonus that won't stack with your typical mult bonuses. Perhaps fang attacks would be certain attacks in the racial tree? Also kinda weird, since normally they'd just give that attack an additional multiplier if you spent enough ranks in it or something but I guess that could work. Again, though, most of the shifter subtypes are not currently being implemented and there will be no feats to accompany them.

https://ddowiki.com/page/Shifter

The feats are not my idea. From what I gather from this page from the official site, they are on the way as additional optional feats for shifters, but not Iconic Shifters. Perhaps if you read about shifters from this page first, my suggestions will make far more sense to you. Hope this helps.

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Originally Posted by SpittingCobra

https://ddowiki.com/page/Shifter

The feats are not my idea. From what I gather from this page from the official site, they are on the way as additional optional feats for shifters, but not Iconic Shifters. Perhaps if you read about shifters from this page first, my suggestions will make far more sense to you. Hope this helps.

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Oh I see where you got all the traits. I'm pretty sure that's just describing shifters in dnd, outside of ddo. If you look just above the Racial Traits you see Dragonmark feats, and above that PnP information. PnP means pen and paper, ie dnd, and is probably just there for people to know where the shifter race comes from. Most of the other races don't seem to have much of a PnP section on the wiki but the newest ones--aasimar and tiefling--both have little sections at the bottoms of their pages which contain some items not currently implemented in ddo. Here is the official information on what shifters will have when released (is subject to changes before actually being released, but usually only very small tweaks are made) https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...hlight=shifter

By the way the wiki isn't really an official site, it's made by players as a resource but isn't connected to SSG or Turbine (the company that owns ddo and the company that used to own ddo, respectively).

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Originally Posted by Tsutti

Oh I see where you got all the traits. I'm pretty sure that's just describing shifters in dnd, outside of ddo. If you look just above the Racial Traits you see Dragonmark feats, and above that PnP information. PnP means pen and paper, ie dnd, and is probably just there for people to know where the shifter race comes from. Most of the other races don't seem to have much of a PnP section on the wiki but the newest ones--aasimar and tiefling--both have little sections at the bottoms of their pages which contain some items not currently implemented in ddo. Here is the official information on what shifters will have when released (is subject to changes before actually being released, but usually only very small tweaks are made) https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...hlight=shifter

By the way the wiki isn't really an official site, it's made by players as a resource but isn't connected to SSG or Turbine (the company that owns ddo and the company that used to own ddo, respectively).

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Thanks for the clarification. I hope they add the traits from PnP, would be a nice add for further customizing.

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Originally Posted by SpittingCobra

I hope they add the traits from PnP, would be a nice add for further customizing.

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Don't hold your breath but do hold hope. Warlocks used to only have 3 pact choices and recently they received 3 more, so maybe someday down the line something similar will happen for shifters.

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Originally Posted by Tsutti

Don't hold your breath but do hold hope. Warlocks used to only have 3 pact choices and recently they received 3 more, so maybe someday down the line something similar will happen for shifters.

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Possibly, gotta get permission from the overlords over at WOTC

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Originally Posted by Yamani

Possibly, gotta get permission from the overlords over at WOTC

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Mm yeah I forgot about that.