Editing Shifter (Pathfinder)

The '''Shifter''' is a class introduced in ''Ultimate Wilderness'', and is intended as a class that focuses entirely on the druid's animal shapeshifting niche without any of the spellcasting. Shifters get full BAB, and access to a somewhat-better list of weapons and armor than druids, though they still can't wear metal armor, and get a lot of the "nature" powers that their [[druid| various]] [[ranger|natural]] [[hunter|brethren]] share: you know, Woodland Stride, Trackless Step, Wild Empathy?  They also get, as their main draw, access to a number of the [[hunter]]'s "animal aspects," which they can either get bonuses for partially shifting into (minor form), eventually learning to chimerize together multiple aspect bonuses at once, or fully Wild Shape into for some more bonuses (major form).  They also get the power to shapeshift claws in any form, which scale up in damage and gradually penetrate better DR, and they get a monk-like ability to apply their Wisdom bonus to armor class while not wearing armor, or half that bonus if wearing armor.  They also get two good saves, Fort and Reflex, and their class benefits for Wisdom indirectly helps their Will, so there's that.

Unfortunately, while advertised as being a more newb-friendly version of the druid for people who like the idea of turning into an animal and eating people but don't want to deal with the homework of being a full caster, the shifter is generally seen as weak and lacking.  It can't take full advantage of having full BAB because of its focus on natural weapon and fighting while shapeshifted, its Wild Shape is really a whole hell of a lot worse than a druid's for no real reason (being unable to ever do powerful shifting feats like turning into elementals and being limited to only shifting into forms specifically allowed by the shifter's aspects), and the aspect bonuses are mostly some combination of weak and boring.  

Also, their claws don't scale up in damage *nearly* hard enough to justify the absence of extra attacks while using natural weapons, and without them the shifter actually has a number of "dead levels."  In general, the class feels like it's a druid or a hunter that's had a bunch of its spellcasting features carved away without enough being added back to replace them.  Not awful, but definitely well below the power level of any other nature-based class.

{{Pathfinder-Classes}}