*UPDATED with Paragon feats - including play guide*
Alternative Build version- This is what my main, double demi shifter is at current. Wildshape, construct LFF3 and dragon form with no foci - will use the dragon focus book once they come out. You could take your foci the other way around if you wanted. I have been very pleased with her.
Note that Doppleganger functions nearly as well as Anarch for shifter in general if you go with base race gnome. You'll end up with the same number of skill points for 2 less int than a human anarch. Indeed you could go with gnome anarch as well but then you are unable to use tower shields, which usually have the best immunes and resists, doppleganger avoids this handicap by always being medium sized. Gnome shifters lose their con bonus while shifted, however. The advantage of elf is sleep immunity plus able learner to bring your parry up to snuff.
Starting StatsElf (Anarch)
Str 8
Dex 8
Con 10 (14)
Wis 18 (24)
Int 16
Cha 8
Level ProgressionStats - All Wisdom
01: Druid(1): Blooded
02: Druid(2)
03: Druid(3): Toughness
04: Druid(4): WIS+1
05: Druid(5)
06: Druid(6): Lightning Reflexes
07: Druid(7)
08: Druid(8): WIS+1,
09: Druid(9): Armor Proficiency Heavy
10: Druid(10)
11: Shifter(1)
12: Shifter(2): WIS+1, Expertise
13: Shifter(3)
14: Shifter(4)
15: Shifter(5): Great Fortitude
16: Shifter(6): WIS+1
17: Shifter(7)
18: Shifter(8): Improved Expertise
19: Shifter(9)
20: Shifter(10): WIS+1
21: Shifter(11): Great Wisdom I
22: Shifter(12)
23: Shifter(13): Great Wisdom II
24: Shifter(14): WIS+1, Undead Shape
25: Shifter(15)
26: Shifter(16): Great Wisdom III
27: Shifter(17): Great Wisdom IV
28: Shifter(18): WIS+1
29: Shifter(19): Great Wisdom V
30: Shifter(20): Great Wisdom VI
31: Shifter(21)
32: Shifter(22): WIS+1, Great Wisdom VII
33: Shifter(23): Great Wisdom VIII
34: Shifter(24)
35: Shifter(25): Construct Shape
36: Shifter(26): WIS+1, Great Wisdom IX
37: Shifter(27)
38: Shifter(28): Great Wisdom X
39: Shifter(29): Dragon Shape (or Outsider)
40: Ranger(1): WIS+1, Epic Prowess
Legendary FeatsLSA Tumble
LFF Wildshape 1-3
LFF Construct 1-3
EpodeDragon or Construct (swap feats if construct) - use outsider if you chose it over dragon.
Paragon FeatsPFF Wildshape
PFF Construct
PFF Dragon (outsider if you swapped with dragon)
LFF Undead 1 (for long duration, no timer GS, full negative and positive immunity when needed, low DC level drain for emergencies)
Legendary Form Defense
Paragon Form Defense
SkillsDiscipline and parry dump on ranger level
Max:
Listen
Animal Empathy
Concentration
Craft Armor
Hide
Tumble to 60
Parry - with able learner
GearBelt: Greater Psi actuator with +14 to all stats save Con and CHA.
Neck: Ranger's Medal for AE
Boots: Nature's boots for AE
Gloves: Masterful performance for discipline
Armor: Stygian Ice
cloak: Rakshasa's hide (or barbazu wrap)
Helm: Love and be loved (ely helm)
Onhand: Dis club
Solar mote - set to wis and con
Play GuideNormally one wouldn't write a sort of guide for how to play a mage but then there are plenty of high level mages and mage players around to ask advice and watch. When people ask shifter advice they typically get dead silence or "I don't know anything about shifters" or worse the occasional bad information. Using abilities effectively just like casting the appropriate spells at the right time as a mage make all the difference in the world. This guide doesn't contain much use X attack on mob Y but mostly general play guidelines to help shifters make the best use of their abilities. But if you learn which mobs are vulnerable to death magic, you can easily translate your knowledge from mage to shifter and vice versa.
Shifters are not meleers for the most part. Tyran likes to refer to them as “ability mages” and that is truly an appropriate title for them, especially how they are on HG. I agree that they should be played similar to how one plays a mage - don't go running out in the middle of things trying to tank, even in a "tank" form. A shifter is not a tank but a shifter is also far less squishy than most mages, and a shifter DOES have tank forms. A good shifter will assess the situation and after experimentation discover the best ability to use to defeat their enemies. Monsters with poor damage reduction with melt away with manticore spikes, monsters with poor reflex saves can be destroyed by dragon breath etc.
Shifters are EXTREMELY vulnerable to flat foot, you must be constantly in some sort of attack or out of range of attack otherwise even a dragon can be killed very quickly.
Forms and their uses - focuses on primary forms at current - with this build
*note that this largely applied to legendary levels and areas, as well as hells and beyond.
Wildshape formsHarpy- if there is no bard around your curse song can give a decent boost to your stoning/stunning ability by lowering saves. Useful at low levels for lowering enemy AB and such. Gets you to level 50 bard song if your animal empathy and level are high enough. You can substitute bard if necessary
Minotaur - a decent armed/tankish form, the Maze spell actually works though only one per shift - combine with the plate of the legendary master for best (though still not very good) damage. This form gets an extra attack per round.
Basilisk- once just the poor stepchild of Medusa, Basilisk now has a death attack. Anything that isn't immune to death magic has a chance to die from the gaze. Extremely difficult to aim, banshee is much better - if you have undead foci.
Drider - Only rarely useful this is the poor man's Death slaad - it is KD immune and packs IGMS, only particularly useful for certain LL dragons, and certain aboleth monsters.
Manticore – large groups and/or enemies with poor damage reduction/pierce immune – do NOT use on things with kickback unless you (and possibly your party) are fully immune to whatever the kickback may be. Otherwise you CAN WIPE your party . . . . Each manticore spike counts as an individual attack and works as a cone now which makes it much easier to control. Use with extreme caution. Far less useful in hells, there are still monsters, especially certain surperiors/elites that are best taken out with this form.
Wyvern Here is your dex tank form. Reasonable AB, good AC and a poison sting (causes dex and str pens). I use it when malebranches appear and I'm out of dragons.
Xorn- Has passwall and stones onhit, I almost never use it but I might were I in ele planes.
Beholder- One of your best forms, do NOT use the antimagic ray unless you know exactly what you are doing. it WILL wipe your party members buffs and they will NOT be happy
. Cold and negative rays are useful for monsters that take cold and negative. Cold is much higher damage and great on pit fiends. Not a tank form though so you need to hide far away and shoot from a distance.
Dire Tiger – A decent str tank form - the Shadow attack is a knockdown effect which nearly always works . . .its fun! This form gets an extra attack per round.
Medusa – enemies with poor fortitude saves, usually undead and elemental type creatures are the easiest, but some monsters are immune to stoning. When you get the “Cannot concentrate” message you have run out of stone gazes for this form. You need to “reset” the form by transforming into Medusa again. The number of stone attacks you get per transformation increases with level. If you are blinded you cannot use medusa or basilisk gaze attacks, making Word of Faith your bane . . .
Mindflayer – enemies without mind immunity, controlling large group of meleeing enemies that are not mind immune. Works fantastically well in certain parts of the hive, elysium and aboleths. The mind blast attack stuns and does mass PSIONIC damage if it lands while your enemy is stunned, from your own attack or a bigsby. Don't stun and then try to melee, let the fighters do that. Mindflayer stuns are limited similar to Medusa and must be “reset” every so often. Even better is the damage you do does not appear to induce KB from monsters. The general rule is mobs that are vulnerable to weird, can also be controlled/damaged by this ability. It would also include a few more mobs that are mind vulnerable but fear immune.
Golem formsIron Golem – Poison breath attack - works on any monster that does NOT have either ability drain immune OR poison immune. First drops con score, then kills. Very nice in aboleths, good in hells as well.
Stone Golem – loot/object breaking ability (rock throwing), Use siege mode to increase damage - use on bludgeoning vulnerable Monsters
Demonflesh golem- a good melee form with high AB. Gets an ab boosting rage and a toggleable 100% elemental immunity. This form gets one extra attack per round.
Marut-AoE elec attack and grapple chain, useful on elec vuln monsters. Grapple chain paralyses monsters such as aboleths.
Crystal Golem- very poor defenses of the golem group - has prismatic spray spell for positive damage.
Dragon Form(s)Dragon form is possibly the most powerful shifter form there are Red, Blue, Green, White and Silver colors. Each have a breath weapon of fire, electric, acid, cold and sonic damage respectively. Each form also adds an elemental damage bonus to melee that matches the color. Dragon form has the highest AC of any form and is a unitank pretty much everywhere and isn't bothered by stat checks. PF and Males show up? dragon out.
The dragon’s breath is the most powerful damage attack.
As a dragon, breathing is almost always more effective than meleeing but requires some skill and knowledge to use effectively. First you need to learn to move your dragon using the keyboard, you’re simply too big to move around using the mouse - all you'll end up clicking on is dragon. (This may also happen to your party members
) It got a significant nerf a while back but it is still quite good.
Putting the dragon breath in a hot slot is very often ineffective as the game tends to make you get absurdly close to whatever you have targeted for breathing on and if it moves your breath can go off in a direction you don’t like. Instead, I usually use the number pad to use dragon attacks. 0 9 9 works for dragon breath, just aim your dragon's body with the directional keys, then 0 9 9 over and over. Once you have dragon foci, you can do 0 9 6 for wing buffet. I often use the same method for other shifter abilities as it seems the fastest way to do them. It is very easy to 0 9 9 and accidentally breach the entire party with beholder though so BE careful!!
If you don't have a number pad, right clicking on ones self works as a substitute.
Other major benefit to dragon form is a high DC gust. You can kill wind type monsters with ease (aside from positioning problems). 096 for that attack. No ploder for phleg/cania? No problem.
Gusting in dragon form also clears enemy aoe effects - like webs - tho also clears your party's puddle spells. Also KDs monsters around you that are KD vuln.
Greater Wildshape I (wyrmling) - Even though it is called Greater Wildshape I, this form is a wyrmling or baby dragon. It is affected by dragon foci and is unlimited in use. Its main benefit is the damage infliction on the breath weapon. The breath of wyrmling is far weaker but it inflicts damage vulnerability to the matching elemental type. Like the Big dragon, there is Red, Blue, Green, White and Black variants. However in this case green dragon inflicts a form of poison which is damage debuff which doesn't last very long compared to the infliction - it's not likely to be very useful as the mod currently stands. It is the black wyrmling that inflicts acid damage debuff. These are mostly useful for really tough mobs like orthons, goristros and bosses. Do a few breaths with wyrmling and then swap to the larger dragon. It can also be used if you run out of the larger dragon or have people constantly complaining about your big dragon size.
A final word about Dragon form. You will end up getting a lot of complaints from party members over the size. If you're worried about this you can go outsider but this limits your elemental damage and tanking ability considerably. Outsider does fire damage very well in a small package, you also get magic and acid bolts from death slaad but you lose the ability to gust winds and the big aoe elemental of dragon. It comes down to personal choice, either is viable.
Outsider formsDeath Slaad Lord– Acid and Magic bolts - great dragon killer, also can produce an anti-confusion aura
Azer Chieftan– small fire aoe (which works underwater!) Also has long range fire stream and fire immunity aura
Rakshasa- Breach, ice storm and thunderclap spells, unfortunately all respect SR, on the plus side you're immune to any spell below lvl 9, like "real" Rakshasa.
Leonal-Unarmed melee form with one extra attack per round. Gets a bard song type how and a fear howl. Neither are particularly useful and does get an anti-fear aura.
Modron- A timestop immune form. Can create wall of fire, an immobilizing trap that stuns non-mind immune enemies for a few seconds. The best ability creates a coruscating beam trap which does positive and fire damage. Can also fire bolts, but usually pretty poor damage
Equipment setupEquipment is where most shifters blow it. Once a shifter is transformed your weapons damage types, your armor, and your shield slot are all merged. You become essentially naked except for the garb and weapons that particular form normally wears. This means you're immune to slagging so long as you STAY shifted. The bulkiest full plate and the lightest robes are all treated the same when you are transformed. The question becomes why would you want to transfer 10% damage immunity from robes when you can wear full plate and get 30% damage immunity or more. Once shifters are transformed their shields, like their armor merge into the form and any monk abilities are still fully functional, which now only include monk progression for unarmed forms. (Monk splash does NOT help your AC)
In determining AC in shifted form, the only modifiers that transfer are the + of armor, + of your amulet (Natural AC), dodge from your boots and the +of a deflection item. This means that a +18 UR chain mail or splint with other nice features, that most people sneer at, could be the best armor for your shifter. ANY weapon you can use will also merge into your melee damage types. Remember that GMW will stack but buffs like FW, darkfire, deafening clang will transfer only on forms with a visible weapon. Don't bother asking for the buffs if you're going to try and melee as dragon or demonflesh golem.
Shield modifier will not stack with your shifted forms however, any other properties on shields such as stat boosts, resists or immunities will. This means that shields and amulets that are useless to other characters may be useable for a shifter, be creative in your equipment choices. Because ability increases given by equipment stack while shifted, you should try to keep all of your stats boosted at all times.
SpellsThe only forms that case true spells and use a concentration check are Rakshasa, Crystal Golem, Drider, . Read the spell Pen tome!
SavesA shifter will naturally gain more reflex and fortitude saves as they level, as these are preferred saves for shifters, and will have ungodly will saves through high wisdom. In dragon form, at level 60, one can easily get these saves above 60 without much effort. Of the three reflex saves are the lowest and could use some support if you had extra feats to spare. But generally shifters will have relatively high saves without any save feats - reflex saves can still be problematic depending on form.
-S