Shifters and AC - am I doing something wrong?

[sabregirl]

Hi all-
I'm one of the few the proud, the shifter players. In the 3 months I've been playing on higher ground I've run into a grand total of about 6 other shifters. Most of the time these have been new people and low level shifters who were generally asking ME for advice. The only apparently experienced person I talked to mentioned only that her dragon had 90AC.

After finally making my way over to the more difficult areas of the server I've come to the conclusion that my AC totally sucks and most of my forms are utterly unusable in most higher level areas. But everything I've tried to improve my AC fails to increase it any more than a few points.

But maybe there's some knowledgable shifters out there browsing this forum laughing at my pitiful attempts to make a good shifter . . . somewhere . . . hiding under rocks and not playing their shifters . . . for reasons OTHER than having crappy AC.

This is my character- she is level 48
5 Druid 5 Monk 30 shifter
Wisdom is 34 base with items to boost to 46
Dex is also being boosted by 12 using items (not much point in stating the base since it's nearly always overwritten by forms)
armor modifier is 10
Deflection is 15

For shifter transformations, even if you have a +15 ammy a +15 shield and a +15 dodge boots, only ONE of those +15s will stack. the rest might as well not even be there, so I'm only listing the highest she has.

She has armor skin, obviously, but NO tumble skill - at the time I built her I didn't realize tumble upped AC.

So what does she end up with in the shifted state?
Dragon- 93
Risen Lord- 81
Kobold Commando - 86
Azer chieftan - 81
Manticore - 81
Minotaur -78
Dire Tiger - 77
Harpy - 79

Now presumably there's better cloth armor out there although the best I've seen so far is +12. A completely maxed out tumble would give you a +9 to AC. Maybe you could get a +16 deflection too.

So there is, presumably, potential to add +12 to each of those numbers. You could throw on another couple of points of wisdom for another +1

So if you take that into account you COULD have

Dragon- 105
Risen Lord- 93
Kobold Commando - 98
Azer chieftan - 93
Manticore - 93
Minotaur -90
Dire Tiger - 89
Harpy - 91

Now this is considerably better than what my current shifter has but still not the 125 dragon form Funky was talking about. So where does this other 20 AC come from? Can someone enlighten me on this cause I just don't see how it's possible.

And I guess there's no making a pure druid shifter because without the extra monk AC bonus you're pretty well up a creek without a paddle. Since only ONE of your deflection items will stack and base armor class is not included there's no way to make up for the AC with items . . .

-S

[archmage]

Catch me online sabregirl, and we can talk shifters. I have one, and can help you with your ac, but your total numbers are still off. I'm the shifter funky referred to when we discussed them. I'll be happy to take a look at your gear and make some recommendations.

[FunkySwerve]

sabregirl said:

And I guess there's no making a pure druid shifter because without the extra monk AC bonus you're pretty well up a creek without a paddle. Since only ONE of your deflection items will stack and base armor class is not included there's no way to make up for the AC with items . . .

-S

I have a dragon druid that does ok, and will do fantastically once she gets a certain epic spell....
Funky

[sabregirl]

Epic spells don't help the poor guy who went 10 druid 30 shifter nor will they get high level buffs pure druids get. Or say if you tried to go rogue or fighter shifter - big ouch. It just seems like you're extremely limited on viable builds. And if dragon is your only trump card as a shifter, why bother being one at all since a druid can do it just fine and has all sorts of spells to buff with? Plus if you added in Monk to your druid you've got the same or better AC in dragon form than your shifter counterpart. Now supposedly there was some penalty on the dragon's breath weapon for being pure druid, I don't know how much that still comes into play with all the changes . . .

The way I look at it, ignoring my AC problem, damage/attack wise the only real reason to pick shifter over druid or anything else is the Death Slaad spittle but that's only particularly useful for bosses and is somewhat countered by a druid's quillfire. The only difference between the two is death spittle is unlimited and has greater range, the unlimited part being the big advantage. But if shifters are really capable of being great why is it NO ONE plays them?

-S

[archmage]

I play mine, and my shifter is probably the best desert character I have out of 14 or so immortals. The reason why no one plays them is they're very complicated to build, and if u make one mistake, your character is headed for the scrap bin. I told you earlier, come see me ingame for some helpful shifter hints. Oh and my shifter also does NASTY things to ssithraks. IT is definitely a viable class, and if played correctly, you can be a powerhouse.

[hiryuu]

Druid/Monk/Shifter is the only currently viable Shifter build, which I've commented on before. Is it possible to merge more AC (Natural or Dodge) if the character has no Monk levels? Even then, non-Monk would be challenging, but it would stand a chance.

[FunkySwerve]

It certainly is, with a little finagling! Nice alternative to the failed experiment with giving non-monks the monk ac bonus. Added to the todo list.
Funky

[sabregirl]

That sounds like a great change - maybe my poor Rogue shifter might be useful after all. (I seem to have an abundance of shifter characters )

While we're on the subject of increasing the number of viable shifter builds, I've been wondering if we could increase the number of classes that could go to shifter. I guess in regular D&D, the rules are any class that has an "Alternate Natural Form" could become a shifter (anything with the polymorph self/shape change spell). This would mean a cleric with an animal domain could become a shifter at level 9 as well as Sorcs and Wizards at level 7 and even a ranger at level 15.

I don't know if that's even possible or just too radical of a change. But I thought, along with the non-monk AC help, it might revive some interest in the class. I like seeing other shifters as well as playing them.

archmage- You were really most helpful. I hope I can get it right this time. I'm determined to make a good shifter if the game allows.

-S

[FunkySwerve]

sabregirl said:

While we're on the subject of increasing the number of viable shifter builds, I've been wondering if we could increase the number of classes that could go to shifter. I guess in regular D&D, the rules are any class that has an "Alternate Natural Form" could become a shifter (anything with the polymorph self/shape change spell). This would mean a cleric with an animal domain could become a shifter at level 9 as well as Sorcs and Wizards at level 7 and even a ranger at level 15.

We could, I guess, but it seems like a lot of work for not much gain. And what would happen with dcs? Should the druid+ shifter ones be expanded to druid OR any of those other classes? A LOT of added work for what gain?
Funky

[sabregirl]

Well I guess I didn't know how much work it would entail but I *thought* the only time druid levels actually factored into DCs was the Dragon's breath weapon. Since the form is shared by both druid and shifter. The rest . . from what I remember, were only dependent on the shifter level.

The only real advantage to that change I would see is a cleric shifter. Mostly for more interesting buffs before shifting. Since the shifter wants to have crazy wisdom anyway it would be a reasonably good combination. Granted your buffs wouldn't be all that great after a while but neither are the Druid's. But you'd have a wider array of them. You could flame your own weapon - which transfers even to unarmed shifter forms and the AC/attack buffs. Plus you'd get heavy armor proficiency for free which is nice since a shifter doesn't really care what the armor rating is simply the armor modifier on it and druid only gets medium.

Bottom line is you have to take 10 levels of something else since shifter is a prestige class. It might be nice to not always have 5 of those be druid. Anyway it's just a thought . . .

-S

[FunkySwerve]

sabregirl said:

Well I guess I didn't know how much work it would entail but I *thought* the only time druid levels actually factored into DCs was the Dragon's breath weapon. Since the form is shared by both druid and shifter. The rest . . from what I remember, were only dependent on the shifter level.

Actually 4 or 5 of them do. No need to guess, you can always check this thread (shifter book is 3rd from the bottom post iirc):
highergroundpoa.proboards3.com/index.cgi?board=info&action=display&n=1&thread=6669

Players rarely if ever know how complicated or feasible their suggested changes are, so don't feel bad when I reject an idea on that basis. If you can think of other ways that this'd help diversify shifter builds then by all means post em.
Funky

[sabregirl]

Well, I'm an old Morrowind modder so I've been in a semi-similar situation with people continually asking me to do things that were actually very complicated to do. I just didn't want to come off as demanding of things that are difficult.

Anyway if I read that list right, druid levels factor into Basilisk, Dragon and Mindflayer. Now it looks like Basilisk has the better DC early on but Medusa will go higher in LL. So you even if you had no druid at all you could make up for Basilik eventually but you'd have to take around -10 on the other two. Not so nice on Mindflayer, as it's one of the better forms but getting a -5 isn't unusual if you want a 3rd class. Hmm well you could conceivably factor in cleric levels instead of druid but that would probably be too crazy. I'll have to give it some more thought. Still shifter + divine power just sounds fun.

In any case back to the non-monk AC stacking, which is far more important than any class sillyness. I guess if I were to pick another modifier to stack I'd go with shield or dodge. Natural doesn't make as much sense since that's most of what the form is giving you and there are some useful amulets out there that have little to no natural AC on them. A similar kind of thing happens with boots so my preference would be on shields - a non monk should be wearing a shield anyway.

-S

[ZeroGravitySE]

Go ninja, Go ninja, GO!

[FunkySwerve]

sabregirl said:

Still shifter + divine power just sounds fun.

Bear in mind that divine power, like all spell and scripted bonuses, is subject to a +20 total cap, and weapons fall into that +20 cap as well. So, with a +13 weapon and +5 from shifter LLs, theres only a +2 room for improvement in ab bonuses. That also includes bardsong, and other ab boosting spells.

In any case back to the non-monk AC stacking, which is far more important than any class sillyness. I guess if I were to pick another modifier to stack I'd go with shield or dodge. Natural doesn't make as much sense since that's most of what the form is giving you and there are some useful amulets out there that have little to no natural AC on them. A similar kind of thing happens with boots so my preference would be on shields - a non monk should be wearing a shield anyway.

-S

I went with shields before even getting to read this post - update to drop later today.

Funky