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View Full Version : Unlocking the Beast Within: Shifter Totemist Sub-Levels (PEACH)



mootoall
2011-02-07, 06:58 PM
Well, I'm playing a Shifter Totemist, and there's just ... so much flavory goodness. So I decided to make some Shifter sublevels for the totemist! This is my first homebrew, so please, be as harsh as you like :smalltongue:

{table="head"]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special |Meldshaping

1st|+0|+2|+2|+0|Wild Empathy, Illiteracy, Soul Shifting|As Totemist
5th|+3|+4|+4|+1|Chakra Binds (crown, feet, hands), Shifted Totem|As Totemist
10th|+7/+2|+7|+7|+3|Beast Shift, Totem Boost|As Totemist
[/table]

Wild Empathy As Totemist
Illiteracy As Totemist
Soul ShiftingStarting at first level, the energy of your essentia resonates with the animals you represent as you shift, allowing you to benefit more from your shifting.

As you begin to shift, you may designate an amount of essentia equal to your regular limit for your totem chakra from your personal essentia pool to assign to your shift as a free action. For every two essentia invested, the ability score bonus recieved is increased by one. This also has different effects for each breed of shifter:


Beasthide- For every two points of essentia invested in your shift, the natural armor granted by your shift is increased by one. This stacks with any existing natural armor you may have.
Longtooth- For every two points of essentia invested in your shift, your bite attack deals damage as if one size larger.
Cliffwalk- For every point of essentia invested in your shift, your climb speed is increased by five feet.
Razorclaw- For every two points of essentia invested in your shift, one of your claws deals damage as if it were one size larger. You must distribute this evenly (i.e. for two points one of your claws gains this bonus, while the next two must go to the other)
Longstride- For every point of essentia invested in your shift, your bonus speed is increased by five feet.
Wildhunt- For every point of essentia invested in your shift, the range of your scent ability increases by ten feet, and the bonus to survival increases by one.


Chakra Binds As Totemist

Shifted Totem Starting at fifth level, when shifting, you create a number of temporary points of essentia equal to two times the number of shifter feats you've taken. These may only be invested in either your totem or the Soul Shifting ability. You assign this essentia as a free action, and this temporary essentia may exceed the normal limit for your Soul Shift, though not your totem. This essentia disappears at the end of your shift.

Beast Shift Starting at tenth level, you gain an unnamed skill bonus based on which chakras you have soul melds bound to.


Crown- +4 to Spot and Listen
Feet- +4 to Jump and Balance
Hands- +2 to Climb, Open Lock, Disable Device and Slight of Hand
Arms- +8 to Use Rope
Brow- +4 to Spot and Listen
Shoulders- +4 to Tumble and Hide
Throat- +2 to Diplomacy and Bluff
Waist- +4 to Move Silently and Ride
Heart- +2 to Concentration, Intimidate and Survival
Soul- +4 to Use Magic Device and Sense Motive


Totem Boost Starting at tenth level, your shifting connects you to your animalistic roots, allowing you to connect to your other soulmelds. You gain the Double Chakra bonus feat for your totem. If you already have this feat, you may either select any shifter feat that you qualify for, or allow Double Chakra to apply to an additional chakra.

Changelog:
8/2/11- Changed Totem Boost to grant the Double Chakra feat as a bonus feat.

9/2/11- Altered the wording for Shifted Totem to allow for bonus essentia to be placed in Soul Shift regardless of limit, and to clarify that they are temporary essentia.

Glimbur
2011-02-08, 10:02 AM
Soul Shifting is not very usable at the level you get it: you can't put more than one essentia in it until later. The Razorclaw ability is kind of annoying to track; it should be ok to just increase the damage on both claws for every two essentia.

Shifted Totem is pretty strong but a Totemist has many other feats they probably want so it should be alright. Are shifter feats generally weak on their own? If so, it's fine.

Beast Shift is fine, the bonus to UMD from Soul binds is kind of weird but Totemists don't get the Soul bind anyway so whatever.

Totem Boost is straight up too good. Giving Double Chakra for the Totem as a bonus feat would be ok. This makes Shifter Totemist arguably better than any other race choice, which is not a good balance point.

I like the flavor: it makes a lot of sense.

mootoall
2011-02-08, 12:18 PM
Yay, a critique! Thank you very much. So, to address your points:


1. Okay, so should I make the first sublevel at level 2, and say that you can always put at least two essentia in there?
2. Well, not only do I find shifter feats not very strong, but there also aren't very many of them, and there *are* many better feats. Not to mention you already have your limit on how many times per day you can shift, and essentia limit.
3. Yeah, and UMD isn't a class skill :P
4. That makes a lot of sense. I'll do that.
5. Thank you! I was really trying to make some decent fluff to go with it. I mean, unbalanced abilities can be fixed- sticking to bad fluff ruins it.

Magicyop
2011-02-09, 08:13 AM
This is actually pretty cleverly done-- I like it. First thing, though, is that all the substitution levels I've seen before clearly state which regular class feature each new feature replaces. The idea is that playing as as a certain race-class combo gives an utterly different experience, not a more powerful one.

Soul Shifting is a really cool class feature, and I like it a lot. One thing, though, is you may want to say the essentia designation must be done at the beginning of the day. It makes more sense the way you have it, just as they are transforming, but I think that all other essentia designation in the book happens when you wake up and are stretching your legs. Make of that what you will, book standards have been broken before in homebrew, and it can definitely work out.

Shifted Totem- This could end up really ovepowered, as cool as it is. I'm foggy on the rules for shifters, but how many times can they shift? Could I not shift repeatedly and gain massive totem essentia, then kill everything, ever?

Beast Shift- Hmm. I love the idea, the implementation feels a little off to me. Any decent full fledged totemist would just get a bunch of random bonuses to all of their skills, right? It doesn't seem like you would use this ability to choose where to slot soulmelds.

Totem Boost- Love it. Very cool.

Overall, it's definitely a cool idea, both in flavor, and in implementation, for the most part. I would definitely use it in a campaign. Best of luck!

mootoall
2011-02-09, 08:27 AM
Oh, one other concern with Glimbur's critique- I know that it would be a bit more complex to have the seperate essentia assigned to the claws, but I think the ability to have two claws dealing 1d6 is a lot more powerful than the Longtooth's one bite dealing 1d8 for an equal investment. Is the discrepancy in book keeping that bothersome that that difference in power is important? Other than that, is this balanced? Broken? Flavorful? Dull? Does no one care about meldshaping?

mootoall
2011-02-09, 08:37 AM
Double posting because of phone character limit- Thank you for critiquing Magicyop!
1. Well, firstly 10th level is dead, so that's why I gave it two things there to play with (1 not very big). Overall there's not much to replace, since there aren't many class features to begin with. The halfling sub levels don't replace things, I think (AFB).
2. Thanks! You can reassign essentia as a swift action.
3. You can shift 1/day, and an extra time per 2 shifter feats. But yeah, I'll say you lose it when you unshift.
4. Yeah, the skill boosts are pretty random from this- as they are from most of the soulmelds. But still, it's just something to fill up 10th level.

mootoall
2011-02-09, 06:48 PM
Going for a triple post record!


To anyone interested, I've now altered Shifted Totem fairly significantly so that your bonus essentia can, for the duration of your shift, exceed your regular limit, but only for the bonus essentia produced. This seems powerful, except that it's for a very limited duration, about as long as a barbarian's rage, and is usually only limited to once or twice per day, especially considering the amount of better feats there are. Thoughts on this?