Increasing Shifting uses per day? (Shifters, 3.5)

[Dusk Eclipse]

Shifters are one of my favourite race ever, they have an awesome fluff, quite a lot of support (for a non-core race anyway); but I feel their core mechanic is quite lackluster.

I mean shifting is cool and all, and save for Cha and Int based casters every race and every role can benefited in some way or another (true, melee and ranged to a degree benefit the most); but I feel that by itself it is too limited. I mean even at level 1 1/day feels too limited in my opinion and you can't increase the number of shifts per day without heavily investing into [Shifter] feats, there are some good ones, such as Shifter Ferocity or some of the "Trait" Elite; but most are very minor in their scope. And most character classes that synergyze with Shifter racial traits really depend on their feats, I don't think that a shifter player must decide on playing their race or their class.

So I was wondering what would be the consequences of letting Shifting per day uses increase based on HD (was thinking on Shifting 1/day and 1 extra time per each 5 or 4 HD) or at the very least houserulling an Extra Shift feat (not a fan of this approach to be honest).

tl;dr What do you think about letting shifters, shift more times per day based on their HD?

[ThiagoMartell]

AFAIK, extra uses of shifting per HD is actually a somewhat common houserule.
There are a few other ways to get more shifting (Bloodclaw Master gives extra uses and I think Weretouched Master does so as well), but the baseline really is not enough.
I advise using the Barbarian progression for Rage and allowing an Extra Shifting feat. After all, you can take the shifter feats and gain +X and one extra use, why not a feat to get two or three extra uses?

[Zilzmaer]

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of races that advance both by HD and class levels at the same time. It's a bit unfair to the players who decide to play a race where everything's up front; they get less out of their choice. And what's the difference between Shifting 1/day at one HD, and Rage 1/day at Barb 1? Personally, I would go with an Extra Shifting feat that gives two extra uses per day. That mirrors Extra Rage. Besides, you shouldn't be playing your race or your class; rather, you should play your character, which is a combination of both with experience.

[Dusk Eclipse]

@ThiagoMartell:
I haven't played in a game where this houseruoe was in play, kinda why I decided to post about it.

I don't think Weretouched Master gives more shifting; but Blood claw master certainly does (and even gives an extra trait if you aren't a Razorclaw)

@Zilzmaer: The difference between Shift 1/day and Rage 1/Day is that you can get more rages pretty straightforward (more barb levels or 1st party feat). And well it might be a bit unfair; but to the best of my knowledge there isn't another LA 0 race with a per day ability like that. Besides one of the problems of low tier classes is that they don't get scaling abilities for the most part.

I agree that you should play your character as, well as an actual charavter; but you should'nt be mechanically forced to choose one part of it.

A bit of topic; but typing and editing from a phone is a pain in the ass.

[GenghisDon]

I'm with the "extra shifts" feat idea. Simple & easy.

[Kuulvheysoon]

IIRC, Moonspeakers and Shifter Druid ACFs advance shifting uses/day, as well.

Moonspeaker also lets you count metamagic and item creation feats as shifter feats.

[eggs]

I advise using the Barbarian progression for Rage and allowing an Extra Shifting feat. After all, you can take the shifter feats and gain +X and one extra use, why not a feat to get two or three extra uses?
I'd get behind that.

It wouldn't break anything and would let either high-level Shifters or Shifters who want to throw some marginal focus on the ability the ability to use it often, while keeping it a minor occasionally-useful trick for low-level non-specialists. That sounds like a pretty reasonable goal to shoot for.