Wild Shape Ranger build

[Gerrtt]

I love shapechanging. Always have, always will.

I'm tossing the idea around of a wild shape ranger and would like to incorporate warshaper, master of many forms, and the first level of fist of the forest.

Would you rather have:

Ran5/Wars4/FoF1/MoMF10 (would get you all the way up to dragon forms, but doesn't get multimorph which means you are stuck with your 11 uses of wildshape for the day, which...doesn't seem that bad, I mean, you're capable of being in wildshape for 165 hours of wildshape a day at that point, but it means that if I turn into a dragon and then back into my ranger I'm out of a use).

or

Ran5/War5/FoF1/MoMF9 (would get multimorph, which means much more shapeshifting to meet the needs of the encounter and not wasting a wildshape attempt because I can't fit through a door, but not being able to turn into a dragon. This version only gets up to various huge creatures [including elementals]).

OR

Ran5/War5/MoMF10 (skips out on the Fist of the Forest AC boost, but would save me a lot of feat tax because I don't need to waste my time qualifying for fist of the forest [although I would get power attack anyways, I am guessing])?

Discuss.

I'm kinda leaning towards the first option. I mean, how many times am I going to get in more than 11 encounters a day? On the other hand, since what I'm really liking is the flexibility granted by being able to change my shape on the fly I really dig the ability to get multimorph.

Decisions decisions.

[Crake]

I've always thought that grabbing master of many forms first was best, maybe grab a level or two of warshaper while you're advancing it, but the size and HD increase that comes along with master of many forms, compared to warshaper is much more powerful. Otherwise you'll be changing into 5HD creatures at level 6-10/11, which is just bad.

My personal wildshape ranger build is trapfinding acp, pick up alertness at 1, combat expertise at 3, trade spellcasting for a feat at level 4 for improved trip, level 6 go into master of many forms and with the bonus fort you get from it you qualify for frozen wildshape, then at 9, when you've gotten fast wildshape from MoMF, pick up swift wildshape (make sure you have 13 dex so you can get it), then at 12 pick up dragon wildshape so you get all the supernatural abilities whenever you wildshape into *any* dragon form (so once you unlock gargantuan dragon form from MoMF you still get their supernatural abilities).

After 15th level, feats and class wise you can top it with whatever you want. Natures warrior gets some of the goodies of warshaper (such as fast healing) but also continues to advance your wildshaping abilities. Or you can grab warshaper, pick up the benfits of that, although you can grab 2 levels for the +4 str con, then grab 3 levels of natures warrior instead, get the fasthealing from that, along with some other goodies. Or whatever combo you want really.

This build needs 13 dex, 13 int (for improved trip to let you take advantage of monsters with the trip special attack) and at least 16 wis, and put all your ability bumps into wis so you can get 19 for dragon wildshape.