Shifter Moonspeaker

[ReD_Exorcist]

So Im playing a Shifter druid and Im taking the racial substitution levels for it, meaning I lose my animal companion and Wild Shaping. I plan on taking Moonspeaker as a prestige class. Is there is anything that gets rid of my Wild Shape as a Moonspeaker and adds bonuses to shifting or spells. I talked to my DM and he said if I could come up with a balanced way to get rid of Wild Shape and find an appropriate homebrewed buff to replace it with then he would be cool with it. So any ideas on what I should add to the prestige class when I lose wild shaping on it?

Yes I know that Wild Shape is boss but, I just don't want to play with it. No need to tell me of how less op I would be because of it.

[Inevitability]

You're a druid: no amount of ACF's, no matter how suboptimal, can ever push you out of tier 1. :smalltongue:

How about getting the Thousand Faces ability of a druid? You're still making the Olarune = Shapechanging connection. If your game is higher-powered, I suggest replacing Disguise Self at-will with Alter Self at-will.

[Hiro Quester]

Eggynack's Druid Handbook has a whole section devoted to Shifters (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1reo17DEJNw7T2PMrJX8mbZsmmQkzDYAsT9W6lBvRWBg/edit#heading=h.556g3egnobot) and the various options for Shifter Druids, especially if you are gearing towards Moonspeaker. He lays out many of your best options there.

Edit: the Deadly Hunter druid variant (SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druid)) loses Wildshape, to get a Monk's Wisdom bonus to AC when unarmored and fast movement, plus ranger's favored enemy, and tracking ability (and track feat).

Losing Wildshape hurts, but if you were never interested in that, then these bonuses might be a reasonable deal to you.

[eggynack]

Really straightforward solution. Stop at level four. Levels past that are alright, but they're nothing crazy. Level five is giving you less than nothing (because you actively don't want wild shape for whatever reason), six is a decent but not overly exciting stat boost, 7, 8, and 9 are kinda marginal and largely numeric, 10 is something you can get easily with a spell, 11 is, if anything, maybe less interesting than 6, and then 12 is very good but not too impressive when you have shapechange. Just sticking to beast spirit, or beast spirit with an occasional dip into a different prestige class, offers a whole lot of meaningful non-numeric bonuses. Generally, I think that something like druid 8/moonspeaker 4/druid 8, perhaps with the aforementioned dipping, is the way to go, and it's even better when levels past four have something you're actively avoiding.

Edit: Or, for a really straightforward solution that goes the other way, have the homebrewed bonus be that your moonspeaker levels count as druid level-4 for whatever mediocre class feature you got by losing wild shape. Seems to really fit the spirit of the ability, and it's incredibly obviously not overpowered.

[Cerefel]

There is always the option of just not using the ability, even if you find no way to get rid of it

[Pyromancer999]

You can always use it to power Wild feats. There's one to give you pounce, and another to give you Blindsight out to 120 ft.

For a homebrew alternative to Wildshape though, why not gain Shapeshift(as per the Shapeshift ACF for Druid) as per a Druid of your Moonspeaker level -2? Gets you all the animal forms from that, is at-will, and also isn't super powerful.

For a more simple alternative, could always give the benefit of the Shifter Savagery feat whenever you shift, if you're going natural weapon-type Shifter.

[eggynack]

Another way to go is having it advance beast spirit. The animal companion is weaker than wild shape, after all, so advancing the companion ability makes a sort of weird balancing sense.