Skinchanger - New Class

[Morto_Ra]

The Skinchanger
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AZizDu1fi_g/maxresdefault.jpg
Credit: Unkown


A deep beastly howl echos across the mountain side. A canvas of white snow and black trees streches as far as the eye can see. With only moonlight at your back your lunge forward, paw over paw. Salavating as you grow closer to the torchlight, torchlight promising food. With a scream of steal and man your claws sink into the lonely traveler. You are the hunter. You are the Skinchanger.

A skin for every occasion
Skinchangers are the ultimate hunters. Turning their prey into their greatest assets. Anything that can be worn can aid them in battle. Many Skinchangers live on the fringes of society, preferring to live alone or in the company of a small band of savages. Their prowess grows with each kill, their strength with each hunt. No one knows the true origins of their powers, but many Druids speak of an ancient circle lost in the hunt.


Creating A Skinchanger
Skinchangers derive their power from within and from their skins. The more skins they possess the more forms they can assume. Were you raised by the wilds, alone in the cold? Or, is your past far more sinester, finding your strength from some long thought dead diety. Regardless of a Skinchanger's origin, all know one truth: the hunt.

Quick Build
You can make a Skinchanger quickly be following these suggestions. First, Wisdom should be your highest abaility score, followed by Consitution. Second, choose the Outlander background. Third choose a short sword and an Explorer's pack.

Class Features
As a Skinchanger, you get the following class featuers

Hit Points
---
Hit Dice: 1d8 per Skinchanger Level
Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier
Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8(or 6) + your Constitution modifer per Skinchanger level after the first

Proficiencies
---
Armor: Hide, Leather
Weapon: Simple weapons and Longbows
Saves: Consitution and Wisdom
Skills: Choose 2 from: Animal Handling, Stealth, Nature, Survival, Perception

Starting Equipment
You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:
(1a) Hide Armor or (1b) Leather Armor
(2a) Short Sword or (2b) 2 Daggers
(3a) Longbow and 20 arrows
(4a) Explorer's pack



Level
Proficiency Bonus
Features
Movement
Damage


1
+2
Skins, Natural Damage
─
1d4


2
+2
Movement
10ft
1d4


3
+2
Arc Type
10ft
1d4


4
+2
Ability Score Improvement
10ft
1d4


5
+3
Extra Attack
10ft
1d6


6
+3
Evasion, Nature's Wrath
15ft
1d6


7
+3
Arc Type
15ft
1d6


8
+3
Ability Score Improvement
15ft
1d6


9
+4
Improved Movement
15ft
1d6


10
+4
─
20ft
1d6


11
+4
Arc Type
20ft
1d8


12
+4
Ability Score Improvement
20ft
1d8


13
+5
Tongue of the Forest
20ft
1d8


14
+5
─
25ft
1d8


15
+5
Arc Type
25ft
1d8


16
+5
Ability Score Improvement
25ft
1d8


17
+6
Bestial Resilience
25ft
1d10


18
+6
Endless Skin
30ft
1d10


19
+6
─
30ft
1d10


20
+6
Limitless Form
30ft
1d10






Skins
As a 1st level Skinchanger, you have the unique ability to wear the skin of your prey. You can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have hunted and skinned during a special ceremony. The ceremony requires you spend a short rest after succesfully capturing a creature. During the ceremony you must consume it's heart and skillfully remove the creatures skin. Once the cermeony is over you have magically attuned the skin to yourself. You must be wearing any skin you wish to use for the purposes of changing into a beast shape.

Your Shapechanger level determines the beasts you can transform into, as shown in the Beast Shapes table.
You can stay in a beast shape for a number of hours equal to your wisdom modifier. You then revert to your normal form unless you expend another use of this feature. You can revert to your normal form earlier by using a bonus action on your turn. You automatically revert if you fall unconscious, drop to 0 hit points, or die. You may use this ability a number of times per long rest equal to half your wisom modifier rounded up (minimum of 1).


While you are transformed, the following rules apply:


Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the beast, but you retain your alignment, personality, and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. You also retain all of your skill and saving throw proficiencies, in addition to gaining those of the creature. If the creature has the same proficiency as you and the bonus in its stat block is higher than yours, use the creature’s bonus instead of yours. If the creature has any legendary or lair actions, you can’t use them.


When you transform, you assume the beast’s hit points and Hit Dice. When you revert to your normal form, you return to the number of hit points you had before you transformed. However, if you revert as a result of dropping to 0 hit points, any excess damage carries over to your normal form. For example, if you take 10 damage in animal form and have only 1 hit point left, you revert and take 9 damage. As long as the excess damage doesn’t reduce your normal form to 0 hit points, you aren’t knocked unconscious.


You can’t cast spells, and your ability to speak or take any action that requires hands is limited to the capabilities of your beast form. Transforming doesn’t break your concentration on a spell you’ve already cast, however, or prevent you from taking actions that are part of a spell, such as call lightning, that you’ve already cast.


You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. However, you can’t use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense.


You choose whether your equipment falls to the ground in your space, merges into your new form, or is worn by it. Worn equipment functions as normal, but the DM decides whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment, based on the creature’s shape and size. Your equipment doesn’t change size or shape to match the new form, and any equipment that the new form can’t wear must either fall to the ground or merge with it. Equipment that merges with the form has no effect until you leave the form.



Beast Shapes


Level
Max CR
Limitation
Example


1
1/4
No flying or swimming speed
Wolf


3
1/2
No flying speed
Crocodile


7
1
─
Giant Eagel


11
2
─
Cave Bear


16
3
─
Giant Scorpion





Natural Damage
At 1st level, you gain the following benefits while you are unarmed or not in your beast shape

You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for the attacks and damage rolls of your unarmed strikes.
You can roll a d4 in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strike. This die changes as you gain shapechanger levels, as shown in the Damage column of the Shapechanger table.
When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action. For example, if you take the Attack action and attack with your fist, you can also make an unarmed strike as a bonus action, assuming you haven't already taken a bonus action this turn.

Movement
Starting at 2nd level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you are not wearing armor or wielding a shield. This bonus increases when you reach certain shapechanger levels, as shown in the shapechanger table.

At 10th level, you gain the ability to move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during the move.

Arc Type
At 3rd level, you may choose a shapechanger arc type, which are described below. You gain an Arc Type Feature from this path at 3rd level, 7th level, 11th level, and 15th level.

Ability Score Improvement
Starting at 4th level, and again at 8th level, 12th level, and 16th level. You may increase one ability score by two, or two abiltiy scores by one. This cannot increase any ability score above its maximum of 20.

Extra Attack
At 5th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Evasion
At 6th level, when you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, and only half damage if you fail.

Nature's Wrath
Starting at 9th level, your unarmed strikes count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to non-magical attacks and damage. This also applies to your attacks gained from your beast shape.

Tongue of the Forest
Starting at 13th level, you may communicate with any living creature that is capable of thinking.

Beastial Resilience
At 14th level you have advantage against all Strength and Dexterity ability checks made while in your beast shape.

Endless Skin
At 18th level you may pick one skin. This skin becomes your permenent skin, giving you all of the benefits of your beast shape as it normally would. This destroys the skin, fusing it with your own. Any changes in appearance are up to you and your DM.
Doing so requires a long rest and the skin to have already ben attunted during a skinning ritual as described above. After the ritual you lose the previous skin and all of it's associated benefits.

Limitless Form
At 2oth level, you may have as many skins as you wish at any given time.





https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gameofthronesfanon/images/4/4b/Raiders.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150906095551
Credit: Unkown


Face Stealers are Shapechangers who specialize in hunting huminoids of all kinds. The stalk their prey as one of their own and should be considered formitable foes if one chooses to track you down.

Hunter of Men
Starting at level 3, you may add you wisdom modifier to damage rolls when attacking huminoids.
Additionally, you gain advantage on survival checks to track huminoids who are of the same race as your current beast shape.

Faceless
At level 7 you may add huminoids to your list of skins and beast shapes.
You gain advantage on all deception and persuation checks when communicating to a huminoid of the same race as your current beast shape.

If someone knows the original owner of your humanoid skin they may make a perception check of DC 10 + prof + Wis modifier to detect imperfections in your disguise.

Yum
At level 11 you can spend an action to cut out and eat the heart of a humanoid. Doing so gives you temporary HP equal to your wisdom modifier. The amount of total temporrary hit points you have at any one time may not exceed twice your shapechanger level. You may save any number of hearts for up to an hour, at which point they lose their potency for the purposes of this effect.

Heartless
Starting at 15th level you may spend a week preparing a huminoid of your choice, the creature in question must be largly intact, not skinned, and still contain all of it's major organs. Once the corpse has been prepaired you may transfer your soul to the new form at any time before you die. Doing so gives you all of the racial bonus of the new huminoid and destroys your old form if it was not already. You must reskin and attune new beast forms after performing this action.

The transfer process takes one hour and if your new form is destroyed during this time frame your spirit will instead continue onto the afterlife as per normal. For the purposes of resurrection and other magic the new humanoid body is considered your own the instant your soul leaves your old form.




https://i.stack.imgur.com/qRf2o.jpg
Credit: Elena María Vacas
Beast Shapers learn to apply their abilties to other creatures. Creating malformed monstrosities and fantastic beasts of great power.

Beast Master
Starting at level 3, you may expend one of your uses of Beast Shape to instead alter the form of a beast who is friendly to you. All of the same restrictions apply to the other creature as they would to you. For the purposes of duration use your own wisdom score. After the skin is applied and the beast is shaped you have advantage on all Animal Handling checks with that creature for the duration of the shape.

The creature has it's own intiative, but you may as a bonus action give it commands.

Magical Beast
At level 7, your beast's unarmed strikes count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to non-magical attacks and damage. This also applies to their attacks gained from their beast shape.

Monstrious Pet
Starting at level 11 you may use an additional skin from your repertoire to give your beast one of the following benfits for the duration of it's beast shape.

- Its AC increases by an amount equal to one-half your wisdom modifier
- Its size increases by one catagory, incurring all bonus and penelties as normal
- It gains a swim and fly speed equal to your bonus movement for your level, if it did not already possess one
- Its damage increase by an amount equal to one-half your wisdom modifier

Bestial Companion
At level 15 you may use all of your Beast Shaper abilities on any willing creature you can communicate with who has an intelligence of at least 10




1) Added credit to Beast Shaper art
2) Removed skins from table
3) moved Nature's wrath to level 6
4) moved magical beast to level 7
5) moved monstrous pet to level 11
6) Added DC for detecting disguise while wearing a humanoid
7) removed redundancy for temp hp
8) clarified action economy for hearts
9) hearts can now be stored for up to an hour
10) Fixed tables so they appear better

[Morto_Ra]

Hey y'all!

This is my first homebrew. I'm sure it is horrible broken in many ways, but any and all feedback would be appreciated.

[Lalliman]

It's cool, I like it. It's hard to appraise the balance because it's so different, but it doesn't seem blatantly broken in any way. I have a number of questions and remarks though.

For one, I'm confused about what the Skins column in the table actually stands for. Is it the amount of skins you can have prepared? The Skins feature doesn't reference any such restriction. It also seems like an unnecessary restriction, given that druids have access to all animals of appropriate CR automatically.

Hunter of Men gives a bonus when using a humanoid as your beast shape, but you don't get the ability to do that until four levels later.

For Faceless, it's strange to let what seems like the linchpin of this archetype (impersonating people) fall to DM discretion. Especially because you have the person's physical skin, assumably you look like that individual whether you want to or not. I would just say you look like the person whose skin you're using, and someone who knows that person can attempt an Investigation check against DC 10 + prof + Wis to notice imperfections in the disguise.

The last two sentences of Yum are obsolete, that's how THP always work. Also, how long does it take to remove the heart from someone's chest? Is that part of the action? You should probably add that the heart should be fresh (e.g. the person died no more than one hour ago) so you can't just turn hundreds of hearts into beef jerky and eat them all day to get tons of HP.

Beast Master is very very strange. You need to find a friendly beast, then transform it into another beast and as long as it's transformed it works like an animal companion. But the animal itself is not a companion, so if you take a long rest and the transformation wears off, the animal will assumably just leave and do its own thing. So if you're relying on wild animals, you might have to find a new one every day. So the best way to utilise this feature is to bring a trained dog who will stick around while not transformed. Or have a bunch of rats that you can transform when needed. I can't imagine what your vision for this archetype is because it's so bizarre, but if I were you I would change the whole premise so that you can animate any skin in your possession into a living creature. So you toss a wolf skin on the ground, and it turns into a living wolf for a few hours. Mechanically mostly the same, but much more intuitive and easier to use.

For Monstrous Pet, the second and third benefits are very strong, and the first and fourth are very weak. A strange juxtaposition.

Nature's Wrath and Magical Beast come online quite late. Both monks and druids get this at level 6.

Lastly, I feel like you need a third archetype for people who actually just want to be shapeshifters. As is, you have to be either a weird summoner or a cannibalistic Faceless Man, thus losing track of the primary draw of this class.

Oh and, the art for the beast shaper is made by Elena María Vacas, found here (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rzDvO).

[Morto_Ra]

It's cool, I like it. It's hard to appraise the balance because it's so different, but it doesn't seem blatantly broken in any way. I have a number of questions and remarks though.

For one, I'm confused about what the Skins column in the table actually stands for. Is it the amount of skins you can have prepared? The Skins feature doesn't reference any such restriction. It also seems like an unnecessary restriction, given that druids have access to all animals of appropriate CR automatically.

That's a great point!



Hunter of Men gives a bonus when using a humanoid as your beast shape, but you don't get the ability to do that until four levels later.

For Faceless, it's strange to let what seems like the linchpin of this archetype (impersonating people) fall to DM discretion. Especially because you have the person's physical skin, assumably you look like that individual whether you want to or not. I would just say you look like the person whose skin you're using, and someone who knows that person can attempt an Investigation check against DC 10 + prof + Wis to notice imperfections in the disguise.

1) Was meaning to change that to a permanent bonus against humanoids

2) And yes! That would be a far better way to implement that feature, thank you



The last two sentences of Yum are obsolete, that's how THP always work. Also, how long does it take to remove the heart from someone's chest? Is that part of the action? You should probably add that the heart should be fresh (e.g. the person died no more than one hour ago) so you can't just turn hundreds of hearts into beef jerky and eat them all day to get tons of HP.

I'll reword it, as my intention was that yes the heart must be fresh and is removed within that action.



Beast Master is very very strange. You need to find a friendly beast, then transform it into another beast and as long as it's transformed it works like an animal companion. But the animal itself is not a companion, so if you take a long rest and the transformation wears off, the animal will assumably just leave and do its own thing. So if you're relying on wild animals, you might have to find a new one every day. So the best way to utilise this feature is to bring a trained dog who will stick around while not transformed. Or have a bunch of rats that you can transform when needed. I can't imagine what your vision for this archetype is because it's so bizarre, but if I were you I would change the whole premise so that you can animate any skin in your possession into a living creature. So you toss a wolf skin on the ground, and it turns into a living wolf for a few hours. Mechanically mostly the same, but much more intuitive and easier to use.

For Monstrous Pet, the second and third benefits are very strong, and the first and fourth are very weak. A strange juxtaposition.

My goal with this arc type is to have you be able to modify a pet, rather than yourself. Though, I do like your idea of animating a skin you've already taken. Might change it.



Nature's Wrath and Magical Beast come online quite late. Both monks and druids get this at level 6.

Oh, yeah! That's probably a good point



Lastly, I feel like you need a third archetype for people who actually just want to be shapeshifters. As is, you have to be either a weird summoner or a cannibalistic Faceless Man, thus losing track of the primary draw of this class.

That ones still just a thought in the old noddle, but I'll be adding it shortly.



Oh and, the art for the beast shaper is made by Elena María Vacas, found here.

Yes! Thank you.



Thank you for taking your time to provide feedback, it's greatly appreciated. I especially like your idea about the Beast Master arc type, and hope to have it up soon!