Wild Shape Variant: Aspect Of Nature. Are there more?

[ngilop]

as the title says.

and apologies if this is in the wrong forum.

Just wondering if the list of aspects were ever expanded upon past what was written up in Unearthed Arcana?

[loky1109]

There is something like in PHBII.

[Crake]

There is something like in PHBII.

The shifter variant I think is widely considered a downgrade, but also just considerably more user-friendly, and balanced. You give up your animal companion, but can use it from level 1, and it's a swift action instead of standard action.

[eggynack]

Not that I'm aware of, but Dragon Magic does have Aspect of the Dragon, which is a similar trade but with a dragon theming. Kinda better abilities too. One of them has a fancy wisdom bonus.

[Dalmosh]

The shifter variant I think is widely considered a downgrade, but also just considerably more user-friendly, and balanced. You give up your animal companion, but can use it from level 1, and it's a swift action instead of standard action.

If Shifter variant druid is on the table, then it's reasonable to expect that the Class Feature Retraining rules presented in the same book are too. I'm personally happy with druid players starting out as a shifter type, and then swapping it out for normal wildshaping (and an animal companion) when that comes online at level 5, if they so prefer.

Generally I find people like the flavour of the shifter variant more when playing from low levels. Having a tough pet vs being able to turn into a reskinnable predator has some cool factor beyond power optimisation.

[Crake]

If Shifter variant druid is on the table, then it's reasonable to expect that the Class Feature Retraining rules presented in the same book are too. I'm personally happy with druid players starting out as a shifter type, and then swapping it out for normal wildshaping (and an animal companion) when that comes online at level 5, if they so prefer.

Generally I find people like the flavour of the shifter variant more when playing from low levels. Having a tough pet vs being able to turn into a reskinnable predator has some cool factor beyond power optimisation.

I tend to make the shifter variant mandatory for druids in my games tbh. It saves a lot on book keeping and removes any problems with form min-maxing, and also does away with the pet which can be troublesome at early levels, and just slows the game down by having one player take 2 turns.

[Seward]

The shifter variant I think is widely considered a downgrade, but also just considerably more user-friendly, and balanced. You give up your animal companion, but can use it from level 1, and it's a swift action instead of standard action.

There's a couple nuances to this.

1. You can use it 24x7 (no waiting 8 levels to use it whenever you want)

2. You keep your stats, get enhancement bonus to strength which starts at +4 and bumps up to +8 when you get large form, +12 at plant form maybe more for your final combat form, can't remember.

3. you start out with only medium land-critter with 50' movement and one attack. At L5 you get 40' flight and 1 talon attack. Next is a large critter with claw/claw/bite around L8? L12 a large plant critter with 2 slam attacks and reach. Last is a final combat form, huge I think, probably with claw/claw/bite. These forms all give some natural armor and all but first form gives some minor save bonus, but you don't get pounce, improved grab, enhanced senses, none of that.

4. You can shift between any form or original form as a swift action, and you can choose any animal that fits the category (so you could be a tiger in a jungle, or a polar bear in the arctic etc). This is pretty cool for scouting, although your initial land and bird forms keep your original size (sm or medium) so choose race wisely to trade off between better scouting forms vs better combat forms in early levels.

5. You keep all your racial abilities, and all class abilities except spellcasting, which can't work regardless of feats/etc that might indicate otherwise. Likewise all gear worn melds and is nonfunctional, in spite of anything else that might indicate otherwise (such as wilding clasps or wild armor). The only gear that might work is stuff put on you after you shift or something like ioun stones (and the former defeats the point of swift action shifting). This means spellcast-buffs in human form are really really important, and you can't hover as a bird as with wildshape and rain down destruction (but you can find a good perch and become human, or use reserve feats or other SU abilities that burn spell slots to do SU effects, such as draconic breath or stormcaster's thunderclap thing)

It isn't for everyone, and you also lose animal companion, but if your campaign is starting at L1, there isn't a better way to get your shift-on and if you're playing a martial race like wood elf or halforc with good str/dex/con even the basic form is pretty effective in those low levels.

It's also pretty good as a dip, to get scouting shapeshift+overland mobility in the basic land-form (you can load up to heavy load, shift, have 50' base overland movement, look harmless, then swift action into a heavy armored (well nonmetallic armor) tank bristling with weapons at need). If you are strong, the basic bite attack gets str*1.5 and stacks up ok against a normal martial charging, so starting an outdoor fight by charging in wolf form with +4 enh bonus to strength, biting, then swift-action into your armored/weaponed/fully geared form for close combat is a decent approach.

Some GM's might let you pull that swift action mid-charge (eg, a leap-attacker charges, leaps, transforms into his armored+greatsword form and lays the smackdown when he comes down). If that is allowed, the bird form shifting to the bigger higher level forms getting double damage on a diving charge could also be pretty interesting (imagine a bear landing on you at the tail end of a bird dive-bomb)

[False God]

Gonna cheerlead for the Shifter variant here.

Great class with a lot of the management of the core druid taken out.

Runs a lot like a barbarian, actually you can MC Barbarian/Shifter Druid into a Shock Trooper build fairly easily. Dump your casting stats and keep only self-buff or healing spells.

[Seward]

Runs a lot like a barbarian, actually you can MC Barbarian/Shifter Druid into a Shock Trooper build fairly easily. Dump your casting stats and keep only self-buff or healing spells.

Barbarian has good synergy, with the extra land speed and rage working while shifted with no issues (and a barb/druid can't cast while raging anyway so you don't miss the casting if you were going down that road anyway).

I sketched out a dog-were (a dog who can change into a wood-elf) concept based around this idea. He was a good boy. He went into warshaper and then tactical fighter - he gets one really big bite attack (think the dog in The Mask) and a lot of surprising AOOs, can do the tactical soldier offensive strike with less danger (warshapers don't care if you threaten a crit on each attack) and he can get Robilar's gambit at L15 if they start focusing on him instead of his pack. This was a 1 level dip into shifter, he was something like barb2/druid1/fighter2/warshaper4/tactical fighter X, starting as a charge-cleave dude then shifting to AOOs after he got warshaper3, adding combat reflexes, hold the line, sidestep (from tactical fighter) and robilar's gambit

The fast healing from Warshaper4 is rather important to the later evolution of this build, as taking hits is part of the cost of doing business. Enlarge Person extends the reach nicely too, although it does take away one combat reflexes AOO. This guy would be in dog form almost all the time, popping out only to use wands or take stuff into his backpack or to shoot a bow at a flying/distant enemy or maybe bust out an adamantine weapon if the DR is getting too high for his bite. Or I guess in theory try to assist in social skill checks, but with 6 int and 8 cha + 0 skill point spent there he won't be that much help. But he'll mean well, even if he wants to sniff or lick you in greeting as a humanoid....

[eggynack]

I sketched out a dog-were (a dog who can change into a wood-elf) concept based around this idea.
Gotta say, fangshields sounds basically perfect for that setup. You have the animal as the base form (anthro bat if you want to go optimal or you can eat the LA with actual anthro wolf) and then spend as much time as possible wild shaped into an elf or whatever. The limit on wild shape actually kinda adds to the cool factor, to the extent that you might want to play it up by trading away wild shape uses. You already trade away one for the elf form and there's probably other stuff worth picking up. Starting at level seven, when you can pick up the sub level, you can run elf form from when you wake up until you go to sleep, but only just. Later on you can theoretically sustain it all day. But, in either case, your ability to manage your humanoid form is reliant on not needing wild shape uses for combat. Seems like a neat tension. Also, you can always be manifesting those weird wild shape hands to play up your elven desires.

[Seward]

Doing it without shapeshift, I'd probably do something like you said and go master of many forms for the humanoid-wildshape form. But what I like about this approach is you start at level 2 (I like starting with barbarian) shifting into dog and never look back. The explanation for playing 1 level in "were-elf" form is that he's spent decades mastering the nuances of being not-dog (although still int 6, illiterate and skill points all put into physical skills that a dog could learn) and this level of adventuring is his "graduation exercise", staying elf under stress of combat, fighting with weapons etc. All that said you could mix Fangshields and Shapeshift if you only took the L4 substitution level (the other two use wildshape, which is a no go). That could be interesting - like a Hyena who turned into a Gnoll or some such.

I kind of assumed some other elf - wizard or druid - was in the party who helped train him, and he'd be sort of an "animal companion" for that individual. Given the kind of attributes he has in shifted form, especially later, he's certainly some kind of legendary ur-dog to begin with, or in the case of a wizard mentor, a heavily magically modified "awakened" dog, so the elf lifespan made sense. It works nearly as well with a halforc if you prefer a more doggy-lifespan, with the "were" aspect extending the lifespan by a factor of 5 or so.

Also it's easier to play a wood elf at most tables than an anthropomorphic dog, Laika notwithstanding. Even if you intend to be a dog most of the time and act like an intelligent (for a dog) might act. Were I to actually play this character I'd try to convince the GM to let me take a scent-type feat - 3.5 doesn't have any that don't involve burning wildshape charges, but Pathfinder 1e has some options. The explanation if I can't work that into the build is the intelligence used up so much of the brain that the part used to interpret scent got ruined, even in dog form. (this is kinda realistic - in a real dog the portion of the brain used to support the nose is much, much larger than on a human)