Shifter
by Prince Phantom
For those of you who only sort of want to play as a werewolf, there’s the Shifter. With a good number of choices for how your transformation affects you, the Shifter can be great for a wide variety of builds and classes. The only problem is that shifting is really their only thing, and with the limited number of times they can do it, especially at low levels, you may run into some problems. Let’s see what we have to work with here.
Shifter Features
Darkvision: Always nice to have.
Bestial Instincts: What you choose here will largely depend on your build. Athletics for grapple builds, Acrobatics for Dexterity based characters, Intimidation for Charisma classes, and Survival for Wisdom classes.
Shifting: Here’s what you came here for. We get to shift into our half beast form as a bonus action, proficiency bonus times per day. At low levels, this might not be enough for every encounter, but by level 5 or potentially level 9 of your table runs a lot of encounters each day, it shouldn’t be an issue. You get four options for what to shift into, and you can only pick one for your entire campaign, so take this decision seriously. We also automatically get some temporary HP when we shift, and I definitely appreciate that.
Beasthide: This is the tank option, giving us +1 AC and even more temporary HP when we shift. This is generally useful for literally every build, and a great default option if none of the other options appeal to you.
Longtooth: On the turn we shift and then as a bonus action on subsequent turns, we can make a bonus action bite attack. This notably doesn’t require us to have made an attack with our action, a requirement that most other bonus action attack features share. That’s notable, meaning you can use this after casting a spell, though most spellcasters won’t have the strength to make use of this. This option would require a specialized build to take advantage of it, but I believe it has a lot of potential.
Swiftstride: We get a 10ft walking speed while shifted, and a new reaction to move away from an enemy when they end their turn right next to us. This is a decent option for builds that want to avoid melee like the plague, but I personally think the Goblin does a better job at this role, as does the Harengon.
Wildhunt: This is another defensive option primarily, preventing attacks from having advantage on us and granting a bonus to wisdom based skill checks. That second part won’t come up much in combat, and it’s hard to justify shifting out of combat since it only lasts a minute. Monsters have a much harder time getting advantage to hit than players do, but if your table uses flanking and your DM likes to take advantage of that fact, this could be helpful. It’s also notable that it removes the one drawback of the Barbarian’s Reckless Attack.
There’s a lot to like about the Shifter’s various options, especially if your table doesn’t run a ton of combats each day. Nothing here is crazy strong, but there’s something here for just about any build, so it gets points on sheer versatility alone. This is a really fun race to build around, and I highly recommend brainstorming a character that incorporates this race. It will likely not be the strongest option, but it will rarely be a bad one either.
Final Rating: 3/5
Shifter (Legacy)
The old Shifter can only shift once per short or long rest, and that should tell you everything you need to know. You don’t really have any reason to select this over the revision.
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