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The Shapeshifter's Handbook $4.99
Publisher: Drop Dead Studios
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by Christopher F. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/02/2017 13:18:13

The Shapeshifter's Handbook is not just a must have for anyone who wants to create an Alteration focused character using Spheres of Power, it is also incredibly useful for giving players and GMs a way to turn any character or creature into a unique shapeshifter.

Most of this book is centered around adding new Alteration talents, feats, and drawbacks for Sphere Casters. It adds a lot of new forms and traits that can allow a character to turn anyone into anything he wants. There are traits that cover constructs, oozes, various outsiders, lycanthropes, and many others. There are also feats that can help customize your playstyle, like one that turns your hostile alteration powers into curses and another that makes it possible to cast spells with verbal and somatic components in any form.

One of my favorate parts of the book is the Transformation line of feats. If a character picks up this feat, he selects a base form from the Alteration Sphere and gains and unlimited use superatural ability that lets him assume that form, simmilar to a Kitsune's human form in Pathfinder. There are additional feats for customizing this form, allowing you to take a hybrid form or add additional traits to it. The best part is that a character doesn't even have to be a caster to take this feat chain. A GM could use this to give any monster a human form that doesn't detect as magical, so it can infiltrate a city. A player could give his figher a Dragon alternate form, so he can fight as a dragon instead of using weapons. The options are endless.

There are a few new drawbacks for the Alteration sphere, and this is the one section where the book stumbles. Flesh Warper is useful for characters who only want to shapeshift other people. However, Rebound causes characters who make saves against your hostile Alterations bounce the alteration back at you, and this is basically better than the original Lycanthropic drawback in all ways. With Lycantheropic you can only target yourself, but with Rebound you can target yourself and your allies with no penalty while they both grant the same benefit. Unnatural Transformation has incredible flavor: your shapeshifts always leave behind telltail signs of who you are, making them useless for disguise. However, they also make you weak to silver... you have to save VS silver damage that you take or lose your transformation. That save DC will be near impossible to make at mid to high level play, making it possible for this drawback to totally disable your character's alteration powers if enemies use silver.

There is also a section with alternate racial traits for almost every race that allows them to gain Basic Magical Training in the Alteration sphere (with themed limits and drawbacks), and it also grants shapeshifters such as kitsune the option to standardize their shapeshifting with spheres by getting the transformation feat. There are also sections discussing how to create custom forms for unusual creatures, having alteration work better with natural shapeshifters, and what forms can use somatic and verbal components.

Overall, this is a great book despite the issues with the drawbacks section. It futher supports Spheres of Power's tendancy to allow incredible amounts of character customization and theme based builds. I would recommand this for anyone who wants to make a shapeshifting character, and this would be of use even for people who don't want to actually use Spheres Casters.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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The Shapeshifter's Handbook
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