u/JaydSky

Hello, I'm hoping that someone might be able to help me with something.

I was really enjoying playing the PnP Shifter class from the big PRC mod in Chapter 1 of Hordes of the Underdark (in Enhanced Edition). Everything was going fine, but as soon as I hit Chapter 2, I suddenly can't shift into several of my shapes. I get the message: "failed to create a template of the creature to polymorph into". And when I try to print the form info it says "Bad Strref" along with "Barbarian (0)" a bunch of times and other nonsensical stuff.

I tried to troubleshoot this with AI assistance (I don't know enough about NWN modding to do it myself) and nothing worked. You should know that the very same exported character info works fine when imported into a fresh Chapter 1 HotU new game, but gets the error when imported into a fresh Chapter 2 HotU new game. So it's like there's something about Chapter 2 itself that's breaking the class.

If anyone has suggestions on how I might fix this, I'd appreciate it. This is one of my favourite games and Shifter was always my favourite class; I was looking forward to enjoying the campaign with the PRC's version.

Update: I tried importing the character into SoU (should have tried this before posting, sorry) and found that it had the same problem. I also clicked on an option called "update known shape information" and it printed out a list where about half my shapes said "Updated" and the other half "could not update". This matches with the shapes that still work and the ones that don't.

At first I thought that this must mean the problematic shapes are tied specifically to HotU Ch.1 - but one of the broken shapes is 'Beholder' and those should exist in HotU Ch2 (that's a whole plot point, right?).

I suppose the only thing that might be possible is editing some list somewhere in my files of creature templates associated with specific modules? Otherwise maybe this class has always played in strangely module-specific ways?

With the published version of the Hollow Warden's Wrath of the Wild transformation, I don't see any good reason to not change it as follows:

• The transformation activates when Hunter's Mark is cast and lasts for the duration.
• You can expend a use of Favored Enemy to transform as a Bonus Action without casting Hunter's Mark. When you transform in this way the transformation lasts for one minute, until you have the Incapacitated condition, or you die.

This makes a bunch of people happy:

• The people who want subclasses to give more reasons to use Hunter's Mark.
• The people who do not want to be forced to use Hunter's Mark.
• The people who both want to have more reason to use Hunter's Mark and don't want to be forced to use it to benefit from their subclass.
• The people who think Wrath of the Wild has too few uses when tied to Favored Enemy alone.

Who does it make unhappy? Do you think this would make the subclass too strong, even with the AC nerf? Would you allow this at your table?

When playtesting UA or homebrew content, ideally everything else in the session should be established content that serves as a benchmark (or 'control' to use experiment language) against which the content being tested can be compared.

I was wondering whether there are any resources that have a good reputation where one can just grab character sheets (and/or other content - encounters would be very helpful) to populate the playtests.

Yes, I can just build them myself, but standardised playtests will save time/energy and also give credibility to the tests if the control content is pulled from somewhere that is respected by the community. I just don't know whether resources like this exist and a Google search didn't reveal anything.

Does anyone have suggestions? Thank you!