How To Be: The Animorphs

One way or another, I’m going to find a way to make a build for How to Be that involves the druid, and if this is how we do it, this is how we do it. See, I can’t tell you who these characters are, or where they’re from. All I can tell you is that we’re going to do our best to make builds for them, and one of them is definitely going to be a druid.

Alright, first up, you’re going to be looking at translation. Every character in Animorphs is a teenaged human in a 90s alt-history. They don’t, largely, punch or fight things face to face. They use animal forms for combat, and they don’t have any known special powers. If you want to play with the low-combat versions of this, you want subtle builds that hide their specialness – so rogues, unarmed combat, characters whose equipment is non-obvious. But you may want to use those characters as your origin point and that’s okay. I’m going to operate from a sort of close model here: I want to make sure that you have a place to start, and then get to make your own choices of what to bolt on top of it.

Everyone in the group needs a way to shapeshift into an animal form. For me, a small number of useful forms are going to cover everything, but you may want an exhaustive approach.

• Initiate of the Old Faith. This gives you Wild Shape, and a druid power to use with it. It’s not impossible to get some mileage out of this, but it’s not really a top power choice unless you’re also doing something that can benefit from the Beast Form power choices and feat support for a druid. This is a real rabbit hole, but it’s also simple.
• The Tuathan is a theme you can take if you’re playing a half-elf or human. It can then use a level 2 Utility power to pick up a shapeshift at will. Very close to level 1, and very simple in what it executes.
• The Werewolf, Wererat and Werebear forms give you free access to a shapeshift that has some combat application. The Pack Outcast also gives you one that you can use in melee combat freely.

Because of these all being possible options to satisfy the more basic characters (don’t look at me like that, you know what I mean), it creates spaces these builds want to leave alone. It’s one thing to say ‘pick which of these you like’ but if a build doesn’t have space for that, it’s not a meaningful choice.

For that reason, none of these builds are going to make sure that the multiclassing or theme option are available, and none use the classes with an overstuffed level 2 utility power slot… which means no Paladins.

The Jake

Alright, how do we get the mix of abilities for a leader.

(“I don’t think of Jake as a good match with the leader role in 4e,” didn’t ask, don’t care, shut up.)

We want a shapeshift-able character who doesn’t rely heavily on his strength. The sentinel druid is an option but I don’t like that class at all. A lazy warlord or a melee cleric could do the job too. There’s not a strong shapeshift option there, but really, the main thing you need to ask is do I want him to fight in melee? If he’s a melee guy, then you play a strength-based warlord, granting attacks and being in the thick of it. If not, play a lazy bard, and spend your time granting attacks and positioning enemies.

The Cassie

Cassie catches a lot of flak for not being a proactive combatant. What I’d point out in Cassie’s context is that she’s also very good at controlling and delaying people. One of Cassie’s most powerful moments was when she basically sat on a single Yeerk for a prolonged period and was willing to put herself in the path of personal harm to get there.

To this end, I put Cassie as the free square. Druid. Druid gets you wild shape, it gets you rituals, it gets you controlling powers that don’t do direct damage and it gets you a beast form that can both move fast and harass a single opponent.

Thing is, if you want to make ‘a Cassie’ in this case, I think it’s going to be about something you see in Cassie that is not obvious to me. It’s about something about the character that really sings to you. Is it the wolf nature? Is it the importance of non-combat skills? Is it the ability to make good faith negotiations?

I can’t give you insight there. Cassie is a character who is most important for reasons that D&D doesn’t pull directly. I would recommend something that cares about wisdom, and not so much about strength.

The Marco

Marco is someone who wants to be pointed in a direction and commit to an action. I think this is where you want a striker, and you want one that cares about wisdom or charisma. Sorcerer doesn’t feel right to me, like, he’s too physical with the donkey kong comparison. I’d also like the Monk, which gives you the mix of mobility and melee. But you can play a monk, aesthetically be a gorilla, and use one of the above options to manage your non-combat shapeshifting.

Alright, that’s the basics. Now here are the more specific weirdo characters with powers that require a bit more detail.

The Tobias

Tobias is the insider othered. Tobias has, in the official structure of the world of Animorphs so many layers of privilege that are supposed to protect and honour him. The fact that he is failed by those systems so totally that he winds up a depressed teenager with no friends is a show of how those privilege systems are fundamentally only functional in convenience. Anyway, thing is, all that is totally not useful for the most pertinent character design trait that ‘playing Tobias’ highlights.

Tobias is a bird.

Not ‘like a bird,’ Tobias is a bird. Tobias can stop being a bird any time he wants (oh, spoilers? get off my dick), but the defining thing about Tobias, the thing everyone is going to think about when you start with ‘Tobias’ is that he’s a bird. How do you get there, then, in a game where people start out as non-birds?

Now, if you’re going to play a Tobias in a group, there are three approaches I recommend.

• The Pixie. Use a Pixie, take a melee class, and just live in what is a ‘bird form.’ Flavour all your gear as development, or painting magical runes on the feathers.
• Pure flavour with a dash of Speak with Nature. Negotiate with the DM a way to handle this so you don’t feel like you’re getting an unfair advantage, and have the character just be a hawk when they’re not in combat scenarios. The Speak with Nature ritual lets you communicate with any birds in the area, so, if you have that ritual, you can just use that ritual to do a bird fly over and gather the appropriate information. That should get you most of what being a bird lets you do. That means you’ll need a class that gives you Ritual Caster (Bard, Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Invoker, Psion, Warlock or Wizard) or take it on your own. I’d favour the Bard as a Tobias.
• Sigh. Sigh. SIGH. Ask if you can play a Hengeyoukai. The Hengeyouka is a heritage option which offers essentially no mechanical advantage to a character, or, to put it more clearly, it is giving up on having a good heritage option. But it can turn into a bird at will, and change back, and that means if you need the shapeshift, there it is.

As far as ‘what should Tobias do,’ my impulse is that he’s either a melee striker with a focus on mobility, like a Ranger or Hunter, or a lazy warlord build who chooses some place to be in the battlefield that doesn’t involve ever actually engaging in melee combat.

The Ax

At this point there’s an awkward wall, because to represent Ax as Ax is, is basically an impossible ask for a system like 4e. Not ‘you can’t do it,’ but doing it will require answering some questions to your satisfaction that might lead to non-overlapping choices. For example, is what matters to you about Ax his extremely nonhuman body plan? Do you want to play (basically) a centaur? Do you want to play a nonhuman outsider who has to have every sensory element of life explained to you?

Some options:

• Take a heritage that is a normal, typical character and explain that your soul or mind are from some kind of alien space. Be a trapped demon, a feywild interloper, a far realms creature, just taking the form of a person and that’s why you’re so fascinated by the tongue and such.
• Take a heritage that is identifiably alien, like the Wilden or Warforged. Don’t take the Wilden, they’re bad.
• Take a heritage that nobody else in the setting has, like the Shardmind, and ask your DM if it’s okay to leave that space undefined. I talked about that with the Gardevoir article.

Taking the standard shapeshifting package from earlier, though, Ax is pretty simple. Just be whatever the Leader needs you to be.

The Rachel

First one through the wall gets bloody.

Rachel is a special one because what Rachel does is very well defined and extremely clear. Rachel is the warrior; she is the defender. She is the tank. She stands in the front and she does the terrible things others don’t want to do. In the context where everyone is okay with violence and nobody’s ‘traumatised’ because of being ‘fourteen’ or something, that’s less of a need, but the point is Rachel is definitely a character who has a specific, clear way of being.

If Rachel isn’t a hot girl who turns into a bear, I have messed up my suggestions.

And so! I bring forth the Knight; I bring forth the Werebear. This is a classic combo that works reliably and even graduates into a better mode later on when the bear can live in that form all the time, and use things like claw gauntlets. But at level 1, a Werebear can turn into a bear in combat, then smack people good with their claw attacks, leave marks and move on and use her aura for the rest of the marking. Fine stuff here.

It’s like Tobias. You have to be able to say ‘oh, I can tell what’s obvious about this character’ and build from there.

Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.

Conclusion

Fundamentally, the Animorphs are not a character. If you took any of these build ideas and started with it in a group, it’s not going to stand out or work as its own thing. It’s going to be something that started from here and you built it out and explored it in your own way. The Animorphs are a communal experience, they are a group and part of that is a group dynamic. Marco wants to complain, Rachel wants to fight, Ax wants cinnabunzzz, and all those things are part of what makes them distinct to each other. A normal D&D game with a character like Cassie in it would be a problem, where Cassie’s character kinda represents a burden the group has to grapple with

(and hey, if that’s your kinda game, go for it!)

but instead, you need to think of these as launching pads for these characters. Places to start, and to see what about these characters – once you get past the basic ‘I am reminded of the Animorphs’ – resonates with you.

What makes your Jake Jake? What makes your Marco Marco? What makes your Rachel a terrifying bear and also something else?