[Cable0]

Id like to create an Elven Shapeshifter Shaman type deal and im having a hard time finding a balance assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[CitizenJoe]

You're not an elven shapeshifter, you're a shapeshifter that has an humanoid form that looks elven.  Start by thinking like an animal.  Your natural form is an animal (which animal is up to you).  Now, you're probably going to be tempted to go with an animal totem/mentor spirit.  Don't.  Remember that you're an animal pretending to be an elf.  So go for something like Mountain or Lake or Moon or some such.

I'm pretty sure everyone is going to point you at getting some fancy commlink and stress how important it is.  You're an animal.  A commlink is not important.  Design your character around not needing one and also around screwing with people too dependent on technology. But don't sabotage your ability to work with technology.

As to animals.  You're going to be tempted to get some super powerful close combat monster sort of animal.  Don't.  If you're thinking city based character go with either a raccoon or a rat.  Be ready at all times to abandon all your gear, shapechange and scurry away.  That being said, stash gear all over the place and have intimate knowledge of the sewers and other animal pathways.

[UmaroVI]

Sadly, the "look like a different type of metahuman in metahuman form" option for shifters is really, really bad. Like terrible. You pay 20 bp for low-light vision. Please don't do this, just be a regular Shapeshifter.

First, you should understand what being a Shapeshifter does for you - you pay a lot of points for Regeneration and hopefully better stats (although some of the animal types have really bad stats). You also get Dual Natured which has some advantages, but comes with the major drawback of being unable to hide from astral enemies. This means you have to be ready to kung fu fight on the astral with ranged combat, ie, you had best know Stunbolt.

There are basically two ways to go as a Shapeshifter shaman. One is to focus primarily on casting - basically, you wind up being a typical magician who has less good casting (because you spent a lot of points on Shapeshifter) but has the very powerful Regeneration ability. The other is to focus on buffing yourself and doing physical combat. Do note that fighting in animal form is always bad because of the lack of equipment; you should use animal form to try to look like a normal animal or in very rare cases where you need something specific (ie, Eagle shapeshifters might turn into an eagle and fly away sometimes), but doing things like being a Tiger shifter and planning to hang out in Tiger form and fight like that won't work out well.

Of the shifter types:

Foxes are pretty bad
Wolves are awful
Eagles are good at the casty type; they bring Charisma and Willpower bonuses, and flight in animal form is nifty.
Tiger/Lion are good at the fighty type; they bring huge stat bonuses (but have 1/5 willpower)
Seal are similar to Tiger/Lion, probably very slightly worse but it's debatable.
Leapord/Jaguar are similar to Tiger/Lion and strictly worse, but not dramatically so.
Bear are good at either fighty type or casty type; they have lousy agility but enormous Body, and slightly subpar mental stats.
Anaconda shifters are not bad, but not a good idea as a Shaman because of their different mental stat mods compared to other shifters (they'd be good at either fighty or casty type, but with a Intuition or Logic tradition).

[Glyph]

If the "elf" part of the equation is more important to you than playing a character who pees on the couch to mark his territory, you might want to consider simply giving an elven shaman the shapechange or critter form spell.  Shapeshifters tend to be pricy, and either you overpay for a few mental Attribute bonuses, or you overpay for some high physical Attribute bonuses that you don't strictly need.

[Cable0]

After reading this may be a bad idea and finding that my party needs another up front character any ideas on a start i was thinking ork?

[JustADude]

After reading this may be a bad idea and finding that my party needs another up front character any ideas on a start i was thinking ork?

The professional munchkins on this board tend to default to "Play an Ork unless you have a good reason not to," as their stance.

[Medicineman]

Why not a Shapeshifter Elven Poser. The Animal that always wanted to be an Elf (cosmetic surgery costs ca 1000 ¥ and 0 Essence lost )

He who wants to Dance with Elves
Medicineman

[UmaroVI]

If you're new to SR4, you might want to take a look through some of the characters in the first link of my sig for ideas.

[Cable0]

i have read through and saw a few id be interested in but im limited on books i apologize for not stating this before but allow me to tell u what i am working with 400 bp gm has arsenal, war, core, street magic,and  black book as far as i know anything goes but an up front character is needed the one we currently have is incredible effective but he is only there sometimes so we need another guy

[UmaroVI]

I think the Bad Enough Trog is fine as-is, the Martial Artist just has Ceramic Bone Lacing which you can swap out for a core-book Bone Lacing instead, the Former Neoprimitive just has Genetic Optimization: Agility which is not super mission critical and can be swapped out for something else, and the Ronin has Attention Coprocessor and Trauma Damper which can be swapped out. Any of them should work.

[Cable0]

Thanks for all the help everyone.
Is there a play by post I could be involved in?
Ive never done one before an Id like to try.

[BreederofPuppets]

What about a bear mage that follows a possession tradition?  Wiping up a quick +6 to all yer physical stats seems to me as a good way to go, if you want to be an upfront fighter, shifter, and a mage.

But, I'm new at this 4e stuff.