[MINIMAL SPOILERS ONLY!]

Greetings, all!

Mechanically, is Fane the best story character?

He starts with his shapeshifting hat, is Undead (meaning immune to Deathfog and healed by poison), gets Play Dead and Time Warp as racials, and +2 initiative.

What say you?

He loses his hat so this hardly counts that much, but undeads in general are most unique and special race from all five, followed by elves. All other races feel more generic.

His Time Warp is probably the strongest of those skills too. Also Deathfog immunity and play death are probably pretty strong on themselves, but on the other hand AI always knows, that you are undead and tries to heal you to death.

Well the lizards are my favourite but hey that's just my opinion.

Fanes time warp is by far the most powerful skill in the game and there plenty of source for the number of battles in the game. But I didnt like his story or character. He was boring and largely a blank slate if not for his back history.

With clever shapeshifting abilities, Fane can become a Dwarf, sneak around the Hold, get the body part that grant Adrenaline, turn into an Elf, eat that, turn into a Lizard, and persuade/barter better.

Yep, from a pure statistic point of view, he's the best. Best special ability in the game (maybe best ability in general), play dead also very usefull, he can use other racial abilities too (you lost the full mask at the begin, it's true, but even with the less powerful version you could gain many advantages, like gain abilities from eat corpse, improve bartering, ect). Immunity to deathfog/poison is a minor improve, but ok, and the weakness to healing is often insignificant, because an heal on you means that enemies have less heal for themselves.

Every character can do this.

Yep, since his "mask" can be used by anyone.

Depends on what you want your avatar to be.

If you want your avatar to be a battlemage then I would say Loshe is hands the best to be both your avatar and a battlemage.
If you want your avatar to be a charismatic canibal polymorph,then yes mechanicaly Fane is the best.
If you chose Fane to be your battlemage and you recruit Loshe,then as far as I am concerned that is not the best - but you could still make this combination work or even surpass the combination I mentioned if you play your cards right.

Early on Sebille is the strongest by virtue of Flesh Sacrifice. Fane being undead makes him both the most convenient (with lockpicking) and inconvenient (hello instant Fane seeking heals). I know that Fane can also use Flesh Sacrifice, but I don't like giving up his helm to do so, so YMMV on that point, plus he loses undead abilities.

Depending on the build too you can take advantage of his Feign Death, which mostly acts as a second invisibility for the end of his turn. Late game, because of Time Warp, he's probably the strongest. You can do combos with him that you can't do with any other character or race. Of course you can just have him cast it on anyone else too, but because of the way the turn order works, it's not always going to give you the same results as him just using it on himself.

It's even more pronounced if you happen to have Glass Cannon on him.

I think you have to have an undead in your party to gain the knowledge on how to make the mask let alone get the face ripper.

I could be wrong though.

You don't need an undead character - you can get the recipe without one. But this is not really needed, because you can get a full mask from Windego early in the game (Fanes mask). For crafting the recipe is not really needed. You can craft the masks without recipe. But this is only worth it, if you want to transform into another race and still use a helm, because the individual masks allow this - the full mask not ... or you need multiple masks for your party.

Just a quick note - you don't need to give up the helm slot to use the mask of the shapeshifter. Use it then take it off and you will not change back until you put it back on and use the skill again. So go ahead, make him an elf and then put a normal armored helmet on him.

LOL, are you serious? I read elsewhere that this didn't work because if you took the helm off he would revert back to being Undead, so I never bothered to actually try that. I played the entire game with Fane as Undead, and he would have been better (other than for lockpicking, which would have just taken a few seconds of switcheroo to handle) as an Elf more often than not.

I carried his mask around every playthrough thinking "Man, if only I could actually use this...". Going to try this now.

Edit: Unless there's a trick or glitch to getting this to work, it doesn't work normally. Fane changes right back to Undead as soon as the Mask is removed. Bummer. Is it just Fane's Mask that doesn't work, and the crafted one does? Otherwise, I don't even know why the hell the recipie exists since it's so convoluted of a process to even make, plus you get a completed one right after you exit the Fort anyway...

Nah, that's bullcrap.
The moment you take it off, you revert to his undead form and regain his racial bonus of Initiative and Critical% + Play dead.

The best way to use the mask is to start turn one, Blood Ritual and unequip it for no AP to enjoy the whole AP, Damage, Initiative and Critical% Bonus.

With the full shapeshifter mask you revert back to normal form on unequipping it ... but I haven't tested this since the last patch.

But if you craft the "smaller" version from ripped off face + source orb you can transform and unequip the mask without reverting back to your normal from. This way you can use elf form with a normal helm.

This sounds like a bug though or better said an oversight.

Fane's ability is OP.
Getting second turn is like cheating