Fastest way to get Alternate Form as a Changeling?

[Amechra]

I'm asking because I noticed that, other than the fact that they don't technically qualify for the Quick Change feat, you can make a Master of Flies out of a Changeling.

I want that ability to turn into a mass of biting death insects, damn it!

I mean, you eventually get to turn into a living Creeping Doom spell, iirc.

And the ability to use Tree Stride, except with swarms, is just too cool an image to pass up.

[Keldar]

Humorously, Races of Eberron gives Changelings a feat: Quick Change.  Which technically would supersede the Savage Species version.  Even if it doesn't, it still is the feat Quick Change providing the same type of benefit as the old one.   Regardless of that, Changelings can get Change Shape by 11th taking Cabinet Trickster from the same book.

You are running into an edition terminology issue.  Alternate Form was not rigidly defined in 3.0 like it was in 3.5.  The example Areana has Alternate Form in 3.0, but Change Shape in 3.5, yet the effects are identical.  That Wild Shape meets a prerequisite for Master of Flies, but does not qualify for Quick Change reinforces the terminology disconnect.  In other words, any shape changing quality should qualify for the Quick Change feat, once you get past the language barrier.

[caelic]

Frankly, I think Keldar has it in one.

In order to nix the class, a DM would have to engage in some pretty hypocritical semantic dickery.  First he'd have to claim that, by the letter of the rules, Changeling doesn't qualify, since by the letter of the rules they don't qualify for the 3.0 Quick Change--despite the fact that they'd likely qualify for an updated version of the same feat.

Then he has to turn around and say that, while by the letter of the rules the 3.5 Quick Change feat supplants the 3.0 and should qualify the Changeling for the PrC, the intent of the rules wasn't for those two feats to be the same.

At that point, he might as well just invoke "No, because you can't have nice things."

[Amechra]

I am grinning widely right now, because my plans of being a little old lady who collapses into a deathswarm is just win in my mind.

Too bad I can't get enough levels in; otherwise, I would totally go Verminlord as well...