Woodie is one of my favorite characters, but he is basically replaced by Maxwell in terms of chopping trees, and only has a slight advantage at getting more logs due to the fact that he needs to eat them to not become a Werebeaver. I used the same seed in the same area, and these are the results of how many logs I got for each character at chopping trees.
Wilson (and other characters): 18 Logs
Woodie: 21 Logs
Maxwell (with one shadow): 24 Logs.
While it may seem like Maxwell is only slightly better at chopping trees than Woodie, let's not forget the fact that he can have more shadows, meaning he can get even more trees chopped down. In addition to this he spawns with 6 nightmare fuel, meaning that he can get 3 Axe Shadows from the start. These are the changes I would make to Woodie in order to make him still be the tree-chopper, but not just be that.
- Hitting a tree reduces the wood meter by 1 instead of 1.5
- Trees drop one extra log (this does not include digging the stump, but it does include living logs)
- Treeguards have a 4% chance to spawn when Woodie chops a tree instead of 1.33%
- Has a x2 damage multiplier against treeguards.
- Living logs restore 75 wood meter, and instead of 50, and boards restore 60 wood meter instead of 15
- Eating cut grass removes 10 from the log meter instead of adding 1 to it
- Isn't bothered by the cold - Woodie suffers the damaging effects of freezing at -5 degrees (game unit) instead of 0 degrees (game unit)
- The werebeaver deals 42.5 damage, and has 75% damage reduction.
- Change to werebeaver's sanity drain. It starts at -30 sanity/minute but the rate a which sanity decreases, increases every 1 seconds (ex: after 60 seconds the werebeaver will lose 90 sanity a minute)
- Can craft a wooden amulet at a tier 1 magic station, which prevents him from turning into a werebeaver (via making it so that your log meter doesn't drop if you chop a tree). The amulet cannot turn Woodie from a werebeaver back into human form. The crafting recipe is 1 living log, 3 wood, and 2 nightmare fuel. It lasts for 8 minutes.
- Breaking something as werebeaver other than trees and stumps decreases sanity by 5 (so 30 sanity is lost for trying to break a boulder as werebeaver)
These changes would make Woodie a better character to play as. It keeps him as the role of a lumberjack, but allows him to be used in combat as well via werebeaver and damage vs treeguards.