D&D 5E Could the Sorcerer get a Shaman subclass

[Henadic Theologian]

It's just because Shamans are the Red caster, and they decided that Sorcerers are Red.

They really should have called them elementalists even that some form of elementals or animalistic seems to be the closest they get to having a commonality (which they don't seem to have much of compared to Clerics, Warlocks, Wizards, Druids, Rangers, Knights, Warriors, Rogues, Barbarians etc...).

 

[Krachek]

Which shaman?

Amazonian
Mongolia
Siberia
Australia
Africa
old China
native American
or
4ed Shaman
WoW Shaman
and now we add MtG!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If the game mechanic of the incarnum comes back, the totemist should be recycled into "shaman", or this could be a mixture of incarnum totemist and vestige pact binder (Tome of Magic: Pact, Shadow and Truename). But this should arrives after the martial adept classes, whose (ki) maneuvers are in the middle between at-will and once-encounter powers.

 

[Parmandur]

It makes lots of sense for sorcerers to be the direct damage colour. However it doesn't make much sense for shamans. They really aught to be green/white.

That's the Druid.

 

[Parmandur]

They really should have called them elementalists even that some form of elementals or animalistic seems to be the closest they get to having a commonality (which they don't seem to have much of compared to Clerics, Warlocks, Wizards, Druids, Rangers, Knights, Warriors, Rogues, Barbarians etc...).

To be honest, you may be overthinking this, particularly in relation to the amount of thought the Magic team has done. If you want to overthink this in line with the Magic team, however, look at the emotional and social elements of Red, not the material elements.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Which shaman?

Amazonian
Mongolia
Siberia
Australia
Africa
old China
native American
or
4ed Shaman
WoW Shaman
and now we add MtG!

What about Sami?

 

[Kobold Avenger]

For Shamans, I think they should either be their own class, or just thrown in the Druid class, or the longshot of Taking over the Druid class and making the Druid a subclass of Shaman.

 

[Blue]

Check out the Hungarian Taltos. Is a shaman that is chosen at birth by the spirits or gods, often with a physical sign of being chosen, like a sixth finger, or being born with a caul.

Taltos is an interesting take. I don't claim to be any more familiar with it than wikipedia, but the power does not seem to be inherent in their bloodline like a sorcerer. It seems they are chosen by an external source (gods or spirits as you said), and lose their power if they don't follow specific rituals such as keeping that physical sign until they are 7, and potentially also being breastfed until then.

In some ways in D&D terms that might actually be closest to a warlock, where they are granted power after attention of a powerful being but after that the power is theirs and they do not need to continue an oath or such to keep it. And not like a warlock - they aren't making a pact for the power. On the other hand wikipedia did mention having specific duties: "The táltos was chosen by gods or spirits for a specific calling in life and had the duty to communicate with the entire Hungarian nation in a time of danger, to warn against invading armies or an impending cultural collapse. ", so perhaps it is closer to a paladin's oath or what a diety would expect from a cleric.

All in all, the Taltos still seems closer to other D&D classes then the sorcerer to me. The picking at birth does have echoes of sorcerer's being born with the power, but it there is nothign to indicate it is because of their bloodline instead of being by external forces, and the fact that it can be lost before manifesting while not definitive does also seem to indicate other classes as well - a potential wizard who doesn't study, a potential cleric or paladin who does not have faith - these can be lost.

 

[Krachek]

What about Sami?

And the Sami,
the Navajo, the Toltec.
Sadly we don’t have timeframe for Classes evolution in DnD.
II could interesting to describe the timeline of classes evolution and transformation for a given setting.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Mechanically it would probably be the primal version of the divine soul sorcerer (able to take spells from the druids' list instead of the clerics') who could spend sp's on a suped up familiar.

Whether that would be better than a druid subclass, a cleric one, a warlock patron, some kind of bard, or a ranger with a spiritual pet is a matter of taste. Heck, back when the ancestral guardian barbarian came out, someone complained that it wasn't shaman enough, so you could probably try to fit it into any class.