Anyone played a Spirit Shaman?

[Felon]

The response to the Hexblade thread was great stuff. So much so that I wanted to move on to the next class I've been considering: the spirit shaman.

I hate the 3.5e druid. Mainly I hate the disposable companion and the excessive shapeshifting, and I want it gone. But I don't like unplogging one element without providing an alternative, so maybe the shaman fits the bill. I've read up on the class, but it seems to involve a lot of details (five pages is a lot for a class). How does it pan out in actual gameplay? Is the Chastise Spirits ability so powerful that it makes encounters with spirits pointless?

 

[S'mon]

The response to the Hexblade thread was great stuff. So much so that I wanted to move on to the next class I've been considering: the spirit shaman.

I hate the 3.5e druid. Mainly I hate the disposable companion and the excessive shapeshifting, and I want it gone. But I don't like unplogging one element without providing an alternative, so maybe the shaman fits the bill. I've read up on the class, but it seems to involve a lot of details (five pages is a lot for a class). How does it pan out in actual gameplay? Is the Chastise Spirits ability so powerful that it makes encounters with spirits pointless?

I agree about the 3.5 Druid - check out my Beskarni Forest Witch PC class here - http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=86657 - it's explicitly shamanic, but based off the druid. The Spirits can be extremely powerful at higher levels, I found it very flavourful though - the PC can summon the spirit of a particular place to question, so the GM gets to play "a river", "a dwarven tomb" etc as anthropomorphic NPCs! Great fun and very atmospheric.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Whenever I see someone deeply displeased with the D&D core classes, I point them in the direction of Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. They have a nature-linked PC called the Greenbond that's pretty nice. For the record, I also like their Oathsworn (which replaces the Monk) and some of their feats, like Hands as Weapons (which allows you to enchant your body with weapon enchantments)

If you want to use it, however, you'll have to tweek it for the D&D magic system. Arcana Unearthed is a little different.

 

[Felon]

If you want to use it, however, you'll have to tweek it for the D&D magic system. Arcana Unearthed is a little different.

Yes, the Greenbond is cool, as are many AU classes, but as you point out the magic systems is not readily compatable. I can take a Spirit Shaman straight off the shelf.

Then again, I'm not sure if the whole "spell retrieval" system meshes well with the druid spell list. The list tends to have one or two broken spells at any given level, amidst a lot of crap.

 

[pheaver]

I play a Spirit Shaman in an RPGA campaign. I originally made him in order to test out a class I've never seen played at medium levels (since the campaign made 7th level characters to start with), and am now up to 11th.

The Spirit Shaman is pretty powerful. I think it might be more powerful than a normal druid in some cases. Unlike other sorcerer-style casters (lots of spells, little selection), you don't lose a level of spellcasting. At 7th level, you have 4th level spells, just like a druid. You just have only one of them at that level to cast a few times a day, so make it a good one.

For my character, I picked Augment Summoning and took a few summon spells, with Augment Healing and a Cure Serious, and then put the druid no-save blast spells (Produce Flame, Ice Storm, etc) at other levels. I did this because having two-stat dependency is rough on a small point buy build spellcaster (25 points). So I pretty much ignored Charisma (took a 10) and bumped up Wisdom. If you're playing in a campaign with a higher point buy, or you roll your stats, you can probably get around the dual-stat problem.

Ironically, I've never used Chastise Spirits. The few times it came up, I could either hit the lone spirit monster fighting us for some damage, save for half, or summon / no-save blast / heal, and the latter was always the tactically better choice. Most of the other abilities haven't come up too much either, but I've only played him a half-dozen times. I like the ethereal ability a lot.

I like the Spirit Shaman class. If you're someone who wants to play a non-shifting druid character, and doesn't like animal companions, this class is ideal. It sometimes has the sorcerer problem of only having a few choices in combats, and little to do outside of combat, but it's still been fun to play.

Paul

 

[radferth]

Just wanted to jump in a plug Green Ronin's Shaman class from Complete Shaman's Handbook. It has the sorcerer-style pick from a few spells to cast on the fly. Its spells are heavily based on domains (you start with two and get an additional every 4 or 5 levels), but the domains are a big chunk of the spells it knows. It also has a few spirit-related powers (rebuke spirits as opposed to undead, spirit familiar). Crunch-wise it is sort of the divine version of the sorcerer with some definite druid leanings. Flavor-wise, they are very rustic, one would imagine the same tribes which produce Barbarians would have shamans instead of clerics. The book is written for 3.0, but the 3.5 errata consists of changing a few of the new skills presented into class abilities and updating the names of old skills like wilderness lore. When I was reading Complete Divine, the Spirit Shaman struck me as one of the better new core classes, but much less "organic" than GR's shaman.

 

[Darmanicus]

The Spirit Shaman looks as though it could be great fun. At some point I want to revive an old 2e character called Shangu, a voodoo priest and I think this new core class would be perfect for it.

I seem to recall you get a guiding spirit which was similar to an ability me old character got and there's not much a better guiding spirit than a dead, deaf grandma who thinks she's still alive and seems to think you always need fattening up......lots of laughs were had!

 

[scranford]

I just created a 3rd Level Halfling Spirit Shaman for a new Eberron "Fantasy Grounds" game. The velociraptor mount was just too cool not to try this. I'll post with experience.

 

[Nightfall]

*agrees with rad* If you want a true shaman type, GR's Shaman is the way to go IMHO. Plus they will be updating this in their Advanced Classes Codex. (At least that's the rumor I heard...)

 

[Chimera]

Can't speak to it myself, but we have a guy playing a Spirit Shaman in our Ravenloft campaign. He's only 2nd level, or may have just hit 3rd, so he hasn't taken it very far yet.

But for flavor, I like it a lot. He's playing it like a Voodoo priest, which is kind of fun in a Ravenloft setting and with our other characters (mine is a Fighter 1/Rogue 2).