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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7366800" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think either I misled you or you are misremembering something.I have four "full caster" classes in my world: wizard, sorcerer, cleric, and shaman.  Each represents a different source of magical power and a different relationship to that power and (usually) a different niche within the society the caster is a part of.   While no one in the campaign world could say, "I'm a fighter" or "I'm a rogue" to identify themselves as a member of a class of being, there is intended to be a close correspondence between the meta-game idea of a class like "sorcerer" and something existing within the fiction.  No one is a sorcerer unless they have some sort of magical heritage that grants them magical powers.  No one is a cleric unless they have some special relationship with a deity (however the deity conceives that relationship), and no one is a shaman unless they've made a bargain with multiple greater spirits who are capable of sharing some of their power with the shaman.  Anyone can dabble in magical theory in order to gain understanding of it independent of any source of power external to themselves, but only a wizard pursues this body of knowledge full time.What I have said a few times is that if I had to simplify things further, and cut down the number of spell-casting classes to just one, it would be shaman, because I think shaman both best approximates the other three and best represents magical tradition as it existed in myth and story (at least, pre-D&D itself).  Shaman can approximate cleric by assuming that the relationships are exclusively with the deity according to the deities preferred model of relation to their clerics.  Shaman can approximate wizard by noting that historically, wizards were believed to get their power by invoking the power of spirits according to various formula.  And Shaman can approximate sorcerer by the fact that it is a short distance between having a magical heritage that lets you invoke magical power, and having a relationship with your magical ancestors that lets you invoke magical power.  I keep all four classes both for reasons related to the expectations people have about D&D (wizard and cleric are a thing) and because there are flavor elements that Shaman doesn't fully capture about the other three that I like.</blockquote>

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