Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greg K" data-source="post: 7048197" data-attributes="member: 5038">I like that you included demonic or angelic beings.  Most people don't realize that from an anthropological perspective, they are spirits.  Most people also focus on animal totems (and sometimes nature spirit in general and either forget or are unaware that, in many cultures,ancestral spirit that acts as the guide. Also how are djinn, rakshasa and elementals classified in 5e?  Part of me wishes that this could be at first level, because in many cultures, it is an illness or other event that results in a person being able to see the spirit world that results in them being taken as an apprentice by an existing shaman. However, this is an issue with WOTC not giving all classes their subclass at first level and why I, personally, want to have the shaman as its own class with its own subclasses.Now, you have suddenly narrowed  by using "animal" when you had defined guides to include more than totem animal spirits.  What about the ancestral spirit (or are they considered celestial or fey) which can be  the ghost of a deceased family member?Again spirit animal is too narrow and rules out things like ancestral spirits that may serve as the Shaman's guardian spirit.This is nice.  One of the things about spirit guides in many shamanic beliefs is that, if the shaman does not know an answer, the spirit guide may have the knowledge or will seek out other spirits that might.I like the list of abilities.  I can also see them being new spells.  The knowledge thing in many traditions is done in an almost a ritual fashion requiring the entering a  trance.  The Silent Guardian could be a variation of mage armor.The reason that I bring this up is that the one thing missing from your subclass is a key ability associated with shamans (in addition to healing, divination, and shamanic trances)- the commanding, turning/rebuking of spirits.  The role of the shaman is to serve as a religious leader that acts as an intermediary between the spirit world and the community or communities that the shaman serves (as opposed to clerics that serve deities or warlocks that make pacts with an entity).  To this end, the shaman will bribe, cajole, persuade, or intimidate a spirit to do the shaman's bidding (e.g., bless, curse, heal, make someone sick, leave a body being possessed or kill an enemy) Much of  this can be simply handled via the spells. However, it also includes driving off (turning/rebukin) spirits as a cleric does undead and, the more powerful the shaman, the more powerful spirits that shaman can affect. Shamans probably shouldn't be able to use this to affect animated undead (e.g. skeletons and zombies) unless binding spirits is used to animate them. The Shaman may or may not be able to affect other corporeal undead (again, it would have to be a spirit rather than other magic responsible for the undead state). Yet,  this Shaman ability can be an extremely nasty ability as spirits includes not only ghosts, but fey, non-deity celestials and fiends, wizard familiars and another shaman's spirit guide and, if elementals in 5e don't fall into one of these categories, they too would be affected (I don't have the 5e MM).  Therefore, a high level Shaman can potentially turn angels, powerful demons and devils, fey lords, rakshasas, djinn nobles, elemental lords- anything 3e considered an elemental, fey, or outsider short of deity status</blockquote>

Verification