Is the Shaman a Playable Class?

[Victim]

I thought that clerics used wands of Cure light wounds for healing between encounters. I usually use my cleric's spells for healing when I think we're done for the day because any spell that doesn't get used is effectively wasted, and when the healing needs to be done in a short amount of time. For example, between the swings of a golem that's pounding on someone.

However, casting spells like endurance, bull's strength, greater magic weapon, and magic circles can take most of a clerics spells, and put him into a support role. I enjoy playing my cleric more when there are fewer people in the group, so that I have more spells and melee ability to play with.

 

[kenjib]

I'm going to have to agree with hong on this one - the problem here is that you haven't a clue how you want to actually go about accomplishing what you want. You're just tossing out a concept you know - heck, that you've admitted - is at face value underpowered, and you're waiting for someone else to tell you how you can fix it up.

Apparently, it's not working.

- Sir Bob.

P.S. Nih!

Yet he asked for help on this. How about we start a more constructive dialog to try and figure out exactly what he wants and then provide some suggestions on how to get there.

mmadsen,

I agree that there is a bit of ambiguity here and as someone pointed out, it's tied into the fact there there are indeed two separate issues here. The first, well defined, is asking whether or not the shaman as-is is fun to play. Unfortunately not many people have played the shaman it seems.

The second issue, which is rather vague at this time, is how we can take the shaman spell list and use it as the basis for a new class. However, what we are missing is a clear "mission statement" that indicates exactly what we are trying to achieve with such a character (i.e. the union of wizard and shaman). I think that we need some kind of archetype or set of guiding concepts that will help us determine what types abilities are relevant to such a class. Otherwise everyone has something different in mind, which I believe is in large part causing the painfully apparent disconnect in communication here.

In non-game terms, how would you describe a typical character that belongs to this class? What do you see emerging from the shaman list that you find of value and what would you like to add to that to complete your concept?

 

[hong]

In myth, killing the monster is _a_ focal point of the story, you are right, but it is not the primary one. The primary focal point of the story is the journey. Killing the monster is a subset of the entire journey. The facilitator has skills and abilities to help with the journey.

And like I said, fine: YOU play the facilitator in that case. Just so it's crystal-clear, I'm not dismissing the important role that facilitators play in helping heroes survive the journey. The point, which I made before but seems to have disappeared, is that the facilitator is not the one who makes the journey. If what you want is to recreate the hero's journey, then such helping hands have essentially the same status as the monsters or the dungeon -- they are part of the journey, but they don't _travel_ along it. And when you translate that into RPG terms, it means the facilitator is along for the ride.

I said quite explicitly multiple times that this does not work with heavy handed DM's.

Anything is possible if you don't have a heavy-handed DM. The point of having a ruleset is to mitigate the possibility of abuse of power by heavy-handed DMs. A ruleset that carries a disclaimer if the DM is a tyrant is thus useless.

It is more of a collaborative process. It's not even anything new. You could do this with the current rules using the bard class just fine solely with knowledge skills, divinations, and bardic lore.

Since you could do this with the current rules, why are you looking for suggestions to change the rules? More to the point, the bard class carries with it a bunch of hedges that prevent arbitrary information-gathering; and furthermore, it seems that people have as much trouble playing bards as they do clerics.

I never said that this character wields any godlike power or is at all unbalanced relative to other party members. Again you are either misrepresenting me or entirely fail to understand what I was getting at.

Someone who holds a privileged position vis-a-vis DM knowledge has de facto godlike power.

Now, regarding whether or not you can make the shaman spell list compatible with the wizard class, my answer would be of course! Getting things like this to work well is a matter of tweaking the details correctly so that things work out the way you want and the results are fun. It's not a question of "can it be done?" so much as it's a question of "how do we do it?"

No, it's a question of "why bother?"

 

[hong]

I thought that clerics used wands of Cure light wounds for healing between encounters. I usually use my cleric's spells for healing when I think we're done for the day because any spell that doesn't get used is effectively wasted, and when the healing needs to be done in a short amount of time. For example, between the swings of a golem that's pounding on someone.

That's exactly what I ended up doing, the last time I played a martial artist/shaman. The guy who had a cleric did so on the explicit condition that he wasn't going to be the party medic, and he ended up being absent more often than not anyway. The CLW wand saved quite a few butts for a measly 750 gp.

However, casting spells like endurance, bull's strength, greater magic weapon, and magic circles can take most of a clerics spells, and put him into a support role. I enjoy playing my cleric more when there are fewer people in the group, so that I have more spells and melee ability to play with.

Indeed.

 

[PenguinKing]

Yet he asked for help on this. How about we start a more constructive dialog to try and figure out exactly what he wants and then provide some suggestions on how to get there.

At this point, it's been attempted and failed. When asked for clarification, he simply reiterates a vague suggestion of how one should go about beginning to accomplish his purpose, without specifying what that purpose is. In the absence of actual information, I'm not sure how much "help" this process is going to yield. =/

- Sir Bob.

P.S. Nih!

 

[Black Omega]

The DM for Brown Jenkin's game chiming in on the Shaman. Is it a viable class? Sure. It's very cleric like with healing and buffs and a different set of domains. Thye have some offense with Ancestral Vengence and Castigation but it's true, for the most part the Shaman in our game focuses on buffs and healing while invisible and only now and then trots out the magical smackdown when needed or annoyed. This is more a matter of how the player plays rather than the class. If you want to emphasis damage spells and de-buffers it can still kick butt.

As far as subtle'I'm not sure it'smagic' spells,the Shaman is no better or worse than any other spell casting class.

 

[hong]

The DM for Bornw Jenkin's game chiming in on the Shaman. Is it a viable class? Sure. It's very cleric like with healing and buffs and a different set of domains. Thye have some offense with Ancestral Vengence and Castigation but it's true, for the most part the Shaman in our game focuses on buffs and healing while invisible and only now and then trots out the magical smackdown when needed or annoyed. This is more a matter of how the player plays rather than the class. If you want to emphasis damage spells and de-buffers it can still kick butt.

OA has some cool spells that don't deserve to languish in an optional supplement, IMO. That's for both shamans and wu jen.

 

[kenjib]

Let's provide some context here. In a previous thread on low magic Hong suggests that mmadsen adopt the shaman class because it sounds like it has the feel he wants.

Ya know, given how much you want to make over arcane spellcasters, you might be better off just dropping the entire class. That's not an entirely facetious suggestion; the basic "aid of the gods" role that you see magic as playing is filled perfectly well by divine spellcasters. In fact, if you replace the cleric with the shaman from OA, you would go a long way to achieving the feel you want, I bet.

As a direct result of this, mmadsen creates this thread to examine the shaman class and determine whether or not the class can fit his needs.

In discussing ways to acheive a "low magic" feel (not really low, but that's another topic) on another thread, I recommended shifting around some of the spells to different levels, emphasizing subtle spells (e.g. Bestow Curse) by lowering their level and de-emphasizing flashy spells by bumping up their level. In addition to the expected cries of "Game balance! You'll destroy the game balance!", this also brough cries of "Why play a wizard who can't blow stuff up?" This was also phrased as, "Why don't you just use a Shaman then, if that's what you want?"

I'm certainly not suggesting everyone change their D&D campaigns to match my taste, but is a spellcaster without Magic Missile and Fireball but with the Shaman's "subtle" spell list unplayable? Or is it simply a change of pace (that might not be to everyone's taste)?

He decides that he wants it to have some of the features of a wizard because he does not like the fact that the shaman has martial arts skills and a few other details. A kung-fu wizard is not his goal. He wants something more like a wizard, but with more subtle magic like a shaman. This is made abundantly clear here:

The idea was simply of a world where wizards cast subtle spells, not where they're necessarily tribal witchdoctors. That is, they'd probably remain Wizards in every way except their spell list. They wouldn't fight well, they wouldn't turn undead, they wouldn't be divine (the divine/arcane distinction would probably go away for such a game), they wouldn't cast spontaneous healing spells (although they might cast all spells spontaneously).

Given that, could you accept such a wizard without classic D&D-style flash-bang magic? Or would it bore you to tears?

I say that this should be possible, and it's just a matter of tweaking the right variables, thusly:

Now, regarding whether or not you can make the shaman spell list compatible with the wizard class, my answer would be of course! Getting things like this to work well is a matter of tweaking the details correctly so that things work out the way you want and the results are fun. It's not a question of "can it be done?" so much as it's a question of "how do we do it?"

To which Hong replies thusly:

No, it's a question of "why bother?"

Honestly, how can anyone hold a useful debate on any subject with someone who decides to take the opposing viewpoint in all cases just for what appears to be the sake of contrariness?

 

[hong]

Honestly, how can anyone hold a useful debate on any subject with someone who decides to take the opposing viewpoint in all cases just for what appears to be the sake of contrariness?

mmadsen has also said that the shaman is not what he's looking for, either (at least not without wholesale changes to the basic D&D rules). But then I really don't know what it is he wants. Maybe he should play Pendragon or GURPS; it would be a heck of a lot less work.

No, I tell a lie. It seems abundantly clear that what you and he _really_ want is not so much a viable, independent spellcasting class that would be fun to play, but just a henchman to buff up the party fighters, and/or a DM oracle to hand out plot tidbits. Since these are essentially NPC roles, you might as well dump spellcasting PCs altogether, as I also suggested (but you seem to have ignored).

As I've said before -- no-one would want to play a wizard. This is just a consequence of taking away some of the wizard's coolest toys, and negating one of the major ways by which they can grab the limelight. Be honest and dump the class; just use the cleric, druid or shaman. And given that despite WOTC's best efforts to make the cleric more appealing, not many people still like playing them (as far as I know), you might as well dump that too.

Hence, I have to ask, why bother tweaking the classes? Just dump all PC spellcasters entirely. If magic is entirely controlled by the DM, all your problems disappear. You can make it as "magical" or "mysterious" as you want, and you don't have to worry about bigheaded wizards stealing the show with their boom spells.

 

[I'm A Banana]

(*psst!* I just posted about ways the Shaman could be altered to be more wizard-like...give it a looksee, maybe?

Now back to your regularly scheduled flame war. )