D&D General Rethinking the class name "Druid".

[Greg K]

Yep. So that's why it bugs me when people suggest making a separate shaman class. Current D&D druid is already a better representation of a shaman than it is of a druid.

I disagree. Looking at a Shaman in the general academic sense as a classification of a particular religous specialist:
1. There needs to be additional spells to reflect that shamans are religious specialists. A common feature of the Shaman, in addtion to healing, is to bless and conduct certain ceremonies during transitional periods such as birth, marriage, death, and reintigration into society after battle (the ceremony spell)

2. Some additional diviniation spells could be added due to diviniation being one of the primary functions of a shaman.

3. There needs to be more spells involving spirits* and going into the spirit world (Note: spirits would include things such as celestials, elementals, fiends, fey, non-corporeal undead, certain types of familiars, ancestral spirits, totems, nature spirits, and, possibly, aberrations and creatures from the Shadowfell)
a. Some spells come close to be thematic for a shaman with regards to detection, protection, and sending out to do harm, but could use variants more fitting for a shaman. If we go with close enough, there are several existing spells that could be added.
b. There are also no spells for going into the spirit world to remove a disease or curse by battling spirit that is causng or to retrieve a soul from the plane where souls of the deceased go and bring it back to restore a life. Currently, we have to use existing spells and call it close enough.
c. There are no spells to force an incorporeal creature to materialize
d. personally, I find many spells, currently, listed on the druid list inappropriate

Additonal spells that could be added to the druid that would be fitting for a shaman if using the druid class a shaman (Note: the Spirit Claw cantrip by Brandes Stoddard for his Spirit Cleric Domain. It makes a good spell for the druid list and shamans)

Cantrip: Spare the Dying, Spirit Claw
Level 1: Bane, Bless, Ceremony, Command*, Magic Weapon, Resistance
Level 2: Aid, Augury, Calm Emotion, Spiritual Weapon
Level 3: Sending**, Speak With Dead, Spirit Guardians
Level 4: Death Ward, Divination
Level 5: Contagion*, Dispel Evil and Good***, Dream
Level 6: Forbiddance*, Harm, Planar Ally*, True Seeing
(edit: for some reason I m having an issue with the astericks. Heal should have two, Forbidance and Planar Ally should have three. Also Harm should not be bold).

* May fit due to the Shaman's respect/authority/or being somewhat feared among their people and their experience commanding/intimidating spirits less powerful than themselves (typical ways shamans deal with spirts is bribery, cajoling, initimidation, and/ or persuasion).
** could be described as using a specific type of spirit (e.g. Contagion using a disease spirit) to harm the subject
*** not perfect, but close enough or some aspects of the spell are fitting.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I disagree. Looking at a Shaman in the general academic sense as a classification of a particular religous specialist:
1. There needs to additional spells to reflect that shamans are religious specialists. A common feature of the Shaman, in addtion to healing, is to bless and conduct certain ceremonies during transitional periods such as birth, marriage, death, and reintigration into society after battle (the ceremony spell)

2. Some additional diviniation spells could be added due to diviniation being one of the primary functions of a shaman.

3. There needs to be more spells involving spirits* and going into the spirit world (Note: spirits would include things such as celestials, elementals, fiends, fey, non-corporeal undead, certain types of familiars, ancestral spirits, totems, nature spirits, and, possibly, aberrations and creatures from the Shadowfell)
a. Some spells come close to be thematic for a shaman with regards to detection, protection, and sending out to do harm, but could use variants more fitting for a shaman. If we go with close enough, there are several existing spells that could be added.
b. There are also no spells for going into the spirit world to remove a disease or curse by battling spirit that is causng or to retrieve a soul from the plane where souls of the deceased go and bring it back to restore a life. Currently, we have to use existing spells and call it close enough.
c. There are no spells to force an incorporeal creature to materialize
d. personally, I find many spells, currently, listed on the druid list inappropriate



Additonal spells that could be added to the druid that would be fitting for a shaman if using the druid class a shaman (Note: the Spirit Claw cantripcantrip by Brandes Stoddard for his Spirit Cleric Domain. It makes a good spell for the druid list and shamans)

Cantrip: Spare the Dying, Spirit Claw
Level 1: Bane, Bless, Ceremony, Command*, Magic Weapon, Resistance
Level 2: Aid, Augury, Calm Emotion, Spiritual Weapon
Level 3: Sending**, Speak With Dead, Spirit Guardians
Level 4: Death Ward, Divination
Level 5: Contagion*, Dispel Evil and Good**, Dream
Level 6: Forbiddance*, Harm, Planar Ally***, True Seeing

* May fit due to the Shaman's authority among their people and their experience intimidating spirits less powerful than themselves (typical ways shamans deal with spirts is bribery, cajoling, initimidation, and/ or persuasion).
** could be described as being using a specific type of spirit (e.g. a disease spirit) to harm the subject
*** not perfect, but close enough or some aspects of the spell are fitting.

Yep. Animism (I'm gonna use that word going forward, since it captures shamanism but without the cultural appropriate risks) isn't captured all that well in the D&D druid. Like you say, it's all about connections with spirits, and how pretty much everything has a spirit to be connected with. That's the primary focus of what animism is, and the D&D druid really doesn't capture that well.

That's why I think there is room for this class in D&D. The animist class I created, while for OSR and not 5e, illustrates how I think there is room for a unique class in the game. The powers the character gets aren't just from animal spirits, but channeling the spirits of animals, plants, and minerals to achieve the powers. For example of what I'm talking about, here are some of the powers a spirit can grant to the animist:

 

[Greg K]

Yep. Animism (I'm gonna use that word going forward, since it captures shamanism but without the cultural appropriate risks) isn't captured all that well in the D&D druid. Like you say, it's all about connections with spirits, and how pretty much everything has a spirit to be connected with. That's the primary focus of what animism is, and the D&D druid really doesn't capture that well.

That's why I think there is room for this class in D&D. The animist class I created, while for OSR and not 5e, illustrates how I think there is room for a unique class in the game. The powers the character gets aren't just from animal spirits, but channeling the spirits of animals, plants, and minerals to achieve the powers. For example of what I'm talking about, here are some of the powers a spirit can grant to the animist:

My only issues is that, from an academic perspective, animism and shamanism are different. The former lacks religious specialists (i.e. "shamans") whom enter the spirit world and intercede with the spirits on behalf of the people..

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

The fact that people have these debates is one of the reasons I like making up words like "greenpriest".

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I disagree. Looking at a Shaman in the general academic sense as a classification of a particular religous specialist:
1. There needs to be additional spells to reflect that shamans are religious specialists. A common feature of the Shaman, in addtion to healing, is to bless and conduct certain ceremonies during transitional periods such as birth, marriage, death, and reintigration into society after battle (the ceremony spell)

2. Some additional diviniation spells could be added due to diviniation being one of the primary functions of a shaman.

3. There needs to be more spells involving spirits* and going into the spirit world (Note: spirits would include things such as celestials, elementals, fiends, fey, non-corporeal undead, certain types of familiars, ancestral spirits, totems, nature spirits, and, possibly, aberrations and creatures from the Shadowfell)
a. Some spells come close to be thematic for a shaman with regards to detection, protection, and sending out to do harm, but could use variants more fitting for a shaman. If we go with close enough, there are several existing spells that could be added.
b. There are also no spells for going into the spirit world to remove a disease or curse by battling spirit that is causng or to retrieve a soul from the plane where souls of the deceased go and bring it back to restore a life. Currently, we have to use existing spells and call it close enough.
c. There are no spells to force an incorporeal creature to materialize
d. personally, I find many spells, currently, listed on the druid list inappropriate

Additonal spells that could be added to the druid that would be fitting for a shaman if using the druid class a shaman (Note: the Spirit Claw cantrip by Brandes Stoddard for his Spirit Cleric Domain. It makes a good spell for the druid list and shamans)

Cantrip: Spare the Dying, Spirit Claw
Level 1: Bane, Bless, Ceremony, Command*, Magic Weapon, Resistance
Level 2: Aid, Augury, Calm Emotion, Spiritual Weapon
Level 3: Sending**, Speak With Dead, Spirit Guardians
Level 4: Death Ward, Divination
Level 5: Contagion*, Dispel Evil and Good***, Dream
Level 6: Forbiddance*, Harm, Planar Ally*, True Seeing
(edit: for some reason I m having an issue with the astericks. Heal should have two, Forbidance and Planar Ally should have three. Also Harm should not be bold).

* May fit due to the Shaman's authority among their people and their experience commanding/intimidating spirits less powerful than themselves (typical ways shamans deal with spirts is bribery, cajoling, initimidation, and/ or persuasion).
** could be described as using a specific type of spirit (e.g. Contagion using a disease spirit) to harm the subject
*** not perfect, but close enough or some aspects of the spell are fitting.

Sure, druid could be even more shaman-like. (And I like your suggestions and I'm gonna steal them.) But point was that it already represents shaman pretty well, whilst not necessarily representing (historical) druids particularly awesomely. I think if you tried to make a (fantasy version of) Celtic druid in D&D, cleric might make more sense.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I'm just going to hang it out there if it hasn't been already that I very much consider druid to be a D&Dism. Druids have been in the game, for me, since I started playing and DMing in 1980. I've also, due to my age, long associated D&D with being a thing which begs, borrow and steals liberally from real world mythology, religion, folklore and to a lesser degree historical elements. Often as a kid I would look up stuff like Orcus, phylactery, reliquary, medusa, lamia, Kostchie, etc. and learn what the mythological or folkloric origins were (I was a kid who's parents introduced me to Mircea Eliade and Robert Graves at an early age). So yeah....for me, druid is kind of important to D&D. Or was.

 

[cbwjm]

One thing that is easy to do with DnD (or, I guess any class based game) is change up the title. So for game purposes you have the druid class, but for title purpose, you might be called a shaman, witch, or greenpriest. You might have two druid players who use different titles, one might belong to a druid hierarchy and still use the title druid, another might be a greenpriest from another land.

I often change up titles as I see fit, in my homebrew, I have a nation conquered by demon worshippers (heavily inspired by the Hyborian nation of Stygia), the leaders are all warlocks but they use the title of priest, because the demons they worship have supplanted the worship of the gods so they have the trappings and titles of an organised religion.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I think some confusion could be avoided if we start with some core understandings:

It's really not that simple.

1. The definition of shamanism does not focus on shapeshifting at all. Not only is it not a focus, it's not even part of the definition. That doesn't mean shapechanging can't be part of a shamanistic culture, but that it's not core, or required, in that definition.

There is no universally recognized definition of the term "shamanism" in either academia or popular usage, whether you focus primarily on a Tungus-Evenk locus, or expand and/or relax your lens and criteria as you seen fit. See, for example, Mihály Hoppál or Volodymyr Yatchenko. Or the definitional problems presented by Pieter Jolly or Stefanie von Schnurbein. See especially The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman by Siikala as she begins what became a vigorous academic critique of Eliade's construction of Shamanism, but confines it to the Siberian heartland.

2. shamanism is just part of overall animism.

Animism is an entirely invented category, the product of 19th-century anthropological speculation - i.e. "these things kind of look the same, so we'll invent a category for them and call them this." We're long overdue in tossing it out altogether. And there is no "just" or "overall;" you are demonstrating a casual, ill-informed arrogance about a subject.

So far, you've asserted [this thing for which there is no agreed definition] is a just a subcategory of [this thing invented by Victorian academics].

I believe, as do others, that shamanism is a term that shouldn't be used because it's more specific to only a certain few cultures, and teeters on cultural appropriation

That's fine, and you'll find lots of academics who agree with you. And plenty who don't. And many who understand that the stable door has been open for a very long time and there's little point in trying to close it now. It is regrettable that the term "Shamanism" was ever coined but it is nonsensical to defer to an even more dubious category - i.e. animism.

3. The idea or concept of people changing shape is in nearly every culture in the world, many of those have nothing to do with how shamanism is defined.

Okay.

As mentioned above, Germanic and Norse mythology has examples of shapeshifting that have nothing to do with a spirit connection.

It is very hard to reach back into an archaic Norse or Germanic consciousness and it is rather presumptuous to assert this categorically as fact. What we do know are that there are many indicators in Norse myth suggestive of a "shamanistic" substrate, upon which later stories were built. Whether these indicators are indigenous to Nordic people or incorporated via cultural exchange with Sami peoples is up for debate. You are free to dismiss the Sami practice as non-Evenk and therefore non-Shamanistic, but, again, many scholars would disagree, regarding Sami culture as part of a Siberian hinterland.

The concept of lycanthropy is another example. Numerous examples in Greek mythology are another (Arachne for example). Celtic mythology is also full of examples of shapeshifting (not just the fairies, but many stories are around shapeshifting as a form of punishment). The list really does go on.

Scholars have noted therianthropy in San rock art and at Les Trois Frères and connected it with ecstatic practices. See, for example, Pieter Jolly, Przemysław Bryk, Ivar Lissner. Your certitude that an archaic stratum of human religious practice is entirely absent from Celtic and Greek myth is ... puzzling.

I'm not necessarily averse to constricting the lens of Shamanism such that it only encapsulates the Tungus-Evenk complex, but you're then left with the problem of what do we call this other stuff and simply lumping it as animism is very 19th-century.

I really don't think we should be using the term "shaman" anyway because the history of that term is pretty specific to certain cultures.

You have a point. But like I say, the cat's out of the bag and we don't have anything better.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The fact that people have these debates is one of the reasons I like making up words like "greenpriest".

Do you know what a "priest" is?

It's someone who stands in the role of intercessor between between the gods and ordinary people. The historical druids might have done that, but the D&D druid was never based on historical druids, of which even less was known in the 70s than it is now, but mythical/fictional figures like Merlin and Radagast.

Historical Druid:
Nature magic: No, there is no evidence to tie them specifically to nature magic;
Shapechanging: No, there is no evidence to suggest they believed they could do this;
Intercessor: yes;
Magic: yes. Both the druids and their enemies believed they could wield powerful magic;
D&D 5e class: Cleric.

D&D/CRPG Druid:
Nature magic: yes;
Shapechanging: yes;
Intercessor: no;
Magic: yes;
D&D 5e class: Druid.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It's really not that simple.


There is no universally recognized definition of the term "shamanism" in either academia or popular usage, whether you focus primarily on a Tungus-Evenk locus, or expand and/or relax your lens and criteria as you seen fit. See, for example, Mihály Hoppál or Volodymyr Yatchenko. Or the definitional problems presented by Pieter Jolly or Stefanie von Schnurbein. See especially The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman by Siikala as she begins what became a vigorous academic critique of Eliade's construction of Shamanism, but confines it to the Siberian heartland.

And how many of those definitions have shapeshifting as part of the core definition?

Start there, and provide specific sources that define a core aspect of shamanism as the ability to shapeshift. Because every definition I could find doesn't mention that at all, but focuses on the connections with spirits (often as part of a ritual or trance).

Because right now you have not proved your point at all. On one side we have a whole lot of evidence of examples of shapeshifting in numerous cultures that are completely different than any definition of shamanism I could find. On the other, is you, making claims that because Nordic cultures lived in a far north region, and Siberia is in the far north, then shapeshifting examples in Nordic mythology must also be shamans like the Sym Evenki (despite the fact that the the original word used for those people, šamán, has nothing to do with shapeshifting.

That's kind of a reach of logic. It's also weird how you dismiss animism as a 19th century invention, but the word shaman isn't much older either. I'd love to see which definition of shaman you are using that has shapeshifting as a core feature, and how old that definition has been used. I doubt it's older than animism. I also disagree with your dismissal of the term because the etymology of shaman is pretty specific to that Siberian region. It's a word specific to a certain culture. To use it as a blanket term across the board for all cultures is literally cultural appropriation. That's why we have other words that mean the same or very similar (like animism). It would be like saying any culture that believed in an accompanying animal spirit had a fylgjur. Or an issue that's happening now, today, with the use of "spirit guide", when that's a term specific to American indigenous cultures.

Either way that digressing, and at this point I'll settle for definitions of the word that say what you're arguing it says. Cuz right now, none of the definitions I can find bother to mention shapeshifting, let alone having it be such a core part of shamanism that a person would argue any examples of shapechanging in mythology or lore anywhere in the world must be shamanism (which is what you've argued).