Shaman vs. Spirit Shaman

[RigaMortus]

really? his spells were shield, and true strike -
in a low lvl campaign the trading a single swing for +20 to hit and power attack for full.
its better until got interirate attacks.

The arcane spell failure for casting in armor isn't worth it IMO at the low levels. Unless his Barbarian wasn't wearing armor. Also, for the two rounds it took too cast those spells, he could have been attacking instead.

I think a mounted lance-wielding spirited charging fighter-type/mage would be much more powergamey. That is worth True Striking with (3 times the Str and Power Attack damage)...

 

[tensen]

While I like GR's Shaman's Handbook, I prefer the Ancestral Speaker class in Green Ronin's Corwyl book, which is like the Shaman updated to 3.5 with a few additional minor abilities. It gets more domains upfront, so its spell choice is less limited.

I actually chose to use GR's Shaman with the 3.5 modification to the website. The Ancestral Speaker may give a few more abilities than the Shaman, but it has a very different feel to it. Same reason why I chose to stay with the class when I saw Complete Divine's Spirit Shaman. It didn't follow the roleplaying base I wanted to go with.

Of course using the Shaman class presented by GR requires a GM that is willing to go the whole spirit route, otherwise it does make the class rather weak.