Shamans and witches? (C&C, but AD&D in general)

[Yora]

I am currently getting into Castles & Crusades as a game for my next campaign. Basically, the setting is a world of tribal societies with a degree of development roughly similar to the pre-medieval germanic and slavic people, or the nomads of central Asia.
Wizards with their spellbooks and crystal balls and clerics in plate armor banishing undead with their holy symbols of their faith are rather out of place in such a setting, so I am looking for variants that are more in line with the images of shamans and witches.

Any sources you might recommend?

 

[GlassEye]

You might try some of the classes in Fantastic Heroes and Witchery. A couple of them look like they might work for you. Also note there are a couple of other classes outside the class section; those are in the religion section and the magic section. (The link above goes to the Dragonsfoot thread where there is a free download.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I would also check out the AD&D witches published in Dragon magazine over the years. There have been at least two. Those would convert to C&C pretty well. Note that the one in the issue with the brown cover (I'm at work, so I can't look up which that is), which I think was also republished in a Best of the Dragon volume is pretty powerful and definitely will be a major focal point of the game if you use it. Incredibly atmospheric and colorful, though.

You also could do worse than take the Pathfinder witch, ignore feats (unless your game also uses them), maybe knock down the hit points and damage dies down to the next tier and just use that.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Dare I suggest the Houri class from an old White Dwarf? I don't know where you might find it, but it actually makes a pretty good witchy character.

 

[Greg K]

I am going to disagree with Whizbang Dustyboots.
For the Witch, I am going to recommend both Mayfair's Witches for 2e and Green Ronin's Witch's Handbook for 3e. Both, in my opinion, are much better than the any of the Dragon versions or the Pathfinder version.

For the Shaman, I recommend Green Ronin's Shaman's Handbook for 3e.

 

[Celebrim]

I am currently getting into Castles & Crusades as a game for my next campaign. Basically, the setting is a world of tribal societies with a degree of development roughly similar to the pre-medieval germanic and slavic people, or the nomads of central Asia.
Wizards with their spellbooks and crystal balls and clerics in plate armor banishing undead with their holy symbols of their faith are rather out of place in such a setting, so I am looking for variants that are more in line with the images of shamans and witches.

Any sources you might recommend?

So, I was very unhappy with the 3e Druid class, which I felt had become too self-referential, too divorced from the source material, and too laden with baggage specific to one particular part of Northern Europe.

The replacement for me ended up being the Green Ronin 'Shaman' from their very well done 'Shaman's Handbook'. I changed up the spell list slightly, since I intended the class to kill the Druid and take his stuff, but it is perhaps the least reworked material I've ever had to incorporate into my house rules. Really good stuff; very versatile. Conceivably, with only a few changes, I could have used Shaman as the basis for a unified spell-caster class and I would recommend you doing that. You could easily use Shaman as priests or wizards of a more traditional sort than D&D encourages (which is based more on late 19th century notions).

Green Ronin also has a book on Witches but I found it to be a bit redundant, as Shaman already incorporated the notion of 'witch' for me. It's also a bit to modern in it's outlook for my taste.

 

[Yora]

Sorry, wrong game.

 

[MJS]

Be sure to check Dragonsfoot.org , back issues of their free online magazine have a witch class, complete with separate , non-mu spells.