Spirit Shaman: How is it in play?

[Krug]

Oh how is it in play? As compared to the Druid?

 

[Felon]

Doesn't have the melee capability, which is a nice change. However, if your druid likes to pick annoying spells (like crowd-control stuff), then with their spontaneous spellcasting they'll be at their fingtertips more often.

 

[Krug]

Looks like they don't get much love...

 

[Felon]

Yeah, the class is not very streamlined; it has many, many pages worth of abilities, rather than one central idea that everything stems from (that's a strength the more popular alternate base classes like warlock and scout have going for them). And moreover, it doesn't distinguish itself from the druid at a glance--after all, many a player already referred to their druid as a "shaman".

 

[Zander]

The spirit shaman is based on the character Wolf from the novel The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates. The class doesn't appear to be very coherent unless you've read the book.

 

[FungiMuncher]

I've been playing one for several months now. The ability to swap out the spontaneous spells is pretty cool. I've been enjoying that. However, the ability to affect spirits is kind of like the ranger's favored enemy, only magnified - it's very dependent upon what creatures the DM puts in his game. In my game, we haven't encountered a lot of spirits, so I get a little frustrated some times.