Talk:Spirit Shaman

This class definitely needs more love. No special class feats (like Divine Might, Mass Song of Heroism or Dinosaur Companion) and lacking a good prestige class - Stormlord is nice but is somewhat lacking (shamans already have electricity immunity via Energy Immunity and Extended Storm Avatars by themselves, +1,+2,+3 items at the level you get the feat are no longer rare, and improving weapon damage for a character that will be casting spells most of the time? Not as nifty, especially since shamans already have Flame Weapon and Storm Avatar for that). Warpriest is actually a more viable prestige class, except for the fact that Warpiest/Shaman sounds... wrong. (in the context of what a spirit shaman is)

Wizards and Sorcerers have good prestige classes and have spell lists designed with a "casting first, everything else later" philosophy in mind. Clerics get good feats and have a spell list designed with an "avatar of god" character in mind. And because of how the cleric spell list is designed, Favored Souls really don't have much to complain about. As for the Spirit Shaman... his spell list was designed with a spontaneous summoning, shapeshifting, animal companion-lugging character in mind (which every druid is, even the pure caster ones). Bad deal. And the clincher is that when it all comes down to it, it's not as much a matter of a mismatched spell list... The classes in NWN2 are supposed to be as different as apples and oranges, unfortunately the way the Spirit Shaman currently is he's basically just a copy of the Druid... who can spam spells that don't exactly work as well anyway. Thing is, the Druid may cast less but he already has enough castings to buff everyone and once he gets his spear and animal companion, you can expect a whole lot more butt-kicking than the Spirit Shaman's low-DC spell spammage. Sadly, this is true. Things would probably be different if the Druid class couldn't get its spellcasting act together but it just... can. With epic feat gravy on the side.

How about an epic feat that allows the shaman to bargain/fight/capture/draw on spirits for power? Would be fun if there was a Shaman feat that allowed you to summon Okku or that increases your stats with a successful Chastise Spirits or something.

Tyrtallows 18:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Summoners, and high DC druids are different builds entirely. Epic Summoner, Champion of Istishia I don't use wild shape at all in either one and the champion build doesn't use it's pet. There are severe PW bugs with even Okku's portrait, etc being used I can only imagine the hell someone would go through using the actual bear in the world. Mictlantecuhtli 16:40, 21 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Last I checked the Spirit-Shaman-arcane-prestige-class-theurge bug was still working. If you have Spirit Shaman levels and you take a PrC that advances arcane spell casting, you gain levels in both the base arcane class and Spirit Shaman.  So you could make a Spirit Shaman 5/Sorcerer 5/ASoC 10/EK 10 with level 28 Spirit Shaman and Sorcerer spell casting.  The bug used to apply to Favored Souls as well, but it was fixed (along with the SS bug, though it resurfaced the subsequent patch). It's probably the worst gameplay bug left in the game, but it's one way to make the Spirit Shaman useful.  I think the big problem with the class is the double attribute spell casting dependency coupled with point buy for attributes and a DC heavy spell list (no AB buffs like the cleric/FS, or no saves like the wizard/sorcerer), you don't even get to use Owl's Insight to raise your DCs. Mithdradates 04:08, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a bit worse than that, actually. There are many ways to safely avoid the DC problem, but while these methods work well for some classes (like Warlocks and Wizards, specifically characters like Safiya who have bad spell DC's but could rely on no-save/caster-level dependent spells and good crafting potential to offset this) - these methods do not work for the Spirit Shaman.

Breaking down the Shaman's strengths, first off Druid buffs have good offensive potential and the Spirit Shaman should benefit from these - unfortunately a high wisdom Druid with metamagic feats or even Craft Wand can take care of all of a party's Druidic buffing needs already. Serious setback one. Druids have some very nice no-save spells, and these should work very well for the Spirit Shaman - unfortunately he doesn't have the +caster level bonuses wizards benefit from (via Assay Resistance or in the case of Safiya, Red Wizard levels) nor any particular skills like Use Magic Device that warlocks can fall back to. Serious setback two. Shamans should make great summoners - the fact that Greater Magic Fang and Nature's Avatar now work for any allied animal (like summoned ones) should make this so, and the ability to spam elemental meatshields - but the highest level summoned animal is a Dire Bear (leaving much to be desired) and as for the elementals... well let's just hope you don't have to use Chastise Spirits or Weaken Spirits while you have them around (these skills do not distinguish between allied and enemy spirits). Serious setback number three. Druids are monsters in melee/ranged combat. Spirit Shamans... Serious setback four. Finally the double DC feature is just icing on this conglomeration of "little" things that together leave the class with much to be desired. Double DC means less stats for physical abilities, which translates to advising shamans to take Stormlord levels... questionable. Zen Archery is nice but really, to have to sacrifice 4 feats total (Toughness, Great Fortitude, Weapon Focus, Zen Archery) for a class that already has good fortitude saves and good HP (for a caster) and who should really be casting spells rather than attacking? The druid spell selection may have Owl's Insight - but it frowns on everything else ranged-combat related. And it's not like the Spirit Shaman will suck too much in melee - he can melee acceptably when necessary what with all the Druid melee buffs - its just that his melee combat presence is definitely not what you should be building your character around. Ditto ranged presence. Serious setback five, and finally with the addition of the Doomguide PrC the shaman just ran out of party roles. As for some of the "specialized" Druid builds... suffice to say, I don't believe in one-person-one-party-NWN2. Come to that, I would be playing an WoW. The whole point in D&D is the group thing. The rest of the druid "specialized" builds are also too unique to be compared to the shaman since these fit in entirely different party niches altogether. Tyrtallows 06:48, 23 August 2009 (UTC)