Spirit Shaman Kit Suggestions, and QoL Ideas

[Rhifox]

As I said on Garn's thread, I'd like to make some suggestions for shaman kits. I'm also including some general quality of life improvements as well, but this post is mainly about kits.

I don't really know how BG's kit system actually works. Ergo some of these may not actually be feasible with the system that has been created.

Kits

Spirit Caller (inspired by the giantitp.com Spirit Shaman's Handbook's Spirit Companion alternate class feature)

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While the spirit guides of most shamans are ethereal beings only able to be seen and heard by the shaman, providing quiet guidance and support, a Spirit Caller has attracted waking guardian spirits (also known as telthor by the Rashemi). These spirits walk with the shaman, protecting her and speaking with a very real voice.

Replaced Abilities:
A Spirit Caller loses access to Spirit Guide (and thus Alertness), Follow the Guide, and Spirit Who Walks.

Gained Abilities:
A Spirit Caller gains a spirit familiar at level 1. At level 5, the Spirit Caller gains Telthor Companion as a free feat. At level 20, the Spirit Caller gains Natural Bond as a free feat. (Alternatively, make Telthor full companion progression so Natural Bond isn't required)

Possessed Shaman (inspired by Pathfinder's Possessed Shaman shaman variant)

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Possessed Shamans engage in a much more invasive form of shamanism. Instead of simply communing with spirits, a Possessed Shaman invites them to share her body. Though very dangerous, a Possessed Shaman is able to achieve a much greater connection with her spirits than most and can use the spirit's skills in place of her own.

Replaced Abilities:
A Possessed Shaman loses access to Chastise Spirits and Weaken Spirits.

Gained Abilities:
A Possessed Shaman gains the ability to designate two skills as spirit skills, one at level 2 and a second at level 16. A Possessed Shaman gains a bonus to each spirit skill equal to her levels in the Possessed Shaman kit. Spirit skills also use Wisdom in place of whatever attribute the skill normally used. Spirit skills replace your normal ranks in a skill, they do not add to them.

Divine Shaman (inspired by the giantitp.com Spirit Shaman's Handbook's Domain Shaman alternate class feature)

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Though all shamans are divine casters, they gain their magic through calling on spirits to act on their behalf rather than praying for divine power to be bestowed directly upon them by a god. The Divine Shaman is different. Though he still communicates with spirits, the Divine Shaman is a servant of his god and seeks to do his god's will on Faerun.

Replaced Abilities:
A Divine Shaman loses access to to Spirit Guide (and thus Alertness), Chastise Spirits, Follow the Guide, Weaken Spirits, and Spirit Who Walks.

Gained Abilities:
A Divine Shaman gains access to one of his deity's domains at level 1. He gains a second domain at level 5. A Divine Shaman also gains Turn Undead progression (or Rebuke Undead, depending on alignment).

Spirit Binder (inspired by Spirit Eater and Devour Soul from MotB)

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Spirit Binders commune with spirits, as shamans do, but they are far more hostile with them than most. She needs no guide; a Spirit Binder has learned to tap into the spirit world under her own power and directly compel the spirits to aid her. This domineering expression allows her to use her will to strike against the soul of a person or object, instead of just disembodied or ethereal spirits.

Replaced Abilities:
A Spirit Binder loses access to Spirit Guide (and thus Alertness), Blessing of the Spirits, Follow the Guide, Warding of the Spirits, and Favored of the Spirits.

Gained Abilities:
A Spirit Binder uses her Charisma for both spells known and for spell difficulty checks. In addition, her Chastise Spirits and Weaken Spirits abilities may now be used on any target, not just spirits.

Witch Doctor (inspired by Pathfinder's Witch Doctor shaman variant)

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All shamans can see the effects that spirits have on the souls of people, but to a Witch Doctor it is his duty to use his knowledge to cure these supernatural maladies. A Witch Doctor cares less about how he might serve (or use) the spirits, and instead on how he might protect the members of his tribe.

Replaced Abilities:
A Witch Doctor loses access to Chastise Spirits and Weaken Spirits.

Gained Abilities:
A Witch Doctor gains Soothe Spirits in place of Chastise Spirits, which functions identically but is now a party heal instead of an attack ability. A Witch Doctor also gains Exorcism in place of Weaken Spirits. Exorcism functions as Dismissal and banishes conjured or summoned creatures.

Quality of Life improvements

• Increase the damage of Chastise Spirits in the same manner as most other offensive spells on BG have been increased, to accommodate for the high HP values on NWN2.
• Add a single target variant of Chastise Spirits, that deals extra damage (or even save-or-die) but only against a single target.
• Convert Spirit Form to how it was described in Complete Divine: It should function as an ethereal effect, like Spirit Journey does now.
• Convert Spirit Journey to how it was described in Complete Divine: It should function as a teleport effect, similar to Shadow Walk.
• Add Spirit Tongue as a bonus class language. It can be easily done by just making a renamed duplicate of Druidic, as both are natural, primal languages. Spirit Tongue is described in Oriental Adventures and is a language all spirit creatures speak.
• Allow shamans to select any deity, as shamans have never had any deity restrictions in sourcebooks. It was included in NWN2 only as a byproduct of shamans using the druid spell list and the deity list being hardcoded to the druid spell list (Obsidian's own spirit shaman NPC was Faithless as a significant character trait, so it wasn't intended for shamans to be restricted to the druid deities). Due to the hardcoding, enabling it is likely difficult, though if it's possible to force a change than maybe allow shamans the ability to pick any deity off the deity changer NPC in the Nexus? Either that, or make a rule exception that play-your-sheet does not apply to shaman deities.
• Presuming that a full custom spell list is very difficult, I'd recommend adding a few extra spells to the druid spell list for shamans' benefit. Namely: the rest of the sleep line and charm/dominate monster. Druid spell list already includes Sleep and Hold Monster, so including Deep Slumber, Hiss of Sleep, and Charm and Dominate Monster is not a stretch. These abilities don't jar too much with the druid list, but are very thematically appropriate to shaman. I considered suggesting an enchantment shaman kit that forces spirits into other people to possess and control them, but frankly, it takes much less development time and accomplishes the same effect to just add these spells to the druid spell list.
• If a full custom spell list is doable, then I recommend an expansion as I've detailed here. This expansion is based off of giantitp.com's Spirit Shaman's Handbook's expanded spell list. Another alternative is the Pathfinder shaman spell list, which is similar (obviously, only counting the spells that are actually on BG). Spell list expansion is desired because the druid spell list is so strongly thematically tied to druids and leaves out many spells that a shaman should have.
• Make Lore: Religion a class skill. Every other divine spellcasting base class has it already... even ranger.

[mrm3ntalist]

Thanks for taking the time to put those together. I will post your suggestions to the QC forums for discussion

[Akroma666]

I love it! Minor suggesiton, they should get a few different spells too based on each.
Ex: Witchdoctor should get access to the Beltyn's Burning Blood spell.

[Rhifox]

I love it! Minor suggesiton, they should get a few different spells too based on each.
Ex: Witchdoctor should get access to the Beltyn's Burning Blood spell.

Quite possible, as additional spell-like abilities. I didn't include anything like this to start with, but if any looks like it could do with a few more extras then that could certainly be done.

Thanks for taking the time to put those together. I will post your suggestions to the QC forums for discussion

Thank you!

[Rhifox]

Forgot to add, for Quality of Life improvements:

Make Lore: Religion a class skill. Every other divine spellcasting base class has it... even ranger.

[LISA100595]

I can't thank you enough for putting this together. Wonderful job.

[Rhifox]

Clarification added to Possessed Shaman spirit skills, thanks to Truthiness for pointing out that I had forgotten it.

Spirit skills replace your normal ranks in a skill, they do not add to them.

The kit does not allow doubling up skill ranks and spirit skill to get 60 in one skill. It's best used on skills you don't have any ranks in, ideally cross-class ones that can't normally get up to 30.

Kit is based on the Pathfinder variant of the same name, and in that one they also they did not stack.

[dedude]

Did any of this find support from QC?

[AlwaysSummer Day]

Some good stuff here for sure.

[dedude]

[*]If a full custom spell list is doable, then I recommend an expansion as I've detailed here.

I'm not sure it's possible to make a separate Spirit Shaman spell book, but it's easy enough to add spells to the druid list and put a guard in the spell script if druid shouldn't be able to cast the spell.

Currently the theme of the druid spell book leans heavily towards wildshape/pet buffs. Doesn't feel very spirit shamany

[dedude]

I'm going to go ahead and bump this again as I really think Rhifox's excellent suggestions deserve consideration.

The most obvious challenges I see with spirit shaman mechanically are:

• Medium BAB but zero spells (except bulls) or abilities to increase AB, or lower AC of enemies. I think all other casting base classes have spells for this.

• Needs points in most ability scores. Light armor so dex can't be too low. Dual casting ability scores wis/cha.

• The above point also makes it tough to max DC stat (CHA). And I believe spirit shaman is the only casting class without a spell that buffs the DC stat. Even rangers can do that. I realize that you can take the blood magic feat to compensate, but that also comes with a lot of bagage.

A little spell book shuffle could go a long way for the class.

[Rhifox]

It's been posted to the QC forums to my understanding. Beyond that though, I don't imagine there will be any changes happening very soon as there are many classes that need a lot more help than spirit shaman does. In terms of balance and mechanics, spirit shaman is in a good place... it's not top tier, but it is a solid 2. So it's likely that any changes that might happen to it will have to wait for buffs to really under performing ones (like Divine Seeker and Black Flame Zealot) and continuing work on melee classes (as the big updates last year mostly focused on spellcasting classes).

I agree that a spellbook shuffle would be nice, though how to go about it without buffing druids is problematic. Yes you could add some kind of 'trying to cast this spell fails since you're a druid' code like how the new prohibited school system works, but since you'd presumably have to do that on a per spell basis it's probably a lot of work. So I don't see a huge spell list change to be very feasible even if it would be nice to have. That's why I suggested just finishing lines of spells that are already started in both lists, like adding the rest of the sleep and charm/dominate spells (thematically appropriate, and gives more DC caster options for shamans going that route). Adding Fox and Eagle to finish the 'animal' line of buffs could also be good. Those could easily be added without needing to include code to prevent them being used by druids, as they're not too out of place or empowering for druids.

If QC feels a flat buff might be reasonable though, then the quickest and easiest thing would probably be giving Medium Armor Proficiency. I didn't include it in the list of suggestions above since I was mostly focusing on kit ideas and thematic or quality of life changes rather than outright 'buffs'. But it's never made much sense to me that druids, who spend all their time in animal form and aren't even allowed to wear metal ICly, get medium armor, while shamans, who spend all of their time in normal form, only get light.

[dedude]

I agree that a spellbook shuffle would be nice, though how to go about it without buffing druids is problematic. Yes you could add some kind of 'trying to cast this spell fails since you're a druid' code like how the new prohibited school system works, but since you'd presumably have to do that on a per spell basis it's probably a lot of work. So I don't see a huge spell list change to be very feasible even if it would be nice to have.

Given the list of spells (what 10-15 spells max?) needing to be shuffled is quite short, and the code change is literally just a copy-paste for each, the coding work is very small.

I agree the kit ideas, though very cool, would be a lot of work and should not be prioritized over other classes more in need. But some of the other suggestions, like the spell shuffle, really are "low hanging fruits" from a development point of view. They just need a thumbs up from QC. I would be happy to volunteer for doing the actual work, if that helps.

[Nemni]

Another thing is to make sure that creatures that are supposed to be spirits are really marked as such (especially many undead aren’t). I love the kit ideas, but it would be nice if the basic shaman was more useable first