Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

In pen and paper, as far as I know, spirit shaman's can take any deity? But due to Nwn2 engine design spirit shaman's can only take druid deities?

Is it legal to rp a different god on a spirit shaman than one that you are allowed to pick at character progression?

Basically I would like to rp a Drow Spirit shaman of Vhaeraun. As that god allows rangers, I am wondering if rping a spirit shaman of Vhaeraun is legal and appropriate?

Thanks

There is nothing wrong with paying homage to multitude of deities. But the server has a rule to role-play your character sheet. Thus your drow druid's primary deity should be something else. Ibrandul or Grumbal might be your best bets.

In stock NWN2 rangers are limited to druidic deity list. But this server took the rangers into a more setting appropriate direction, and thus Rangers are not limited to druidic deity list.

As for Spirit Shamans, I wouldn't mind seeing them freed from the druidic deity list, but I think there is some source book passage that ties them down to druidic deities in forgotten realms. I do not recall it from the top of my head.

If you can find that passage that'd be great, but I've read a lot of lore on the shamans of forgotten realms (of which there really isn't much!), and as far as I'm aware, shamans being tied to druidic deities is a nwn2 engine quirk. I never RP'd my shaman getting my powers from one specific deity but always from the spirits, great and small, through bargains, favors and similar outlooks, as it really should be.

Spirit Shamans and Deities
Spirit shamans are no exception to the requirement that divine casters have a deity, and they draw their powers ultimately from a god. However, in the case of a spirit shaman, spirits act as intermediaries of this divine power, and it is the spirits themselves that spirit shaman PCs bargain with. While usually a spirit shaman will know the source of his divine powers, it is also open to a spirit shaman to venerate a cause, a broad aspect, or the spirits themselves, without realising that ultimately his or her power is derived from a god.

From DM Rulings for our server.

Considering that they're using nature-based divine spellcasting, the deity(ites?) are more often the ones promoting/granting such magical powers (Like all deities that sponsor druids) rather than not.

When a spirit shaman meditates to regain her daily allotment of spells (see below), she sends forth her spirit guide to bargain with the spirits and retrieve knowledge of the specific druid spells she will be able to use that day.

http://dnd.arkalseif.info/classes/spiri ... index.html

This is a DM ruling that was made for this class in regards to the Forgotten Realms Setting, in which all divine spellcasting comes from deities. This extends to spirit shamans (a supplement class by RAW, by all accounts) as well, on our server. And the DM ruling is final.

All divine spellcasting, druid or cleric or spirit shaman, may come from deities, but if the Spirit Shaman is "...without realising that ultimately his or her power is derived from a god..", by "forcing" a Character to select a Druid deity on their Character Sheet, which by Server Rules they must RP to the best of their ability, it gets confusing, in the context of the quote, because picking a deity becomes mostly an OOC action, than one that is an IC action.

Setting rules trump generic rules.
Forgotten Realms is setting rules.
Spirit Shaman uses generic rules.
FR rules say divine casters need to worship deities.

For example, Player's Handbook 3.5E says:
"Characteristics: Druids cast divine spells much the same way clerics do, though most get their spells from the power of nature rather than from deities."

But in Forgotten Realms, Druids always need to worship a deity to get spells.

But if you want divine spells in FR, you worship a deity.
Whether you're a Druid, Ranger or Spirit Shaman.

It makes the most sense for Shamans to worship nature deities like the Druid in FR.
And perhaps the Shamans is aligned with spirits that serve a deity, or prays to a deity while also communicating with spirits for advice.

TL;DR: The lore of the class changes slightly, so you get spells from nature deities, not spirits.

Spirit Shamans are not Druids. The DMs have the power to put any rule they want in place, but concerning the SS Custom Rule, it says right there that a Spirit Shaman may not consider their spells coming from a Deity, even if by the Laws of Forgotten Realms magic, they do.

Thus, a Spirit Shaman having to limit their "veneration" to a short list of approved Deities, stamping this onto the Character Sheet, does put into question if the Player MUST acknowledge that nature God, or not, in the RP (since it's in the custom rule they don't).

So like I'm saying, the end result here is that choosing a nature deity becomes a bit of an OOC choice. That's fine with me, at the end of the day, since it doesn't get in the way of my Character thinking their powers and spells come from their Spirit relationship.

So as to the OP, if the Character venerated multiple Deities, but either understood their spells came from a nature deity, a spirit of the deity, a stone that the talked to, whatever, it wouldn't really matter. All except for what one is mechanically forced to choose at Character Creation.

Let me say it another way:

PHB says that Druids get their spells from nature itself, instead of deities.
In the FR setting, this rule is overridden by the setting rules which say that ALL divine casters must worship deities to get spells.

Complete Divine says that Spirit Shamans get their spells from spirits, instead of deities.
In the FR setting, it's overridden again and Spirit Shamans MUST worship deities to get spells, end of story, exactly like Druids.

No one said that Spirit Shamans are Druids (duh). Setting specific trumps DnD generic.
Spirit Shamans need to worship deities to get divine spells in FR, trumps getting their spells from spirits.

It's not an OOC, it's specifically IC. Like DM Soulcatcher said above.

DM Soulcatcher wrote:This is a DM ruling that was made for this class in regards to the Forgotten Realms Setting, in which all divine spellcasting comes from deities. This extends to spirit shamans (a supplement class by RAW, by all accounts) as well, on our server. And the DM ruling is final.

I simply don't agree with you. I see it the way quoted by Soulcatcher himself:

"...it is also open to a spirit shaman to venerate a cause, a broad aspect, or the spirits themselves, without realising that ultimately his or her power is derived from a god."

The way I see it - all spells come from gods in FR, spirit shaman spells come from gods, spirit shamans can use spirit intermediaries for gaining spells, some spirit shamans don't realize the spirits are "agents" of the gods, gods don't care if they realize it or not, the god listed in the character sheet is the god the spells come from, the character doesn't read the character sheet, we are free to RP spirit shamans getting spells from spirits themselves as that is the character understanding, we as players know a god is involved from the sheet.