Single casting stat for spirit shaman

[GholaMan]

Can this be a thing please? This would be great.

[Louvaine]

I mean, it'd be great for all classes facing similar issue (FvS, Paladin, etc). But arguably, SS is weakest of them all, so could really use that boost.

[Dragonslayer]

I'm not sure I see a reason to based off of the lore of the class and the intent behind the spellcasting. They're non-prepatory casters who have a slew of unique abilities tied into their ability to perceive (a wisdom based concept) the spirit world, and their ability to use their strength of personality and persuasiveness to converse and to bargain with said spirits (a charisma based concept). Without both of those abilities working off one another, the class concept is compromised.

A spirit shaman who can perceive the spirit world and doesn't bargain isn't able to get spellcasting, because it's a key component of how they gain their power. A shaman who can't perceive the spirit world similarly cannot get spellcasting, because they don't even know what to look for.

If the argument is for ease of use and simplifying the spellcasting purely for a mechanical reason, then there's even less reason to do so. As pointed out, there are plenty of classes that require multiple stats to perform well, and in that respect two isn't especially burdensome with +4 wisdom items readily available from the shops.

Just thank your stars you don't play a paladin, which needs STR, DEX, CON, WIS, and CHA to be a half decent fighter with a limited spellbook.

[GholaMan]

Dragonslayer I can admit your first point about the lore of the class is a good point, the rest however not so much.

Now as to why you saying well there are other classes that need multiple stats to perform well so spirit shaman don't need to change argument isn't a great one. So there are two types of classes in DND single stat and MAD. Fighters, warlocks, swashbucklers, druids, wizards, sorcs, barbarians, rogues, phantom, bards and clerics can be played with a high degree of effectiveness with a single high stat some more so than others. Clerics for example usually do extremely well with also having high STR and or CHA. These classes present you with a clear path, and or some simple choices, like playing a DEX fighter or a Conlock.

Now lets get into classes that are MAD, meaning multiple ability score dependent. These classes include Ranger, monk, paladin, spirit shaman, favored soul, master at arms. Now favored soul and master at arms are both the least MAD dependent out of the MAD classes. Favored soul because, you just don't actually need wisdom to be effective, you can have your entire spell list be buffs and some healing while being a 100% effective character because of the cleric spell list. Master at arms is the second most effective because unlike the rest of the MAD classes you can get away with 2 stats instead of 3. Rangers and monks are middle of the road in the MAD department, since for them while they like having lots of high stats you can actually get away with building a single stat for them as well. STR or DEX is easy to build on rangers, and DEX and WIS is easy to do for monks, boosting your other attributes for those builds is essentially icing on the cake for them.

Now for paladins and spirit shaman, the two most MAD dependent classes in the game. Now as far as effective build options and choices there are actually far more for paladin that work than for spirit shaman. Paladin in general is still a more cohesive class than spirit shaman is in terms of class features with their MAD dependency. And while going 30 paladin has some viable build options going for it, 30 spirit shaman is unironically playing the game in hard mode. As far as paladins go their man stats are actually STR and CHA, WIS and DEX and CON can easily be mitigated with the gear options that are available on the server. You also do not need more than 12 dex and 14 wisdom. The gear options that paladins want on this server are easier to acquire and are cheaper than the ones spirit shaman need.

Now Spirit Shaman, the actual most MAD class in the game. And you may rightly be wondering how exactly is there a class more MAD than the paladin, well that comes down to how spirit shaman cast spells and their lack of proficiency in equipment. Paladins have heavy armor proficiency, which means you can start with 10 DEX and get a +2 DEX piece of equipment and get your max DEX to AC for full plate, pretty easy. Spirit shaman start only with light armor prof which means the dex score you are aiming for to fill out the lowest DEX required light armor is an 18 DEX, combined with the fact that you have to minimum reach 19 wisdom to even access your own spells. If you don't want to build epic divine might as a paladin, you don't have to. This isn't the same for spirit shaman, where if you want to use your own class abilities aka spell casting you must have minimum 19 wisdom.

Which leads us to CHA for shaman, arguably their most important stat, but even if you max out CHA you will still have less spells to cast than other spell casters you will in most cases have lower DC for your spells because you will be investing more of your ability score points into other stats like DEX, CON, STR, and WIS. The other issue us that CHA is only good for spirit shaman's casting DC, the only abilities that function off of their CHA are basically useless. Further compounding the problem of having to choose between the number of spells per day and effective spells is that as a spirit shaman you will be spending more feats than other classes not on making yourself more powerful but just shoring up your weaknesses. The other issue with spirit shaman and MAD is that if you decide to max out wisdom dumping CHA is not really viable as you are still playing a spell caster that primarily is going to rely on casting spells rather than a spell caster that primarily buffs themselves. So you wont be able to pull off disregarding the DC half of your spell casting like a favored soul can and go for the simple buff and bash, which is compounded by the fact that spirit shaman use the druid spell list meaning any AB boosting spells would only be usable on summons or if you could shapeshift, which you can't.

So you have spirit shaman which is a less effective buff and bash than cleric/druid/favored soul because you cant boost your AB. Worse DC caster than Druid, if you want to spam spells then you are better off playing pretty much any other spell caster because at least they will have more effective build options. Swapping to a single casting stat will still leave Spirit Shaman with useless class abilities, a design that is all over the place, horrible weapon and armor proficiency, while still being MAD without getting any real benefit out of it like say a paladin, ranger, or monk.