The Shaman's Handbook
"The winter of our discontent is over."
Those were the words spoken (or rather, typed) by Green Ronin bigwig Chris Pramas when I mentioned that I like to see more product coming out of the promising d20 publisher staffed by WotC alumni. Green Ronin won critical acclaim (and an award or two) for their Freeport series of modules and products such as Legions of Hell. This whetted the gamer appetite for more such excellent products, but they were slow in coming.
Alas it seems that the dry spell may indeed be over. This month, not one new product from Green Ronin arrived, but three: the Freeport sourcebook, Armies of the Abyss, and this book, the Shaman's Handbook.
The Shaman's Handbook is the first in Green Ronin's Master Class series of books. Each Master Class book introduces one or more new core classes and the material to support it. I am generally apprehensive about introducing new classes, but the concept of a shaman seems to be popping up in multiple places in the d20 System. The Oriental Adventures book had a shaman class, and Mongoose Publishing will have their own take on shamans soon in the first of their Encyclopaedia Divine series. So there is plenty of interest in the concept, but the Shaman's Handbook has some tough competition.
A First Look
The Shaman's Handbook is an 80-page, perfect-bound softcover book priced at $16.95 US. This is precisely the same as the one other 80 page supplement that I own (Gladiators: Sands of Death) and has a similar price per page as the slightly larger WotC classbooks.
The cover of The Shaman's Handbook is quite colorful and very attractive. The cover art is by Stephanie Mui-Pun Law, who is masterful with watercolors and well heeled in the gaming industry (albeit mostly in the CCG end of the pool). I have been a fan of hers for some time and this cover does not disappoint. Pictured on the front is a female shaman in a leather or hide looking outfit with various fetishes dangling from her, and with spirits mingled with a rising column of smoke in front of her. The back cover has a close up shot of a face tattooed in Celtic style along with a muted replication of the front cover illustration that serves as a backdrop to the cover blurb.
The interior illustration is attended by a variety of talents. The most recognizable artist to gamers might be Toren "MacBin" Atkinson. Most of the remaining art in the book has a more esoteric and abstract style befitting the subject matter of those that deal with spirits and the dream world. While it fits the subject matter, it really didn't catch my eye.
The typeface is fairly typical for an RPG product. Headers use a stylistic "swoopy" looking font. Overall, the book delivers a decent value based on content density for the given price.
A Deeper Look
The Shaman
The book's central offering is the shaman core class. The class has all of the trappings of a core class in the PHB, including exposition about role, adventurers, and alignment, the required class abilities and tables, plus starting packages. It does not, however, have a stock NPC. (Not that I expected one, but I was spoiled by Beyond Monks: The Art of the Fight by Chainmail Bikini Games.)
The shaman is a divine spellcaster. It is somewhat similar to the Oriental Adventures shugenja in that it casts divine spells much as a sorcerer in that is uses Charisma as a casting statistic, can cast spells spontaneously, and only knows a limited number of spells.
A shaman starts with two totems, represented by an anscestor or nature spirit. Each totem grants a domain from which the shaman may cast spells. Except for the Spirit domain (which all shamans have), all of the domains are the same as the clerical domains in the PHB. The shaman also gains additional totems (and thus domains) as she goes up in levels.
A shaman does not receive the ability to turn or rebuke undead, but instead may rebuke spirits. This ability works much like the clerical ability, except that it may only be applied to spirits. In The Shaman's Handbook, spirits include all elementals, outsiders, and creatures with the "incorporeal" subtype. In addition, shamans may expend their rebuke attempts as dispel attempts against other shamanic magic.
This seems like a neat adaptation of the standard clerical ability, but I worry that it may be a little powerful. Creatures such as outsiders often are very powerful for their HD and lack any sort of turn resistance like undead. As a result, the shaman's ability may be too giving.
At 4th level, the shaman may call a spirit familiar. The familiar is similar to a wizard's or sorcerer's familiar, except it has the spirit template provided in the book.
As a side note, The Shaman's Handbook notes that some people may not be too eager to put a new class in their games, but it offers that druids, sorcerers, and barbarian/clerics may fill the same roles.
In addition to the rules material, the book has a bit of exposition on shamans, such as examples of shamanic traditions in real world cultures and symbols and fetishes typically used by shamans.
Prestige Classes
There are six new prestige classes presented in The Shaman's Handbook:
- Dreamer: The dreamer has its own spell list and class abilities that allows it to interact with and enter the dream realm.
- Ghost Guide: The ghost guide is a short (5-level) class charged with the responsibility of guiding restless spirits to their final destination. Class abilities are related to permanently laying undead creatures to rest and preventing creatures from rising as undead.
- Healer: Healers are divine spellcasters specializing (yes, even more) in the healing arts. Healers are not good fighters, but gain bonuses to healing spells and the use of the healing skill.
- Skin Changer: The skin changer is a spellcasting class whose class abilities all center around the wild shape ability similar to the druid's. The wild shape ability is not a prerequisite.
- Spirit Hunter: The spirit hunter is a fighting versus a spellcasting class specialized in fighting spirits. It gains the favored enemy ability against various spirit types and class abilities that help in fighting spirits such as see invisibility and ghost touch. The only ability I question is true death, which prevents raising spirits from the dead by any means. That seems a little all ecompassing to me; most such abilities permit 9th-level spells (resurrection, wish, miracle) to restore a slain crature.
- Spirit Master: Where shamans work in harmony with spirits and try to appease them, spirit masters act to control spirits. Spirit masters are spellcasters with class abilities relating to the control of spirits, including the binding of outsiders and the creation of undead.
Overall, the prestige classes seem interesting, well justified, and appropriate to the subject matter of the book. Most of them seem as if they could easily be used by characters with no levels in the shaman class, adding flexibility to their use.
Shamanic Skills
Whenever a d20 supplement - especially one targeted at D&D - introduces new skills, I worry. All too many such products fail to take into account the scope of existing skills or consider the impact of having to retrofit other classes to use them. Many such skills might exist under the Craft, Profession, or Knowledge categories.
The new skills introduced are Dreaming, Knowledge (spirit world), Spirit Empathy, and Trance, as well as new uses for Perform for shamans. Of these, it seems as if Dreaming and Spirit Empathy are difficult to justify as individual skills. However, Trance seems to me like it could be a new use for Concentration, perhaps requiring a feat that a shaman might get for free. None of the new skills outline how they fit in with the existing core classes.
Shamanic Feats
There are a total of 16 new feats, including general, item creation, and spirit feats. Spirit feats are a new category of feats that require the use of a shaman's rebuke spirit ability in the same way that divine feats in Defenders of the Faith and The Quintessential Cleric require the use of a turn or rebuke undead attempt.
The general feats include Larger Familiar (grants the character a larger familiar than normal, allowing such creatures as bears, cheetahs, and wolverines), Sense Spirits, and Totem (allows access to a new domain of spells).
New item creation feats are Craft Charm (creates small items that essentially act like potions), Craft Fetish (creates items that act much like scrolls), and Enchant Tattoo, used to place magical tattoos on people.
Spirit feats include Smite Spirit (works much like the paladin's smite ability, but applies against spirits), Spirit Strike (use a rebuke attempt to gain the ability to attack incorporeal creatures normally for a number of rounds equal to your Charisma bonus), and Spirit Ward (gives you and your allies a bonus to save against spells and abilities of spirits).
Shamanic Magic
This chapter provides a spell list plus a number of new spells for the shaman. Aside from the new spells, the shaman's spell list is somewhere between the cleric and druid spell lists. There is a smattering of nature oriented spells. As the shaman deals with spirits of nature of the dead, and outsiders, they sort of straddle the two classes. There are a few spells that aren't normally divine spells that fit the shaman's idiom, such as phantasmal killer.
Most of the new spells all concern spirits or the "spirit world." An interesting example is the "confront spirit" spells: confront curse spirit, confront disease spirit, and confront magical spirit. Each one of these spells allows the shaman to confront curses, diseases, or spells respectively. The caster enters a trance and then combats a spirit representing the condition to be removed. If the shaman wins, the condition is removed. Otherwise the shaman awakens and cannot confront the spirit again until he gains a new caster level.
Other spells include ghost touch (similar to the weapon ability of the same name), ethereal projection (similar to astral projection, but you can be killed if either body is killed), protection from spirits (as the alignment protection spells, but applies against creatures considered spirits), and polymorphic projects (sends forth your spirit, which takes the desired form.)
Overall, the new spells are fairly interesting and appropriate.
Shamanic Magic Items
As mentioned in the feats section, there are three new types of items created for shamans. Fetishes are small items such as bead necklaces, collections of feathers and bones bound by a thong, animal skulls, or bags full of herbs, crystals, and bones. A fetish esssentially acts like a scroll, but may be charged.
Charms are small items such as rabbits' feet, feathers, incense, potions, oil, or rune-covered bark. Charms are effectively identical to potions.
Mystic tattoos cover a part of the body and do prevent you from using other items covering that body part. Mystic tattoos come in two types. Mystic marks are single use items, while permanent tattoos have permanent effects. In either case, the GM is provided with the option of allowing the recipient to pay the XP cost instead of the shaman. Unfortunately, no sample tattoos are provided.
Samples of other types of magic items are provided that are appropriate for shamans, such as the staff of spirits (casts various spirit-related shaman spells), dream catchers (protects the dreamscapes of everyone in a room with such an item in it), and totem masks (a set of masks, each of which provides one attribute bonus and a spell effect appropriate to the creature depicted on the mask).
Shamanic Worlds
This chapter details the cosmology and the planes of existence as viewed by shamans. Typcical d20 System conventions such as the Ethereal, Astral, and Shadow planes are mentioned, though they are referred to by different names by shamans. For example, the Ethereal Plane of the d20 System is referred to as the Spirit World by shamans.
The cosmology of shamans is referred to as the great tree, but in reality the structure tightly parallels the standard D&D great wheel cosmology and can more or less be considered the same thing from a different perspective, and sidebars point out how you can draw these parallels to fit shamans into a standard campaign cosmology. Specific planes are also touched on such as the Dream World and the Land of the Dead.
Finally, the chapter discusses adventures in shamanic worlds.
Spirits and Monsters
The Shaman's Handbook is primarily concerned with spirits, and at last here they are. As mentioned earlier, all outsiders, elementals, and creatures with the incorporeal subtype are considered spirits. In addition, this chapter introduces new spirits.
The chapter starts off with a spirit template that can be applied to most types of creatures. It is similar to the ghost template but the creature's type does not change; instead it does gain the incorporeal subtype. Some spirits can materialize, enabling them to interact with the physical world. Sample sprits are included such as a sprit dire bear and a spirit ogre mage. Other spirits included are the cannibal spirit (or wendigo), disease spirit, fetch, and possessing spirit.
There are also two other templates, the exalted beast and the beast lord. The exalted beast is an animal possessed of a spirit that gives it great intellect and mastery over its kin. Beast lord is a template that may be applied to creatures with both the exalted beast and spirit template. They are extremely powerful and are masters of their race. Examples of each template are provided.
Conclusion
The Shamans Handbook brings the shaman to life in game terms. It does a good job of presenting a number of ideas faithfully and putting them in historical context. At the same time, the shaman is presented in a way that makes it fit rather well with a standard game. For example, the method of classifying spirits means that the shaman might easily find a home fighting alongside a party that is taking on demons or undead.
Even if the idea of a new core class doesn't thrill you, the prestige classes are phrased in a way that other classes can take advantage of them, though you would generally get much less value out of the book.
I saw many great ideas and implementations in this book that would be useful whether you want to add more detailed primitive spellcasters to a standard game, create exotic encounters for characters traveling to distant lands, or to run a game patterned after such diverse sources as mythical ancient America or Mononoke Hime.
-Alan D. Kohler
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