Hey guys,
I stated in another thread I'm going to be doing way of the wicked in a couple of months. The party cleric decided she really likes the mechanics of the shaman and would prefer to play that.
We are a group pretty much all for "play what you want" but we do like the rp to work.
So, why would a shaman want to help Asmodeus, or work for him, or do whatever it is we are supposed to do for him? What would her motivation be?
I read wiki and other googled stuff on shamans with her so pretty much spirits are their main shtick, just as it says on the ACG write up.
But we've come up short on how this type of class would even want to work with Mr. Uptight orderly, suppress the weak asmodeus?
Help us think outside the box? Any good rp suggestions? The best we can do is she is wanting to guide as many souls to hell as possible. But why would she?
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I'm going to be playing a shaman in WotW too and I've chosen to be a worshipper of Barbatos (there's a big ol' write up by Wes Schneider in Kobold Quarterly #22 that gives lots of information on playing a devout worhsipper easier). He just seems more *primal* than the other Arch-devils, except maybe Geryon, and he has a raw, natural magic and wisdom associated with him. Seems a perfect match for a shaman.
He owes direct allegiance to Barbatos but acknowledges Asmodeus' sovreignty in the same way one would swear fealty to a lord and via them to the king.
Protip: once you've completed the flensing, it's very difficult to reaffix the skin. :P
I've found that I have the opposite problem, I like the idea of the Shaman, just not the mechanics of it. I feel they would have been much better as a spontaneous caster.
As for why a Shaman might want to help old 'Mo, for the same reason most people help Devil overlords: for personal benefit. Most deals with a Devil are made from a position of weakness. Bargaining from a position of strength is a much better idea. If you can do something that a Devil needs done, you hold an advantage in bargaining. They need you, and they'll have to make it worth your time and effort.
What are the usual reasons people do bad things? Because they're greedy, angry, desperate or confused. Any of the first three could do, and shamans are if anything more honest about such motivations than some other ideologies.
e.g.
Greedy - you like the shinies. Or, the trickster spirit you're bound to does. Or, you need a lot of money for something - maybe something happened to a relative which only a wish could undo.
Angry - you want revenge on someone. Or on everyone.
Desperate - there's a bad guy who wants you dead, painfully, and only allying with someone stronger will save you. Or maybe some anarchic lynchings took away someone important to you and chaos seems a greater threat than evil.
Yeah maybe we are over thinking it too much. It just seems the shaman is more....I dunno....good. You know, healers and helpers of their people and all.
I'll look into barbatos. I guess she doesn't have to cow tow to asmodeus.
Shaman's thing is spirits. Contacting, channeling, helping, etc.
Taking a page from Scythia's playbook, most deals with devils are a screw-off competition where the parties involved try to screw each other over. Asmodeus usually wins, but there can be side-effects; or situations where he doesn't just have their soul as a tasty larvae to enslave normally. A few possible examples:
-Hellbinder A decided he was going to trick ol' Mody by selling his soul to several patrons at the same time. With 3 or more devil-lords (many of whom don't like each other and won't deal) all claiming a piece of his soul, he can renegotiate his contract if/when he dies, right? Except the devils had no problem grabbing his soul and pulling the respective parts they owned until it was torn to pieces. Now you have a shattered piece of a person that regular soul-magic doesn't have much use for but a spirit shaman, who is used to dealing with concepts and pieces of minds can still grab ahold of them and put them to work.
-Hellbinder B managed to meddle with his contract enough that regular enslavement or processing isn't allowed, the intent of B was to make it so his soul was unusable so he would just be left alone and able to try and do his own thing. The result was that he spent several centuries in Boredom Hell until he was willing to re-negotiate. He won't work for devils, but he will happily work for contracted third parties like the shaman.
-Hellbinder C tried to cheat by killing his contract holder and making himself undead. He failed, his soul is missing (no one knows where it went) but his spirit is still around. A shaman is the best way to exploit the situation.
-Devil D has no legal way of getting to the prime material plane, in fact if his physical body ever gets there he will be destroyed or devoured because both the higher ups in hell and the forces of light in heaven don't like him. Loophole found: only act through a binding shaman as a being of non-physical spirit.
In all these cases...
I hit send on my glitchy phone sorry.... Anyway, these are just.... Amazing!