I was thinking of building a summoning-focused Druid and the Animal Shaman archetypes caught my eye. I saw some guides say the Saurian Shaman and maybe Lion Shaman are the best, but why, exactly? My best guess is that Saurians are found all across the SNA list and felines often have pounce, but are there different opinions about that? Bear Shaman looks pretty good as well, too bad there's only two bears on that list.
If I make this character, I'm thinking of not being in melee myself. While I could do that with decent stats, I think I'd rather just be a backrow caster, as I have lots of frontliners already.
Also, it doesn't specifically mention it, but I'm guessing the archetypes also delay Wild Shape to level 6?
Also, this is for PFS, so I guess I don't want to go too nuts with all the summons, as there's usually a 1 combat pet per character limit. I don't want to clog up all the time during combat.
|
As to whether you lose Wild Shape at Level 4 it isn't crystal clear however
1) The original author stated multiple times that he intended his wording to mean that Shamans only got Wild Shape at level 6 (and his wording made it into the book unchanged)
2) That is very arguably the clear intent of the rules as they are written as otherwise you get the very weird situation that a Shamans Wild Shape gets WORSE at Level 6 in some respects.
I think that most GMs rule that you don't get Wild Shape until level 6.
The Saurian Shaman is definitely the best. The main advantage that it gets is that there is a huge variety in what "dinosaurs" can do (In Pathfinder, Dinosaur includes the flying and swimming reptiles too). And James Jacobs LOVES dinosaurs so they are always VERY competitive options
I played a Lion Shaman in PFS and overall I'd say its slightly more powerful than a base druid but no more powerful than the better archetypes like Menhir Druid. Cats are some of the best combat options available but they're not very versatile. Basically, all cats are mechanically very, very similar (pounce killing machines).
The biggest advantage of the Shaman is that it can summon as a standard action. Back when my Shaman was in PFS scenarios that was huge. I think that there are now lots of other ways to get that (Power Creep) so its less big.
Oh, and summoning templated animals is quite useful. If nothing else, it extends the value of Summons to higher levels. Just make sure to do all the math ahead of time and decide that a Summon 5 is ALWAYS a Advanced Giant Tiger (or whatever, that example is almost certainly wrong)
The delayed Wild Shape costs a little at lower levels but at about level 8 or so its no biggy.
But be nice to the table when summoning. I only did it when either
1) the situation had gone very south and deaths were in the offing
2) it was late and we all just wanted to go home
3) it was a fight the others REALLY didn't want to have (eg, against a lot of rust monsters in one scenario)
Edit: Obviously, build the character you want. But for PFS I found that deliberately building for versatility can be VERY useful. My druid had decent physical AND casting stats and spent resources to be decent in combat, decent at casting spells, decent at summoning. Depending on the group that showed up for any particular game she could adapt one of several different roles (I had preselected different spell loads for different roles). Obviously, the trade off was that she was somewhat less powerful in each role. But she was ALWAYS good enough in the role needed that day for that table.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Saurian shaman is an upgrade
For everything else there's mastercard
Why does everyone rave about the menhir? An extra caster level is... like.. a feat.
As to whether you lose Wild Shape at Level 4 it isn't crystal clear however
No ambiguity about it since
this FAQ, shamans get wildshape at level 6.Menhir is good as it does not mess with wildhshape and gives more useful benefits than it replaces. Also druids don't get that many feats and have a few "must haves".
What feat is this that grants a general caster level? The only ones I can think of are very situational.
Eagle is very nice as well, I'd say. There's a FAQ about making Rocs legally available. And Nobility Domain has Divine Favor.
I like the shamans because of the new options for domains. Lion gives you Glory which may lead to the Heroism subdomain. Finally the druid has some useful self-buff spells.
Wolf provides Liberation and Travel. Two of the best domains available. Bat Shaman gives you Darkness or Trickery. Several provide the Destruction domain which optionally includes the Rage subdomain.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why does everyone rave about the menhir? An extra caster level is... like.. a feat.
Well, nobody cares about Trackless Step if the rest of the party is still leaving tracks (or at all). Woodland Stride is very limited (natural undergrowth); doesn't help in rocky terrain or against the sort of magical undergrowth a druid might be making himself. So these aren't big sacrifices for the occasional extra caster level.
We don't care about Wild Empathy either most of the time, we're dumping Charisma anyway. Nature Sense is a minuscule bonus. Trading that for Spirit Sense is the real sweet deal. Drive GMs wild by trying to sense enemies before opening doors.
TL;DR - You trade away circumstantial powers for more broadly applicable ones while staying 97% normal druid awesomeness.
Why does everyone rave about the menhir? An extra caster level is... like.. a feat.
Adding to what Ascalaphus is saying -
That, and the fact that it doesn't trade out venom immunity at level 9, but grants you Wis/day Transport via Plants. For free. And, that at level 13 Alter Self at will is amusing, but as a natural shapeshifter it's arguably not as useful to you as it would be for anyone else, so swapping that for 13+ rounds of Ethereal Jaunt as a supernatural ability is quite tempting, and is certainly a lot more of a "get out of jail free" card than Many Faces
Also, Menhir Savant gets progressively more fun for self-buffing, for some rather minuscule investment.
1) You can get +1 to CL of Transmutation spells with a trait.
2) You can add a further +1 to the CL of Transmutation spells with the Half-Elf alternate racial trait "Mordant Envoy"
3) Anointing Oil gives some of your buff spells a further +1 CL for 25 gp a pop.
Together with the +1 CL whenever, you're set for a lovely +4 to CL on your buffs as early as level 2.
Also consider that a -lot- of the non-buffing druid spells are of the transmutation school, including some of their battlefield control spells, the ones that affect plants (plants are immune to enchantment, so) etc etc - making your spells both stronger, more likely to pierce SR, etc etc etc - but I digress. Menhir Savant is simply the equivalent of Druid+, in my mind.
|
|
As for when shamans would be good;
- Standard action summons
- Templates to add to your summons to scale them to the job in quantity/quality/size
- Early access to huge forms (dinosaurs)
Altogether this is mostly interesting for lion and especially saurian shamans.
I'm only impressed by the dino-summoning potential really. If you don't really want to summon that much, the archetype doesn't have a lot to offer.
Thanks for the replies, everyone! I was indeed eyeing the Menhir Savant already, since it gets +1 CL relatively cheaply. It works especially well on summons early on, squeezing out an extra round of combat. I've put the build in the freezer for now as I'm unsure how much my build is appreciated at PFS, but once I ask around I might return to it. Thanks a lot, everyone!