So Im thinking about making a Shaman for an upcoming game im going to play in.
Wanted to play a blaster / controller style, most likely Heavens to start off as until the wandering spirit.
Does anyone have any past experiences and or advice on the class?
Love the class. I've been playing a melee-oriented Shaman through Rise of the Runelords and it has been very effective.
For a blaster/controller style, you'll probably want to focus on mental statistics, including WIS, CHA and INT. You'll find lots of chatter on the forums about using Lore as a Wandering Spirit to use Arcane Enlightenment hex grab arcane spells (which is a fantastic feature to expand the otherwise mediocre spell list), but it does require a significant investment in all of the mental statistics.
Heavens spirit is nice, but for a blaster/controller style build I would actually suggest having a look at the Waves spirit for the Crashing Waves and Water Sight hexes (also, to a lesser extend, Beckoning Chill).
Water Sight is great for pairing with spells like Fog Cloud for control purposes (ie. you can create areas where only you can see).
Crashing Waves boosts the caster level and creates an excellent status effect rider for water description spells. Normally it kinda stinks for Shamans because there are so few such spells on their list at earlier levels, but when combined with Arcane Enlightenment you can pick and choose from great combinations (like Snowball or Flurry of Snowballs).
In a similar vein, I have been thinking about the idea of a Samsaran with the Mystic Past Life racial trait, which would allow the character to hand pick a few spells off another divine caster list -- namely the Druid list. If you liked that idea, you could pre-select spells like Snowball, and then use your Wandering Spirit for something other than Lore, or just use it to pick up different spells.
Shaman is incredible. I will pretty much never play a Cleric ever again thanks to it.
For Blasters, Lore is hard to argue with. But I usually prefer that as my Wandering Spirit, just so I can Swiss-Army-Knife my spell selection. To be fair, the Shaman may very well have the best spell list in the game (without certain Spirits/Hexes/FCB).
Zenogu-- you think the Shaman list is that good *without* access to other spells via FCB or Arcane Enlightenment?
I can't say I agree with that. I feel like it's a bit of a mixed bag with no clear focus. I mean, not horrible or anything, but definitely not the best either.
In particular, I continue to be annoyed about the fact that you get things like Endure Elements and Resist Energy, but not the Communal versions of those spells. I think that was a major oversight, including when they fixed up some other issues via errata (such as adding the Summon Nature's Ally spells).
Fortunately, there are some workarounds to assist with the mediocre list, and the Human FCB to pick up spells off the Cleric list has been really helpful for my melee shaman (who took the Speaker for the Past archetype and so can't access Arcane Enlightenment as a wandering hex -- and well, he's also too dumb to leverage it anyways).
There's holes here and there which you can plug with your options, but no other class has access to all 3 types of Magic.
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I just hit 12th in our Hell's Rebels campaign. We started at 1st with only three PCs, and mine was the only caster. Things got shuffled up a bit and we now have two PCs and two cohorts, but the shaman is still really solid. He's made three melee attacks in his career, and zero ranged (non-spell) attacks.
That said, I went caster, caster, caster, and more caster. Planned-for and designed to be flexible, so he's an aasimar with Scion of Humanity, so he gets the human favored-class bonus. Lets him add a cleric spell to his list every level, which nicely fills the gaps. I went Life to get channel energy, and wandered into Lore to get Arcane Enlightenment. So yeah.
Finally, I picked up crafting feats, and have made a number of skill-boosting items. That let me pick up Ritual Hex at 9th and he's able to meet the ritual's requirements rolling a 1. I use that now for Arcane Enlightenment, leaving my wandering spirit/hex to go as I please.
Super, super flexible. But at the price of a 9-page character sheet.
I thoroughly enjoy him.
Interestingly, I have just started dabbling in a bit of PFS and on 2 separate occasions I have seen ruled:
Regarding the Lore Spirit (Arcane Enlightenment) and Wandering Spirit combo, that Wandering Spirit DOES NOT over-ride the original mechanics of Arcane Enlightenment... ie) it cannot be used to choose a different set of Wiz spells every day. The core mechanics of Arcane Enlightenment still apply..... one spell can be replaced per level.
The GM's ruled that the core purpose of Wandering Spirit is to allow access to different spirits on a daily basis. Repeatedly accessing the same spirit every day does not over-ride the mechanics... you are in essence still 'wandering' back to the same list.
I have to say at the time, I thought 'Does it really matter in a PFS game?', but then looking at the abilities more carefully it makes perfect sense. If this is not the case then the wording on Arcane Enlightenment is essentially pointless, and also it changes the ability from powerful to OP. In both cases, the game stopped for at least 15 minds to allow the arguing to settle down!
I would love to get a PROPER FAQ ruling on this from a Paizo dev or PFS authority... as opposed to an ongoing cyber flame war!!
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What stat array should I use for the Arcane Enlightenment caster build?
I was looking online and one of the guides said as follows
20 point buy: 7 str - 9 dex - 12 con - 13 int - 16 wis - 16 cha
What do you all think of it?
