There is a shaman in my current campaign, now at level 3. While the class has a lot of moving parts, the player manages it well and has fun with it. As long as you are willing to do more bookkeeping than for the average full caster, you should be fine.
Personally I'd stick with either parent class, because they are more straight-forward. When it comes to hexes, I vastly prefer witch because she gets them at level 1 (so a human one can pick up three instantly if desired) and isn't restricted to spirit hexes when taking Extra Hex. And spirits force you into a strict sequence of spirit abilities, opposed to oracle's sandbox of revelations. Wandering spirit and wandering hex make me feel obligated to check out all the options over and over, for limited benefit - eh, no thanks.
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Shaman is a bit weird power wise. The spell list isn't the best and the hexes tend to be slightly weaker version of witch hexes and oracle revelations.
But it has some options that can make it the strongest caster. First, it has the human favored class bonus that can allow it to grab most of the best cleric spells. Then it has the lore spirit hex arcane enlightenment that allows it to grab some of the best wizard spells, which you can change out daily if you took it as a wandering hex.
So, if you are playing a "human" shaman with access to the lore spirit, then you can be very powerful, but if you play some shaman other than that, you'd usually be better off with playing some other class.
Shamans can be really versatile.
They can get Life-Link and a Protector Spirit Animal, which can be quite effective.
The ever-popular Wandering Spirit (Lore)/Wandering Hex (Arcane Enlightenment) trick adds a lot of utility.
Outside of that, it's a 3/4 BAB, 9th level divine caster... just like the rest of them. Its "power" will vary depending on who is building/playing the character, and the needs of the party/campaign.
I have never been disappointed when I played a Shaman, and I have played a lot of them. In fact, it is my favorite full divine caster ... and I vastly prefer spontaneous caster above prepared caters. Druid is a close second. If the party needs a divine caster, I automatically default to taking shaman because I can pretty much fill any role and cherry pick what cleric spells I need from the favored class options.
Its powerful yes....but no way near being top of the tree.
Honestly, as long as you take Protective Luck and Chant, your party is going to love you anyway. Whatever else you do is icing on the cake. The hexes alone make the class decent.
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I've played a couple of Shamans: a human Flame Spirit all the way through Ironfang Invasion, and a half-orc Speaker for the Past Heavens Spirit in Strange Aeons (currently in Book 5). I've found them to be very versatile. The Speaker for the Past archetype in particular is very good, and makes a strong tier 1 caster. You could argue that the Speaker for the Past is too good.
I personally feel that Arcane Enlightenment is a trap option. The Speaker for the Past archetype gets you a good selection of "arcane" spells without being MAD.
Shaman is arguably my favorite class.
The Waves Spirit + Crashing Waves Hex + Pale Flame spell + Benthic Metamagic feat + Magical Lineage (Pale Flame) has got to be my favorite combination of abilities for the Shaman.
Forcing a Fort save every time you connect with something with a (ranged) touch attack bludgeoning damage spell several times a round, or it goes prone... Its so good that I'd use it even without metamagic reduction.
I just wanted a Cha based spontaneous caster version of the Druid. As for the Shaman, it is just a mess.
I just wanted a Cha based spontaneous caster version of the Druid. As for the Shaman, it is just a mess.
I feel like that's mostly just an oracle with the nature mystery.
The shaman can be built a lot of different ways. It's practically build your own spell list between spirits, wandering spirits, some favored class bonuses and possible arcane enlightenment. It responds well to system mastery; it's actually potentially more fiddly than I like, which is something I say of few PC options.
OTOH it's entirely possible to play a shaman with the battle spirit as your basic full-casting divine goon, and similarly simple concepts. It doesn't actually have to be fiddly and overpowered.
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Says you. The Oracle has enough nature related options that I don't know that just being a "spontaneous Cha Druid" is enough to make a class. The spontaneous witch isn't Cha based, but it too crosses that niche somewhat.
Still.
Shaman is the most divisive of the 9th level caster classes when it comes to these questions.
I don't care for it much, nor do I hate it, but it's easy to see - including in this very thread but it's a pattern we see in many, many shaman discussions - that some are just in love with it, and others refuse to consider it could ever be considered any good.
So it's safe to say it's not for everyone. And that's fine.
It's finicky, there's a lot of moving parts (more than any other 9/9 caster ?), some very strong options baseline, a weird, unwieldy spell list...
(not gonna go into the archetypes much since every class has a mixed bag of those, but yeah : some powerful things there too)
I'd say it requires a player to take the time to really learn its intricacies, but absolutely rewards putting in the effort.
It's not for me, but I know better than to pretend it's bad.
I haven't played a Shaman, but it looks strong to me, but as others have said it probably requires a high degree of system mastery.
Thematically the "Shaman" probably should have had some relation to the Druid, and it's very weird that the Hybrid of an INT-based caster and a CHA-based caster became a WIS-based caster ... but then I think the Witch being an INT-based prepaired caster was a strange decision too.
I do think it suffers from the Human FCB being better than other options, and there are a few other similar gripes, but overall I think it looks fun, interesting and powerful.
I am going to disagree that Shamans favor Humans... that is completely on the player and their choices.
Personally, I like Helpful Halfling Serendipity Shamans with the Tribe Spirit... can VMC Cavalier for Order of the Dragon or Order of the Staff. Although the Halfling FCB does well with the Nature Spirit, too... or any other archetype/build/Spirit that utilizes their Spirit Animal's abilities.
Gear Gnome Animist-Speaker of the Past Shamans can use their FCB to pick up three Hexes over the course of their career, which helps since Animist gives up so many of the Hexes gained through levels. Brigh is your god of choice, should you want to take Deific Obedience and/or VMC Cleric for Divine Alchemy.
I am going to disagree that Shamans favor Humans... that is completely on the player and their choices.
Honestly I haven't looked at them in a while. I was just going off what was said earlier about the FCB.
I generally think that if one FCB is significantly stronger than others then that's a design flaw, but in this case I was basically talking crap since I haven't actually looked at it lately =P
I retract that part of my statement pending further research .
I understand the value/utility/power of gaining access to expanded spells... but if one wanted Cleric spells so badly that they would limit their Shaman's race, then they could accomplish much the same thing just being a Cleric. Lol.
To be fair, though, I don't really build/play my characters the same way a lot of other people appear to. So what may seem like an obvious or even overpowered choice to everyone else, very well could not even show up on my radar.
Like, I used the Tea of Transference/Ki Channel trick Firebug mentioned with a Halfling Bard VMC Monk... Arcane Healer provided the Channels, VMC provided the Ki, and Giesha already had a similar armor restriction as VMC Monk... she used the Resourceful alternate racial feature to qualify for/pick up Shikigami Manipulation... worshipped Irori and wore the whole set of Monk's Robes, Bodywraps, and Necklace of Ki Serenity... and she loves tea parties with the party, scribes a cubic buttload of scrolls, and has near-infinite Bardic Performance/Channel Energy/Ki/spells. Lol.
Trying to build around a shaman's spirit animal has the fatal flaw that their fatalities are expensive. 500 gp/shaman level to get it back (750 per with one archetype), and it's not like familiars/spirit animals are resilient.
While the cleric character class is solid in its own right, shamans have a lot more abilities and their own spell list; the combination of cleric buff spells with shaman multiple attack spells can get absurd. Or utility - I saw a player grab the lore spirit as a wandering spirit to cast legend lore as a 4th level spell (in a game limited to 4th level spells max) and wasn't that a pain to GM for. He also used the slums spirit for teleports and life for healing, and (ab)used arcane enlightenment as a wandering hex.
Speaker for the past is a strong archetype, but it's actually less of a headache to GM for. Shaman non-spirit hexes (as in VM's example) are still OK, but they're not the part of the class you need to keep an eye on other than witch hex (slumber).
Yeah, the (part) human FCB is notably stronger than the others.
I understand the value/utility/power of gaining access to expanded spells... but if one wanted Cleric spells so badly that they would limit their Shaman's race, then they could accomplish much the same thing just being a Cleric. Lol.
But then how would they access the good wizard spells too? The human lore shaman is about getting the best spells from the best spell lists.
The base shaman spell list is very unfocused and very lackluster.
Fair enough, but it's still "limiting" you to three of the most popularly played races, anyways. And there are a bunch of others that can Pass for Human... which, at least in the Tiefling's description, includes "for all purposes"... like FCB.
And the design flaw is not specific to the Shaman class. PF1 has a serious design flaw handing the game to spellcasters on a silver platter. So any FCB that has to do with spells is going to immediately be better than all of them that do not have to do with spells. And that is true of every class/archetype/race/FCB combination possible... the most powerful have to do with magic, every single time. Not the Shaman's fault.
The ability scores are their own problem, and should probably just be dropped altogether. No races adjust anything, and that solves that. Keep all thr skill modifiers and things that make each race unique... just completely eliminate all options for a race to adjust the ability scores.
I'd honestly be fine with slightly more powerful FCBs if they were only available to otherwise non-optimal races. But as the game is, the FCBs seem really random. It's not like human is bad at being any class, so they shouldn't get the most powerful FCBs too.
I really do like the ‘partially flexible racial ability arrays’ in PF2.
Yeah, it was one of their best ideas. For those not familiar with it: The races get their usual adjustments, but the player can also add a +2 to any score that didn't get a racial bonus. If they want, they can remove the -2 flaw with it, otherwise they turn a +0 into a +2. Humans simply gain two of these +2s (again, they can't be stacked).
It comes with a tiny bit of power creep and blurs the lines between races a tad, but it easily makes it up by supporting way more races for a given build idea.
I would rather blur the line between races a little bit than have a bunch of cookie cutter combinations of races and classes because some BS arbitrary numbers happen to align with this or that class' BS arbitrary keyed ability score.
Characters are not supposed to be aware of these concepts, yet they drive every choice made in character creation. It's stupid.
Characters are aware their race is better at certain things than certain other things. They may not have a number to stick to it, but they know elves are nimble and dwarves are tough.
Imagine if in our world there was another race that was mostly like humans, but they were on average much better at cooking food. Then you'd expect those people to disproportionally be drawn towards being chefs.
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I believe, on average, it is a disproportionally small number of any race that is drawn to be an adventurer... and since we generally are dealing with that tiny percentage of each race that has taken to adventuring, I don't think it's necessarily fair to assume that cooking, or whatever, is still a skill we can say they are going to possess any more than literally anyone else from any other race.
White people can't jump... it's a stereotype, and a movie... but there are still white athletes. Literally never even heard of a Dwarven Sorcerer... and Goblin Paladins are so rare that they make front page threads every time they are mentioned.
Being an adventurer is already being an exception to your race, whatever it may be... what is to say your general ability scores are not also exception to the norm for your race? Maybe being a stronger than average Goblin is why you chose to be a Barbarian adventurer. Maybe you weren't as sneaky and had to be tougher... doesn't matter...
I don't think you should be stuck with the same ability modifiers as the Goblin that chose to be a Rogue adventurer. Different Goblins, different lives, different choices... but same ability modifiers? Why? Becauae they are both Goblins? When I was in high school, I couldn't benchpress my body weight. There were girls who weighed half as much as me, but could benchpress twice their own body weight. Males are expected to be stronger, but I wasn't. We were all human, probably still are.
Point is, racial ability modifiers are stupid and the game would be richer and more diverse without them.
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... Literally never even heard of a Dwarven Sorcerer... and Goblin Paladins are so rare ... Maybe being a stronger than average Goblin is why you chose to be a Barbarian adventurer.
I've played all three of those before. I tend to have a specific rebellious streak in me to play the combinations that get little attention. Same reason I made a Barbarian with 10 str, 10 dex and 10 con and LOVE playing the old bastard. I've played enough that I get a kick out of the underdog stuff.
Adventurers also need to survive and grow. The dwarven sorcerers just don't tend to get very far or live very long.
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I have a half-orc heavens shaman in PFS who I've enjoyed a great deal, though opportunities to play him have gotten scarce since he reached Seeker tier.
Nar-Lok is not particularly optimized for anything; he's strictly a support caster, who usually takes Life as his wandering spirit to boost the party's healing capabilities.
His AC is not great for his level, and he's only so-so at melee anyway, so he usually hangs back and casts buffs on the party, hexes on enemies, and occasionally one of his few decent offensive spells (like chain lightning, through his heavens spirit). He has Scared Tattoo and Fate's Favored, and enough Wisdom to make failed Will saves very rare.
His spirit animal is even less of a combatant than he is--instead, she's the brains of the team: she has the Sage template, so provides all the knowledge skills that his middling Int and few skill points can't afford. (She's also a wyrmling nightmare dragon, thanks to a PFS boon giving a new option for Improved Familiar. They're a delightfully creepy pair!)
Adventurers also need to survive and grow. The dwarven sorcerers just don't tend to get very far or live very long.
au contraire mon frère.
Aging is exactly what the doctor ordered. Age penalties/bonuses make up for a Dwarf's natural difficulty with sorcery.
An "Old Age" Dwarf would have -3 STR, -3 DEX, -1 CON, +2 INT, +4 WIS, +0 CHA. That's a perfectly acceptable stat-spread to begin at 1st level with 18 CHA.
My group just picks whatever FCB they want so long as it doesn't require a racial feature.
Shamans feel meh to me because I want to be able to fill the condition removal slot, but they don't get them on time for me not to feel bad about it.
I'd honestly be fine with slightly more powerful FCBs if they were only available to otherwise non-optimal races.
In all seriousness though, I agree with this wholeheartedly.
{. . .}
It's finicky, there's a lot of moving parts (more than any other 9/9 caster ?), {. . .}
And the organization of the explanation of those moving parts leaves something to be desired . . . although both the moving parts and their explanation are downright concise compared to those of some of the Occult classes.
And the organization of the explanation of those moving parts leaves something to be desired . . . although both the moving parts and their explanation are downright concise compared to those of some of the Occult classes.
This pretty much sums up why my first hybrid class character was a brawler (only 4 pages!) and my first (and so far only) psychic caster used an archetype rather than an OA class.
The class is ridiculously flexible and very strong. In our last campaign I played in we had a Shaman who cast like a wizard, healed like a cleric and debuffed like a Witch all at the same time. He went out of his way to invest in some gimmicky nonsense that wasn't very strong but still had an unparalleled ability to solve problems with his strong chassis and broad spell access.
It's a pretty neat class.
... a Shaman who cast like a wizard, healed like a cleric and debuffed like a Witch all at the same time...
When spellcasters that have a companion creature they can share spells with discover the potential of the Share Spells teamwork feat, 'buffing' as a spellcaster takes on a whole new level of meaning.