Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hi there!
My question is: why do you think Shamans are not a D&D class?
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There are homebrew ones and in those we can start to see the answer. They seem to be derivations of other Classes. The one i know about is "What if warlock but wisdom caster" with many very well designed but Druid like features. The one from the unofficial WoW conversion that had been floating around was like a Sorcerer but Wisdom.
D&D classes are usually pretty distinct from each other (with Druid and Cleric being the exception because Druid used to be a Cleric subtype in older editions) so we have to ask, "What would Shaman be if made officially" and then also we have to grapple with the broadness of the term shaman.
We use that term Shaman to describe things as different as a Tradition Inuit Angakkuq and a New-Age spiritualist in a tie dye tank-top. (Like one of my former players Jessie.)
Jessie wanted to Play a Shaman, well he wanted to play himself, which was the table premise, and he had a hard time defining it into a D&D role, so he went Cleric, after a very long discussion on what it meant to be in his eyes.
Buuuuuuuuut. With the World of Warcraft colab coming, the official one, not the fan one that has been floating around, there likely will be one sometime next year.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
“Shaman” is a bit of a weird term. While it got its origins describing certain religious practices in Siberia, it was co-opted to describe a whole bunch of different practices globally, often lumping them together as a general “tribal practice” instead of representing the nuance of the individual cultures. This is one of the reasons Wizards has moved away from using the term in Magic the Gathering - it is a term that means very little anthropologically other than “Western Europeans decided to arbitrarily lump these things together.”
From a rules perspective, it also makes things difficult. Because there is no real unified definition of “Shaman” it is hard to define exactly what the role might be. You could very easily make a Druid, a Spirits Bard, or any number of other characters and correctly identify them under the label “shaman.” Which puts Wizards in the position where defining it one way might cause a backlash of “but actually it means this, you’re wrong Wizards” (when, in reality, both are right due to the nebulous nature of the term).
Between the somewhat questionable history of the term and the issues that can arise from its vagueness, I expect Wizards simply does not want to touch the issue, particularly since there already exist other ways players might get the assorted vibes they might be looking for in a shaman character.
Most D&D classes don't have a clear definition, so I don't really see that as an issue.
I don't know about older editions of D&D, but at the least the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate has shaman as a class option.
Define what a Shamen is based on mechanics and not fluff and lore.
-Examples:
Martial class, all armor types, uses battle field control to protect allies and defeat enemies.
Martial Class, uses advantage to deal lots of damage, highly skilled at many things.
Martial Caster who uses magic to help allies, and to assist in controlling the enemies.
Caster who can engage in some martial abilities who specializes in buffing allies, and debuffing enemies, they are also good at all skills.
Martial caster who specializes in damage and tanking, often thinks they are the face of the party.
Martial Class who specializes is resisting damage and dealing more damage.
Martial Class who uses abilities to make a lot of controlling attacts.
Caster class who buffs allies, and can engage in melee and tanking through specialized abilities.
Caster who has access to a lot of great damage spells and abilities to make their spells better. Thinks they are the face of the party.
Caster who can cast almost all the spells, best controller and most damage possible, but hard to play.
Specialist caster who focuses on few spells, great at damage, can melee, can control, is the face of the Party.
opposite, most D&D classes have very clear definitions, subclasses are where you can blur the lines.
Yeah, it's a problematically loaded term that only really applies to a select few.
Druids cover a ton of that flavor. Warlocks & Clerics the rest.
Plus, very few know the proper terms due to a lot of them being insular lore to various peoples, & they're kept from others for good reason(suspicion, profiteering, colonialism, imperialism).
Same reason the skinwalker horror craze is especially assholish towards Algonquin & Navajo peoples, among others.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I think the class should be similar to the Shamans of WoW, with subclasses essentially based on the elements. Nobody blames Blizzard for the concept they have of a Shaman, so I don't see why there should be a problem in D&D.
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So, basically a Druid who took Warden in 5.5 and places various field control effects?
WoW uses the Shaman partly because- particularly in early days IIRC- they went in heavily for "X race can only use this, that, and the other class", with Druid being a particularly limited one. Thus a second class to cover the rest of the "nature magic" space.
Also, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess plenty of people have critiqued Blizzard for using the generic theme park version of various IRL cultures as the basis for various races, particularly on the Horde side of things.
Have you ever played Warcraft or WoW?
I've been playing Wacraft III and then WoW since the 2000s, actively participating in Warcraft forums, and I've never seen a topic regarding this matter. So no, there's no "plenty of people" criticising Blizzard for that (of course you could find some threads talking about it, but it'd be an absolutely residual thing). Besides, I'd find that complaint a little bit absurd: all Warcraft races are based on human cultures.
Regarding the Shaman class, I don't see the problem, honestly. I'm pretty sure they can imagine original subclasses for it. I wanna see how they portray the Shaman class in the new WoW setting book.
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Unless the "shamans" are explicitly based on the Tungusic peoples of Siberia's healers, that term does not apply.
& I unfortunately suspect Druid is going to be slapped with this as a skin, earning both WotC & Blizzard easily avoided bad press from the usual sources.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
It applies in WoW, why wouldn't it apply in D&D?
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It's bad there, too.
There are ZERO accurate depictions of the closest thing to a real life version, & Warcraft stole it from an old DND supplement.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I think Blizzard's Shaman concept is pretty popular. They don't need to depict "real life shamans", everything can be reinterpreted. Druids, for example, have almost nothing to do with what real druids were in Celtic societies. I honestly don't see the problem here.
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As has been said a few times above, Warcraft's idea of a shaman differs rather heavily from D&D's.
Previous editions have featured Shamans as base-classes - 4th edition's PHB2 and the 3.5 Complete Divine had them as expanded character options, but they've not been depicted in the fashion that Warcraft does, which doesn't lend well to a setting-agnostic environment. They've functioned very similar to clerics, with a focus on ancestral spirits and nature spirits, as well as place-magic.
The closest analogues to WoW's shamans are likely Storm Domain Clerics and the Ancestral Guardian or Storm Herald Barbarians, and even that approach specifically puts them through Warcraft's lens - Warcraft shamans bargain or coerce their powers from 'The Elements', and while some of their practices involve ancestral worship and being spiritual guides to their cultures, that's far from the forefront in their mechanical identity.
That doesn't necessarily lead to a unique stand-out role in modern D&D that needs its' own fully developed, official and supported across all settings standalone class.
Been playing WarCraft since 1997, when it was a Warhammer clone on the PC. Green Orks are a White Dwarf magazine invention, prior to that Orks looked piggish and would have had pig skin tones.
But on to Shaman.
As a class, it is a mix of Fighter and elemental druid. In WCIII Thrall was a shaman a basic Hero unit (Purge, lightning shield, bloodlust) in D&D terms they are a three differant D&D classes backed into one.
Fighter (or Barbarian), Cleric, and Druid.
If I was going to make one, I would use the following multiclass builds. The totems would be familiars or a homebrew item.
Elemental - Cleric (War) Wizard (Evoker) - min level 6
Resto- Cleric (Light) Druid (Stars) -Min level 6
Enhancement - (Technically you have options)
-Option A - Barbarian (World Tree) with a level in cleric - min level 4
-Option B - fighter (ED) - min level 3
Option C - Fighter (BM) and cleric(war) - min level 6
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Also plenty of people have pointed out that Shaman in the way Blizzard origanally did it was a bit Racist. They have activily toned down the Racism in WOW to a degree because of the critizism. ESP under Microslop. (I hate Microsoft, but I do appreciate that they fired the toxic memebers of Blizzard)
While the word originates from them, as with all loan words in English it has a differant meaning, and usage. Shaman is a person who has special powers to use spirits in healing or harming. It is synonymous with Warlock, and Druid. Both of which are words from other langagues as well.
Blizzard did have a lot of Racism in it's early version of WOW, and they have been slowly toning down the overt racism, they however are using the terms correctly for Warlock, Druid, and Shaman, and these words are not being used in a racist way. By adding multiple no tribal races as Shaman they have removed the innate racism of only having tribal races being shaman. It's basically why dwarves have that class, because dwarves are Scottish coded.
I've never seen a thread talking about how racist Blizzard's portraying of Shamans is. Never in 26 years. In my opinion, I don't see any racism in the way they portray Shamans in WoW and I feel accusing the company of being racist because of that is a bit of a stretch (are they racist because Worgen culture is based on Victorian style?).
I love Shamans in WoW and I think they can have a place in D&D fantasy, but it's true that several D&D subclasses have already shaman vibes, so it might be a difficult thing to implement.
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A quick search would help you with that. (ie google "Cultural racism in Warcraft") At least once a month over the last 26 years there is at least one post talking about racism, sexism, and other toxic dev inclusions in WOW (these posts are usually posted on a sunday, and deleted on a monday, I call them Sunday posts). Blizzard has been aware of it forever, and has been active in removing them ever since the incident. Just because you are not aware of an issue doesn't make the issue less in the eyes of people who are aware of it. The fact that orcs in WOW are African coded, and Trolls are Carabean coded, and classes in WOW have always been locked to races really makes it clear that Shaman as used was created in a racist way. They have been trying very hard to fix these issues in WOW for the last few years, but the core design of Warcraft was always race wars. So trying to fix 30 years of overt racism will take time. The fact you don't see it is on you, anyone who plays WOW and is aware at all is aware of the built in racism in WOW. It's still a good game, and there is a lot of love given to the Horde races by everyone so it doesn't feel gross, but it is still racism.
I disagree with you in what's racist and what's not, but I see your point.
I hope they are able to fit WoW Shaman fantasy into D&D with their new book.
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