Dungeons & Delvers: Drafting the Shaman

In between Red Book and a bunch of other stuff, Melissa and I are also working on a Dungeons & Delvers version of A Sundered World.

This means that, in addition to the battlemind, nomad (which was featured in Appendix D, Issue 7), and invoker classes we’ll need a shaman class. We also need it for our prehistoric game and Cowboys & Cthulhu, but we figure that we can create one version that works well enough for everything (or works with minimal tweaks).

The shaman from A Sundered World was based conceptually on the shaman from 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons: you have a spirit companion that you can summon, and you have a suite of spells that can originate from you or your spirit. There was also a spirit type, and various spells got kicker effects if your spirit type matched up.

For A Sundered World we built on it by looking at what shamans were purportedly able to do in the real world, plus some of the lore and flavor from The Waterborn and Black God.

The end result was that you had a spirit companion bound to your flesh: when it was withheld you gained various bonuses and abilities, and when it was released it could fight and help out your companions. The downside was that, in addition to losing access to the aforementioned bonuses, you suffered whatever damage it would take (which we felt was more elegant than Dungeon World’s usual “it’s up to the GM what happens to your pet” method).

You could see and speak with spirits, and had an ability that would get them to do stuff for you (sometimes in exchange for something else), and draw on your own spirit to heal, destroy, and grant you additional strength. There was no limit to how often you could draw on your spirit’s power, though there was a risk that it would do something bad or become exhausted for a period of time.

The advanced moves let you do more stuff with spirits (like bind them into totems), and made your spirit stronger, tougher, better able to heal or channel destructive magic, etc. As with most of our Dungeon World classes, we kind of provided several thematic trees for you to specialize in if you wanted.

Translating this to Dungeons & Delvers is a bit tricky, specifically in regards to the healing part: technically in A Sundered World, while you could try to heal someone whenever you wanted, there was always the risk of getting a 6 or less and having the GM do...whatever they came up with.

In a very early draft of Dungeons & Delvers, back when we were still calling it FrankenFourth, clerics could pray during a short rest to regain all of their spent Favor. This created an issue where A) a cleric would be constantly badgering his god for more Favor, without any drawbacks, and B) the Healing Domain prevented damage instead of healing it, because otherwise a cleric could just constantly top off everyone’s Wound Points without much time and effort.

Didn’t make much sense or feel right, so in the end we changed Favor to a kind-of per day resource: once in a given day you can pray to your god and set your Favor to its maximum. But, only the first time is free: if you find yourself needing more, you’ll need to perform a ritual and offer up sacrifices. Makes more sense and allows clerics to actually heal and perform similar miracles, like restore ability damage, cleanse poison and disease, and resurrect the dead.

Melissa and I don’t like recycling mechanics unless they make sense and we can’t come up with something better, but for the shaman to be able to heal there needs to be some sort of limiter. We considered making healing a kind of ritual effect, but if you really want magical healing, and healing is supposed to be a big part of shamans, then unless it’s your only option why not just go with a cleric or druid?

So, for now, shamans are also going to use Favor, though if anyone has a better idea or another term we’re open to suggestions.

The in-game explanation for the shaman’s Favor mechanic is that you go into a trance and enter the spirit world. There you talk, bargain, and assist various spirits, setting your Favor to its maximum (level + Charisma). From then on you can use Favor to get spirits to do stuff for you. If you run out you can get more, but like clerics and druids it costs you (though for shamans the GM can require you to perform services instead of doing sacrifices).

One way we’re going to differentiate the shaman from clerics and druids, is that shamans don’t have access to all of their spirit talents, all the time. For example, clerics with the Fire Domain have fire resistance, and their lance of faith can inflict fire damage. If you have the Storm Domain you get lightning resistance, and can have your lance of faith inflict lightning damage. If you have both, then you get both resistances and your lance of faith can inflict either or both damage types.

Instead of domains, shamans have spirits: Fire Spirit, Lightning Spirit, Water Spirit, etc (they also have talents for other things, like Astral Projection and War Totem, but for this example I’m focusing on the spirit talents). Fire Spirit gives you fire resistance and a ranged Charisma fire attack (shamans don’t have a default Charisma attack baked into their class features), while Lightning Spirit gives you lightning resistance and a ranged Charisma lightning attack.

The difference is that, at 1st-level, you can only have one active at a time. Calling upon a spirit takes a Swift Action, and you get some bonuses and abilities when it’s active. You also gain access to more potent stuff that requires a Favor expenditure. If you want to change it out, that’s another Swift Action, but you lose access to whatever the previous spirit granted.

Each spirit type has a talent tree (Fire Spirit grants access to Exhalation of Ashes and Burning Mantle), and so far each subsequent talent grants both more passive stuff and things you can blow your Favor on. I expect some talents to just bump up abilities and features that other talents grant.

At higher levels you can have more spirits active at a time: right now it’s +1 spirit for every 5 levels. If nothing else that’s an incentive to snag some other spirits instead of hyper-specializing, not that we expect every spirit type to have enough talents to just stick with that across twenty levels.

Another way they differ from clerics and druids is that healing is going to be a default aspect of the class. It’ll basically be on par with the cleric’s Healing Domain and the druid’s Rejuvenate, with the option to take a Healing Spirit talent to use it as a Swift Action and at a distance.

Shamans will also be able see and communicate with spirits, penetrating invisibility and illusions that they create. At 1st-level its out to a 30-foot range, and the radius expands as you level up.

Finally, you start with a spirit companion, bound to your flesh. As with A Sundered World, when it’s withheld you get some bonuses, and when it’s released it can do other stuff like fight. Going to handle it like the ranger's Animal Companion, with a half-dozen or so specific animals that can be easily reskinned if you want something not on the list.

We're curious what you think: sound interesting? Got suggestions or better ideas? Anything you wish shamans could do in other games, but don't?

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