Shamans and Spirits

What is a shaman? What do they do in your setting? What powers do they have?

What are they actually supposed to do? And what's the shaman equivalent of an "Archmage"?

"Shaman" is a generally a catch-all term for pagan and indigenous analogues to holy men. Usually their job is communing with spirits, often while hopped up on ayahuasca. There's often some animal magic as well. Aztec shaman claimed they could become jaguars. Again, typically after consuming a hallucinogenic cactus.

I do have shaman in my setting, as an exclusive Background Edge for my homebrew race of island dwellers. They can commune with spirits and cast ritual magic to heal people. They have a close spiritual connection to sharks and often wear sharkskin cloaks.

Shaman would exist in settings with lots of unseen spirits that influence the world and are the ones with the gift to see/speak to these spirits and/or knowledge of the traditions to do so properly. They are mediator between the mundane world and the unseen world.

If you wanted rain or a good hunt, you'd ask the shaman to help you communicate to ask the spirits to help. Sometimes anyone can talk to spirits, in which case shaman are people who study and keep the lore of how to do so safely and effectively ("Three generations ago there was a drought like this one and our ancestors sacrificed a goat to the storm spirits for their favor and it rained for a week, so they probably like goats."). In other settings only someone with the proper gift (usually part curse as well) to speak to the spirits and so any requests must go through them.

Most tribes or towns would want to have their own shaman and find apprentices for them to keep them on hand for when they're needed. Other's may have to share a shaman with a larger area ("All mountain tribes go to the Green Mountain Sage for aid") or sometimes you have wandering shaman who help people with spirit problems in exchange for a meal and place to sleep.

This is of course vague as specifics change depending on culture or metaphysics.

It is a very cool concept that ties in strongly with a lot of good RPG ideas. However, most settings kind of lack them as the way magic works doesn't really function well with the metaphysics of this unseen world.

For a good example of shaman role and shenanigans look for "Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-boiled Shaman" comics.

The native equivalent of a cleric who attains their powers through communion with the natural spirits of the land rather than through the intercession of a deity. Instead of putting all of their eggs in one basket, they often deal with a great number of disparate sources of power, though some do tend to end up with a particular rapport either with one spirit in particular or with a group of them. The term 'medicine man' is far more common, but it's usually known what you're talking about when you speak of them. In general, though, they act as a spiritual agent among the native Peoples, and tend towards much greater acceptance and respect in a community than a witch who is instead usually viewed with fear and suspicion.

The standard duties of a shaman range from tending to the sick, divining the future, seeing the dead off to the afterlife, blessing hunts, chasing off witches and malevolent spirits, and the like. Among some tribes, they also directly lead either daily life or in warfare, though not all. And there is no equivalent to an archmage. If you have a medicine pouch, you're a medicine man. Some are older, some are wiser, some are stronger. But there is no rank once you have completing apprenticeship.

This is a great question, OP. Shamanism's got a history in so, so many cultures, and yet in a lot of D&D type games if it's dealt with at all it's treated as a unique, off-color brand of magic rather than the norm. I dealt with it academically a lil bit in the context of the Hmong, and there's some fascinating stuff going on.

I've been thinking, for my next campaign/setting/whatever, of making the druids specifically shamanist/animist as opposed to the clerics, trying to create the sort of dichotomy you get between the folk animist substrata in Thailand and the Buddhist stuff on top, for instance, or maybe Shinto and Buddhism in Japan. The clerics call upon Amaterasu or Vishnu or whatever, but the druids are the ones talking to your village goddess.

Part of the thinking here is, the original D&D conception of cleric and druid, the sort of interaction you find in Greyhawk, say, I think is supposed to mirror the Christianization of Western Europe and the marginalization of a pagan "Old Faith". Given that both faith traditions don't deny the existence of the other's power and don't have a major ideological conflict, though, I think you'd get syncretism rather than opposition. The other D&D idea about druids is some kind of proto eco-activist, and I don't really know what to say about that other than I don't find it particularly interesting.

I'm sort of testing out what I want to do with this with a character in a friend's campaign. I'm trying out the paladin's green knight subclass and playing her as basically a fanatical animist sohei.

In any case, unfortunately, a lot of the interesting things about shamanism, the trances, the spirits, D&D doesn't deal with in a ruleset way at all. Shadowrun's nice for that, though; as much as a lot of things in SR are wonky, if you can avoid puking at the pseudo-Native pastiche they paint over it, they have the basic concepts of shamanism down pat.

>In any case, unfortunately, a lot of the interesting things about shamanism, the trances, the spirits, D&D doesn't deal with in a ruleset way at all.
4E did exactly that. Made the Primal power source something as supported as Divine, with fluff and classes to fit all four archetypes.

Pour one out for the best edition, homies

Guy you're responding to here. I was never into 4e for other reasons, but I'll give credit where it's due on this; you're absolutely right. It wasn't second fiddle to the Divine world at all.

Yeah, animism seemed to largely die out in the west by the 11th century or so and D&D is kind of generically both "Western" and later than that, so the closest we get is Druids I guess.

I find shamanism far more interesting than more "scientific" magic of D&D in every way, but the "worlds greatest RPG" doesn't really support it well at all. I keep trying to think of a way using the system as-is but everything feels a little not quite right.

One of Shadowrun's great draws to me is it's shamanism, as it's something we don't get to see much, though it seemed more interesting in earlier than later editions.

Someone pointed out that Burning Wheel has a good system for it but I haven't played.

>I'm trying out the paladin's green knight subclass and playing her as basically a fanatical animist sohei.
You mean 5e's Oath of the Ancients?

>It wasn't second fiddle to the Divine world at all.

It still amuses me that 4e is one of the few editions to give a good reason why all those powerful gods and demon lords are not brawling all over people's stuff and that reason is 'If they tried that again, the Primal Spirits would kick the shit out of them. This is their home'

Yeah, Shamanism is just a pointless adjective in Shadowrun nowdays that UMT has made the differences between shaman and mages nothing more than what stat they use to resist drain.

Honestly, Warlocks are closer in terms of how they draw their power in 5E insofar that they negotiate their magic and gifts from an outside force that is not simply a target of blind devotion in the same way that clerics are. I reckon that might be why most of the shaman homebrew that I've seen use the same basic structure where you have !Invocations gained from local spirits that offer a wide variety of abilities and your !Spell Slots are more potent effects.

Interesting, I never looked at it from that direction. I was thinking of divine soul sorcerer, but will have to take a look at doing it as a warlock.

Cheers.

>clerics call upon Amaterasu or Vishnu, druids talk to local gods
I've always thought that druids and shamans are less important because of this. They're only powerful if they stay in one area and establish a relationship with whatever sort of spirit community nearby. In comparison a cleric can call down the blessings of Vishnu all day long and a wizard doesn't have to deal with outsiders.

Shamans are intermediarys between spirits and mortals, just like clerics are intermediarys between gods and mortals.
Spirits are the souls of things, built up over time, where as gods are the souls of ideas built up over time. Spirits can be easily mistaken for gods however, and the terms are often used interchangeably.
Spirits can become gods if they acquire enough soul power, so a river spirit who has the worship of a tribe, might become a god of freshwater or flowing water should the tribe grow big enough. God's cant become spirits however, and will simply break apart if they degenerate.
Anything with a strong emotional resonance will generate a spirit them god over time. This includes events like a yearly holiday, or wars that last for decades. The last major war of my world was ended by a coalition of shamans and clerics who came together to trick the spirit of the war into a mortal body, and kill it. As you might have guessed from that, if a spirit dies, so too does the thing it represented and vice versa.

The most powerful shamans are soul bound, meaning that they willingly gave over their body for a spirit to inhabit, giving its powers a physical form. This is one of the only ways for the spirit to cheat death if the thing that they once represented is destroyed. However if the thing isn't restored soon the spirit will have to feed on their hosts soul, creative a mutually depended relationship.

A amalgam between a Cleric and Druid and a Necromancer.

Generally a spirit talker who will bargain with spirits on their tribe's behalf, Spirits of nature, animals and ancestors.

Huh. That's pretty solid. Thanks, famalam.

They’re basically the ambassadors between sapient worshippers and the God’s animals and spirit servants.
They’re a cleric class that require a difficult spiritual journey where if they are worthy their doety bestows them with a totem.

This totem is a shitty level 1 spirit that they then have to carry within their own body and are forbidden from eating or drinking until they can create an adequate vessel for it, in the shape of the spirit’s animal.
Also a lot of shamans die during the spirt journey

This totem becomes the conduit for their ability to perform rituals. Over time you will learn to speak the language of the spirit animal of your totem and communicate with their mortal counterparts, and they will tend to congregate around you relative to your strength
Your totem can temporarily borrow your body for some powerbuffing but at the cost of your own control, this shouldn’t be a problem if you have good relations with spirits. Eventually you can take the form of your totem, permanently altering your outlook on life as you have lived as your totem even briefly. Finally the highest tiers of shamans choose to live in the spirit plane almost exclusively, where they could even approach and speak to their God in the flesh
>tiers: Shaman’s apprentice, Shaman, Jhakri, Hierophant

My particular shaman has found a way to use death energies and leeches as an alternative form of healing magic. The particular totem also tries to encourage the character to murder-hobo, drink blood, and turn into either a 18 foot stone crawling worm, or a 450lb sentient mound of leeches. This asshole totem was punishment from Lord Death for being part of a traitor race, and failing the first sprit quest

There's also a supplemental flavor document in case you need to give a crash course to a DM or player unfamiliar with the concepts.

...weird, you aren't even me. Guess it was a popular piece of homebrew.

Well, I've gotten about $850 in royalties from it, but popularity isn't quite why I had it on hand.

ayy, you did good, user.

Simply put

A Shaman speaks to Spirits.

Ancestral Spirits, Elemental Spirits or Animistic spirits.

One of my popular archtypes I enjoy playing is a Bear Shaman.

He "Communes" with the Spirits of the Wild and the Bear by getting drunk off his ass and wading into battle with a massive club or Axe.

Basically everything posted has been good stuff, so thanks everyone. Especially the Supplement posters.

Now another question: What kind of rituals do your shamans perform?
I get the idea of Spirit healers, naturalistic medicines and remedies, incenses, and the like, but what other "shaman" things do your shamans do. Is Voodoo shamanism?

Also is Uncle from Jackie Chan Adventures a shaman?

>Is Voodoo shamanism?
Voodoo is pretty much everything that ever passed through Louisiana. Syncretic religions are fun as hell, but can be a pain to categorize.

>Also is Uncle from Jackie Chan Adventures a shaman?
Well he uses organised eastern animism, so yes and no, he's a.. "civilised" shaman.

Is there any setting that exploints more "substance user" shamans? You know like alchemist but consuming weird chemicals and ingridients to see and do stuff.

I don't think there's really anything stopping a society from being "modern" and "shamanistic" at the same time since it's basically a sort of faith.
For instance Shinto seems pretty shamanistic and yet most people in Japan pay it a little more than the minimum amount of lip service.

Shinto and what they call "traditional" Chinese and Korean religion have clear aspects of what we are calling shamanism. Tengri, the faith of old central and northern Asia was tied close to shamanism as well. All of these religions kind of combined more with the traditional faith than superseded it (Egg Shen has a great quote about this in Big Trouble in Little China). It is remnants of what they believed in Asia before even Buddhism and Taoism arrived.

In the west we had not dissimilar beliefs but 1500 years of Christianity and Islam stomped it all out much more thoroughly, those some bits still linger.

>those some bits still linger.
Slavic folk belief stuck around for a damn long time, and a decent amount of that stuff was about appeasing various spirits. The actual shaman role wasn't as common, mind you.

Even in the Abrahamic world, a lot of the syncretic folk beliefs in Latin America and Africa have shamanistic components.

From what I understand black people + Abrahamic religions = Black religions with abrahamic flavor.
Like, even the muslim black countries note that they also follow "indigenous traditions" and Catholicism + Louisiana blacks became voodoo

Most people were consummate "deivores" snatching up gods and legends if they liked them.
took 2000 years of vigorous religious purging and trimming on top of a already millennia old monotheistic faith to get here.

And even then when we look though the bible and compare with other older faiths we can practically see the seams where they pasted shit in.

Who does this art style appeal to?

People who play World of Warcraft I assume? This was back in 2006, Alliance shamans weren't a thing yet, the draenei were just introduced as a selling point for The Burning Crusade and Blizzard had no idea how much more popular the women would be compared to the men

But even besides all that, it does look pretty cool.

>What is a shaman?
A magic user who performs magic by making deals with spirits
>What do they do in your setting?
Provide magic support to orcs.
>What powers do they have?
They're big into healing, clairvoyance and curses.
>What are they actually supposed to do?
The same thing every magic user is? To cast magic?
>And what's the shaman equivalent of an "Archmage"?
Spirit King.

What are games or settings (bonus points for both) that support shamans and general animism. Maybe even know magic but through third parties.

Why do they have those weapon proficiencies? Seems kind of eclectic.

She has some nice tits.

In my game, orcs (who are based closely on the Mik’maq tribes of Nova Scotia, Quebec, and northern Maine) are the only ones who can be shamans. Orcs have a special connection with a subset of spirits which didn’t go to the void, where most go, but are trapped in a separate realm, as they are the First of the Dead from the world’s first war. Orcs have a special connection to the god of war, who rules over this realm, so they can summon spirits in pentacles who do all of their magic for them, sort of like how demons work in the Bartimaeus Trilogy.

I really just wanted to incorporate that style of magic as homage to books I enjoyed as a kid, but its worked well so far from a flavor and mechanic perspective, so that’s a nice bonus.