Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightshade
I'm not badmouthing shaman; I'm just noting that in the particular problem sorcerers created (buffing up the party) they simply weren't in the same running, because spirit magic is not of long enough duration for it to be an issue. And frankly, a shaman isn't able to put up a better countermagic than anyone else, as that's an issue more of what spell's available than how many magic points were; experienced characters of any magical pursuasion willing to pursue Power spirits could have magic points to burn. If anyone was going to win on the countermagic tango, it wasn't likely to be a spirit magician, since both divine and sorcerous characters did not need a specific, high rank spell to do it; sorcerers could do it with manipulation, divine mages by simple stacking (though the former had to have enough skill and the latter enough points, of course).
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The power of a shaman isn't in his direct spirit magic (or usually even in his divine magic, if he has it), but rather should be in his array of various bound spirits: which he can pass off to "buff" up others if he so desires. He's the only one who doesn't need specific magic to go seize a spirit and bend it to his will, and he should have a far wider range of spirit types and powers to choose from than a sorcerer or a divine user. However, I always thought that RQIII did under power starting shamans, to the point were no one wanted to play them, so I went to a mix of RQII and RQIII for starting fetch POW.
I'm not sure that he should be as able in direct confrontation, but he should be completely hell to deal with indirectly. He can wander in on the spirit plane, snipe at someone with spells or spirits and move away without anyone else able to interact with him. Someone mentioned removing spirits from a sorcerer, or anyone else for that matter, and that's something a shaman can do with ease by simply seizing the spirit on the spirit plane and releasing it. There's no need to do that "during combat", and yes it's not productive and also doesn't fit the "picture" of what shamans do so that's a feature for me.
I should note here that I never let sorcerers seize spirits and bind them at their leisure.* They have no access to the spirit plane and so can only do that by very painstaking and inexact methods. It's pretty easy to keep them in check with a little common sense there. (Summon only works for a range, so there's very little chance of having the exact spirit in range unless the GM is nicer than me!
) The same goes for divine users, who should be able to bend certain spirits to their will with ease and have no access to most others IMO.
* This reminds me a bit of discussions about SB1-3 sorcerers who were without argument dominant powers in the game world. We always assumed all those sacrifices were extremely expensive and enforced that, only to realize later that some people never bothered with that and had "demons up to their ears" as it were. (Well, there were some controls due to CHA, but we rarely had even longterm characters approach that max.) Sorcerers still dominated play there, but we had fun anyway, and there did seem to be some sort of cosmic karma in play because sorcerers always seemed to be at the receiving end of 01 rolls by nobody special, while some other less spectacular characters had very long lives in the game.