Pathfinder: WotR (Beta) - Shaman Class & Archetypes Mechanics/Overview

what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you the shaman class in pathfinder wrath of the righteous which is currently in beta the shaman is someone who speaks with the spirits of the world natural spirits that exist in everything really and they use those connections to draw their power and further their own goals or that of their spirits so couple things about the shaman right off the bat one they're a divine caster however they have this weird mix of wisdom and charisma for their casting stat their actual casting which is similar to a clerics in that they get a full spell list the shaman spell list that they have to prepare their spells from that part of it works off of their wisdom stat they actually also get domain slots from the spirit they choose which we'll get into in just a minute but they get domain slots to the best of my knowledge that part also seems to function off of wisdom however they get a lot of class features from their spirits that actually work off of their charisma modifier now the big one is the class features so when you pick a spirit which again we'll get into it usually gives you an ability or several abilities at select levels that then almost always function off of your charisma modifier if they need to function off of something their actual spells is pretty much wisdom however their class features usually work off of their charisma stat now with that out of the way let's get into it so for class skills we are looking at persuasion lore nature lore religion knowledge world knowledge arcana for our base class and then for proficiencies we are looking at all simple weapons light armor and medium armor now for our base class we are going to bond with a spirit so these spirits function very similarly to cleric domains though a little differently so a there is way less of them than the clerics 30 plus domains there are nine i believe spirits to choose a bond from now they're going to give you hexes and bonus spells as well as features at first eighth and sixteenth level the hexes we get to pick at various levels depending on our archetype but every few levels your shaman will get to pick a hex and this will add hexes to the list depending on what your spirit is now the bonus spells are our domain slot spells for our spell casting ability all of the spells that we get as bonus spells from our spirit are the spells that we get to put in our domain slot for our spell casting and then each individual spirit will have a class feature at levels 1 8 and 16. most of the first level abilities are all like touch strikes so pretty much all of them are melee touch attacks that will you know will be element based or whatever type it is you have the eighth level ability is usually some stronger variant of that first level ability and then at 16th level this is all pretty much some transformation of some sort for things like waves and flame it's an elemental that you turn into and then other ones will have slightly different effects for instance nature actually gives you a companion animal at level 16 but there are exceptions to that such as the life spirit at level 16 actually gives you something called quick healing which gives them the ability to cast healing spells or channel positive energy as a swift action but most of them let you turn into something elemental wise that is related to your spirit now that brings us to our spirit animal now basically the way this works is very similar to a which is familiar because it gives you a familiar that's what the spirit animal is so you'll get to choose a familiar and the familiar is what is granting you your domain slots from your spirit now while it's not possible to get this killed or anything it is important for an archetype here in just a bit but suffice to say you'll get to choose a familiar there's quite a few of them all of them give a plus two bonus to perception checks however in addition to that all of them will usually have a plus one two or three bonus to a various skill or savings throw or something to that effect and then at level two we start picking up our hexes for our base class shaman so these are the same as the witches hexes i should have them up on screen here works basically the same way they do actually use your wisdom modifier unlike a lot of the spirit class features i mentioned earlier hexes do a wide variety of things they can negate stuff they can give you claw attacks you can pick metamagic with them one of them ice plant is particularly useful because it gives you a plus two natural armor bonus which is very nice so just various stuff like that hexes can do a lot of stuff for you at level four we can pick up wandering spirit this lets you form a temporary bond with your spirit other than the one you selected as your class feature now the tool tip here will tell you you have to make this selection each day when you prepare your spells that's not true not for the game anyway so basically what will happen is once per day you will be able to use the wandering spirit spell which you are granted when you hit level four and it'll have a flyout menu that you can then pick your spirit from regardless of the time of day or anything like that and then it'll give you all of the following effects which is that it will grant you the spells from that particular spirits list of spells that i mentioned however you don't add the hexes and instead of getting the 8th and 16th level abilities that you would normally get you won't get those until level 12 and level 20 for your wandering spirit choice and keep in mind it's temporary you can change this literally per day now at sixth level we pick up wandering hex this is the hex part of it now this is pretty much the same as you know wandering spirit but for hexes once a day you'll be able to gain the use of one of the hexes associated with the spirits you've chosen either your regular one of course or your wandering spirit so it'll just give you more hexes to use per day now the regular spirit part of it that's important too even though it might not sound like it because that'll let you use the hexes that are part of your spirits class feature or whatever regardless of whether or not you actually chose it as one of your hexes you can potentially gain that hex this way and then at 14's level you can choose two hexes per day instead of just the one and that brings us to our first archetype the possessed shaman at level two your possessed shaman will trade the hex they would normally get at that level for the class feature crowded vessel so at second level whenever a possessed shaman fails a savings throw against charm or compulsion they can attempt a new one as the spirits inside of the possessed shaman fight to regain control from the compulsion effect so if this savings throw is successful it just ends immediately compulsion effect that is and then at first level they actually pick up shared skill this will let you select two skills at level one and you will gain ranks in them equal to your shaman level and use your wisdom modifier in place of the ability modifier that those skills would normally use however the ranks from this class feature will not stack with your other actual skill ranks and then you know only the higher of the two would apply and that brings us to the spirit hunter spirit hunters lose their like wandering spirit and wandering hex ability however they pick up some cool stuff to replace it with for starters they get object bond which lets them restore spell slots once per day and they also pick up spirit weapon enhancement so at first level they as a swift action can grant a plus one enhancement bonus for one minute to any weapon they are holding every four levels beyond first it adds another plus one until you hit plus five at seventeenth level and then just like other weapon enhancements the actual weapon enhancement can go to plus five however you can start adding special ability types to your weapon as you level up which will consume some of the extra bonus that you might have over whatever the weapon's base enhancement bonuses so if you had a plus two enhanced bonus sword which would just be a plus two sword really and you used your spirit weapon enhancement at level 17 where you got a plus five you could potentially add plus three which would give you the plus five and then use the other two to add a weapon special ability thus not wasting your points now that brings us to the spirit warden so the spirit warden picks up restless magic at level one which adds several spells to their magic list as you can see here they also pick up a natural min i don't know at level one as well which will give them a plus two bonus to intimidate checks and then at level two they trade their hex for rebuke spirits at second level they will be able to channel positive energy as a cleric of their level regardless of the alignment you can only use it to harm undead creatures you can use it a number of times per day equal to three plus your charisma modifier and then at tenth level you again trade a hex for laugh at death which will give you plus four insight bonus on saving throws against death effects and that brings us to our unsworn shaman so our unsworn shaman trades set bonuses for versatility now our class sheet here is blank obviously for the most part and it's actually not very useful because i assume this might be a mistake but it doesn't tell you some of the stuff you actually get here but to explain it at second level we're going to pick up wandering spirit instead of getting it at fourth level so it functions the same way you can form a bond with the spirit and then it'll let you use its class features you won't get the spells and that's important because we're not forming a permanent bond with these spirits as an unsworn shaman and because we don't have a permanent bond we don't get our spirit animal and our spirit animal if you remember is the conduit that actually gives us access to the spirits bonus spells our domain slots so the unsworn shaman doesn't get their domain slots like the other shamans would the trade-off there is all of this versatility because you might be thinking to yourself well wandering spirit and wandering hex were different do i not get wandering hacks that is another part of this that isn't on this class sheet at level one you get access to an ability called minor spirit in which you can form a temporary bond with a minor spirit which will actually give you your selection of whatever hex you want to pick now at sixth level you gain a second wandering spirit as an unsworn shaman getting the class features from that as well so the main trade-off for an unsworn shaman is again just the set bonuses and your domain slots in lieu of all of this versatility that just being able to pick this stuff randomly whenever you want like per day or whatever gives you and that brings us to our final archetype the witch doctor now again trading mostly hexes for various different abilities so at level 4 we're going to pick up channel energy which is going to let us use channel positive energy but at a minus three to your level so normally you know it's a cleric class feature but when you pick it up as a witch doctor you get like a level one cleric version of channel positive energy you can use it a number of times equal to three plus your charisma modifier however this is a separate pool of channel energy that will not stack with the life spirits channel energy just something to keep in mind the level one ability you get with the life spirit is actually channel energy but it does not stack with this because it is a separate pool at a different level now at level 8 which doctors pick up counter curse they can choose to lose any prepared magic spell third level or higher to spontaneously cast dispel magic or remove curse it can only target a spell effect that is on an ally including yourself and any magic level you sacrifice higher than third level will give you a plus two sacred bonus on the caster level check to dispel the effect and that is for every spell level you sacrifice so if you were to sacrifice a fifth level spell you would gain a plus four sacred bonus and then that is going to do it for the shaman class guys so there you go honestly i think this is a really cool class mechanically like it mixes and matches a lot of other things from classes with a lot of unique flavor and honestly just a lot of versatility in using those classes so again i honestly just think this is really cool but to be fair that is coming from a guy who was at one point the 19th ranked shaman on world of warcraft's shadow song server that was years ago and this is now but i do like shamans so with that out of the way guys thank you so much for watching i truly do appreciate it i couldn't do this without you guys the channel is growing every day so honestly if you watch anything i do just thank you me wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music] you

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 25,595

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Pathfinder, Wotr, wrath of the righteous, classes, shaman, guide, builds, spirits, hexes, spells, domains, charisma, wisdom

Id: hJL_JXu2BwM

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021