So I totally forgot to post this; sorry!
After some player feedback pointing out that my writing wasn’t entirely clear in places and that +1 bonuses are pretty boring, I rewrote the Shaman. Here’s the Shaman 2.0. Any feedback is appreciated, especially suggestions for move names (I’m shit at coming up with interesting ones).
One thing I’m sort of worried about is that there’s a lot of the moves that don’t require a roll because they have an HP cost. This is partly because I don’t want to have a tonne of advanced moves that require rolling, but I’m slightly worried it might mess with the XP gain curve (Sage LaTorra, Adam Koebel: I know you guys are busy right now, but any feedback/in-depth mathing on this and on the idea of HP costs would be very welcome).
The other thing is that I have way too many words, but oh, well!
I would like to read the file, but I dont have acces to it, can I have it please? ^^
Yeah, that works a lot better when I actually make it public. Sorry Iacopo Benigni! Fixed now.
Thank you! ^^
Nice work! I found that Vengeful Ghosts requires Hungry Ghosts, but Hungry Ghosts is no longer listed. Should it still have Hungry Ghosts, or should Vengeful Ghosts no longer have that requirement?
Thanks for spotting that – I ditched Hungry Ghosts in favour of Thief of Eyes when I rewrote Help from Beyond, so it should definitely not have the requirement anymore. Took it out.
This is cool. I really like the Help from Beyond mechanic.
I am surprised that All Things Past is limited to “when you first enter a locale”. There doesn’t seem to be any fictional need for it to be limited that way. I’d probably give more than “vague” information, too.
Grim Portents is cool, but I wonder how often there will be meaningful chances to use it. You’d need the right kind of intrigue-heavy campaign, I think.
Spiritual Healing is nifty. Thief of Eyes is super nifty.
3d6 from Sympathetic Magic is a lot. I guess playtesting will tell whether it’s out of line.
Vengeful Ghosts requires Hungry Ghosts, which doesn’t seem to exist.
colin roald All Things Past is basically a reflavour of the Bard’s elven racial spun out to a full move (hence “when you first enter a locale;” note that the place’s history won’t be changing between repeat visits so it’s not like it needs to let you do it more often). Since I didn’t want it to require a roll, it always counts as having rolled 7-9, hence the vagueness. Far from the best move in the playbook, I’ll grant you.
Thanks for the feedback!
I’ve just switched all of the powers that had 5 HP costs over to requiring you to take a debility instead. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before since I already had Animal Guide – those were meant to be out-of-combat moves so the HP costs were pretty much nil.
Doh! So much for humans getting off easy!
Bardic Lore says on first encounter with anything, the bard can ask any one question about it and get a truthful answer. I take the “first encounter” part as coming from the fiction, which is that the ability represents information the bard already knew, from having heard stories. For the shaman, there seems to be no reason he couldn’t go ask the spirits about a place at any time, presumably after stuff happened that gave him a question. Then I’d think it would be natural to have a roll to see whether the spirits know the answer, and/or are willing to tell you. Doesn’t seem like there should be a big problem with structuring it like that — it’s not too far off what any character can do with Spout Lore, anyway. My two cents.
Making it more like Open Your Brain would be cool.
Thief of Eyes – You can make use of their stolen sense as long as you concentrate. Just once? Anytime I concentrate? Anytime I concentrate until the sun next passes the horizon?
I love The Shaman!
Why is Song of My People +Wis and not +Cha?
Richard Robertson: the intent of the human racial was always to be able to get around the high-HP-cost moves with a cool fictional cost. That said, with the self-inflicted debilities that stay until you release the spirit/destroy the effigy, I’m not sure whether the human racial should change to be “when one of your own moves would require you to take a debility” (so it only works on those moves; but then what happens to those long-lasting debilities) or just leave it as-is.
I’m leaning towards the former, but switching “freshly-killed” for “powerful” in the racial. This stops the Shaman from just murdering a pigeon to curse someone.
Thief of Eyes: just once, until you stop concentrating. If you concentrate on it for 70 hours, it lasts 70 hours.
Song of My People: because what makes the performance valuable is the wisdom it conveys, not just how well you’re singing (and because I wanted more +Wis moves).
colin roald: good points. I was dodging the roll for length issues (like I mentioned, too many words; this barely fits on a character sheet as-is), but it would probably work better as a +Wis move. Open Your Brain is probably a good source of inspiration, too.
What kind of help does an Honoured Ancestor provide?
What kind of help can the ghost of one of your ancestors provide?
That’s the answer to your question. It’s a ghost (that no one but you can understand); it provides whatever help would be fictionally reasonable for it to provide based on what you and the DM agree on! It can give you advice or go scout ahead or show up and try to scare someone.
In our game there is a shaman’s grumpy grandpa, that everyone understands very good. His help comes mostly in form of moral teachings. Grandpa’s deathtime disappointment is that shaman is still not married and he lectures constantly on the matter.
Vasiliy Shapovalov That was exactly the idea. 😀 Glad you like it!