Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128664I don't know about Tunguska shamans, but I do know that animism is very different from, say, Christianity. Christianity posits an omnipotent God responsible for everything. In animism, the focus is different. The basis of animism is that everything has its own soul, its own god. The trees, the mountains, the stars, even abstract concepts. They all have souls/gods. Human beings can have multiple personal tutelary gods and inner demons.

None of this is news to me, and I have an educated layman's knowledge of Roman (& other) religious practices.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128664I don't know about Tunguska shamans, but I do know that animism is very different from, say, Christianity. Christianity posits an omnipotent God responsible for everything. In animism, the focus is different. The basis of animism is that everything has its own soul, its own god. The trees, the mountains, the stars, even abstract concepts. They all have souls/gods. Human beings can have multiple personal tutelary gods and inner demons.

I don't think anyone was saying otherwise.

Greetings!

Yeah, exactly what flavour or culture shamans come from, in the game--I think Shamans are pretty damned neat. They essentially serve the same practical and social function that Clerics and Priests do--but also embracing a lot more nuances and styles. Shamans are different from Clerics, not just mechanically and spell-wise, but also thematically. In just about every example I have studied, the Shamans are decidedly *mystical*--that is their stock in trade. Shamans are omen-readers, and routinely deal with and navigate the spirit world. Shamans are also often very weird, and sometimes enjoy unique social authority to do lots of strange things, including practicing or otherwise exemplifying some cultural taboo; eg--the tribe holds that a certain kind of deer is sacred and cannot be killed, but the shaman can hunt and kill the special deer.

Very cool stuff.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Just think that to counteract the sexy but utterly ren-faire bullshit above, here's what a real shaman looked like:

Quote from: SHARK;1127357Personally, I don't think all Cleric and Druid spells--say if using one or the other for a Shaman template--really fit well for Shamans.

I don't think cleric spells really fit well for generic polytheistic priests either, but that's D&D.

It's kind of tangential, but I always through the Japanese Shinto priest, at least the fictional representations, would make a better generic priest, and fits the shamanistic role better as well. It's not really that different from the cleric: Downgrade armor, get rid of the Chanson de Roland weapon restrictions, convert turning undead into some generic spiritual purification power, and then tweak the spell list (which could be a big or small project, depending on the effort someone is willing to expend).