Editing Shaman (section)

===3rd Edition===
''Not to be confused with the [[Spirit Shaman]] or the [[Dragon Shaman]], as those classes both work in entirely different ways. ''
[[File:Shaman OA 3e.jpg|left|300px|thumb|''Oriental Adventures'']]
[[File:Shaman OA Dragon 318.jpg|right|300px|thumb|''Dragon #318''. Our monkey mage got a lot more badass. His class, sadly, did not.]]
The 3rd Edition Shaman class was released in the '''Oriental Adventures''' sourcebook as a replacement for [[Cleric]]s, since those were not considered particularly "Oriental". It's likely the most obscure 3E base class since it's one of only three and a half to be printed in 3.0 only, and OA [[Samurai]] constantly gets attention for being noticeably better than the class of the same name from Complete Warrior. It's biggest competitor is the [[Eidolon (Dungeons & Dragons)|Eidolon/Eidoloncer]], which requires you to either play in a single obscure campaign setting or implement some heavy baggage of that setting into your own. In Shaman's favor here is that it's not actually possible to take all 20 levels of Eidolon before epic, bringing its stats as a base class into question despite being described as one.

Compared to the Cleric, the Shaman suffers a smaller hit die, loses medium and heavy armor proficiencies, and has weaker turn/rebuke. In exchange, it gets a third domain at level 11 and a random grab-bag of useless bullshit: an animal companion, the ability to see ethereal creatures, a charisma-based boost to saving throws, and some martial bonus feats. OA basically took the Cleric, made it more [[monk]]-like and [[MAD|more dependent on constitution and dexterity in order to not die]], and [[fail|forgot to give it Flurry of Blows, their wisdom bonus to AC, or any of the other things that were supposed to make monks work]].

Adding insult to injury is their proprietary spell list. Instead of borrowing the Cleric list like the [[Favored Soul]] does, the shaman has its own unique spell and domain lists, which means it does not benefit at all from the hundreds of cleric spells and domains found in splatbooks. They do still get the War domain, which is improved over its Cleric version: because shamans are not tied to a patron deity like clerics are, the War domain grants them proficiency with ''any'' <s>small or medium martial melee</s> monk weapon of their choice.

To sum up, Shamans are clerics that have been rendered worthless for anything other than the "buff self and then smash face" build, and even in that role, clerics might still be better.

The Dragon #318 update of them to 3.5 gave them a minor boon in making their unarmed strike scale like a Monk's. Otherwise it just updates their bonus feat options to reflect 3.5's changes.

{{D&D3-Classes}}

====d20 Modern====
''[[D20 Past]]'' introduces an Advanced Class named Shaman that's actually the 3rd Edition [[Druid]] in all but name. Like every other spellcaster in the system, its one of the better classes. For the details, see the Druid article.