Legends of Belariath

Classes

Shaman

Shamans believe that the beings of the ethereal realm can guide and give insight into the world around them. They seek knowledge and guidance from those beings, whether for their own purposes or the benefit of their clan or tribe. They believe the wisdom of these beings transcends the boundaries between realms. For them it is a calling, allowing those in the ethereal world to effect change in this world through them.


Character Creation

Allowable Races: Cat People, Duessa, Centaur, Dark Elf, Drak Sen, Goblin, High Human, Barbarian, Minotaur, Ogre, Sheyka, Sithian, The Tribe, Torian, Troll, Vulpine, Wemic, Wolven

Qualifying Classes: Base Class

Type of Class: Magical

Spell Spheres Allowed: Spirit, Racial, Common

Armor: A B

Weapons: A B

Class Bonus Stats:

STR INT AGI RES STA SPL LFE
Bonus Stats 1 2 0 3 2 2 1

Mindset:

Shamans believe that the beings of the ethereal realm can guide and give insight into the world around them. They seek knowledge and guidance from those beings, whether for their own purposes or the benefit of their clan or tribe. They believe the wisdom of these beings transcends the boundaries between realms. For them it is a calling, allowing those in the ethereal world to effect change in this world through them.

Concept:

The shamans are the mediums between the tangible realm and the ethereal realm. Those that can bridge the gap to those apparitions that was never of the corporal world. They give knowledge and wisdom from the plane beyond that the normal eyes can't see, that mirrors the world of Belariath. They are the spiritual mediums of the world, capable of calling out to, communing with, and using the power of these spirits by either pulling them temporarily into our plane of existence to perform a spell, or to do so in a more permanent fashion in the form of familliars.

Advantage:

Spirit Sense
A basic, yet highly useful skill possessed by Shamans that allow them to detect all spirits and their particular affinity, excluding the dead as that is the Necromancer's domain. When used in conjunction with such tools as scrying or runes, it can allow them a vague understanding of past events or those yet to come, the meaning of which they seek to discern.

Knowledge of the Unknown

The Shaman often communes with those entities of another realm, another time, perhaps another place entirely. Though, they have something to say... they often represent themselves in forms of animals, energies, others are unidentifiable. These beings, or intelligence transcend time and space, therefore there knowledge doesn't follow the rules. Sometimes, they share the knowledge with the shaman in brief moments of clarity, images passed from the ethereal, and the Shaman knows what's to come before it's happened.

Mech: The Shaman gains an extra +3 init roll for every time the Shaman class is taken. Often times, during combat the shaman see's something, or has a feeling of it happening before it does.

Shaman x1 +3 Init Roll
Shaman x3 +9 Init Roll
Shaman x5 +15 Init Roll
Shaman x7 +21 Init Roll

Disadvantage:

Spiritual Recklessness
The shaman's link to the spirit realm can give them a tremendous advantage in a whole range of things, using their foresight and suggestions in order to put themselves in the best possible position, and possibly pre-empt things that might occur against the shaman. This link comes at a disadvantage however, if it is used, the shaman is straddling across the divide between the two realms, and as such, is less able to defend against attacks from either realm, until they can pull themselves fully back into the realm of the living. This disadvantage is considered in-play for as long as Knowledge of the Unknown is used.

Mechanics: This disadvantage gives the shaman a negative modifier to the first attack used against per combat

ShamanX1: -1 def to first attack each combat
ShamanX3: -3 def to first attack each combat
ShamanX5: -5 def to first attack each combat
ShamanX7: -7 def to first attack each combat

Backlash
As they only get a vague feeling from the fleeting hints of what has past and that which is to transpire, misinterpretations are not uncommon. Since they are at the mercy of the spirits, some malevolent one’s going out of their way to deliberately misleading the Shaman to drive them mad, they are wary of harming a spirit or familiar in any way.

The Spirit World

Spirits are neither present in nor absent from the world of Belariath, but dwell in a usually unperceivable plane of existence thinly spread between physical reality and the afterlives of mortals. Not mortal themselves, and having never been, they still each possess a consciousness from which emotions can swell when provoked.

Their non-physical forms, their incapacity to suffer harm or death, their ability to whisper between the worlds of Gods and Men; many who research the subject claim the nature of Spirits implies they were originally intended as tormentors, meant to spread madness among those who'd seek to make Belariath livable. It is believed that someone or something, Gaea herself in some of the legends, tamed the spirits at the dawn of creation, giving each a task or assignment meant to occupy it till the end of time, and suppress their more destructive natures.

It's believed that many of the 'laws' of physical reality depend on the tasks these spirits perform, that without the elemental spirits for example, just some of many sorts, fire would cease to warm and comfort, the air would cease to fill our lungs with sustenance, the waters would no longer quench our thirst and the ground itself might give up its hold on us, leaving us all to drift off into the black of the night sky. They are by no means the source of all Law in the world, nor do the spheres of magic depend upon them, but without them it is believed the Laws of the physical would degrade eventually to the point where no mortal could hope to survive.

Long have the spirits performed these tasks, and often in the doing they're afforded glimpses of the mortal world, even into the afterlives. These glimpses are a source of great pleasure for some, a source of great envy and anger for others. Many spirits take to bitterness, boredom or despair, either neglecting or willfully giving up their 'duties' to obsess over the Mortal world. These are more often than not the spirits whom commune with, serve, or torment the Shaman of the World, those mortals who can peer past the veil of physical reality and speak out to the spirits.

Formless and foreign to all the mortal senses, how spirits 'appear' to a Shaman is by no means defined, but more a personal matter between them. Some speak of animal-guides, others of haunting specters; some chat at great length with perfectly mundane objects or entirely bewildered livestock. Nothing is 'seen' when spirits are seen by a Shaman, nothing is 'heard' when they are heard... it's simply the way their minds try to define something entirely separate from mortal reality, and quite beyond definition. Thus Shamanism is often mistaken for madness, and vice versa.

Whenever a Shaman uses their magic's, they are briefly compelling idling spirits to perform a new task in the physical world, their flesh acting as a conduit through which the spirits are briefly funneled into reality in a form often dependent on the Shaman's perceptions. Even the form of the Familiar, those oft-benign spirits who offer up their loyalty in exchange for a chance at being a part of the mortal world, is based on the perceptions of the mortals to whom they are tethered. Spirits still resolute in their duties are beyond the manipulation of Shaman however, only the most powerful mages able to drag a spirit tasked to their specific element away from its work temporarily.

Some spirits are stronger or craftier than others, having learned much from their interactions with Shaman, and find ways to worm into the Physical word independently. These are spirits of the darkest and most dangerous sort, for they'll do whatever it takes to remain among mortals, up to and including taking possession of a mortal's body if a way can be found.