Shattered Kingdoms

Reading the voodoo removal thread, I came up with this idea.

How about you take voodoo of shamans, and give them this spell instead?

It would be a minor level charming spell, like domination, the difference be that it could work on animals too and keep heavy concentration. The shaman takes control over one's spirit (be he/she sentient or not, spirits don't have to do with sentience).

It should be of the same level as domination (if not of slightly smaller level). This way you give shamans a fair trade for voodoo and don't make them overpowered, since it would be a hell for them to keep concentration on all Control Spirit, Spirit Aura and Sanctuary and also cast spells.

Awful idea and you probably have never played a shaman. Shamans are already a heavy concentration class, adding more spells that require concentration would make it impossible to play them. And no shaman would ever give SA over even charm person itself.

I'd much rather see voodoo replaced with some kind of scry spell. With fewer people around, it's a pain to ever find people in the game right now. You could tweak how often the spell could be used and how much warning the victim got of being scried based on balance issues.

I'd trade damage for location straight across right now. Keep the debuffs, zero the mana of the shaman and keep the same vulnerabilities and timer. That would work for me. Both would know the others location. Not sure what this does to the usefulness of a doll.

Debuff the penalties for using a doll. For example, take 50% mana, and drop 1/3 of the lag timer.

I'll note once more the lack of 'detect aura' on shamans.
If you guys think it's not enough compensation for losing voodoo, maybe it can be added as a passive ability or enhanced in some sort of way.

Why everything has to be measured according to PK?

A shaman RP-wise is the character to see into the eyes of another and read his soul!! Not the priest, not the mage, neither the necromancer.

How about "bad juju" and "good juju" spells?

Like enchant weapon/armor, but for people instead. You give them a moderate random stat increase with good juju (+to hit, +damage, +random stat, +save), that can be done only once per day per target. Does not require a doll.

Bad juju adds two moderate random debuffs (-to hit, -damage, -random stat, -save), that can be done once per day per target. Doll required, and the doll itself can take three uses of bad juju.

I don't think we need more buffs and debuffs, there are plenty of them in the game (even more so with recent addition of religion specific prayers). Also you'd have a whole other round of balancing required if you increased damage as one of the buffs to prevent instakills by hellions and rogues.

I also don't think we need another class to have detect aura. SK shamen don't really fit with this anyway.

What we don't have available so far as I know (could be cabal spell that does this) is a scrying spell. I think it could be cool if it were balanced right. It could even be a form of "ghost walking" where the shaman steps out of body and ends up at the target location in sort of ethereal form.

That gives me an idea.

How about a spell that makes a persons body into a corpse (with hp though that cannot move), then the shaman turns into a spirit (like someone who died). They can target this at a person or at a set of stones. While in spirit form, they are treated just like anyother dead char, except some certain things. They do have limited interaction with the real world. They can only cast their maledictions or healing magics (cannot target undead with healing magic) through the spirit.

Now it also takes mana to get back to the body. If the person doesn't have enough mana, they take a massive hp hit and they have spirit disorientation. This effect will also happen if they are exorcised. Also, if the body is killed (it cannot attack back) they are killed immediately and the effect stops.

Why do you hate the Jews, Ain?