#kech

Arab hotty

(art by Poly3it on DeviantArt)

We’re back with another revision special, where I go through and rewrite my oldest archetype entries to be up to my modern standards, and today we’re looking at our first of what would be really the only true “series” of archetypes in the system.

Animal shamans, existing before the shaman class became a thing, are a variety of druid that are devoted to the totem of a single animal, all gaining similar abilities with only a small amount of variance, but each demonstrating how that focus can be applied.

In modern times, I feel like this sort of archetype would probably all be one archetype with a variety of different options, but the outliers of the group, specifically dragon shaman and saurian shaman, would lose some of their nuance in the process.

In any case, the Ape Shaman!

Primates as a whole are clever and agile creatures, most built for tree life, but their opposable thumbs, and evolution towards brain complexity makes them unique to many other broad categories of beasts. After all, we ourselves are primates! However, while they are associated with smarts, pranks, and community, they can also be extremely ferocious, and creative in that ferocity.

With that in mind, these druids can be wise and cerebral, but also deadly defenders, but they may also bide their time, plotting insidious revenge against their foes as well. They may serve as a bridge between humans and apes in their land, or they may focus on shepherding communities. After all, there is much more variety in primate-kind than most give credit, and with it comes many different sorts of communities and behaviors.

The nature bond of an animal shaman must be either with an animal associated with their totem or with domains associated with them. As such, they must either have an ape companion, or have the Animal, Community, Destruction, or Strength domains, with the option for the Family and Rage subdomains.

They can also befriend or influence apes much faster and with greater success than other animals, demonstrating a special empathy with them.

One of the iconic ability of animal shamans is a partial wild shape that briefly grants access to abilities commonly associated with their totem. In this case, they can become expert climbers, improve their senses, strike hard with their limbs, or grow thick fur to cushion incoming blows.

Another such ability lets them summon their totem animal at greater speed and flexibility. All of their summoned primates are tougher, and they can summon younger ones at lower spell levels, and bigger and stronger ones at higher levels, which helps fill out spell slots where they can still summon apes. For Ape shamans, this gives them a range of a young ape as a second level summoning, or an advanced giant dire ape as a 6th level (or a advanced giant girallon at 7th if you count that), which is not a bad range overall. Heck, if your GM allows you to homebrew in megaprimatus, you can go even further. Apes in particular are interesting summons because they can also make use of improvised thrown and wielded weaponry, though obviously you can’t train summoned creatures to do so.

Finally, the last iconic ability of animal shamans is that they get wild shape slightly later than other druids, but gain the advantage that any primate forms they might take treat their druid level as higher for the purposes of what effective spell and duration they have to work with, giving them stronger and more accurate forms at earlier levels. While megaprimatus is too big, and girallon is too magical to replicate, this does give them stronger and earlier access to plenty of primate forms, including the devil monkey form. Plus, unlike summons, you can make full use of those opposable digits while in wild shape.

The ape shaman offers a decent spread of abilities, and it’s summons and shapes cover a surprisingly wide area though they lack some variety. As such, I’d still recommend it. Personally, I would build them as a mostly support built with an edge of melee when needed, but you can go fully melee if you want.

A lot of the time, there’s a tendency to assume that druids prefer animals to people, which isn’t unwarranted a lot of the time, and it may very well be true in the case of today’s subject too, but a lot of what makes primates appealing is that they are so very much like us. Indeed, if these shamans value apes as a totem, exemplifying their strong suits, then their cleverness and ability to show kindness to not just their own species but others as well, are reflected in most sapient species too, giving even the most misanthropic ape shamans at least an understanding of civilized peoples.

Recent rumors from the colonies of the empire of Mrex have spoken of apes that walk with no trouble on their hind limbs, wielding tools and weapons, and even speaking eloquently with colonists. Some may assume this is a very unflattering report of native peoples, but the colonists insist that it was in fact an ape, one that demonstrated powerful magic as well.

For as long as anyone can remember, the villages of the Calu jungle have been completely nomadic, never staying in one place long enough for the local kech tribes to plan out ambushes and raids. However, something has changed, the kech are beginning to pick off villages one by one, aided by mighty apes who normally spurn the wicked race. Has one of the shaman elders gone rogue?