When the Shaman first came out I was overjoyed. I've played Shadowrun form many years (it was my first RPG and I've played every version since 2nd edition) and I always thought the Shadowrun Shaman would fit in very well with the Pathfinder setting. I set out to make a shaman that would;
* Communicate with the spirits/dead
* Call on the spirits for help when needed
* Summon spirits of nature/man to aid the party (both in combat and out of combat)
* And most importantly, work to put the spirits are rest.
The Bone Shaman looked to be the best fit, but there are some drawbacks;
* Lack of the ability to communicate with the dead/undead
* Lack of the ability to summon spirits or the undead
* Most necromantic characters are "evil"
How would your flesh out this character concept in Pathfinder?
As a DM, would you allow a "good/neutral" necromantic character, who's necromantic power comes from a desire to help the dead/undead rather than control them, or are all necromantic characters doomed to be "evil"?
Juju oracle, ignore the errata on undead alignment.
Edit: and yes, I had for a while at my table a halfling neutral necromancer who didn't align himself with any particular God. Instead, he borrowed from all across the pantheon, and had a big collection of holy symbols. He had to stay neutral, which means casting an even-ish number of good and evil spells, and his end goal with necromancy was to eventually bring his level 1 commoner wife back to life with no strings attached. Hence why he was animating undead: not to control them, but to practice.
I actually have an Occult Mystery Oracle in a eastern style game where he's basically an onmyodo with the haunted curse.
Voice of the Grave yo.
He's all about opposites, so most of his spells are opposites, like cure/inflict obviously, bane/bless, and so forth.
Perhaps the Medium will be good for this concept.
Sounds like I should focus on the Oracle first, then check out the Witch. Which gets more "dead" spells (raise undead, speak with dead, etc)? Is there any benefit to dual-classing (to get the best of both worlds)?
Oracle is going to have the most stuff that interacts explicitly with undead, because it has the cleric spell list. Witch doesn't have a whole lot besides speak with dead and a couple others, and it doesn't even get animate dead without the correct patron (which you'd take, probably). I think there might be a hex or two between the shaman and witch that interact with undead creation, but a Bones or Juju oracle would also work. I think they're about on par with one another, but I love the flavor of the Juju oracle. Potentially, if you and your DM are amenable, you could homebrew a Juju shaman archetype. Since the class is a hybrid of witch/oracle it could actually be pretty awesome, and it makes perfect sense.
This is assuming you/your DM allows homebrew. I might even try to make an archetype in that vein. Of course, there are already quite a few shaman archetypes that do spirit stuff. Have you checked out Animist?
My GM is the owner of Purple Duck Games. He'd probably make me create an archetype that he could potentially sell. My original goal was a Shaman character, so maybe a Shaman Archetype with their Spirit spells being all "dead" focused.
I'll look through the Juju Oracle though.
Where is the Juju Oracle from? I can't find it on the PRD.
There's two variations of the Juju mystery for whatever reason
One is from faiths and philosophies I believe
My GM is the owner of Purple Duck Games. He'd probably make me create an archetype that he could potentially sell. My original goal was a Shaman character, so maybe a Shaman Archetype with their Spirit spells being all "dead" focused.
I'll look through the Juju Oracle though.
It's a mystery, not an archetype.
And there's actually only one Juju mystery, it's just had some errata and is listed twice on the SRD's page because it lists all of the Paizo mysteries twice. And it debuted in an adventure path.
