Puppetmaster class good idea?(Shaman reflavoring)

[Sasori]

So Im a fan of Naruto. Now with those who dont know within naruto are puppet users. These puppets are uman sized used by chakra strings. Iv been thinking about ideas of classes and i think shaman is my favorite, my only problem with it is this. I kind of feel like the shaman is like a pokemon master.....except he can get hit by enemies too. I sounded kind of odd how the shaman just sat there and told the spirit animal what to do then i had a idea. What if it was a puppet master? The animal would be the puppet and then t would give purpose and reason for the shaman just standing there. So it controls it with strings instead of just sitting there yelling commands. I think its a great idea so like i said i would change the spirit animal to a puppet and the shaman to a puppetmaster and the abilities would just be renamed to the various puppet armaments. Thats all i would do to the abilites. Now the one probelm with it is the fact that just the the spirit animal the puppet dosent take damage or take aggro which is kind of weird beacuse if i were that one kobald getting sliced open by this weird puppet thing im pretty sure i would attack it but then again the puppet idea in my opinon makes more sense then the shaman jsut standing there and yelling commands. the other small probelm is possibly paragon paths but idk. The other reason i wanted to do this is beacuse oringinaly before my friend and i picked out classes we were going to make our own i was going to make a puppet master...it takes alot of time to makes those classes so we just decided not to so yeah. :D
So what you guys think? :D

[Sol]

If you google DnD 4e puppet master you'll find a few lazy warlord|bard hybrid builds focused on forcing/allowing other creatures (both party members and enemies) to attack on their behalf.

Reflavoring a shaman is fine, really. Spirit companions can indeed be attacked, they just are binarily either unaffected or destroyed by the attack, which is fairly accurate to a puppet either still being functional or not working anymore.

As hit points were never intended to actuall measure literal health so much as exhaustion, the recourse damage the shaman takes when a companion is destroyed can easily be described as just the impact from having a cord severed, or just even the inconvenience of having to switch to a different puppet.

[Sasori]

Hm i didnt know that i though allys could pass through the spirit but enemies couldnt on top of that can you resummon the spirit beacuse if ur playing shaman and u cant and its killed ur kinda screwed

[georgie_leech]

As hit points were never intended to actuall measure literal health so much as exhaustion, the recourse damage the shaman takes when a companion is destroyed can easily be described as just the impact from having a cord severed, or just even the inconvenience of having to switch to a different puppet.

"Dangit! That's the 4th one in 30 seconds! I can't take this anymore!" *faints*

[Epinephrine]

Hm i didnt know that i though allys could pass through the spirit but enemies couldnt on top of that can you resummon the spirit beacuse if ur playing shaman and u cant and its killed ur kinda screwed

Yes, you can easily re-summon the spirit. One shaman build gets free action summons 1/round as a feature (they tend to blow up their spirit to affect enemies, hence needing the free re-summon) and the others do it as a minor action, unless they invest in a feat to do it faster.

[Sasori]

Ok my only concern now is this. I think it would be really weird if when ever the puppet died you would be ike "Oh thats ok i have a infinite supply" just dosent make sense. The other probelm is it looks like it can be very easily defeated at lvl.1 all the enemy has to do is 10 damage to it in 1 hit and it dies. My final small problem with the attacking thing is the spirit animal is just flesh ...or jsut like....idk but the puppet is wood which i think would mean it would have ac but idk whats your guys opinon

[Sol]

Ok my only concern now is this. I think it would be really weird if when ever the puppet died you would be ike "Oh thats ok i have a infinite supply" just dosent make sense. The other probelm is it looks like it can be very easily defeated at lvl.1 all the enemy has to do is 10 damage to it in 1 hit and it dies. My final small problem with the attacking thing is the spirit animal is just flesh ...or jsut like....idk but the puppet is wood which i think would mean it would have ac but idk whats your guys opinon

Spirit companions do have AC. They share your defenses.

10 damage at level one is a lot, actually. Most monsters will not kill it unless they roll quite well on their damage dice.

You don't have to describe it as infinite puppets, you can describe it as needing a moment to fix and re-position your puppet.

And lastly, over-analyzing what does and doesn't "make sense" in a fantasy setting, when you're trying to pull in flavor from another fantasy setting, is a losing battle. Very little "makes sense" in DnD, and even less makes sense in the real world. Handwave the flaws away with magic or technology or superhuman skill.

[Epinephrine]

10 damage at level one is a lot, actually. Most monsters will not kill it unless they roll quite well on their damage dice.

I disagree; the Spirit companion's health has not been updated to match MM3 statistics. Most fights that a level 1 party will see will be against level 1-3 foes. These foes have average damage outputs of 9-11 per hit, so we're looking at 50% or so at best. This just gets worse as we level; by 8th level it takes 14 damage to dispel it, but enemies deal 17-20+ damage on average.

I am not sure if there is a consensus on whether it needs to be; on the one hand, it is now easily dispelled, on the other hand, it does not transfer very much damage to the Shaman (or puppet master), making it still a good trade-off. Personally, if I were to DM a shaman I would update both the health of the spirit and the damage transferred to be higher, trying to match the original (slightly less than 50% dispelling when hit by an at-level foe), as the shaman frequently establishes effects that benefit those next to the spirit. Make the spirit too easily dismissed and it makes it trivial to spend a single attack by the weakest non-minion on the board to dispel the big encounter buff the shaman has thrown up (and yes, by paragon it is virtually certain that any attack that hits will dispel it - say at 14th level, you need to deal 17 damage to dispel; a level 15 foe will deal an average of 23 damage, say 3d6+12 or so. Only on a roll of 3 or 4 on the 3d6 would that fail to dispel the spirit, which is pretty slim odds.)

You could look at other summoning-type classes, or even a theme like Fey Beast tamer for a source of a companion that is more robust, and isn't constantly dispelled and re-summoned. The Druid (Sentinel) comes with a companion that could be re-fluffed (and the puppet would have the same stats each timne, and is repaired between fights just as the companion is re-summoned), or you could go with a summoner build of a variety of classes, (Wizard, Druid, Druid (Protector), Artificer) and re-fluff the summons as being your puppet. Of course, the different summons would still have different abilities, but that could just be a different spell animating it (this time, the puppet grows envenomed talons...).

[Sol]

I disagree; the Spirit companion's health has not been updated to match MM3 statistics.

While true, I tend to assume that parties this interested in flavor are not using MM3 monster math.

Were I trying to fix it, I'd probably add the shaman's WIS mod to the calculation on both sides, and give protector shaman companions additional CON mod hp without upping their recourse damage. By high epic, the companions are indeed extremely difficult for monsters to not kill, but the fact that there's no lasting status effect from the attack more than makes up for that.

All in all, if a given monster has a 65% chance to hit, and a 65% chance to destroy the companion on a hit, then the monster only has a 42.25% chance to actually do anything with an attack against the spirit companion, and it will *only* deal damage, with no other effect, and that damage will be reduced by a minimum of 5, the spirit companion is doing its job just fine.

[Inevitability]

While true, I tend to assume that parties this interested in flavor are not using MM3 monster math.

Why would being interested in flavor mean you don't want to run a mechanically sound game? I, for one, am both.

[Sol]

Why would being interested in flavor mean you don't want to run a mechanically sound game? I, for one, am both.

Perhaps I should have phrased it, "parties this unaware of nitpicky mechanics," or, "parties this insistent that flavor directly match mechanics," but those sounded less polite in my head.

I'm with you on wanting both mechanics and flavor, but I still stand by my hunch that the OP's party isn't using MM3 math.