Talk:Shaman/@comment-85.144.252.218-20160927161455/@comment-178.191.65.73-20180122125907

Seems to me this class is strictly better than druids. It has a better level progression, better selection of weapons, detect illusion is useful, and the class specific spells are pretty decent. In particular they can raise dead, which druids (except for Jaheira) can't, and Maze at lvl 7 is pretty good.

Sorcerer spell casting is also strictly superior to memorized spellcasting in BG, as opposed to pnp. Reduced versatility is only really a problem if you have a huge selection of spells that you would want to use in the first place, which isn't the case in BG. Even with the mage spell list there's only so many spells that are essential and they all fit easily within the 6 known spells per level the sorcerer gets. This is even more true for the druid who gets fewer and crappier spells than the mage.

The spirit summoning thing might be bad for the same reason as the druid's shapeshifting, ie not being able to cast while doing it, but that depends on the spirits you get (I haven't tried yet). In any case it's again strictly superior to shapeshifting because you're not putting yourself in danger and you can have several at the same time.

Basically this class has no drawbacks and only advantages compared to druids, who, while arguably the weakest spellcasters, are still spellcasters with a bunch of pretty powerful spells from lvl 5 onwards, which puts them ahead in power over any non-spellcasting class. This is not a bad class, let alone the worst, by any means.