High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The shaman is an alternate playable character class in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The shaman has been published or republished many distinct forms over the decades. There are two main shaman concepts in D&D: monsters who cast clerical or druidic spells, and a human or demi-human PC class. The spell-casting monsters are generally treated as primitive or unsophisticated clerics or clerics of uncivilized or inhuman deities. For those iterations that treat the shaman as something other than a priest of uncivilized deities, the shaman gains power from animistic spirits instead of, or in addition to, a deity, force, or philosophy. These spirits may be ancestors, animal spirits, or spirits of the land.