PF: The Witch's spell list

[Naked Granny]

Preface: One of the things that has always frustrated me about spellcasting under the d20 ruleset is how rigid spellcasting class lists are. For some reason, Wizards and Sorcerers can't cast spells which heal (PF introduced the Infernal Healing spells which is an interesting take on the matter) while any Cleric even if his deity is all "death destruction and darkness, raaaaah!" can prepare and cast them even if he can't spontaneously convert prepared spells into them for efficiency.

The Druid spell list is very much a hybrid of Arcane Conjuration and Evocation with somewhat delayed healing, and they're defined as a "divine spellcasting" class. The Witch is "arcane" and focuses on Enchantment and other debuffs while also having bare-bones access to healing spells -- though not to the Restoration family.

Leaving aside my personal quibbles with overall design philosophy behind Vancian casting and the arbitrary distinction between Divine and Arcane spell lists, I have to say, the Witch spell list really seems to be missing out on some of the really, truly important spells which would allow her to actually take the role of "primary spellcaster" in a party. The spells provided through Patrons are notoriously bad with only two or three Patrons bringing any decent expansion or definition to the Witch list!

The Problem: I can't find anywhere a good side-by-side comparison of what spells the Witch is missing out on from the Cleric and Wizard spell lists. I need help compiling this information so that I can make better decisions about how to build my next Witch character -- who is looking to be a Samsaran of some sort, though we all know there's far more than just 5 spells which Witches really need in order to shore up their weaknesses.

In my opinion, Witches have a really glaring lack of defensive options which is a bit crippling in the early levels depending on how aggressive your DM is about targetting spellcasting PCs. Wizards get automatic access to Invisibility, Mirror Image and Blur pretty early on which helps tremendously to keep them alive, but Witches are essentially forced to spam their Slumber Hex all day long because they just don't have any good options. This is a problem because it makes the Slumber Hex too important compared to the other Hexes available (many of which are notorious "trap options" already), and also because spamming one ability to accomplish every task is both boring and easily countered, making the Witch class just unsatisfying to play as even if she is very powerful.

This is bad game design.

In fact, considering how most of the Hexes are either obviously amazing or obviously traps, the only real choices in generating a Witch character, mechanically, are about how to shore up her glaring weakness to direct attack -- and there are extremely few options to do this with. The entire Witch spell list pretty much just duplicates or acts as redundancy for the Hexes she will be spending 90% of her combat rounds using. If the Witch's spells are supposed to be "freed up" for utility and situational spells (because her Supernatural SLAs do the bulk of her combat work), then why does her spell list actually have a glaring lack of such utility and buffs?

Incomming rant:

And there's a lot of omissions that just leave me wondering "why???" about the Witch's spell list. For example, if she's so focused on deception, manipulation and debuffs, why does she have so few Illusions? She gains the Dream and Nightmare as Hexes but not the spells? Look at all the Symbol/Sigil spells she gets, but no Permanency? If she's a glyph-drawing witchcrafter, where's the Dimensional Anchor? Where's the Magic Circle spells?! A Magic Circle is virtually the one defining feature of contemporary witchcraft! She gains Heal and Regenerate, but not Restoration without burning her Patron on it? There could be a lot of overlap with Druids in the "weather and seasons" types of spells, but... where are they? I mean, she gets Control Weather as both the spell and a Hex choice -- where's the rest of them? She gets Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning but not Call Lightning and Call Lightning Storm? What sense does that make? She gets Summon Monster but not Planar Binding, even though the latter fits far better with her "theme"? She gets Baleful Polymorph and Vermin Shape, but not Beast Shape or the generic Polymorph Self spells, even though legend is fraught with Witches changing shapes into beasts and animals? Why does she get Cloudkill and Cone of Cold? Those are not really fitting her theme at all. Ditto Elemental Swarm, Major Creation and Stinking Cloud.

A clever player could gain access to all sorts of non-thematic spells like Haste, Slow and Fireball, but the most obvious "in-theme" spells aren't even available through Patrons! And don't get me started on the pitiful selection which Patrons provide, most of them only giving spells that all Witches can learn anyway...

Again, the problem with the Witch class is that, although she is powerful, she is supremely limited as the ultimate one-trick pony and simply cannot fill the role of "primary caster" in a party even though she does almost nothing else. The Witch's game design feels rushed, incomplete and unsatisfying. She just cannot compete with a plain ole Wizard or Cleric in any role that those two classes can serve.

The Goal: Help me to expand my Witch's spell list using Patrons (possibly custom designed, subject to DM's approval, of course), race (Samsaran almost certainly?) and whatever other means are reasonable to gain some solid defensive powers, though any really important spells the default list lacks I would be very happy to gain.

Big obvious ones like Invisibility, Mirror Image and Stoneskin should be made priority, but the more I look into the Witch's spell list, the more I feel as though a simple Wizard with a high UMD score for some Scrolls/Wands of Cure Wounds and Restoration would just be better in every way.

Also priority should go with "thematic" spells that fit with the depictions of Witches in myth and history. In no particular order:

the Invisibility family, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, Magic Circle vs. Alignment, the Restoration family, shapechanging effects, weather and seasonal -related spells, Darkness, Deeper Darkness and Daylight, the Image family and Miracle/Wish.

There's a ton of spells which aren't theme-appropriate that would be just as easily gained: Haste, Slow, Time Stop, Blur and Displacement, the Protection from and Resist Energy families, Gate and so on.

[BowStreetRunner]

Depending on how computer-savvy you are, you could download the Spellforge Pathfinder (http://www.nzcomputers.net/heroforge/defaultpath.asp) database and then unhide the "SpellList" tab. Find the columns for the classes you want to compare and hide everything except those columns and the spell information and you can just run down the list and see not only which class gets which spells, but any difference in spell level between the two.

[avr]

You might prefer a half-elf to a samsaran because of the bonded witch (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/core-races/half-elf/bonded-witch-witch-half-elf) archetype. The extra spells from their bonded item look like they should replace those from the patron (appearing at the same levels), but they just don't by RAW.

If you want to spend a feat (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/arg-feats/racial-heritage), you could get the archetype as a human but I think not as a samsaran.

[Naked Granny]

Depending on how computer-savvy you are, you could download the Spellforge Pathfinder (http://www.nzcomputers.net/heroforge/defaultpath.asp) database and then unhide the "SpellList" tab. Find the columns for the classes you want to compare and hide everything except those columns and the spell information and you can just run down the list and see not only which class gets which spells, but any difference in spell level between the two.

I must be pretty computer-un-savvy then, because those spreadsheets don't play nice with Open Office at all (looks like they've got a ton of scripts that simply do not work in OO). I'd like to get it working, but... after spending an hour poking around with five of the most recent files from there... naaaah, prolly never gonna happen.

Maybe I just have the dumb. :smalleek:

PRPG_CS_v_0_9_4 does work fairly well, though there's still some things that just seem baffling. I don't think that's the one you're talking about, though, as it's more of a "complete character generator". The "Spellforge" spreadsheet takes roughly ten minutes to load and hangs for about a full minute any time I fiddle with it only to beep at me and say that some script or another failed. That and I don't see how to un-hide and look at what you were talking about. Very un-user friendly.

Appreciate the sentiment, though.


You might prefer a half-elf to a samsaran because of the bonded witch (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/core-races/half-elf/bonded-witch-witch-half-elf) archetype. The extra spells from their bonded item look like they should replace those from the patron (appearing at the same levels), but they just don't by RAW.

It doesn't look like they're supposed to replace Patron-granted spells to me. Looks like accessing the item's granted spells is the entire point of the archetype -- but not really worth giving up an Improved Familiar, especially not with the choices presented though Wand is tempting. Look at Staff, though, sheesh, what a rip off, right?

I think I'd rather go with Samsaran even though it offers fewer total spells because that way I can at least pick them for myself, and therefore will pick up more spells that I will actually use.

Besides, Bonded Items are the weaker choice even for Wizards. The tyranny of action economy.

And I just want to have a Familiar. =)

[Arbane]

But if witches get resist energy, burning them at the stake will require a blast furnace! :smallbiggrin:

I actually do agree, somewhat - the witch spell list is really eccentric (no planar binding on the main list?). I wonder if it was a deliberate design choice to edge away from the wizard's "I can go ANYTHING!" abilities?

[Paulcynic]

My players and I have found that Hexes are extremely effective, and it feels as if that is their primary mechanic. And so it made sense to us that her spell list was inferior to the wizards. Why cast spells when you can dump everything into Int with Ability Focus (at most tables), and have a nearly unresistable Sleep Hex :) The Witch is a very effective boss controller, and a great support class.

Not that homebrewing a better spell list is wrong, just wanted to add our table's perspective to the discussion.

[Naked Granny]

My players and I have found that Hexes are extremely effective, and it feels as if that is their primary mechanic. And so it made sense to us that her spell list was inferior to the wizards. Why cast spells when you can dump everything into Int with Ability Focus (at most tables), and have a nearly unresistable Sleep Hex :) The Witch is a very effective boss controller, and a great support class.

Not that homebrewing a better spell list is wrong, just wanted to add our table's perspective to the discussion.

Stream of consciousness about the state of the Witch and inter-class balance:

What you have to ask is this: would you still play a Witch if her Hexes were the only thing she brought? No spells, no familiar, just Hexes. Because by paying to be a full-caster, you're giving up your Hit Dice, weapon and armor proficiency, BAB, saves... basically you're giving up everything in exchange for "full spellcasting".

Assuming that Hexes simply break even against any other class' special abilities (Wild Shape, Talents, the slew of Monk features and so on), why should the Witch have a spell list which is inferior to both Clerics and Wizards? Keep in mind that she will never have the raw number of actual spells per day of either of those classes due to Domains and School Specialization.

I'm not saying that the Witch should have the entirety of the Wizard's spell list, nor his school powers and bonus feats, just that there are several thematically appropriate and mechanically important spells which she misses out on. Even if she gained every spell in my "wish list" up there, she still wouldn't match the Wizard's breadth and depth and neither would she be gaining the healing/curing spells at the levels which Clerics gain access to them -- and she would still be at only baseline spells per day as a prepared caster.

Would it really be overpowering if she could protect herself or sneak around a little? A mob of commoners with pitchforks and stones really could walk up and outright kill even a moderately high level Witch because, in all seriousness, her only real defense is Fly... for the entirety of the game. And how many turns will it take her to use Sleep on every commoner in the mob? She can hold her own as a duelist sure, but any spellcaster could match her in that department.

Can she heal even as well as a Druid? No. Can she crowd control as well as a Wizard? No, she can't, actually. Can she nuke or divine as well as a Cleric? Embarassingly, no. Can she fight and pick locks and disarm traps like a Rogue? Obviously not.

Well, what can she do? She can "cast" two or three spell-like effects an unlimited number of times in a day, but only if she's targetting a different creature each time...

I am well aware that the Sleep Hex is extremely powerful for what it does. But it is not powerful enough to make up for the loss of absolutely everything else. A Wizard can perform the Witch's role on a party very easily and yet can do far far more and is better protected while doing it. Ditto the Cleric.

But the same cannot be said in reverse. The Witch cannot replace either a Wizard or Cleric. She can't even replace a Druid. She is, in fact, closer in performance to a Sorcerer or Oracle but with far fewer spells per day and is a prepared spellcaster on top of that. If fear of the Slumber Hex is keeping you from giving the Witch spell list the overhaul it so desperately needs, then obviously the Slumber Hex needs to be nerfed or removed so that she can be given the powers she needs to carry her weight as a functional member of a team.

[Cambrian]

I have to agree and disagree with you (not surprising since it was a very elaborate post). Many thematic spells you mentioned are absolutely absent.

I don't think the witch should have easy access to the protection spells as difficult as it is to survive without them. Easy access to flight goes a long way to help her survive though.

The same with the restoration spells; they are quite versatile and powerful since their spells are not the primary focus in combat. So unlike a wizard they can prepare more utility spells. No restoration spells means she can compliment healing without replacing a primary healer.

As far as hexes go there are some serious winners and mostly losers but it does seem Slumber is the go to option which makes her very vulnerable/ineffective against Undead/Constructs.

The other aspect of a witch that is bothersome is her reliance on her familiar. If a wizard looses his familiar its a nuisance. If a witch looses her Familiar she looses her spellbook for a week...

[Crasical]

Setting the bar to 'as good as a cleric of wizard' is pretty high.

[Ryulin18]

I've been running a game that involves a witch, and I can easily say that I'm glad they don't have better casting.

A witch has her hexes, that is her bread and butter. She basically has some really nice spells like sleep with no HD limit (slumber), fly @ level 1 with a free feather fall and skill bonus, confer negatives to almost all rolls and keep the going all day (evil eye), give other players another roll on anything all day (fortune) and the list just goes on and on.

Not only can she do this as much as her spell slots, she can do this ALLLLLLLL DAY! that's 8640 times a day! How many wizards have that sort of amount of spells a day?

and then she has her spells on top of that, they're just back ups. spellcasting is Not her primary skill.

[Paulcynic]

I've been running a game that involves a witch, and I can easily say that I'm glad they don't have better casting.

A witch has her hexes, that is her bread and butter. She basically has some really nice spells like sleep with no HD limit (slumber), fly @ level 1 with a free feather fall and skill bonus, confer negatives to almost all rolls and keep the going all day (evil eye), give other players another roll on anything all day (fortune) and the list just goes on and on.

Not only can she do this as much as her spell slots, she can do this ALLLLLLLL DAY! that's 8640 times a day! How many wizards have that sort of amount of spells a day?

and then she has her spells on top of that, they're just back ups. spellcasting is Not her primary skill.

The Witch is probably the 2nd or 3rd most powerful caster class, and remains mechanically distinctive. It would be a shame to water down the uniqueness of the classes and how they play.

As for the Issue with Survivability or Sneakiness :) Patron Spells covers that. Anything brazen enough to attack the Witch, well, her arsenal of hexes from levels 1-20 are extremely effective and lethal. But I would recommend Transformation for Beast Shape and Forms of the Dragon, or Deception for Invisibility and Time Stop.

I think that this class can be tailored to fill the gaps in the group rotation using just the stock Witch. This is again only my observation having a witch in the group for 12 levels.

I think it would behoove you to perhaps create a PrC or Archetype, trading out what you feel are useless mechanics for what you see as upgrades. My players are min-maxers, and so I understand the desire to play a character without flaws, who can singlehandedly do everything, and do it better than other classes who specialize in only one or maybe two game mechanics/roles. And that is why I play a Wizard ;P But looking over the Witch's spell list, she's got nearly all of the most powerful spells in the game, so I might be missing the point of this thread.

The Witch is not supposed to be the Wizard, but she is just as powerful (excluding Wish).

[Paulcynic]

I'm going to try and build an 11th level Witch (middling level, all classes should have come into their own by 11th), and see if I can't make a build or two that addresses your concerns using the stock rules. I think I might gain some insight into what you're seeing.

Couple of questions though, what level Which are you playing? And what are the Stat Generating Points you were given at character creation?

[Naked Granny]

Edit: I have received approval from my DM to collaborate with him to create a new custom Patron. Still working on my build (buying gear takes forevar! =P)


The Witch is probably the 2nd or 3rd most powerful caster class, and remains mechanically distinctive. It would be a shame to water down the uniqueness of the classes and how they play.

As for the Issue with Survivability or Sneakiness :) Patron Spells covers that. Anything brazen enough to attack the Witch, well, her arsenal of hexes from levels 1-20 are extremely effective and lethal. But I would recommend Transformation for Beast Shape and Forms of the Dragon, or Deception for Invisibility and Time Stop.

I think that this class can be tailored to fill the gaps in the group rotation using just the stock Witch. This is again only my observation having a witch in the group for 12 levels.

I think it would behoove you to perhaps create a PrC or Archetype, trading out what you feel are useless mechanics for what you see as upgrades. My players are min-maxers, and so I understand the desire to play a character without flaws, who can singlehandedly do everything, and do it better than other classes who specialize in only one or maybe two game mechanics/roles. And that is why I play a Wizard ;P But looking over the Witch's spell list, she's got nearly all of the most powerful spells in the game, so I might be missing the point of this thread.

The Witch is not supposed to be the Wizard, but she is just as powerful (excluding Wish).

You see, what I'm stating is that the Witch simply is not just as powerful -- and she does lack Wish. As I said, even giving her the bare bones defensive spells in my wish-list up there, the Wizard would still far outclass her for sheer variety and punch. So any concerns that adding a few thematically-appropriate spells to round her out, that this would make her "too powerful" are simply incorrect, misguided, paranoid or something. And I would even be entirely willing to exchange the Slumber Hex to get them. A single-target one-attempt-per-day mind-affecting SoD effect is just not worth the survival and flexibility which the Witch has traded away in spades.

Look over the Witch spell list. See how many pure SoD and curse-like effects there are. Her entire spell list essentially just duplicates her Hexes. What good are they, then, you have to ask. Where is the theoretical "utility" and such that she is supposed to be using her spell slots for? To say that's how she should work is nice and all, but that's just not what I'm seeing.

Our DM is not a fool who will just sit watching as the Witch spams Slumber and Cackle every turn. Hence, the undead. Hence the archers. Hence a lot of things which simply would not faze a Wizard who could defend himself and accomplish his role in the party since he isn't limited to a narrow range of [mind-affecting] SoDs.

I do feel a bit like I'm repeating myself, but, again, if one or two Hexes are leading people to think that the Witch is too powerful to gain a few necessary spells, then obviously those Hexes should be removed from the game. Show me something the Witch can do that the Wizard can't accomplish with a mild investment into UMD at level 10 -- while invisible, protected from energy, with DR 10/adamantine and 10/magic against ranged weapons, and four or six Mirror Images 100 feet in the air. Oh, and the Wizard just Hasted the party and dropped a Wall of Stone to block off an important pass.

The intelligence / ruthlessness of your DM may vary. ;D


I'm going to try and build an 11th level Witch (middling level, all classes should have come into their own by 11th), and see if I can't make a build or two that addresses your concerns using the stock rules. I think I might gain some insight into what you're seeing.

Couple of questions though, what level Which are you playing? And what are the Stat Generating Points you were given at character creation?

4d6 drop low x7 drop lowest again, level 10 character, two Flaws (for two Feats), two Traits

Will be the only caster of any kind in a group with a weak 2Ran/8Fighter (built for campaign flavor, he won't be very effective in combat, imo, it's just his player's style of play), another martial class (verrrrrrrry possibly a paladin, depends on whether he can be convinced that we'll need help recovering from encounters with undead which will present a major force on the jungle island), and one who hasn't announced anything but she tends to play ranger/rogue archers and is very likely to do so again.

I am aware that Witches don't fare as well against undead, and I have motive to make a character that is as good-aligned as possible, and I am aware of the Hedge-Witch archetype and Healer Patron... but one has to wonder why the archetype doesn't just go ahead and give her the Restoration family of spells instead of the weak Hex replacements, because Clerics can spontaneously convert spare spell slots into healing at level 1, and they don't have to give up an entire Domain just to cast Restoration (which is the closest thing to compare this Patron mechanic to). It's as if a Cleric had to give up two Domain Powers and pick a specialized Domain just to fill the role of healer at all. Witches only get one Patron, too, remember, so it's not like you can pick up the healing that you need and still grab the necessary defensive buffs to keep yourself alive against archers and surprise wraith attacks, etc... Even if there were a Patron which would provide such things at any level!

Consider this: the UMD DC of a Heal scroll is only 31. Raise Dead is 29. Restoration 27. What would a Wizard need to do to pass these DCs with ease by level 10? Especially given we aren't using point-buy, so he could have a pretty amazing Cha without impacting any of his other scores. UMD is a class skill for Witches, yes, but a single level dip into Cyphermage would solve the problem for the Wizard and he would still be up a bonus Feat and an entire spell per spell level per day! And, if he were a Foresight Diviner, his school powers would outclass everything the Witch gains through Hexes, on top of allowing him to roll his UMD twice and take the better result.

Then you realize that Cyphermage dip isn't necessary just because the Dangerously Curious character Trait exists, so the Wizard would be up two bonus Feats instead of just one. And no matter what, he's still up dozens of spells that he will use often and will ensure his survival in situations the Witch can do nothing about.

Again, is it really too much to want six or seven buffs for the Witch spell list? Am I being unreasonable in wanting to play a Witch with flavor and the mechanics to back it up? I mean, right now, looks like I should just roll yet another Wizard and describe myself to the other characters as "a Witch" and the party would be better off.

And I, for one, would be glad to not know what 90% of my combat turns will be (Evil Eye, Cackle, Misfortune, Cackle, Slumber, Cackle, repeat)...

Provided I'm facing creatures not immune to [mind-affecting], because then I'll have nothing I can do except Fly away and hope they don't shoot me in the back.


A witch has her hexes, that is her bread and butter. She basically has some really nice spells like sleep with no HD limit (slumber), fly @ level 1 with a free feather fall and skill bonus, confer negatives to almost all rolls and keep the going all day (evil eye), give other players another roll on anything all day (fortune) and the list just goes on and on.

First of all, she can't Fly until she would be capable of casting the spell, and even then she can only use the Flight Hex for this effect for class-level minutes per day. Evil Eye is [mind-affecting] and the devs have not yet commented, to my knowledge, whether you can Cackle to extend it if they do pass their Will save. Cackle takes up your Move action, and "cackling madly" doesn't fit with very many character concepts -- and is limited to 30' range. Speaking of which, just about all Hexes are limited to "use a single Move action to walk up and smack me" range.

The list doesn't "go on and on", by the way, those three Hexes are basically the only worthwhile ones on the entire list of Hexes. The rest are things like long finger nails and the ability to smell children...


Not only can she do this as much as her spell slots, she can do this ALLLLLLLL DAY! that's 8640 times a day! How many wizards have that sort of amount of spells a day?

How often do you have 8640 rounds in which to use Slumber on 8640 different targets which aren't immune to [mind-affecting] effects? You can't Cackle to extend Slumber, y'know...


and then she has her spells on top of that, they're just back ups.

Ah, but the reason they're just backups is that the vast vast majority of her spell list can't do anything that her Hexes can't -- which isn't flattering to the class, by the way. If your entire spell list can be boiled down to two or three good spells that you'll use often, but that your class ability does better, that is a huge neon sign screaming for help.


spellcasting is Not her primary skill.

It's not her primary ability? Then why is it her primary ability is weaker than every other class' primary abilities and that her secondary ability is also not as good as any other class' spellcasting? I think you're simply wrong. The Witch is a spellcaster in every sense of the idea, and her Hexes were just poorly designed and even more poorly balanced than her spell list. Any Oracle or Sorcerer could produce a wider variety of effects and more often, in practice, during a day. When even the spellcasting of a Druid is badly overshadowing yours, you know your class has a problem. And Druids can replace most Fighters and Paladins in combat as well.

[ThunderCat]

I can't see how a witch could possibly be underpowered. Even if it's not on par with other tier 1 classes, which I'm not sure is the case, it doesn't mean it's weak. It's one of the strongest classes in the game, and even if it's weaker than a well-played wizard, it's also mechanically distinct enough that you wont feel like an inferior wizard.

I've had good experiences with my witch. I relied mostly on my hexes in battle, and used spells only in situations that weren't covered by the hexes. Mage armor and false life to protect myself, enlarge person on the barbarian before a fight, obscuring mist to cover our retreat, command/hold person/blindness to prevent a target from escaping (when the sleep hex wasn't enough), charm person when we needed someone's cooperation, cure spells when no other healing was available, glitterdust against multiple enemies, web shelter and mount for travelling, and vomit swarm because I felt like it. There are enough strong and useful spells to cover what's needed.

The witch is more than strong and versatile enough. You just need to get over this idea that full (i.e. up to 9th level) vancian spellcasting needs to be the main strength of any class who gets access to it, and that it therefore needs to enable the caster to do pretty much everything. Think of the witch as a strong class that just happens to have 9th level vancian spellcasting on the side. Giving the witch wizard spellcasting in addition to the hexes would be too much, and it would make the class seem more bland, despite the increase in power.

[Naked Granny]

I've had good experiences with my witch. I relied mostly on my hexes in battle, and used spells only in situations that weren't covered by the hexes. Mage armor and false life to protect myself, enlarge person on the barbarian before a fight, obscuring mist to cover our retreat, command/hold person/blindness to prevent a target from escaping (when the sleep hex wasn't enough), charm person when we needed someone's cooperation, cure spells when no other healing was available, glitterdust against multiple enemies, web shelter and mount for travelling, and vomit swarm because I felt like it. There are enough strong and useful spells to cover what's needed.

That feels to me like commentary on how easy the game is, rather than a resounding affirmation of the Witch's comparative power, relative to the Core classes.

Remember, though, I'm not saying that the Witch is weak when compared to all classes/prcs in the game. I am saying that she has major design flaws which leave her unsatisfying to play. A major difference.


Think of the witch as a strong class that just happens to have 9th level vancian spellcasting on the side. Giving the witch wizard spellcasting in addition to the hexes would be too much, and it would make the class seem more bland, despite the increase in power.

I think if the Witch didn't have full spellcasting, she wouldn't be any better than a Ninja with half-BAB, one good save and no weapon or armor proficiency. A Bard would be far more powerful than she if she only had Hexes. No, I just can't agree even in the least. A Witch without full casting would be an insulting waste of a party slot.

I'm not even asking for a complete copy of the Wizard's spell list, in all seriousness, I think the Witch only needs a small handful of spells that suit her flavor and somehow didn't get onto her list -- many of them are scattered and diluted throughout the really awful Patron options currently available.

Perhaps an even dozen spells or fewer is all it would take to satisfy me, and you'd be hard pressed to show how giving them to her would allow her to rival the Wizard even so.

I don't want or need a Witch to be more powerful -- I just need a character that can fill the roles of both Wizard and Cleric. If the Mystic Theurge were a half-decent option, I'd leap at the chance. But Witches just do not have the flexibility in combat to be worth a slot on the party if she has to replace a Wizard.

You couldn't say that the Warlock could fill the role of a party's Wizard, and that's the class which the Witch most closely resembles.

Would the Warlock still be an attractive character option if he had no other invocations besides his Eldritch Blast alone? Because telling me that Witches don't need spells because they have Hexes is virtually identical to saying this.

Can we get the thread back on topic? I do not really care about the anecdotes and personal opinions of others of the Witch's general power level. I have a specific goal in mind, and I don't need to be convinced that she doesn't need to be able to do what I want her to do.

See? :smallfrown:

[ThunderCat]

Spoilered for length.


You see, what I'm stating is that the Witch simply is not just as powerful -- and she does lack Wish. As I said, even giving her the bare bones defensive spells in my wish-list up there, the Wizard would still far outclass her for sheer variety and punch. So any concerns that adding a few thematically-appropriate spells to round her out, that this would make her "too powerful" are simply incorrect, misguided, paranoid or something.

Calling people who have actually played the class “paranoid” for saying it's powerful enough as it is, is not the best start :smallannoyed: You obviously want something different from the class than what the designers made it for. And that's completely OK, but it's no reason to conclude, without any experience and without listening to any other viewpoint first, that it's designed wrongly.


And I would even be entirely willing to exchange the Slumber Hex to get them. A single-target one-attempt-per-day mind-affecting SoD effect is just not worth the survival and flexibility which the Witch has traded away in spades.

A single-target one-attempt-per-enemy SoD effect. If you're dealing with so many enemies that a single-target power will not be an effective enough use of your turn, you must also be dealing with enough enemies to allow you to use the Slumber Hex every round for as long as the battle lasts without running out of enemies to use it on.


Our DM is not a fool who will just sit watching as the Witch spams Slumber and Cackle every turn. Hence, the undead. Hence the archers. Hence a lot of things which simply would not faze a Wizard who could defend himself and accomplish his role in the party since he isn't limited to a narrow range of [mind-affecting] SoDs.

Indicating that other DMs are fools if they do not target the Witch's weaknesses specifically is needlessly contemptuous. Most of my DMs use Paizo's own module, and I've never had an issue with the Witch. And it's true that a DM can lessen the effectiveness of a Witch (especially a badly designed one), but the same DM can also lessen the effectiveness of a Paladin by making most enemies neutral or by mainly using large groups of less powerful enemies, the effectiveness of a Cavalier by setting up most encounters in places without room for a mount, the effectiveness of a Bard by focussing on Hack'n'Slash, and the effectiveness most melee characters by including lots of high mobile enemies. This is not news.


I do feel a bit like I'm repeating myself, but, again, if one or two Hexes are leading people to think that the Witch is too powerful to gain a few necessary spells, then obviously those Hexes should be removed from the game.

Why? Just because a class feature is considered powerful enough that the class does not merit getting extra advantages doesn't mean it's too powerful. It just means it's powerful enough (together with the class' other features) that no extra features are needed to balance it out. And it's not a few hexes, it's quite a lot, which are powerful enough together that I have yet to hear of a player who had trouble contributing as a Witch (though you might become the first :smallamused:).


Show me something the Witch can do that the Wizard can't accomplish with a mild investment into UMD at level 10

What can a Wizard do that other classes can't do with UMD? As it has been said in many threads about class effectiveness before (especially in regards to fighters and monks): If you argument for why a class is strong(er) relies on using a skill available to everyone to copy the class features of another, you're not arguing about the strength of a class, you're arguing the strength of UMD.


I am aware that Witches don't fare as well against undead, and I have motive to make a character that is as good-aligned as possible, and I am aware of the Hedge-Witch archetype and Healer Patron... but one has to wonder why the archetype doesn't just go ahead and give her the Restoration family of spells instead of the weak Hex replacements, because Clerics can spontaneously convert spare spell slots into healing at level 1, and they don't have to give up an entire Domain just to cast Restoration (which is the closest thing to compare this Patron mechanic to).

Restoration is not on the Witch's spell list, therefore the Witch has to 'give up' (i.e. make use of) an entire patron. If the Cleric wants a spell that's not on the Cleric spell list, the Cleric has to use an entire domain to get it too. The Witch is not designed to be a primary healer, so if you want to be one, you'll have to use a class feature for it, just as a Cleric needs to use a class feature (and a more significant one at that) to cast a type of spells Clerics don't normally cast.


It's as if a Cleric had to give up two Domain Powers and pick a specialized Domain just to fill the role of healer at all. Witches only get one Patron, too, remember, so it's not like you can pick up the healing that you need and still grab the necessary defensive buffs to keep yourself alive against archers and surprise wraith attacks, etc...

Domain Powers are not comparable to Hexes. The Cleric gets 4 domain powers, the Witch gets 11 hexes, and the option to take more with a feat. You made a big deal out of how a Cleric got two domains while the Witch only got one patron, so you should at least pay attention when the numbers favour Witches instead. Clerics also have to choose between Domains that give them access to the spells they want, vs. the ones who have the powers they want, while a Witch can cherry-pick.


Again, is it really too much to want six or seven buffs for the Witch spell list? Am I being unreasonable in wanting to play a Witch with flavor and the mechanics to back it up? I mean, right now, looks like I should just roll yet another Wizard and describe myself to the other characters as "a Witch" and the party would be better off.

I'm pretty sure there are at least six or seven buffs on the Witch list already. Enlarge/reduce person, false life, mage armor, alter self, just for the first couple of levels. There are also lots of (perhaps technically non-buff) spells which increase the target's chance survival/effectiveness in combat, like preventing you from drowning, making you immune/resistant to certain harmful effects, enabling you to see hostile targets you wouldn't normally perceive, fly above the range of enemies, etc.

But basically, wanting to be a buffer and describe yourself as a Witch is not that different from wanting to be a skill-monkey and describe yourself as a Fighter. The Witch is not primarily, or even secondarily, a buffer. It has the option to cast a fair amount of buff spells (more with right patron or racial feature) if needed, which already makes it more flexible than a lot of other classes who can't do much outside their narrow area of expertise, but it not its focus. Its lesser buffing skills is not a bug, it's part of what the class is designed to (not) be.


And I, for one, would be glad to not know what 90% of my combat turns will be (Evil Eye, Cackle, Misfortune, Cackle, Slumber, Cackle, repeat)...

Sure you would. And other gamers like being a couple-of-tricks-pony. There are classes for everything, the Witch might just not be a class for you. That doesn't make it underpowered or badly designed, it just means that if you want a full spellcasting class which has both high defences and casts a variety of buff spells, is the group's primary healer, and have a variety of attack spells targeting every save and working against enemies with all kinds of immunities, the Witch is not for you. Thinking about it, neither is the Wizard.

That being said, there are other Hexes usable in combat than just those 4. Pre-prepared Poison Steep offered with Beguiling Gift, Unnerve Beasts to make horses throw off their riders or watchdogs to turn on their handlers, Fortune and Cackle on your friends to increase their effectiveness, Ward to protect a vulnerable party member (especially an animal companion/familiar/eidolon without much gear on its own), Healing to pull a fallen comrade up from negative HP or damage an undead, etc. It's just that the 4 you mentioned are usually so effective that everything else seems redundant. But again, just because a class which has a few tricks it does really, really well (like “I smite the evil-doer” or “I waste it with my crossbow”) might be boring to you, it doesn't mean everyone else share your taste, and it doesn't make it an issue of balance.

Also, I've been sticking to lower levels, and so have you in regards to the Witch, but one of your complaints was that the Witch didn't get access to Wish, and one of your examples was what a Wizard could accomplish at level 10, so I think it's unfair that you haven't mentioned a single thing the Witch get after level 9, such as Major and Grand Hexes. Ice Tomb is immensely effective, Agony is pretty good too, Retribution can devastate most enemy tanks and bruisers, and Dire Prophecy is tons of fun (except for the DM). Some of them also has a range on 60 ft, are not mind-affecting, and last long enough to make Cackle is unnecessary.

If we're talking about spells, the Summon Monster X line of spells are widely regarded as being among the most powerful and flexible spells there is (so much that the most powerful Summoner archetype focusses entirely on them), especially at higher levels, and are almost impossible to go wrong with. Glitterdust is an amazing debuff which is neither mind-affecting or subject to SR. Obscuring Mist/Fog Cloud can do wonders for shaping the battlefield in your favour if you use it well. So can Web. And all of them work on undead and at range. If you're dealing with living targets, Blindness/Deafness has a good range and is not mind-affecting either. And again, that's only early level spells.


Provided I'm facing creatures not immune to [mind-affecting], because then I'll have nothing I can do except Fly away and hope they don't shoot me in the back.

Misfortune, Agony, Ice Tomb, Retribution, Dire Prophecy, and several other Hexes are not mind-affecting, and neither are several of your spells. And that's not to mention the stuff you can do for your allies which makes immunity and non-issue.


First of all, she can't Fly until she would be capable of casting the spell, and even then she can only use the Flight Hex for this effect for class-level minutes per day. Evil Eye is [mind-affecting] and the devs have not yet commented, to my knowledge, whether you can Cackle to extend it if they do pass their Will save. Cackle takes up your Move action, and "cackling madly" doesn't fit with very many character concepts -- and is limited to 30' range. Speaking of which, just about all Hexes are limited to "use a single Move action to walk up and smack me" range.

Evil Eye lasts for one round if the target succeeds its save. Cackle extends the duration of Evil Eye with one round. I don't see what there is to argue.

The Agony and Retribution Hexes work at a 60ft range (and some Hexes don't list range (which is a legitimately bad feature) so their range is up to the DM). If the enemy fails its save against Evil Eye, it lasts long enough for you to not need to cackle. At level 5+, Sleep lasts long enough for most battles too, and so do most major Hexes. So that really only leaves Misfortune/Fortune and Evil Eye on enemies who succeeded their saves requiring you to Cackle. Also notice that at level 8 and again at level 16, Misfortune/Fortune extends by one round, allowing you to miss a round of Cackling if you need it. And finally, if you're that desperate, the Ratfolk favored class ability (which you can pick up as human with a feat) allows you to extend the range of your Hexes.


The list doesn't "go on and on", by the way, those three Hexes are basically the only worthwhile ones on the entire list of Hexes. The rest are things like long finger nails and the ability to smell children...

How often do you have 8640 rounds in which to use Slumber on 8640 different targets which aren't immune to [mind-affecting] effects? You can't Cackle to extend Slumber, y'know...

The Cackle, Evil Eye, Misfortune, and Slumber Hexes are the best combat Hexes from levels 1-9. From level 10, you have several other powerful options to choose from. Also, you make it sound like Slumber has such a short duration that Cackle is necessary, when the reality is that most fights don't last more than a few rounds, which is more than enough time after the first couple of levels.

Non-attack hexes aren't bad either. Fortune extended by Cackle is extremely versatile. The Charm Hex can seem weak compared to Charm Person, but when your DM enforces the verbal and somatic components of spells, being able to screw with people's mind without onlookers suspecting anything is gold (and tons of fun). Prehensile Hair allows you to hold two wands/rods, make several types of strength checks using your INT, and deliver touch spells at 10ft reach, using you INT modifier. Scar and Ward open up some nice new tactical options.

A lot of the Hexes which mimic spells are worth several castings of those spells. Feral Speech is basically an unlimited Speak with Animals (a spell not normally available to the Witch), the Healing and Major Healing Hex gives you considerable amounts of free healing in a large party and means you'll always have something at hand when coming across a wounded NPC, Tongues can be split up so you'll almost always have enough uses of it after the first few levels, Water Lung can help a small party (<7) stay under water for as long as you can keep awake, Beast Eye and Hag's Eye both allow you to scout ahead without any risk to yourself (and again, they can be split up and used in the amounts you need it), Life Giver lets you Resurrect people for free, and we've already established that Flight is well worth taking (also note that being a SU ability means it can't dispelled) etc. They're not game-breaking abilities, but many of them are worth more than most feats.


It's not her primary ability? Then why is it her primary ability is weaker than every other class' primary abilities and that her secondary ability is also not as good as any other class' spellcasting? I think you're simply wrong. The Witch is a spellcaster in every sense of the idea, and her Hexes were just poorly designed and even more poorly balanced than her spell list.

Other classes spellcasting usually is their primary ability, so asking why the Witch's secondary ability is not as good as other classes' spellcasting is moot. But more to the point, bard spells are weaker than Witch spells (limited amount of spells known, fewer spells per day, caps at 6th level) and certainly weaker than Wizard spells too, but Bardic music is not an overwhelmingly powerful primary ability either. The thing is, some classes are limited to only a couple of class features, only one of which really matters, but that one ability is immensely strong and versatile. Other classes have dozens of weaker abilities meant to complement each other instead. Most classes are in between.

The Witch have two major class features which are not quite as strong as the Wizard/Cleric spellcasting, but (usually) both stronger and and more versatile than the Wizard/Cleric secondary abilities (school powers and domains). That's the basis of the class. The Hexes are often powerful enough to be all you need in an encounter, and unlike spells, you rarely have to think of conserving some of them for later encounters. The spellcasting is there for when you come up against enemies on which your Hexes work badly, and to give you some more out-of-combat utility than you have merely from your Hexes.

Saying that a class which doesn't have any single class feature as powerful as a Wizard's is underpowered, badly designed, or lacking, would make just about every class except the Wizard underpowered, badly designed, or lacking. Same deal for saying that every class' primary feature needs to be as powerful as a Wizard's. And saying that any class needs to be as powerful as Tier 1 classes in order to not be underpowered, badly designed, or lacking, is just silly.

[ThunderCat]

That feels to me like commentary on how easy the game is, rather than a resounding affirmation of the Witch's comparative power, relative to the Core classes.

First off, just because I do better in a game than you think you'd be able to with the same class does not mean I play in more easy games. Perhaps I'm just better at getting the best out of the class :smallwink: Secondly, you are being rude and arrogant to assume I was making a comment about the effectiveness of a class by not comparing it to anything. That would be stupid, and if you automatically think this low of posters here without any proof, what on earth caused you to come to these stupid people for assistance?

I've been playing a witch with a lot of other gamers. Some of them are as good at optimisation as I am, maybe even better in some areas. When I've played certain other classes (such as Rogue, Fighter, and Ranger), I've had to optimise a lot more in order to not get overshadowed, and even then, I was not among the most powerful party members. When I played a Witch, I made a few obvious choices, and easily managed to be among the most powerful members of the party. This is in comparison to players who played other classes, not in comparison to nothing. The assertion that the Witch is not powerful relative to Core classes is flat out wrong. That your argument have so far solely consisted of comparisons to the three most overpowered classes in the whole game, says it all. If you want to convince people that the Witch is weak compared to other Core classes, try comparing it to the Rogue, Monk, or Fighter instead, because comparisons to Wizards are meaningless.


Remember, though, I'm not saying that the Witch is weak when compared to all classes/prcs in the game. I am saying that she has major design flaws which leave her unsatisfying to play. A major difference.

Actually, you are saying it's weak. Also, you reserve the right to claim the class has design flaws and is unsatisfying to play, despite having never played it, and then go on to talk about how you're not interested in input from people who have played actual Witches in game, because their games were probably easy and (unlike them/their DM) your DM is no fool. And you complain that people don't just bend over to accommodate you? :smallsigh: Also, in order to speak about design-flaws, you should at least know a bit about the class. You don't need to be an expert to have an opinion, but you've overlooked, or failed to address, a huge number of things about the class so far, which makes it quite annoying when you then turn around and use your lack of knowledge as an argument for why the designers have made mistakes.


I think if the Witch didn't have full spellcasting, she wouldn't be any better than a Ninja with half-BAB, one good save and no weapon or armor proficiency. A Bard would be far more powerful than she if she only had Hexes. No, I just can't agree even in the least. A Witch without full casting would be an insulting waste of a party slot.

I never argued against giving the Witch full spellcasting (though it certainly doesn't need it if played right), but giving it Wizard spellcasting is beyond broken.


I'm not even asking for a complete copy of the Wizard's spell list, in all seriousness, I think the Witch only needs a small handful of spells that suit her flavor and somehow didn't get onto her list -- many of them are scattered and diluted throughout the really awful Patron options currently available.

What flavour is that, exactly? Because I never saw Witches as healers. Perhaps New-Age Wiccan witches, but with abilities that include poisoning and cooking people, I doubt those were the inspiration. Usually, the local wise women/witches were able to give some limited healing (roughly analogous to some cure spells and ranks in the heal skills, both of which the Witch has access to), but they were mostly famous for consorting with demons and cursing people. I also never saw witches as being able to shroud themselves in protective spells and be able to wade into battle. The witch archetype from where I'm from and from the fairytales I was told as a child was all about subtlety. Divinations, Transmutations, and Curses suit the Witch's flavour fine by me, but major Christian-style healing never struck me as a core part of what witches were all about. It's all well and good that you want a different type of Witch, and by all means, go for it. But if you're going to make claims about how the Witch doesn't have the spells that suit her flavour, you need to be more specific about what flavour you're talking about.


I don't want or need a Witch to be more powerful -- I just need a character that can fill the roles of both Wizard and Cleric. If the Mystic Theurge were a half-decent option, I'd leap at the chance. But Witches just do not have the flexibility in combat to be worth a slot on the party if she has to replace a Wizard.

You just need a character that can simultaneously fill the roles of two of the most overpowered classes in the game? And you wonder why the Witch comes up short? It should be self-evident why.


You couldn't say that the Warlock could fill the role of a party's Wizard, and that's the class which the Witch most closely resembles.

Would the Warlock still be an attractive character option if he had no other invocations besides his Eldritch Blast alone? Because telling me that Witches don't need spells because they have Hexes is virtually identical to saying this.

So the Witch most closely resembles a class that is definitely not a Wizard or a Cleric, and yet you find fault with it because you can't get it to fill the roles of both a Wizard and a Cleric? Also, a Witch's Hexes are not identical to a Warlock's eldritch blast, they're closer to being identical to all the Warlock's invocations.


Can we get the thread back on topic? I do not really care about the anecdotes and personal opinions of others of the Witch's general power level. I have a specific goal in mind, and I don't need to be convinced that she doesn't need to be able to do what I want her to do.

See? :smallfrown:

If you have a specific goal in mind, there's an easy way to get people's help. Here's how you do it:


I'm making a character for 4 person party, where at least one of the players isn't going to be very effective in combat. I'll be the only caster, so I need to fill the roles of both an arcane and a divine caster (i.e. healer). I'll also need to able to keep myself safe, because I doubt the other party members will be able to always protect me. I've been looking at the Witch, because it comes the closest to having a blend of Cleric and Wizard spells, and I can take the Hedge Witch archetype to be able to spontaneously cast Cure spells.

The problem is that it's still lacking somewhat in the spellcasting department compared to a Wizard, and it seems very vulnerable. I could try to find a Patron with lots of buff spells, but I need to take the Healing Patron to get access to the Restoration line of spells. Would it be overpowered to give the Witch access to some more Sorcerer/Wizard spells? I don't plan on using the Hexes a lot, so I'd be willing to give some of them up in exchange for better spell casting. Any suggestions?

Here's how not to do it:


The Witch is a horrible class, it's badly designed, unenjoyable, and makes no sense! It clearly has worse Wizard spellcasting than the Wizard, but it also can't heal as well as a Cleric, and it doesn't even get access to Wish, so it can't contribute properly :smallfurious: I've never played it before and I have no interest in hearing from other people who have because I already know it sucks, so I just need to change the class to make up for the glaring weaknesses it has. It needs to be able to buff itself so it's not fragile, heal as well as a Cleric without me having to spend any considerable resources on it, and do Wizard casting.

Also, because there are two strong mind-affecting combat Hexes (which is practically all of them, especially since I wont mention any Hex gotten after 9th level, despite talking about how the Wizard was the superior because of what a 10th level Wizard could achieve), and the Witch's spell lists have some good mind-effecting spells on it, it means I'll be utterly useless against anything immune to mind-effecting effects, and I'll have absolutely nothing to do but flee if I encounter undeads. And if anyone thinks differently, I need to remind them that my DM is not a fool, and anyone who's had any success with a Witch is probably playing in an easy game. I'll also write long posts ranting about the mechanical weaknesses and bad design of the Witch class, while making obvious mistakes such as mentioning using Misfortune and then claim I'll have nothing to use on creatures immune to mind-affecting spells, exaggerate the lack of buff spells on the Witch's spell list, ignore the amount of long-range Witch spells that work on undead, ignore Hexes with a range longer than 30ft, ignore Hexes that aren't mind-affecting, and generally ignore all Major Hexes, but I don't want anyone to address them or disagree with me, despite posting my opinion as the objective truth.

See the difference?

[Arbane]

but they were mostly famous for consorting with demons and cursing people.

Amusingly, they're not very good at the 'consorting with demons' part, either - Planar Ally/Binding isn't on their spell list, and the archetype that adds it DOESN'T add Circle of Protection. :smalleek: Now that's Trap Option in the purest sense of the word.


Divinations, Transmutations, and Curses suit the Witch's flavour fine by me, but major Christian-style healing never struck me as a core part of what witches were all about.

Never heard of Witch Doctors? :smallwink:
(Semi-seriously, witches as healers probably predates Christianity.)

For my own bit of anecdata, I can only say that by the time my party's cleric and magus are running low on spells and planning to retreat, my witch usually still has a head full of spells. And I'm pretty sure I'm pulling my weight.

[Naked Granny]

Y'know... I really don't take very kindly to the sort of condescension and open hostility you're attacking me with, but maybe you'll be the first to bring a response anyway.


If we're talking about spells, the Summon Monster X line of spells are widely regarded as being among the most powerful and flexible spells there is (so much that the most powerful Summoner archetype focusses entirely on them), especially at higher levels, and are almost impossible to go wrong with. Glitterdust is an amazing debuff which is neither mind-affecting or subject to SR. Obscuring Mist/Fog Cloud can do wonders for shaping the battlefield in your favour if you use it well. So can Web. And all of them work on undead and at range. If you're dealing with living targets, Blindness/Deafness has a good range and is not mind-affecting either. And again, that's only early level spells.

Those are all spells on the Wizard list. They are not something which the Witch brings to the table to make her worth her slot instead of a Wizard. The Witch brings nothing unique to her class, instead relying on being able to fill multiple roles to be worthwhile. Since she cannot, in fact, fill any of those roles better than anyone else, she is not, in fact, worth picking over anyone else. It's really just that simple.

UMD can't replicate Wizard spells because it cannot give you the save DCs which a warm-bodied Wizard can cast. The same is not true for a Wizard UMD'ing wands of Cure Wounds or especially a scroll of Heal. In fact, in actual play, even Clerics themselves don't usually bother taking up spell slots with Cure and Heal type spells, they just use a wand during downtime.

If Witches weren't supposed to be primary healers, why does the Healer Patron exist and why do they get almost every healing spell except Restoration at Cleric levels, without needing a Patron, rather than as Druids do? I mean, are you saying that Clerics should have to pick the Healing Domain in order to be considered "primary healers"?

There aren't any Hexes which do things a Wizard or Cleric spell can't do. As primary class abilities, the Hexes are just not novel or unique -- even though their theoretical massive number of uses per day is large, that doesn't make them good game design or the Witch worth her slot on a team over a Wizard or Cleric. So it doesn't matter that there's a handful of Hexes which can function, all classes are expected to do their jobs. What's so amazing about a full caster that can produce a SoD when needed? I haven't mentioned any of the Major or Grand Hexes because, frankly, they are just as unimpressive as the normal Hexes and easily reproduced or surpassed by level-appropriate spells.

For example:

Agony. Single target nausea which requires the Witch to be level 10 to use? Unimpressive: Stinking Cloud has been doing that for both the Witch and Wizard except as a large area at greater range since level 5, and you can cast Stinking Cloud again if your targets make their save.

Retribution. In a smart group of players, enemies don't land melee hits very often if ever. D&D has often been described as a wargame of "rocket tag", and, indeed, that style of combat becomes very common around this level. Especially since healing is so inefficient, preventing your foes from dealing damage in the first place should be priority, and Witches are not, by your description anyway, primary healers. Retribution only returns half the damage dealt, so even in the best case scenario, your own BSF ally (or YOU!) is dead first. If you just want to do some damage to a single target, why not cast a nuke on him? Or Suffocate.

Ice Tomb. Again, there's a spell on the Wizard list called Icy Prison which scales better with level, can be recast to target the creature again if Entangled isn't good enough for you, and he's been casting it since level 9. Oh, and the Wizard didn't have to choose between Agony and Ice Tomb to pick for his level 10 class feature, which he still gets, by the way, in the form of a bonus feat most of which are better than any of the Hexes.

None of the rest of the Major Hexes are really worth mentioning since their effects are largely fluff and insignificant for 90% of actual play. Beast Eye is possibly fun and all, but at these levels, spellcasters, including the Witch, are using all sorts of Prying Eyes and Greater Scrying.

You only get two Grand Hexes, and I advise all Witches to pick them very carefully indeed. Guess which ones don't do anything that a level 9 spell can't do better?

Death Curse is an insultingly weak Phantasmal Killer except it allows even more saves. At this level, it does become worth mentioning that (Su) effects aren't subject to Spell Resistance or Dispelling, but good luck even getting this Hex to stick. How many rounds of combat does a Pit Fiend typically stand there letting you get his Saves down before teleporting up to you and smacking you with a Vorpal weapon? And worse yet, when he does so, what's your recourse? Compare with Mass Suffocation to get an idea of what this Hex ... doesn't ... compare well against. A single target Save or Save or Die at a fixed 30' just doesn't blow my skirt up when we're talking about wide area similar effects at a range of 70' which only target one save and require 15 total saves to stay alive. So, if a level 18 Witch really wants something dead, she casts Mass Suffocation and then Cackles some Misfortunes, she doesn't waste time with single target Death Curse.

I love Eternal Slumber, I really do, it's got great flavor and is probably the only effect on the Witch Hex feature list which is uncommon. But it's reproduced by Binding (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/binding) which Wizards have been casting since level 15. Witches, it should be noted, do not get access to that spell even though it's probably the most iconic spell cast by Witches in stories and popular media.

Dire Prophecy is really just a specialized Bestow Major Curse with some incremental improvements that aren't worth requiring character level 18 to use. It doesn't truly do anything that Misfortune hasn't been doing all along. Again, being (Su) is nice and all, and the sole saving grace, but still not impressive at level 18 for a "full caster".

Life Giver can save cash, but she still can't cast True Resurrection, and she still can't cast Wish or Miracle in order to deal with Destruction which has been in play since level 13. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to research what all else can't be undone by Resurrection (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/resurrection). This isn't too surprising since Druids also get shafted when it comes to raising the dead, and that's understandable. This Hex really is more than Witches could have hoped for. Hardly a game-changing powerhouse at level 18, though. And you only get two Grand Hexes to choose from, and this one quite literally just duplicates a lower level spell.

Summon Spirit is flavorful, but the wording is pretty much iron clad: it duplicates Greater Planar Ally as the spell, but on top of paying for the services of the ghost (a potentially astronomical sum), you also have to subject yourself to a negative level while it serves you. And I really can't find anywhere in the Hex's description that says it is anything other than a high HD ghost. Compared to the free Resurrections of Life Giver? Pass.

And last, Forced Reincarnate. Used on a very old and powerful dragon, could be handy since young dragons shouldn't be too difficult to deal with at this level. Other than that, is largely a mere nuisance to the sorts of entities which level 18 PCs will be fighting. Powerful outsiders, namely, most of which are well capable of casting Wish or have allies capable of doing it for them. It's basically a very elaborate Maze effect on this rank of entity, provided they are even subject to the Reincarnate spell in the first place.

I'm not sure it's really worth responding to the suggestion that a Witch, when faced with a large number of foes, should spend each turn using Slumber on a single target. Is this really what passes as "effective crowd control", or is it just something blurted out in a red-cheeked huff because I have the gumption to declare Witches poorly designed?


Evil Eye lasts for one round if the target succeeds its save. Cackle extends the duration of Evil Eye with one round. I don't see what there is to argue.

It could be interpreted that way, but the way the description is phrased implies strongly that the effect is truncated to a single round on a passed save. If your DM rules that the effect, by being truncated so, cannot be Cackled because the passed save overlaps it, then there you are -- arguing with your DM.

Move Actions are not something to just be given away willy nilly. Especially for a class which has precious few defenses other than literally staying out of arms' reach. If you had a slew of defensive spells, better Hit Dice and Medium armor and who knows what else to protect you, it might be a different story. The rules for Flight don't really make matters clear about whether you can Hover without spending a Move Action to do so (though the DC is a mere 15 which should be easy to pass at least). Your DM, especially if he is the sort to rule that you can't Cackle an Evil Eye if its save was passed, seems perfectly able to go either way on this. And since Flight is, in all seriousness, one of the only things keeping you alive, that's a very serious thing to worry about.

Ditto the DM's ruling about whether wands, rods and staffs and such are considered "weapons" for the purpose of your hair.

Admittedly, nothing can save you from a bad DM -- but in the real world, we don't always get to choose our DMs.

Fortune had better be extended by Cackle, by golly! Because you don't get to affect that person with it again for the rest of the day! And then there's the problem of needing to Cackle while also needing to be quiet... In my experience, most of the rolling with tension involved are for sneaking around.

Cackling madly is hardly what I would describe as "subtle".

Compare the Flight Hex against the Air Wizard's ability... The Wizard has to wait a while for it, but gets unlimited flight. By that level, both classes are able to cast Overland Flight, sure, but when you need to book it, the move speed does help. As does the unlimited duration. And Wizards can cast Levitate an unlimited number of times, too. This is, to me, a clear case where the developers simply "forgot" and left the Hex in an incomplete state. I think the Hex should allow unlimited Flight at level 10, just as Air Wizards get, and most especially because it is such a core ability for Witches -- they'd be sitting ducks without it! Leaving Levitate at 1 use per day is pretty insulting, too, and the whole Hex, though a nice thought, really lacks the scaling it needs to feel like a properly rewarding class ability.


Saying that a class which doesn't have any single class feature as powerful as a Wizard's is underpowered, badly designed, or lacking, would make just about every class except the Wizard underpowered, badly designed, or lacking. Same deal for saying that every class' primary feature needs to be as powerful as a Wizard's. And saying that any class needs to be as powerful as Tier 1 classes in order to not be underpowered, badly designed, or lacking, is just silly.

And now you're just making assertions based on your opinion.

Flatly, I disagree.

I think all the classes should offer something which makes them an attractive choice for players.

The Witch is in the unique position of not offering any unique class mechanic nor is she capable of filling any role as well as any other class. What I intend to do is add the bare minimum selection of spells which the Witch could use in order to solve the latter problem because solving the former is a much bigger change.

And I intend to accomplish this task using the tools already in game. Patron choice (which I now know I can custom design), race choice, skills, items and so on.

Instead of getting help with the information for which I started this thread, I get viciously attacked for stating a simple obvious fact. You don't have to play the Witch in my group. You don't have to play with my group at all. You don't have to agree with my solutions to the problems the class has. You don't have to play the version of the Witch I will be playing.

I am not interested in arguments about why you think the Witch is Paizo's golden gift to earth and mustn't be touched.

If you can't contribute constructively to the topic of the thread, I'm sure I don't know what this forum's rules on that sort of behavior are.

[Naked Granny]

Warning: Long!

First off, just because I do better in a game than you think you'd be able to with the same class does not mean I play in more easy games. Perhaps I'm just better at getting the best out of the class :smallwink:

Or.

Perhaps you're wrong about that.

Or.

Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of this thread.

Or both.


Secondly, you are being rude and arrogant to assume I was making a comment about the effectiveness of a class by not comparing it to anything. That would be stupid, and if you automatically think this low of posters here without any proof, what on earth caused you to come to these stupid people for assistance?

How dare you.


I've been playing a witch with a lot of other gamers. Some of them are as good at optimisation as I am,

Arrogant, am I?


maybe even better in some areas. When I've played certain other classes (such as Rogue, Fighter, and Ranger), I've had to optimise a lot more in order to not get overshadowed, and even then, I was not among the most powerful party members.

Of course. You couldn't possibly just not be as good at optimization as perhaps you ought to be in order to deserve to play the game the way you want.


When I played a Witch, I made a few obvious choices, and easily managed to be among the most powerful members of the party.

Your party is not mine. Your goals were assuredly not mine.


This is in comparison to players who played other classes, not in comparison to nothing. The assertion that the Witch is not powerful relative to Core classes is flat out wrong.

I've said all along that the Witch has features which are exceedingly powerful, and I've also said all along that just being powerful is not a measure of good game design, nor necessarily of the design I want from my characters.


That your argument have so far solely consisted of comparisons to the three most overpowered classes in the whole game, says it all.

Oh, really? I think the sentiment that Wizards, Clerics and Druids are overpowered "says it all", too...


If you want to convince people that the Witch is weak compared to other Core classes, try comparing it to the Rogue, Monk, or Fighter instead, because comparisons to Wizards are meaningless.

They aren't, actually, especially when my goal is to find a way to substitute the Witch for a Wizard. Especially when the function, flavor and purpose of the non-casters has no overlap with that of the spellcasters. Especially since I don't care about assertions about my "wrongness" based in nothing more than opinion.

If the Witch "just isn't the class for me", then D&D certainly isn't the game for you. I might recommend GURPS or Shadowrun or something, if you can't stand the idea of spellcasters being able to work a few supernatural wonders.


Actually, you are saying it's weak.

Weak design. Two words of equal importance that must go together when describing the Witch.


Also, you reserve the right to claim the class has design flaws and is unsatisfying to play, despite having never played it,

I have played Witches, and I really don't know how you could possibly know whether I had or hadn't in the first place. I don't reserve the right to have an opinion, but I also don't think anyone else's opinion on the matter has a place in this thread. Go make your own thread and hold court on the matter if you won't contribute to this one.


And you complain that people don't just bend over to accommodate you? :smallsigh:

Complain? I've indulged at length on the matter which is entirely off the topic of my thread, with you in particular, now.



Also, in order to speak about design-flaws, you should at least know a bit about the class. You don't need to be an expert to have an opinion, but you've overlooked, or failed to address, a huge number of things about the class so far, which makes it quite annoying when you then turn around and use your lack of knowledge as an argument for why the designers have made mistakes.

Do. Please. Make your own thread to enlighten me on the matter. Be sure to link it in here, because I won't go looking for it. You've turned my thread into a flame-bomb already, and I'm pretty this exchange is against the rules, though I may be wrong about that.


I never argued against giving the Witch full spellcasting (though it certainly doesn't need it if played right), but giving it Wizard spellcasting is beyond broken.

I didn't say that Witches should gain the Wizard spell list, either. I have made the case that there's a certain number of spells which clearly suit the Witch class for theme and mechanics (as I see them) that they do not have on their list by default, though how that gets exaggerated into "Witches should be better than Wizards in every way", I really don't know.


What flavour is that, exactly? Because I never saw Witches as healers.

Really.

Really.

With healing spells featuring so prominently on both Hex feature list and in spell list alike, with Witches being described first and foremost in myth and legend as healers... They even have the Heal skill on their class skill list, for crying out loud. They have an archetype and a Patron specifically designed to allow them spontaneously convert prepared spells similar to a Cleric and to cast the Restoration and Cleanse group of spells. They have the Cauldron and Cook People Hexes, a major function of which is to produce restorative potions and cookies. It is precisely the easy access to magical healing which allows the Witch to not be a pathetic version of the Wizard with fewer spells per day, fewer feats, a dramatically smaller spell list and less developer attention.


but they were mostly famous for consorting with demons and cursing people.

So because that's the thing you like about Witches in myth and story, that should be the only thing they can do? I'll note that "consorting with demons" is probably the one thing they can technically do while still being the weakest of all available classes in the actual doing. In my opinion, in actual play at the table, they aren't really all that much better at the cursing than anyone else, either, though probably no worse and better than some.


I also never saw witches as being able to shroud themselves in protective spells and be able to wade into battle.

Considering the paltry 30' range on their Hexes, I would definitely describe that as "wading" in the battle. Up to the armpits. Achilles was protected rather thoroughly by a witch's ensorcellment, he was invulnerable to all onslaught until, by chance, his weakness was found (which was where the witch held him to dip him into the waters). And would you say that the default Witch spell list has many buffs? How about buffs that remain relevant at level 10 or 20? Would you say the Witch needs more than just Flight and Mage Armor to withstand attack as she gains levels? What about the Ward Hex? That seems like a clear "buff" to me, so is she really not supposed to be able to provide some party support aside from the long list of Cure Wounds spells she gets?

Clearly, buffs, utility and party support are a very major part of the Witch class, both Paizo's printed version and the one that might hope to capture the essence of myth, story and legend.

And the one that would hope to stay alive against all odds with three comrades.


The witch archetype from where I'm from and from the fairytales I was told as a child was all about subtlety. Divinations, Transmutations, and Curses suit the Witch's flavour fine by me, but major Christian-style healing never struck me as a core part of what witches were all about. It's all well and good that you want a different type of Witch, and by all means, go for it.

And so I shall, if you would be good enough to not pollute my thread by abusing me about my ideas concerning the Pathfinder Witch's game balance and my need to design a Witch, using the Pathfinder rules, to suit my personal desires to fit with my own group in which I am all but certain you are not a participating member...

I really think you just misunderstand my goals here, and I'm not even in a position to change how the Witch class is printed.

We even seem to agree, if I may say so, on more things than not concerning the Witch, especially her fluff and such.


But if you're going to make claims about how the Witch doesn't have the spells that suit her flavour, you need to be more specific about what flavour you're talking about.

I really rather like the flavor I thought Paizo gave to the Witch. Or rather, the flavor as I assumed was universally understood, and which you largely agree with, as well. The subtlety, the cursing, the manipulation and divinations -- those things are splendid! I like that. I want that. I have no problem with the overarching theme and flavor of the Witch. "You guys missed a spot" is a far cry, though, from "This isn't what I had in mind at all, let's completely remake her from the ground up."


You just need a character that can simultaneously fill the roles of two of the most overpowered classes in the game?

Cleric and Wizard aren't overpowered, you'll just have to get over that bit. I point to the universally scorned Mystic Theurge as further proof of this.


And you wonder why the Witch comes up short? It should be self-evident why.

In fact, I would probably still play a Witch if her Hexes were removed entirely and her spell list gained the even dozen or so spells I think it should have.

Comes up short is not at all what I think or how I've described her. She doesn't work correctly, either as intended or even very well as designed, but this is not the same as a statement about her "power". If this point can't be understood, then there simply isn't a reason for you to keep talking to me here.


So the Witch most closely resembles a class that is definitely not a Wizard or a Cleric, and yet you find fault with it because you can't get it to fill the roles of both a Wizard and a Cleric? Also, a Witch's Hexes are not identical to a Warlock's eldritch blast, they're closer to being identical to all the Warlock's invocations.

No, I meant the mechanics of SLAs which have no limit to their uses per day in combination with spamming one of them for 90% of all the player's turns. I am displeased with the design of the Warlock, I hate it intensely. It is the epitome of poor design and is deeply unsatisfying to play. So when people suggest that I play the Witch like the Warlock ("Just spam Slumber, EE and Cackle!"), I'm not sure how to respond.

It rather misses the point of the class to play her that way, and it misses the point of my intentions toward the Witch (phrasing!! :smalltongue:) to think that I'm asking for advice about how to play her.


If you have a specific goal in mind, there's an easy way to get people's help. Here's how you do it:

Here's how not to do it:

See the difference?

Yes. I only wish you did, too. :annoyed:

[Paulcynic]

After a quick look at your fix with your DM, which is the best solution without pulling the entire class apart, I'm glad that you're able to shore up what you see as class deficiencies. And so its not appropriate use of my time trying to dive deeper into this discussion.

However, I did begin to prep for the project and wanted to share one of the things I found already in the core witch that address your concerns:

Survivability and Wish:

Endurance: 2nd—endure elements, 4th—bear's endurance, 6th—protection from energy, 8th—spell immunity, 10th—spell resistance, 12th—bear's endurance (mass), 14th—restoration (greater), 16th—iron body, 18th—miracle.

This makes Endurance the absolute best Patron come level 18, and pretty awesome beforehand.


I do take issue with one of your responses to ThunderCat, the facts specifically:

Those are all spells on the Wizard list. They are not something which the Witch brings to the table to make her worth her slot instead of a Wizard. The Witch brings nothing unique to her class, instead relying on being able to fill multiple roles to be worthwhile. Since she cannot, in fact, fill any of those roles better than anyone else, she is not, in fact, worth picking over anyone else. It's really just that simple.

Those spells he lists are all on the Witch's spell list, making her spell casting a near identical Analogue to the Wizard, and her Hexes are more powerful than the Wizards Specialty Schools. And I would find your argument about the Witch bringing nothing unique to her class, and being ineffective more compelling if there was consensus. Do you find yourself saying this about all other classes that aren't the Wizard and Cleric? If so, ask your GM if you can Gestalt a Wizard and Cleric, as there are no solutions for your particular troubles in all of the Pathfinder books.

[Ravens_cry]

I've always found witches to be a fun and flavourful class that steps out of some of the typical boundaries of arcane casting, though it rather bones if you are facing a lot of mind affecting immune creatures.

[Gnorman]

Cleric and Wizard aren't overpowered, you'll just have to get over that bit. I point to the universally scorned Mystic Theurge as further proof of this.

I have to point out here that the Mystic Theurge is universally scorned because it severely hampers the progression of the two best spell lists in the game, not because the classes required for entry are somehow deficient. It is most certainly not "proof" of the Cleric or Wizard being underpowered. If anything, it serves as the opposite.

That being said, the Witch is not far behind either of them. I can see your misgivings, and I agree that some points are not examples of stellar design. But in comparison to many other classes, I believe the Witch is well done.

Wanting to be both the Wizard and the Cleric is, I think, where you are setting yourself up for failure with the Witch. It's never going to be as good as either one, or the Druid - the advantage is that, in a pinch, the Witch can sort of sub for whichever (pun definitely intended).

[Ravens_cry]

Their spell list is only about 3/4 of the story. The hexes also add to the dynamic. Ooh, and if you can pull it off, a Witch with Leadership and the Coven hex. . . .heh, heh ha . He he, Ha He Ha! Mu-Wa-Ha-HAHA HA! ! !
Sorry, *wipes away tears* but it's nice to get a use for the Followers, no?

[Naked Granny]

Moving on swiftly.

I've got a little list (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NLV24qTnlg) of "the big ones" which I'm most concerned with. These are spells which are both not on the default list and which I have personally deemed to be "important". I haven't displayed them in any particular order of priority, though.

By spell level, though Arcane and Divine spells are jumbled all together, the exact level which some of them should be considered isn't really important:

1.

True Strike, Silent Image, Erase, Anticipate Peril, Alarm, Endure Elements, Hide From Undead, Protection from Arrows

2.

Blur, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Darkness, Gust of Wind, Misdirection, Command Undead, Defending Bone, Rope Trick, Lesser Restoration, Undetectable Alignment, Resist Energy, Remove Paralysis

3.

Explosive Runes, Nondetection, Magic Circle vs. Alignment, Protection From Energy, Blood Biography, Blacklight, Daylight, Sheet Lightning, Wind Wall, Displacement, Invisibility Sphere, Animate Dead, Create Food and Water, Deeper Darkness, Invisibility Purge, Obscure Object, Halt Undead, Beast Shape, Gaseous Form, Haste and Slow, Resinous Skin,

4.

Dimensional Anchor, Lesser Globe of Invulnerability, Stoneskin, Aura of the Unremarkable, Control Summoned Creature, Malfunction, Malicious Spite, Terrible Remorse, Overwhelming Grief, Wall of Ice, Greater Invisibility, Beast Shape II, Mnemonic Enhancer, Stone Shape, Dismissal, Freedom of Movement, Planar Adaption, Restoration, Contagion

5.

Life Bubble, Mage's Private Sanctum, Planar Binding (lesser), Wall of Stone, Sending, Wall of Force, False Vision, Mirage Arcana, Persistant Image, Phantasmal Web, Seemming, Beast Shape III, Passwall, Polymorph, Permanency, Transmute Rock to Mud to Rock, Breath of Life, Cleanse, Commune, Disrupting Weapon, Un/Hallow, Spell Resistance,

6.

Antimagic Field, Envious Urge, Utter Contempt, Contingency, Leashed Shackles, Mislead, Pemanent Image, Programmed Image, Shadow Walk, Veil, Create Undead, Undeath to Death, Circle of Death, Antilife Shell, Joyful Rapture,

7.

Banishment, Circle of Clarity, Sequester, Spell Turning, Teleport Trap, Magnificent Mansion, Mass Invisibility, Phantasmal Revenge, Simulacrum, Control Undead, Mass Fly, Greater Polymorph, Statue, Limited Wish, Repulsion, Greater Restoration,

8.

Dimensional Lock, Protection from Spells, Greater Planar Binding, Binding, Euphoric Tranquility, Screen, Create Greater Undead, Orb of the Void, Earthquake, Spell Immunity Greater,

9.

Freedom / Imprisonment, Mage's Disjunction, Wall of Suppression, Gate, Interplanetary Teleport, Overwhelming Presence, Icy Prison Mass, Weird, Energy Drain, Etherealness, Time Stop, Wish/Miracle, True Resurrection, Mass Heal,

Gear can go a good way toward dealing with a lot of these, especially the UMD skill -- but UMD really is only for spells which don't rely on a save DC or can be serviceable at minimum caster level. A custom crafted Staff might be able to contain a great many non-class spells, and provided it can be recharged, would be an interesting way to expand a party's spell options. It's pretty upsetting how expensive Staffs are, though, and that the Witch should have to set out so much of her cash for items to prop up a lackluster spell list at all.

But if the warriors can drop so much gold on nice items in order to perform their duties, then the least any other party member could do is pull her weight, right?



Rings:
A Ring of Invisibility (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-invisibility) should be made top priority, as it serves in so many ways for offense and defense, and doesn't have any limit on uses/day. Extremely expensive at 20k, but probably worth it.
The Decoy Ring is tempting, but the static Disbelief DC (19) just leaves me thinking that the 12k pricetag is better put to above ring instead which is much more versatile and can't just be disbelieved.
Ring of Evasion (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-evasion) would be fantastic even at 25k if the DM will approve the 3.5 feat Insightful Reflexes. Probably not worth that much money if not, though.
Ring of Chameleon Power (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-chameleon-power) is not half bad for the price, considering that it isn't defeated by a simple See Invisibility. The Disguise Self functionality is very sweet icing on this cake, depends how short the supply of Hex slots is, though.
Ring of Freedom of Movement (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/freedom-of-movement), at 40k is an eyeball opener, but worth every copper on the sticker price.
Ring of Continuation (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-continuation) is very nifty, I could see it being worth a lot, but is much too expensive to buy with a level 10 character's WBL.
Rings of Wizardry are insultingly expensive. No. Just no.

Wondrous Items (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items): Here's where everything is. Sighhh, so much to pick through. Keeping in mind that I will probably be able to buy Wondrous Items at Cost if I pick up the Craft Wondrous Item Feat at character level 3 -- which would give me those last seven levels' worth of WBL to spend on these for much cheaper...
Hat of Disguise could be incredibly useful for a Witch who finds herself at the wrong end of a pitchfork-wielding mob. I probably won't. But it's cheap enough that it should probably be considered one of those "every adventurer should have one" sort of things. I've seldom seen an entire class feature option rendered so obsolete, and the spell is not on the Witch's list...
Handy Haversack. Obvious. Necessary. Of course I'm grabbing one: scrolls at hand with only a move action? Next best thing to spontaneous spellcasting from a spellbook.
Stone of Alarm is rather expensive for a level 1 spell, but it's hard to deny that most adventurers will find it useful. Perhaps a little less useful for a Witch who's Spellbook has legs, but if you're going to craft an astronomically expensive staff to lean on, 2.7k doesn't seem like too much for a good night's sleep.
Chimes of Opening are delightfully flavorful, but rather expensive at 3k for only 10 charges. Doesn't replace a good Disable Device skill, and is rather awkward to use while sneaking around. Almost certainly a pass.
Pearls of Power: So cheap, you can get four of them at full price for less than half the crafting COST of a Ring of Wizardry, and they don't even take up an equipment slot. You can even find them for up to spell level 9! Obviously there's something wrong with game balance here. I'll take a bushel of these babies for a decent range of spell levels, probably 2-4.
Boots of Levitation: another one of those "you fool, you spent a Hex slot for that?" items. doesn't even use charges. 7.5k is cheap enough that every mid level adventurer should have a pair. Period.
Gloves of Storing offers another layer of protection for that royally expensive Staff, but is itself a touch expensive for what it does. Great for subterfuge, but... again, 10k is just not really reasonable.
Necklace of Adaption is potentially marvelous! See all the spells I listed earlier which protect a subject from extremes of heat/cold and poisonous vapors? 9k wouldn't be too much if I thought I needed it.
The Owl Figurine is yet another one of those "Don't waste a Hex on that" items. Combined with a decent flying / improved Familiar, you won't need no stinkin' Prying Eyes.
Broom of Flying... cute... real cute... come over here and say that to my face! :smallfurious: In all seriousness, this item is simply not worth it to buy. By the time a Witch can reasonably afford to plunk down that much on a single item, she can cast the spell Overland Flight which lasts just as long. Broom would be much better if your DM rules that it functions as a mount, allowing you to use the Ride skill to direct it without using up your own Move Actions (read: Cackle!)
Cloak of the Bat I have to admit I'm a real sucker for how flavorful this item is. Functional to boot! A touch expensive at the sticker price, but at Cost is quite worth it, say I!
Headband of Fat Head probably only +4 because the benefit of the extra expense for that last +2 at this level is almost certainly not worth giving up the Staff I intend to design for myself.

Upward in cost from there is mostly just gravy, special lusty eyes for the Orb of Storms, Wings of Flying, Boots of Teleportation, Crystal Balls of any sort, Cloak of Etherealness, Tomes and Manuals, the Cube of Force, and so on. There really are quite a few items sitting around or potentially created which can alleviate even a "full caster's" problems with spell access. I tend to see Wondrous Items as a means of "freeing up spell slots". When your broom can whisk you away, that spell slot could be used on Teleport, right? Errr, that's not right... uhhh Baleful Polymorph! Right. No need to prepare practical spells. Just concentrate on more Save-or-Dies.

An interlude on Staves (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/staves).

Let's take the time to review the process of creating and pricing Staves (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items).

Specifically, where it says: "The creator must have prepared the spells to be stored", and basically casts the spells into the staff every day while crafting it. This suggests to me that a character can't get around the requirement by simply increasing the DC to create the item by 5 or whatever, like you could with a Wondrous Item, say.

And here's the part where it gets weird. If the staff has has a spell on [the Witch] spell list, she can recharge it even if none of the other spells are on her list. But this begs a question: which spell slot does she expend to do so? What if the highest spell level in the staff is different for different classes who can cast that spell?

Recharging the thing is almost beside the point, though, so long as the Witch can do so:


she can also imbue one staff with a portion of her power so long as one or more of the spells cast by the staff is on her spell list and she is capable of casting at least one of the spells

and


the caster must forgo one prepared spell or spell slot of a level equal to the highest-level spell cast by the staff.

So it's pretty cut and dried as far as I'm concerned:

If a Witch commissioned a Staff to be custom crafted containing all sorts of spells she isn't otherwise capable of casting herself, she could still use and recharge the Staff in all ways normally simply having a spell contained within it that she could cast herself. The spells would use her Intelligence modifier, too.

Anyone see anything about Staves that wouldn't go according to this plan?


I have to point out here that the Mystic Theurge is universally scorned because it severely hampers the progression of the two best spell lists in the game, not because the classes required for entry are somehow deficient. It is most certainly not "proof" of the Cleric or Wizard being underpowered. If anything, it serves as the opposite.

That being said, the Witch is not far behind either of them. I can see your misgivings, and I agree that some points are not examples of stellar design. But in comparison to many other classes, I believe the Witch is well done.

Wanting to be both the Wizard and the Cleric is, I think, where you are setting yourself up for failure with the Witch. It's never going to be as good as either one, or the Druid - the advantage is that, in a pinch, the Witch can sort of sub for whichever (pun definitely intended).

At the level cap, a 10 MT / 7 / 3 build would be essentially identical to the Witch in terms of the spell list she ends up with, but would lack Hexes. The MT is weaker than the Witch, obviously, while leveling, and it's only because most groups never go all the way to 20 and beyond that it's considered a trap option. If I were generating this character at level 20, I would take a Mystic Theurge without hesitation and I would perform better than any Witch and be more satisfied with its mechanics, besides.

That the Druid and now the Witch classes exist is definitely proof that hybrid "divine and arcane" spell lists are not too much -- and the distinction between "divine" and "arcane" is one of the major pet peeves I have with d20. I didn't say that MT proved Clerics and Wizards were weak, I simply noted that the way d20's multiclassing system works causes the MT to not work as advertised for 80% of your adventuring career (disastrously so for the first 50% of it). Frankly, I think the Witch should function as well as a Gestalt Wizard/Cleric -- within the carefully defined areas of specialization which her spell list is obviously focused. Debuffs, manipulation, divination, buffs and party support. She is already most of the way there, in fact, and what's left doesn't feel like enough to claim as a "balancing factor". It feels incomplete and unsatisfying. Not "she can't gain those last few spells because she'd be overpowered if she did".

And I have to wonder why can't the Witch be as good as a Cleric, a Wizard or a Druid? Why does she have to make do with "being almost good enough in a pinch"? That, to me, is just insult to injury, y'know? Tells me that there's definitely more balance work to be done -- and Paizo introduced the Witch class to the system. Cleric, Wiz and Dr00d were here before she was, so Paizo's at fault for doing an incomplete job of remastering the 3.Xe system that they seem to have hijacked from WotC.


Do you find yourself saying this about all other classes that aren't the Wizard and Cleric? If so, ask your GM if you can Gestalt a Wizard and Cleric, as there are no solutions for your particular troubles in all of the Pathfinder books.

Most of the Wizard School Powers are crap when compared to what Sorcerers or Oracles get, or, yes, many of the Hexes. But some of them are phenomenal, like the Foresight school, in particular, which is so extremely strong that I would go so far as to say every other Wizard school specialization was a noob trap.

The Druid gets a slew of Druid-specific spells on top of its defining class feature, Wild Shape, and several other class features besides. The Hex class feature system would be nice and all -- if there were half-decent competition for half of those Hex slots. But, in fact, Witches are hard pressed to pick a different set of Hexes from every other Witch out there. The winners are just obvious. Smelling children? Really? Long finger nails? Why can't she just stop trimming her nails and spend that Hex on something else?

And no, about the Wizard and Cleric, the Witch (and to a certain extent, the Mystic Theurge PrC) is literally the only class which I have difficulty justifying an existence for. The Druid I feel can hold its own and can serve as the party's "primary caster", especially in a campaign or setting with a more nature-y or wilderness theme to it. The half-casters like Bards and Inquisitors seem more than fine to me. Sorcerers, Oracles, both seem perfectly fine, I have never felt frustrated by their mechanics, quite the opposite in fact. They have plenty of options and mechanics to allow them to perform very well for what they advertise. The Witch, though, is entirely a problem of false advertising to me. She promises a hybridized spell list and delivers only half-heartedly, skipping more than half of both divine and arcane lists and still not including a huge number of flavor-appropriate spells. She promises amazing Hexes and delivers with one or two and the rest are utter trash. And she literally does not offer anything other those two things.

That's my problem with the Witch. She's "so close and yet so far" from being what she promised me she'd be, and I see such a simple fix for it, that I'm just baffled by the opposition I'm meeting with here.

If you're talking about comparing non-casters to Clerics and Wizards, I have never understood why people get so upset over the "Batman Wizards are OP" baloney. It's not a PvP game. It's a team game. Spellcasters have a role to fill in a party just like warriors and thieves do, and in more than a decade of playing with D&D from 2nd edition on up, I have never seen a convincing argument that Wizards "can do anything the rest can do but better". The arguments always boil down to "but if I had every spell ever published prepared to cast simultaneously and the blue moon was holding its mouth just right and not distracted or directly attacked by pink unicorns and flying pigs...", and that's just nonsense.

What I have seen in actual play is that Wizards and Clerics perform a role which is no more important than anyone else's overall even if it is a difficult and sometimes very rewarding role. Certain types of players may be drawn to playing those classes, though, and that more than explains the social-dynamic tension I've seen at the table. When those types of people are not behind the wheel of the caster, they're taking the spotlight while driving the warrior. Case dismissed, y'know? :smalltongue:

[Gnorman]

Case dismissed, y'know?

I think you mean "I rest my case."

Here's the problem I see with comparing them to the Big Three. It comes down to this (admittedly absurdly reductive) statement: "Free candy is totally underpowered compared to free candy and free ice cream." I find it difficult to view a substantive problem here, if we are to use the Wizard/Cleric/Druid as a model. If your argument is simply that the Witch is inconsistently designed, I'd be more inclined to agree with you (but less inclined to sympathize, as I think the Witch was a step in the right direction in terms of limiting the breadth of spell caster options).


Why does she have to make do with "being almost good enough in a pinch"?

Because she's ALMOST good enough in two roles. I don't buy the druid as being a hybrid between arcane and divine, and I'd be curious to hear what you see as the essential distinction between the two.

As to the hexes issue: perhaps it is an aftershock of ivory tower design, an emphasis on fluff over utility, or a simple lack of creativity / perspective on the part of the designers. I can't speak to that.


It's not a PvP game. It's a team game. Spellcasters have a role to fill in a party just like warriors and thieves do

The problem is when the spellcasters have so much power and so many options that they can not only fill their own role, but that of the rest of the party. The cleric can fight better than the fighter can ever dream of. The wizard can easily take care of locks and traps, and who needs a party face when you have Dominate Person? "Guy who hits stuff with sword" or "Sneaky guy" is a much, much narrower design concept that "Guy who is magic," and the role is much narrower accordingly.

Being the sidekick / pack mule for the guy you can kill gods with a second thought, while you're stuck hitting stuff really really hard with what is essentially a poorly-carved stick in comparison is not a lot of fun. That's why people complain about the balance issue. It's not about competition. It's about a horrid imbalance in collective contribution. There are ways to deal with it, but you have to put in extra effort to do so.


The arguments always boil down to "but if I had every spell ever published prepared to cast simultaneously and the blue moon was holding its mouth just right and not distracted or directly attacked by pink unicorns and flying pigs...", and that's just nonsense.

EDIT: Not going to rebut this, actually.

[Naked Granny]

I think you mean "I rest my case."

No, I mean that I am dismissing the case. Because I am the judge of my gaming experience, not anyone else.


Here's the problem I see with comparing them to the Big Three. It comes down to this (admittedly absurdly reductive) statement: "Free candy is totally underpowered compared to free candy and free ice cream." I find it difficult to view a substantive problem here, if we are to use the Wizard/Cleric/Druid as a model. If your argument is simply that the Witch is inconsistently designed, I'd be more inclined to agree with you (but less inclined to sympathize, as I think the Witch was a step in the right direction in terms of limiting the breadth of spell caster options).

All full casters have both the candy and the ice cream except for the Witch who has only candy. Ergo, she is obviously not a full caster even though she has paid for the ice cream.

And -- AGAIN -- I am not saying that I think Pathfinder should rewrite the Witch with the complete and combined spell lists of the Cleric and the Wizard.

Please. People. Stop it with the slippery slope, to use the correct logical fallacy terminology.

What I am talking about here is designing a character to suit my purposes using in-game rules to shore up the spells which don't appear on the Witch's spell list because I will need them.

Even if I were appointed by Paizo to republish the Witch as I saw fit, I would be adding perhaps a dozen or even 16 spells to her list -- and she would be losing about ten or twelve, too, which I don't feel are appropriate to her flavor. The few spells I want her to be able to cast are both flavor appropriate (so much so that I can't understand why she doesn't have them and how she can be considered a "witch" without them) and will not by themselves cause the Witch as written to overshadow any of the other classes.


Because she's ALMOST good enough in two roles. I don't buy the druid as being a hybrid between arcane and divine, and I'd be curious to hear what you see as the essential distinction between the two.

I like to describe the Druid as being a Cleric who has merged the arcane Conjuration and Evocation schools onto his list and gained a huge chunk of Transmutation as well. It's true. Druids spontaneously summon creatures, they're very good at dealing with summoning friends to help, they have a whole bunch of non-summoning spells which behave very similar to the Wizard's school of Conjuration, too. They get a much stronger emphasis on "nukes" than the Cleric does, though with a "natural-world" flavor. The Polymorph Self and Flesh-to-Stone business is the meat and potatoes of Transmutation. Druids also have very good Divination and Abjuration spells. The essence of "divine magic" in D&D though has always been "divine casters can cast healing spells" which Arcane casters cannot at all.

The Witch is simply intended to be an inversion of the Druid.

Instead of big flashy Conjurations and Evocations, she focuses on Enchantment and Divination, she also gains quite a few spells from Necromancy, but unlike the Druid who got all the important effects to accomplish the secondary "talents" in his portfolio, the Witch's spell list was poorly planned and she just kind of got stuck with whatever the darts landed on. If she's supposed to be a dark, occultic manipulator, why doesn't she have any of the important anti-undead spells? Especially since without them she has literally nothing she can bring against the undead (which would make her, again, the only supposed "full caster" with such a huge huge huge weakness). And aren't Illusions supposed to be "manipulator"-type effects? Why were those left off? Why the random splattering of Evocations picked willy nilly without even a theme to them? Why does she clearly have more of a party support role than the Druid and yet miss out on so many buffs which are iconic to witches in myth and lore?

It's not that her spell list should contain every spell ever published, but without the appropriate ones, then all the fluff and art just falls flat because the mechanics simply do not support it when you actually take time out from abusing Slumber and Cackle to look.


As to the hexes issue: perhaps it is an aftershock of ivory tower design, an emphasis on fluff over utility, or a simple lack of creativity / perspective on the part of the designers. I can't speak to that.

I can.

The Witch class works better as an NPC than as a PC, and that's absolutely wrong on every level. Bad game design, bad wording, bad everything. I would suspect that the game developers have too much experience as DMs and not enough as players.


The problem is when the spellcasters have so much power and so many options that they can not only fill their own role, but that of the rest of the party. The cleric can fight better than the fighter can ever dream of. The wizard can easily take care of locks and traps, and who needs a party face when you have Dominate Person? "Guy who hits stuff with sword" or "Sneaky guy" is a much, much narrower design concept that "Guy who is magic," and the role is much narrower accordingly.

Being the sidekick / pack mule for the guy you can kill gods with a second thought, while you're stuck hitting stuff really really hard with what is essentially a poorly-carved stick in comparison is not a lot of fun. That's why people complain about the balance issue. It's not about competition. It's about a horrid imbalance in collective contribution. There are ways to deal with it, but you have to put in extra effort to do so. The available options vary wildly from game to game, but Planar Binding alone can outperform the fighter while still representing a fraction of the options available to the Wizard.

MMMMkay, well I'm just gonna call those two paragraphs complete and unabashed lies. It is not true that Clerics fight better than Fighters, that is just... not true even a little bit. And Planar Binding producing a combatant better than said Fighter? Trolling is supposed to be subtle, you know. I am aware of the myth that got popular due to inter-class envy and Low-Magic-Campaign-aficianados, but even a cursory examination of Pathfinder gives the lie away, and I will not spend any more time addressing this baloney.

Go make your own caster-hate thread if you want to, but you're polluting this one which is mine.

[Paulcynic]

Well, you've already said that you wont be convinced. Speaking for myself, I'm participating in your discussion as a way to help you, not thwart you, in achieving your goal. And if you make a claim that on its face is just wrong, I'd like to help you understand as best that I can why the rules and mechanics are not as you've claimed. But you're also talking in circles, complaining that the Witch isn't as powerful as the Wizard, and then in the next post claim that the gaming community has over inflated the power level of said Wizard--saying its nothing to aspire to. Its confusing, and seems like your position is simple opposition. The real problem here is that you have a very limited set of examples by which to draw your broad conclusions. Please take your fellows seriously when we post examples that set the record straight.

For example: I think for all the examples shown, you've not read the offerings which show that your view on this issue is related to your inexperience with the mechanics. Fortune and Misfortune are two of the most powerful abilities in the game, they virtually have an infinite duration when the witch Cackles. Slumber hex may bore you, but it makes the target Helpless, which means a free coup-de-grace against any HD creature. Unless you have a bad GM who has made all of the BBGs immune to Mind-affecting, the witch actually pwns Bosses. She's a boss controller. Bosses are the hardest and most fun encounter type, and the Witch just brings them to their knees. You don't kill faster than Slumber --> Helpless --> Coup-de-grace --> Fort save DC 40+ or die. And her spell list may be missing the "everything" you will find in the wizard's, but her list includes everything you need to defend herself against melee attackers (Blindness, and many other spell options), as well as be sneaky. And she get Miracle through the Endurance Patron.

I'm offering facts, but it doesn't seem useful to offer helpful insights against subjective rigidity.

You're the only one so far in this discussion who feels that the Witch is a terrible and underpowered class. Your assertions as to why have been argued against.

Perhaps a more productive thread for you would be to ask: What would be the best custom Patron spell list if I want to achieve X and Y? This will remove any instinct from those participating in your thread to argue facts against opinion.

Good luck bud, I hope you achieve what you've set out to achieve.

[Paulcynic]

MMMMkay, well I'm just gonna call those two paragraphs complete and unabashed lies. It is not true that Clerics fight better than Fighters, that is just... not true even a little bit. And Planar Binding producing a combatant better than said Fighter? Trolling is supposed to be subtle, you know. I am aware of the myth that got popular due to inter-class envy and Low-Magic-Campaign-aficianados, but even a cursory examination of Pathfinder gives the lie away, and I will not spend any more time addressing this baloney.

Go make your own caster-hate thread if you want to, but you're polluting this one which is mine.

Ah, damn. That was just an ugly bit of unnecessary ad hominem. The real solution to your problems did not require you to request help from the GitP community, as you already knew exactly what you wanted to do. It has become apparent that you're here to pick a fight.

[Ravens_cry]

Geeze Louise on French Peas!:smallsigh: Can you people take this to a different thread?

[Naked Granny]

Well, you've already said that you wont be convinced.

I won't be convinced by petty lies and what amounts to "urban myth", no.


Speaking for myself, I'm participating in your discussion as a way to help you, not thwart you, in achieving your goal.

Yes, you're probably the only contributing poster in the thread, and I appreciate it -- I just had no idea when I finally registered for these forums that having a contributing poster in a thread would be a noteworthy cause for celebration.


And if you make a claim that on its face is just wrong, I'd like to help you understand as best that I can why the rules and mechanics are not as you've claimed.

So far, I feel like I've understood absolutely perfectly the arguments made to me, but that mine haven't been understood even a little bit. I doubt this is a unique situation when people disagree, but it is puzzling that I have shown how various peoples' ideas were self-contradictory or incorrect and yet somehow I am the one people keep repeating is ignorant or inexperienced. Without anything to support that claim aside from "noooo, dude, you're, just so wrong. so wrong, dude."

Despite myself, my opinion of these forums is now that they are actually worse than 4chan, just with less porn.


But you're also talking in circles, complaining that the Witch isn't as powerful as the Wizard, and then in the next post claim that the gaming community has over inflated the power level of said Wizard--saying its nothing to aspire to.

It's perfectly possible that the Wizard class isn't too powerful and that the Witch class isn't as powerful as the Wizard. Some silly little kid wrote up a "tier list" and it garnered much attention, and then snowballed as people piled onto the bandwagon and it became a meme that "lol Wiz is OP!", even though the whole premise was based on a complete fallacy and has nothing to do with how the game is actually played between friends sitting at a real honest-to-god tabletop.


Its confusing, and seems like your position is simple opposition.

So... when someone can prove that they hold a more accurate understanding of a thing, it's just "simple opposition" when they don't bow to the clamoring roar of a meme that gained traction amongst internet kiddies and Civil War Simulationists?


The real problem here is that you have a very limited set of examples by which to draw your broad conclusions.

I think it would help to go back and take stock of who has, and how often, made rude statements including things like "Well, we've had a Witch player in our group once" and "I was amazing and better than anyone else in my group while I was playing a Witch" and "I've never met you and I know nothing about you but you've never played a Witch before and you don't know what you're talking about."


Please take your fellows seriously when we post examples that set the record straight.

The presumption is noted.

I still claim my right to disregard rude and illogical assertions, whether by fellow forum members or god's trumpet-totting divine messenger. It isn't my fault that so far only unconvincing personal anecdotes, outrageous fallacies and emotionally-motivated assertions have been made decrying everything from my intelligence to my gaming experience and history. And this is, what, the first thread I've ever made here? A fine how de do.

What weight should I give to users such as this?


For example: I think for all the examples shown, you've not read the offerings which show that your view on this issue is related to your inexperience with the mechanics.

I have, in fact, and then I went on to show that my experience with the mechanics allows me to know that my view on "this issue" is still valid -- and then to prove how.


Fortune and Misfortune are two of the most powerful abilities in the game, they virtually have an infinite duration when the witch Cackles.

Theory and practice seldom agree, and this is one such example of forum users posting based on what they've read and not based on how the game actually plays. If a Witch wants to spend all day Cackling to maintain one or two Hexes, she will do so only until she needs to use her Move Action which she most certainly will in order to avoid a charging orc if not to place another Hex on something out of range. And once allowed to lapse, those Hexes can't be reapplied. You get a grace period once you level up some, sure, but how many Move Actions will you be giving up and how many will you have to use to Move in order to stay alive?

It's just not believable that mine is the only DM in the world who is smart enough to force the Witch to Move more than once in a combat. As if it were difficult to do in the first place considering the short range on her Hexes.


Slumber hex may bore you, but it makes the target Helpless, which means a free coup-de-grace against any HD creature.

It does bore me. To sleep, actually. It wouldn't if the class weren't forced to use it so often -- by lack of any other good options. Elves can't be all that rare, even in Pathfinder, though. Constructs. Undead. Various random monsters of many sorts and descriptions are all flat out immune to Slumber, and Undead alone as a creature group make up a huge portion of what PCs will be facing.

I am acutely aware of how useful it is to provoke a coup-de-grace (http://dndtools.eu/spells/draconomicon--92/hiss-of-sleep--1009/), thanks. Sleep isn't a new thing to d20, Pathfinder's Witch is an amateur at abusing it. And DMs around the world are well practiced at countering it.


Unless you have a bad GM who has made all of the BBGs immune to Mind-affecting, the witch actually pwns Bosses. She's a boss controller.

That's a pretty big "if" there. Mind-affecting is a very common thing for monsters to be immune to. From vermin to swarms to gelatinous cubes, from high Will-save NPCs to mindless and alien beings and creatures that just don't sleep, it doesn't take any real special effort to encounter a huge portion of foes which are immune to Slumber. I would go so far as to say that it quite likely the most common immunity in the game.


Bosses are the hardest and most fun encounter type, and the Witch just brings them to their knees.

I do find the notion of "bosses" to be a charming import from video gaming. Important and powerful NPCs are not necessarily killable or even assailable just because they confront the PCs in combat.

And not all tabletop groups run such "big powerful opponent" encounters alike. What if our group doesn't enjoy "bosses"? What if our group tends to actually avoid the risks of taking on such powerful entities? What if our group is the "boss"?


You don't kill faster than Slumber --> Helpless --> Coup-de-grace --> Fort save DC 40+ or die.

So... are you telling me that the power to kill in combat is the sole determinant of a class' design, power and value to a group? That there isn't more to the game than one combat after another?

Maybe someone doesn't have as much experience at the table as he'd like me to believe.


And her spell list may be missing the "everything" you will find in the wizard's, but her list includes everything you need to defend herself against melee attackers (Blindness, and many other spell options), as well as be sneaky. And she get Miracle through the Endurance Patron.

If her spell list had "everything she needs to defend herself"... how come I can produce a list of dozens of defensive spells that she could make very good use of? Blinding one charging orc doesn't really do much about the ten others who are right behind him.

As for being sneaky, actually, if you look at her spell list, she has a profound lack of sneakiness despite her bent toward manipulating the minds of others. Relying on the Stealth skill alone is a rather precarious position to be in when one has been Dominating and Cursing in town all day.


I'm offering facts, but it doesn't seem useful to offer helpful insights against subjective rigidity.

What you're encountering is someone with the insight to recognize that your helpful insights aren't the whole story and how many holes and gaps there are in the strategies available to the Witch which no one has yet provided a satisfactory answer to. If I'm not satisfied by the repetition of "use Slumber on it", then maybe it should occur to one that I'm not who is rigid.


You're the only one so far in this discussion who feels that the Witch is a terrible and underpowered class. Your assertions as to why have been argued against.

Ineffectually.

I haven't ever described the Witch as "underpowered", by the way. There's more to game design than just "under or over powered", believe it or not. Some aspects of the Witch may be outrageously powerful and yet offering in no real gameplay value. Slumber and Cackle, for example. Having those two Hexes doesn't mean that the Witch is "overpowered". Poorly designed, certainly, but this doesn't have anything to say about her overall power compared to any other entity in the game's system. Similarly, having a non-functional spell list doesn't mean that Witches are "underpowered" even if they can't perform in their task. Again, badly designed and not working correctly, yes, but that has nothing to do with any assignment of "power".

What has happened here is a bunch of armchair, amateur game designers think they're qualified to shout me down just because they're so attached to a meme ("omg, wiz OP lol!") and they outnumber me.

I don't really care for this forum, there's nothing interesting to be gained here, apparently. I've been accomplishing my goal on my own while subjected to pointless abuse while here, though. And you all don't even have the decency to be ashamed of yourselves. Instead, you tell me it's my fault that you're abusing me in no uncertain terms.

Fabulous.


Perhaps a more productive thread for you would be to ask: What would be the best custom Patron spell list if I want to achieve X and Y?

Which I did.


This will remove any instinct from those participating in your thread to argue facts against opinion.

And it didn't.


Good luck bud, I hope you achieve what you've set out to achieve.

And I have, no thanks to all but one here, thanks.

The problem with D&D is that one has to play with the sorts of people who play D&D.

[Gnorman]

The tier system is not a myth, nor is it gospel truth. It's merely a metric.

I say that the cleric can outfight the fighter (albeit temporarily) because of spells like Divine Power (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/divine-power) and Righteous Might (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/righteous-might) (which were, admittedly, more problematic in stock 3.5). The cleric may also heal, buff, debuff, nuke, control, etc., while still maintaining a large stable of utility spells, many of which can solve obstacles by themselves. Anecdotal evidence will vary, but the fact that they have a wealth of options is pretty much objective.

By comparison, the fighter is good at fighting, and perhaps a few skills or magic items allow him to go beyond that. You're quite right in pointing out that D&D is not just a combat game. That works against the fighter, whose skills lie primarily in that arena. But by that same token, why do you criticize the witch for having non-combat-related options? They're just that - options. The problem, as I see it, is that certain classes have many more than others. As such, spellcasters can deal with a wider range of approaches than non-casters. That's why we have the accusation of the wizard being stronger (your description of which I find disingenuous - it's not a "Wiz is OP lol" meme or a mindless bandwagon; there's more to it than that). It's not that they're "overpowered" per se - it's that they live in an exponential, quantum universe, where the more mundane classes are stuck in a linear, formalist one.

The Witch has a number of problem-solving abilities that go far beyond what most classes are capable of, by virtue of being a full spellcaster. The hexes and the choice of patron are just gravy, and I don't agree with your assertion that only a few choices are objectively viable. People will find a way to justify every option, even if it is not the most optimal choice. Even if she doesn't get ice cream, she still gets a lot of candy. Halloween has been kind to her. Some kids don't get anything at all. The Witch may not get as many Snickers bars as you would have hoped, and you may not like Whoppers (or feel that they are not appropriate), but her ability to choose the kind of candy she gets (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch/witch-patrons) is already pretty good.

Deception or Trickery for illusions.
Healing for Restoration.
Spirits gets you Planar Ally, which is close to Binding.
Occult gets you the anti-undead spells you wanted.
Strength or Ancestors have some decent buffs.

If nothing else, can you discuss the possibility of altering the spell list with your DM? Get rid of the ones you find lacking thematically, replace with the ones you do? The custom patron precedent has already been set, shouldn't be too hard to at least give it a shot.

[ThunderCat]

On personal attacks and the design of the Witch class,





Or.

Perhaps you're wrong about that.

Or.

Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of this thread.

Or both.

How dare you.

Arrogant, am I?

Of course. You couldn't possibly just not be as good at optimization as perhaps you ought to be in order to deserve to play the game the way you want.

Your party is not mine. Your goals were assuredly not mine.

I can hardly be more ignorant about the optimisation skills of my co-players than you are, so I don't see what's arrogant about talking about it. As for your comment about 'deserving' to play any type of game, I don't think gaming is something you have to earn. If someone in my group wants to play a powerful character, but don't have the skills to make such a character themselves, I help them make a more powerful character, because gaming is supposed to be fun, not a competition. As for myself, I get to play the game I want, I just realise that not every class is equally easy to make into a powerhouse, so if I'm lazy and want to be a powerhouse anyway, I stay away from certain builds.


Oh, really? I think the sentiment that Wizards, Clerics and Druids are overpowered "says it all", too...

They aren't, actually, especially when my goal is to find a way to substitute the Witch for a Wizard. Especially when the function, flavor and purpose of the non-casters has no overlap with that of the spellcasters.

Of course there is overlap between the roles of casters and non-casters. Divination spells vs. perception, tracking, and knowledge skills. Damage spells vs. non-magic attacks. Fly spells vs. movement skills. Magically conjured food and lodging vs. the survival skill. Charm spells vs. social skills. Summoning spells vs. tanking. Etc. etc.. Sometimes certain non-casting classes can do something somewhat better or easier than certain casting classes, but usually, the casters are able to contribute with more. I don't mind a whole lot, but I don't pretend 3E or 3.P is balanced.


If the Witch "just isn't the class for me", then D&D certainly isn't the game for you.

The difference here is that you have expressed severe dissatisfaction with the Witch, whereas I have no major issues with D&D. I think that if a class doesn't appeal to you, you should play a class that does. That doesn't mean I don't have fun playing D&D, even though there some classes I rarely if ever play.


With healing spells featuring so prominently on both Hex feature list and in spell list alike, with Witches being described first and foremost in myth and legend as healers...

Where in legend and myth have witches been described first and foremost as healers? Especially in European folklore (which is where the PF Witch seems to have drawn most of its inspiration)?


So because that's the thing you like about Witches in myth and story, that should be the only thing they can do?

No, but focussing on the things I like about Witches in myth and legend isn't a design flaw just because it's not the thing you like. Especially not when mine seems to be very common. Even in the old 3E DMG, which offered a 'Witch' class as an example of a home-brewed class, they mentioned that the Witch was not as good a healer as the Cleric but that “she can offer a little help to those she favors” IIRC. So it's not exactly an idea invented by PF. Similarly, I've never minded the idea of a holy warrior, or a religious figure less focussed on spells than a Cleric, but I've never cared for the idea of the Paladin. I was happy when the Inquisitor came out, because it was a lot closer to the kind of holy warrior I wanted to play. But that does not make the Paladin a badly designed class (though the pre-Pathfinder Paladin actually was badly designed, but for different reasons). Not fitting my preference =/= badly designed.


Considering the paltry 30' range on their Hexes, I would definitely describe that as "wading" in the battle. Up to the armpits. Achilles was protected rather thoroughly by a witch's ensorcellment

Thetis was a Nereid, not a Witch. Calling her a nymph, goddess, or titan (since she was the daughter of one) would be more correct. And the myth does not mention her bewitching her son, merely dipping him in the river Styx, which she, as a divine creature, had access to. According to another myth, she held him over a fire to burn away the mortal parts of him. Heracles was also thought to have gained at least part of his divine strength through drinking from Hera's breast, but that does not make Hera a witch.


Clearly, buffs, utility and party support are a very major part of the Witch class, both Paizo's printed version and the one that might hope to capture the essence of myth, story and legend.

That seems to be circular logic. How about the option that the Witch was just meant to have a decent (but not overwhelming) amount of buffs, utility and party support so supplement it's primary focus, which is on SoDs and debuffing? And if you don't like it, I think it would be a lot easier to talk about if you'd do more to distinguish between “It's bad design” and “It's not what I want”.


No, I meant the mechanics of SLAs which have no limit to their uses per day in combination with spamming one of them for 90% of all the player's turns. I am displeased with the design of the Warlock, I hate it intensely. It is the epitome of poor design and is deeply unsatisfying to play.

Since many people liked the Warlock immensely, I wouldn't say it's poor design. I also don't like classes whose major shtick is “I make a full attack on the monster”, but I don't begrudge people who do, or claim that classes which appeal to this demographic are automatically badly designed just because I personally find them boring.


If Witches weren't supposed to be primary healers, why does the Healer Patron exist and why do they get almost every healing spell except Restoration at Cleric levels, without needing a Patron, rather than as Druids do?

Archetypes exist to allow people to do something different with their class, or focus more on a specific sub-set of abilities. And just as you haven't demanded that a Witch should be more focussed on undead, water, ice, or attacking people with its hair just because there are archetypes for it, I don't think it's fair to demand that the Witch should be able to work as a primary healer straight out of the box, merely because there is an archetype for it. Also, Druids gain Cure spells very similarly to a Witch (their entry is delayed by one from Cure Moderate Wounds, Witches' from Cure Serious Wounds) and even get Neutralize Poison a level earlier, and they're still not considered to be obvious primary healers either. That's not to say Druids and Witches can't do it, it's just not their main strength compared to Clerics or Oracles (especially Oracles with the Healing mystery).


What's so amazing about a full caster that can produce a SoD when needed? I haven't mentioned any of the Major or Grand Hexes because, frankly, they are just as unimpressive as the normal Hexes and easily reproduced or surpassed by level-appropriate spells.

The amazing parts about these SoDs are that they:

1: Are automatically Silenced and Stilled.

2: Can't be counter-spelled or dispelled.

3: Are able to ignore SR and other protections from spells (Spell Immunity, Globe of Invulnerability, Spell Turning).

4: Have scaling DCs.

5: Cost you no spell slots.

6: Can be cast on every enemy you meet (twice the Accursed Hex feat if they succeed their saving throw) without running out.

Those are some pretty significant advantages. Most casters don't have enough of their highest level spells to last through every encounter on a busy day, meaning they have to resort to lower level spells with lower DCs. And vancian casters are limited in that every spell prepared costs them some utility in other areas, meaning they'll usually try to conserve their spells as much as possible. In contrast, Hex DCs are always as high as your highest or second-highest spells, and you have all your real spells to supplement them with. Granted, if you never run out of high level spells, never face enemies who try to counter-spell or use means to protect themselves specifically from spells, are never prevented form using verbal or somatic components, and don't encounter enemies with spell resistance, a lot of the advantages of Hexes are negated. Then again, if you never encounter enemies at a distance, a lot of the advantages of archery are negated too. As you said yourself, you can't protect yourself from bad DMing.


I'm not sure it's really worth responding to the suggestion that a Witch, when faced with a large number of foes, should spend each turn using Slumber on a single target. Is this really what passes as "effective crowd control", or is it just something blurted out in a red-cheeked huff because I have the gumption to declare Witches poorly designed?

I was pointing out that your two complaints didn't go well together. That a Hex (barring the Split Hex feat) is single-target is only a weakness if there are multiple enemies, and that a Hex (barring the Accursed Hex feat) can only be cast once on each enemy is mainly relevant if there are no other enemies to target. That being said, the lack of AoE or multi-target Hexes (barring Split Hex) is a limitation. But not an unreasonable one IMO. I think it's OK, even good, for a class to have areas where it's not as effective as other classes. Not to mention that unless you're fighting a horde of weak minions, taking out an enemy per round is not bad at all, and if your Hexes are not appropriate for the situation, your spells ensure that you wont be completely useless.


Fortune had better be extended by Cackle, by golly! Because you don't get to affect that person with it again for the rest of the day! And then there's the problem of needing to Cackle while also needing to be quiet... In my experience, most of the rolling with tension involved are for sneaking around.

Strange how you focus on the importance of stealth in relation to one of the only Hexes in existence whose fluff includes sound, and yet ignore the advantage most Hexes have over spells in being stealthy.


Compare the Flight Hex against the Air Wizard's ability... The Wizard has to wait a while for it, but gets unlimited flight. By that level, both classes are able to cast Overland Flight, sure, but when you need to book it, the move speed does help. As does the unlimited duration. And Wizards can cast Levitate an unlimited number of times, too. This is, to me, a clear case where the developers simply "forgot" and left the Hex in an incomplete state. I think the Hex should allow unlimited Flight at level 10, just as Air Wizards get, and most especially because it is such a core ability for Witches -- they'd be sitting ducks without it! Leaving Levitate at 1 use per day is pretty insulting, too, and the whole Hex, though a nice thought, really lacks the scaling it needs to feel like a properly rewarding class ability.

The Air Wizard's ability is its whole class feature. And apart from a couple of sub-par blasting abilities, that's all it gets from it, whereas Flight is just one of many Hexes. In addition, an Air Wizard receives a severely limited set of school spells to prepare in its specialist slots. The Witch has a lot more freedom to choose the strongest aspects of its class features. Hexes don't come in packages where you have to take the weak with the strong, you get a lot more of them than Wizards and Clerics get schools and domain, you can get even more with feats, and they have no bearing on your patron.

[ThunderCat]

And I intend to accomplish this task using the tools already in game. Patron choice (which I now know I can custom design), race choice, skills, items and so on.

Giving any class access to a two-figured number of spells from another class list is pretty much impossible outside houseruling. The only build I can see coming close is a half-elf Oracle with the Paragon Surge spell and Eldritch Heritage (Arcane) after level 10.

For a more realistic amount of spells, there's always a Samsaran with a high INT. Also, since you made such a big deal out of how Wizards are almost as good healers as Witches because they can rely on wands and UMD, it's hard to justify treating it as a catastrophe that you don't have access to the Restoration line of spells with a non-Hedge Witch. Restoration spells are very situational anyway, so having them as scrolls and wands makes even more sense than with cure spells.


Instead of getting help with the information for which I started this thread, I get viciously attacked for stating a simple obvious fact.

Being told that your “obvious fact” is neither obvious, nor a fact, is not the same as being “viciously attacked”. You expressed an opinion which neither I, nor (it appears) anyone on this thread, agree with or have ever seen others agree with. Or in other words, a fringe opinion which has not been proven. It's only natural for people to express their disagreement, it's nothing personal.

Also, it is one thing to say something controversial, realise it's not the topic you want to discuss on the thread, tell other posters that you'll have to agree to disagree, and then steer the conversation away from that topic and into what you want to discuss, by avoiding to talk about the controversial topic and stick to the real topic of the thread. It's something completely different to use large parts of your posts to make semi-controversial claims that no-one agrees with, react to people's disagreement by posting equally long and detailed rebuttals of their claims, and then tell them that they're not allowed to address your rebuttals because it's your thread. Forum threads are not private soapboxes where disagreeing with the OP is the same as trolling.

[ngilop]

I think the OP and myself must be looking at different Witch's spell lists.

the OP claims the WItch has no defensive spells at all

just a cursoruy glance of 1st, 2ndand 3rd level spells nets me

Bungle, reduce person, mage armor, and mount
Levitate, bestow curse, fly oh and marionette possession. (yeah that spell that is magic jar but 'weakened to 3rd level cuz you need LoS...)

Now for the battlef ield control that the wicths uppsoededly has none of as well..
casue fear, command, ear peircing scream, frostbite, hypnotism, obscurring mist, sleep,

daze monster, ethrall, fog cloud, glitterdust, haunting mists, web
ash storm, cackling skull, deep slumber, stinking cloud.

and do not get me started on teh dozens of utility spells a Witch has at her disposal.

To me the witch is supposed to be more 'subtle' with her magic that a wizard, not so much being shwing with fireballs and prismatic spheres and such.

but to look at the witch's spell list and say thats it useless and incaple fo being the primary spell caster (im assuming you meant primary arcane caster becuase teh wizard would be unable to be the only spell caster in a party as well as the wizrad own spell list is unable to deal with things a standard partyw ould eventually run into)

tells me that you just happen to have lack of an idea on what is up.

I know from personal experince that A witch is more than fine being the sole arcane user in a party as those same spells that make wizards Oped witchs get as well. not to mention the cleric/druid spells the witch has on her list.

ran Carrion crown with Myself as a Witch, an Oracle of Ancestors, a barbarian and 2 rogues (the 2nd rogue went into the godling PrC, think of a fighter that gets domains and you kind have an idea)

at no point duirng the whole 18 levels of play, did myself or anybody else think " that damn witch, she cna't do anything"

[avr]

Just a suggestion, but since you're fairly unimpressed with hexes and would prefer a wider spell selection, why not write up an archetype which trades all hex ability in for domains & domain spells as per a cleric? Fluff is easy enough to come by for that concept I think; the witch has been touched by an angel/fey/whatever as well as her darker patron.

I'm not sure the trade is a power up in combat terms, which might make it easier to sell to your GM. OTOH I think it does what you're after here.

As to why PF's Witch spell list is limited, I suspect it's based off the writeup in the 3rd ed DMG about designing a character class. This had a shortish spell list (probably for space reasons) and was never expanded in 3rd ed that I know of.

[Naked Granny]

The lunar triumvirate of Maiden, Matron and Crone, represented as the Gibbous (youth or growth), Full (peak of life and maturity, light) and Crescent (bitter wisdom and doom) moon, respectively, seems to lack an important element in the portrayal of Witches and the phases of the lunar cycle. Interestingly, the seasonal and solar cycles also have a fourth phase, and all of these various cycles are commonly referred to or revered in myths, legends and lore about Witches and "the ancient way".

The Missing Phase: the New Moon

Why is it that only a triumvirate is usually mentioned as metaphor for the phases in life? It is evident after only a little thought that there still remains a fourth aspect: the aspect of non-existence, being either pre-birth or post-death, and it is strongly suggested by the nature of being a cyclical or circular arrangement, that these are in fact simply different ways of looking at the same thing.

The New Moon is both the repose of the previous cycle and the burgeoning genesis of a new one.

It is also a time of mystery, of the unknowable. The New Moon is invisible, departed from the cosmos, absent from the court of the heavens. In this way, the New Moon is an embodiment of mystery and secrets, both at once potential revelation, a secret preparing to be shared, and a hidden face, the covering-up of what was once plain to see. It is perhaps apart from the other phases of the Moon because they are all three visible, available to be interacted with, while the New Moon makes its presence felt in the world both in spite and because of its absence. The Triumvirate is often depicted as three women standing such that two of them present their profiles, but this still allows room for a fourth who stands hidden from view behind the three who are in the foreground and presented for view.

A goddess of the mysterious, the occult, the hidden, she represents the ultimately unknowable, that which is beyond, before and after life itself. In this way, she completes the cycle which living beings recognize as youth, adulthood and decrepitude. Variously represented by an empty, often ragged circle (the eclipse, or birth) or by a black disc (the void and oblivion), she is a goddess which values her privacy, secrets, occult knowledge, and that which is hidden. She completes the cycle as the link between ending and beginning. The Maiden is youthful vigor, innocence and sex appeal, she is beginning and excited by the experience of life, full of ambition. The Matron is mature, industrious and nurturing, the head of her family and home which she protects with all her being. The Crone is wise, experienced and bitter, for she feels death's approach.

Thus, the sacred Torc has an opening, even as it is a circle. It represents the severely Crescent Moon which is both the end and the beginning of the lunar cycle, and yet also encompasses the space between them, continuous as a circle despite an apparent gap.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-66UptF2HTUs/TfGfAW-L_RI/AAAAAAAAAEk/lLnW6k48xAQ/s1600/the+four+flowers.jpg


New Witch Patrons:

The Maiden:
2nd -- Protection from Arrows
4th -- Resist Energy
6th -- Beast Shape I
8th -- Freedom of Movement
10th -- Beast Shape III
12th -- Joyful Rapture
14th -- Greater Polymorph
16th -- Earthquake
18th -- Wish

The Matron:
2nd -- Endure Elements
4th -- Lesser Restoration
6th -- Protection From Energy
8th -- Restoration
10th -- Life Bubble
12th -- Antimagic Field
14th -- Greater Restoration
16th -- Protection From Spells
18th -- True Resurrection

The Crone:
2nd -- Anticipate Peril
4th -- Defending Bone
6th -- Halt Undead
8th -- Malicious Spite
10th -- Breath Of Life
12th -- Undeath To Death
14th -- Control Undead
16th -- Create Greater Undead
18th -- Energy Drain

The Veiled:
2nd -- Vanish
4th -- Undetectable Alignment
6th -- Blacklight
8th -- Greater Invisibility
10th -- False Vision
12th -- Antilife Shell
14th -- Sequester
16th -- Orb Of The Void
18th -- Time Stop


Just a suggestion, but since you're fairly unimpressed with hexes and would prefer a wider spell selection, why not write up an archetype which trades all hex ability in for domains & domain spells as per a cleric? Fluff is easy enough to come by for that concept I think; the witch has been touched by an angel/fey/whatever as well as her darker patron.

I'm not sure the trade is a power up in combat terms, which might make it easier to sell to your GM. OTOH I think it does what you're after here.

Oh yes, definitely, in fact. The problem really is only that I didn't feel at the time like it would be necessary to go to all that trouble. I haven't mentioned it to him, but I think designing a new Archetype is pretty much the next step up after designing four new Patrons. I really have no idea whether it would be worth the trouble, and if I'm to give up Hexes entirely... then why not just generate a Wizard and call myself a "witch" in game? But then, the Witch spell list does have the healing spells on it -- and that is worth something!


As to why PF's Witch spell list is limited, I suspect it's based off the writeup in the 3rd ed DMG about designing a character class. This had a shortish spell list (probably for space reasons) and was never expanded in 3rd ed that I know of.

I think you're quite right. I remember looking over that very page and thinking to myself "This couldn't hold a candle to the other casters as-is. It's practically just an Adept."

[Paulcynic]

Its always amusing to encounter someone with a low EQ. Don't worry, none of us are insulted, we understand that sometimes a person just needs to feel like a victim and stamp their feet a bit. I hope you feel better. But I do find it curious, I reread your OP and your specific request was to have the GitP community do some tedious grunt work for you by compiling all of the wizard spells not found on the witch's list. I'm sorry that nobody was willing to 'snap to it,' but do you really expect other people to do the pot scrubbing for you? I think so.

As to your Patron lists, from an outsider's perspective, they do not achieve what you have declared as your goal to 1) Improve the Witch's effectiveness as a Melee Combatant and 2) Make her a Master at Stealth. I doubt anyone would choose your patrons if they were canon for being less useful than those that already exist.

But lets begin with Theme:


Why is it that only a triumvirate is usually mentioned as metaphor for the phases in life? It is evident after only a little thought that there still remains a fourth aspect: the aspect of non-existence, being either pre-birth or post-death, and it is strongly suggested by the nature of being a cyclical or circular arrangement, that these are in fact simply different ways of looking at the same thing.

One exists pre-birth, birth is not the start of one's creation. Perhaps you meant "pre-conception?" But no, you always mean what you say. And so in this case, you've made an illogical assertion. "Phases in life" yet after death, there is no more 'you;' one is not "Invisible" and the such, as one has ceased to exist--you are not Alive. This is a very weak thematic ploy to string together another list of eclectic spells which are already achieved by the Deception (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/baseClasses/witch.html#deception), Shadow (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/baseClasses/witch.html#shadow), and Trickery (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/baseClasses/witch.html#trickery) Patrons.

There are equal problems with the Maiden, Matron, and Crone, doing nothing to address your primary complaints about the Witch:


Witches have a really glaring lack of defensive options which is a bit crippling in the early levels depending on how aggressive your DM is about targetting spellcasting PCs. Wizards get automatic access to Invisibility, Mirror Image and Blur pretty early on which helps tremendously to keep them alive

Which is what every person who has contributed to this thread assumed to address.


So... are you telling me that the power to kill in combat is the sole determinant of a class' design, power and value to a group? That there isn't more to the game than one combat after another? Maybe someone doesn't have as much experience at the table as he'd like me to believe.

Your premise this entire time has surrounded combat, forgive me for not understanding that you intended on talking to those 10 orcs that you've gone on and on and on about. Had I known that you weren't at all interested in shoring up the Witch's combat inadequacies, I'd have pointed out that the witch is one of the most capable at social game mechanics, with the Tongues and Charm hexes, she can communicate with everything, and she can charm Animals and Humanoids, which account for the majority of things one would want to ally with, rather than kill.

And since you're now intimately familiar with the Witch's spell list, you can also see that her list is peppered with the most powerful social spells: Detect Thoughts, Charm Person, Command, Augury, Enthrall, Hidden Speech, Perceive Cues, Status, Zone of Truth, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Seek Thoughts, Share Senses, Speak with Dead, Suggestion, Charm Monster, Discern Lies, Divination Geas (lesser), Locate Creature, Secure Shelter, Three Fold Aspect, Dominate Person, Mind Fog, Reincarnate, Telepathic Bond, Find the Path, Geas/Quest, Guards and Wards, Suggestion (mass), Hold Person (mass)(to stop a group of people of killing eachother or running off toward certain death), Symbol of Persuasion, Vision, Charm Monster (mass), Discern Location, Prying Eyes, Sympathy, Dominate Monster, and Refuge.


The Goal: Help me to expand my Witch's spell list using Patrons (possibly custom designed, subject to DM's approval, of course)... and whatever other means are reasonable to gain some solid defensive powers

Big obvious ones like Invisibility, Mirror Image and Stoneskin should be made priority

You will find Invisibility on the Deception list, and Mirror Image on Trickery. And she has better options than Stoneskin: Mage Armor, Beast Shape, Form of the Dragon, etc.

You will find all of the best spells to deal with Crowds of Orcs on her spell list: Hypnotism, Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud, Summon Monster II, Summon Swarm, Vomit Swarm*, Web, Screech, Sleet Storm, Stinking Cloud, Summon Monster III, Black Tentacles, Confusion, Dimension Door (to get away from crowds of orc), Solid Fog, Summon Monster IV, Wandering Star Motes, Cloud Kill, Mind Fog, Suffocation, Summon Monster V, Symbol of Sleep, Symbol of Pain, Waves of Fatigue, Cloak of Dreams, Guards and Doors (if you have 30 minutes to prepare), Suggestion (mass), Swarm Skin, Symbol of Fear, Symbol of Persuasion, Chain Lightning, Phase Door (to get Away), Scrying (greater), Summon Monster VII, Symbols of Stunning, Symbol of Weakness, Waves of Exhaustion, Charm Monster (Mass), Storm Bolts, Summon Monster VIII, Symbol of Death, Symbol of Insanity, Elemental Swarm, Storm of Vengeance, Suffocation (mass), Summon Monster IX, and Wail of the Banshee.

You will find that she has the absolute perfect blend of Restorative and Healing spells to complement her immensely useful and diverse list of Utility (teleportation, astral projection, plane shifting, sanctuary spells, all of the identify-type spells, etc), Social (see above), Crowd Control (see above), and of course her Hexes make her one of the most powerful Single Target Controllers (as discussed previously) in the game based solely on her scaling Save DCs.

Her list of restorative and healing spells include: Detect Poison, Purify Food and Drink, Stabilize, Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Dispel Magic, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Curse, Remove Disease, Share Senses, Cure Serious Wounds, Death Ward, Break Enchantment, Cure Critical Wounds, Reincarnate, Cure Light Wounds (mass), Dispel Magic (mass), Flesh to Stone, Cure Moderate Wounds (mass), Heal, Regenerate, Clone, Cure Serious Wounds (mass), Resurrection, and Cure Critical Wounds (mass).

If you want Restoration spells, take the Healing Patron from UM:

Healing: 2nd—remove fear, 4th—lesser restoration, 6th—remove disease, 8th—restoration, 10th—cleanse, 12th—pillar of life 14th—greater restoration, 16th—mass cure critical wounds, 18th—true resurrection.

I think the real problem here is the Driver, not the Vehicle. Your GM should probably tailor his combat more to suit your tastes, and your examples about being attacked by 10 orcs at once shows a stunning lack of Cooperation among the players at your table. You, and you alone are the problem, the Witch is a very USEFUL ;) and also powerful class.

Your Four Patrons show that as you looked over her available spell list, she already had everything you had complained that she lacked. And so you filled it instead with already existing spells from other Patron lists, and then you added Restoration and Control Undead and called it a "theme."

TLDR:

She Dominates at controlling, debuffing, and slaying Single Target Foes.
She Dominates at controlling, debuffing, and slaying Crowds of Foes.
She Dominates at Surviving against Single Target and Crowds of Foes.
She Dominates at winning over/Controlling and serving Others, including crowds.
She has almost all of the most powerful restorative and healing that one can expect from a hybridized Arcane/Divine list.
The only things she can't do are Rage, Bardic Performances, Smite, Ki, Summon and Eidolon, Favored Enemy, Sneak Attack, and maybe something else that's not worth looking up to make my point.
Check out the Healing, Occult, Transformation, and Endurance Patrons, and the Grave Walker archetype, of which your four homebrew patrons are analogues. This shows that what you wanted was already in the rules, you just didn't know it ;)


The Witch doesn't need Planar Binding. She doesn't need Restoration. She doesn't need to Command and Create Undead because she's not a necromancer. She's a witch. The 2nd or 3rd most powerful primary caster in the game. Everything you've asserted is uninformed opinion. And don't worry, it only took me 30 minutes to find this information; I'm sure with how amazingly smarter you are than us dumb, lying, plebes, that you can vet this information more faster.

[Paulcynic]

And since you've never read JaronK's post on how and why Tiers are designated, here is a link (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=bc18425e5fa73d30e4a9a54889edf4 4e&topic=5293) and the relevant explanation:


My general philosophy is that the only balance that really matters in D&D is the interclass balance between the various PCs in a group. If the group as a whole is very powerful and flexible, the DM can simply up the challenge level and complexity of the encounters. If it's weak and inflexible, the DM can lower the challenge level and complexity. Serious issues arise when the party is composed of some members which are extremely powerful and others which are extremely weak, leading to a situation where the DM has two choices: either make the game too easy for the strong members, or too hard for the weak members. Neither is desireable. Thus, this system is created for the following purposes:

1) To provide a ranking system so that DMs know roughly the power of the PCs in their group

2) To provide players with knowledge of where their group stands, power wise, so that they can better build characters that fit with their group.

3) To help DMs who plan to use house rules to balance games by showing them where the classes stand before applying said house rules (how many times have we seen DMs pumping up Sorcerers or weakening Monks?).

4) To help DMs judge what should be allowed and what shouldn't in their games. It may sound cheesy when the Fighter player wants to be a Half Minotaur Water Orc, but if the rest of his party is Druid, Cloistered Cleric, Archivist, and Artificer, then maybe you should allow that to balance things out. However, if the player is asking to be allowed to be a Venerable White Dragonspawn Dragonwrought Kobold Sorcerer and the rest of the party is a Monk, a Fighter, and a Rogue, maybe you shouldn't let that fly.

5) To help homebrewers judge the power and balance of their new classes. Pick a Tier you think your class should be in, and when you've made your class compare it to the rest of the Tier. Generally, I like Tier 3 as a balance point, but I know many people prefer Tier 4. If it's stronger than Tier 1, you definitely blew it.

This post is NOT intended to state which class is "best" or "sucks." It is only a measure of the power and versitliity of classes for balance purposes.

His work is very useful to the GM, and has been forged with massive input and consensus across the entire RPG community. This is another thing that you've done nothing to research, and yet you have very strong opinions on it. How can someone as seemingly intelligent as yourself be so willfully ignorant?

[Naked Granny]

Its always amusing to encounter someone with a low EQ. Don't worry, none of us are insulted, we understand that sometimes a person just needs to feel like a victim and stamp their feet a bit. I hope you feel better. But I do find it curious, I reread your OP and your specific request was to have the GitP community do some tedious grunt work for you by compiling all of the wizard spells not found on the witch's list. I'm sorry that nobody was willing to 'snap to it,' but do you really expect other people to do the pot scrubbing for you? I think so.

Well, since none of you have actually done anything except piss and moan at me while I've been doing the reading and compiling information after making sure through exhaustive search that the "community" had never done the work before already, I think your indignation is more than a bit presumptuous. "Hey, sweetie, think you could peel those potatoes for me while I making dinner?" "Aww ~mom~..." And that's when the kid starts to pitch a fit because he was asked very politely to accomplish a trivial task for the greater good.

So.... low emotional quotient? I'm hardly amused by your behavior, but yes, you're quite right, I'm not insulted that kids will be kids and I understand the need for people to viciously attack while anonymous on the internet after evading any sort of enlightenment or civil discourse.


As to your Patron lists, from an outsider's perspective, they do not achieve what you have declared as your goal to 1) Improve the Witch's effectiveness as a Melee Combatant and 2) Make her a Master at Stealth. I doubt anyone would choose your patrons if they were canon for being less useful than those that already exist.

I wish I could claim to be amazed that you think I'm trying to make a melee Witch, but... well, I didn't really believe you had read... well. Anything. As for "master of stealth", I don't think an Invisibility spell alone will do that, either, even if it were my goal -- which I defy you to show I had set out. Maybe you're referring to the breathtaking talent the users here have of deliberately re-interpreting what I do say to mean wildly dissimilar and perfectly stupid things.

Like "able to sneak around a little when required" suddenly meaning "invincible and undetectable even to the gods".


But lets begin with Theme:

Let's not, because I didn't ask for input on the fluff, and frankly no one else's opinion on my own custom-created fluff is relevant to me or this thread.


"Phases in life" yet after death, there is no more 'you;' one is not "Invisible" and the such, as one has ceased to exist--you are not Alive.

Maybe with an elementary-school level of reading comprehension you would have recognized that the "phases of life" segment referred only to the first three aspects of the lunar cycle because the connotation is explicitly that "life" is not all there is. Therefore any complaints that there isn't a "fourth season of life" are just irrelevant and transparent excuses to attack me.


This is a very weak thematic ploy to string together another list of eclectic spells which are already achieved by the Deception (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/baseClasses/witch.html#deception), Shadow (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/baseClasses/witch.html#shadow), and Trickery (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/baseClasses/witch.html#trickery) Patrons.

I didn't have to use a theme to just plop down some spells for selection, and I wasn't satisfied with any of those Patron choices, obviously, because I don't feel like wasting most of my Patron-provided potential spells on those which are already on the Witch's list -- which is because the entire purpose of this thread is to expand the Witch's spell list... wait for it... because I'm not satisfied by the existing Patrons and spell list.


There are equal problems with the Maiden, Matron, and Crone, doing nothing to address your primary complaints about the Witch:

The goal when designing these Patrons was to create fluff and then design their provided spells to fit with the criteria that the spells be thematically appropriate and not already on the Witch's spell list. Which they all do and nothing more or less.

It's not my fault that you assumed I would use Patron options alone to accomplish absolutely everything in the way of fixing what is a poorly designed class. It is definitely your fault, though, for attacking me personally as if I've committed some grave sin by not fitting your precious expectations of the world. I don't owe you anything. I'm not sorry for not fulfilling your misunderstood notions of what I'm doing. Get over yourself.


Your premise this entire time has surrounded combat, forgive me for not understanding that you intended on talking to those 10 orcs that you've gone on and on and on about. Had I known that you weren't at all interested in shoring up the Witch's combat inadequacies, I'd have pointed out that the witch is one of the most capable at social game mechanics, with the Tongues and Charm hexes, she can communicate with everything, and she can charm Animals and Humanoids, which account for the majority of things one would want to ally with, rather than kill.

Actually, if you had been paying attention, I have repeatedly and consistently, perhaps even stridently, insisted that Witches are plenty capable of offensive action in combat and that I saw their non-combat utility and party support as being lacking.

See the previous two conditions I used for designing the list of spells these four custom Patrons provide.

Spells don't have to be responsible for everything a PC does. That's probably where your anti-caster bigotry comes from, though. The expectation that players can't do anything unless it's a spell, I mean.


And since you're now intimately familiar with the Witch's spell list,

I was intimately familiar with it before, but I challenge anyone to create an exhaustive list -- from memory -- showing the overlaps and excluded spells of any two spell lists in the game, let alone three.


you can also see that her list is peppered with the most powerful social spells

I don't care about your opinion of what the "most powerful social spells" are, and I don't need to care. Furthermore, what the Witch already has is irrelevant to my thread since it is my estimation of her abilities which is important -- in my thread which I created to share my opinions and seek the help of those who shared those opinions.


You will find Invisibility on the Deception list, and Mirror Image on Trickery. And she has better options than Stoneskin: Mage Armor, Beast Shape, Form of the Dragon, etc.

The problem with the canon list of Patrons is that a Witch can only choose one Patron and it definitely feels like a "no-win" situation when none of the Patrons accomplish the design goals which the Witch actually needs. Tho needs as defined by the player's opinion -- in this case, mine. Not yours.

I wanted Patron options which would provide more than just a single spell I might want and couldn't easily obtain anyway. The Healing Patron is the closest thing to a satisfying Patron option, and that's why you'll note that The Matron resembles it quite a bit.

As for the suggestion that Mage Armor, Beast Shape and Form of the Dragon are better than Stoneskin, I don't think I've laughed quite so hard and long in my life. Let me know if I've somehow overlooked the ability of, for example, Beast Shape to bestow DR 10/adamantine to an ally.


[U]You will find that she has the absolute perfect blend of Restorative and Healing spells

No.


[B]Her list of restorative and healing spells include: Detect Poison, Purify Food and Drink, Stabilize, Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Dispel Magic, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Curse, Remove Disease, Share Senses, Cure Serious Wounds, Death Ward, Break Enchantment, Cure Critical Wounds, Reincarnate, Cure Light Wounds (mass), Dispel Magic (mass), Flesh to Stone, Cure Moderate Wounds (mass), Heal, Regenerate, Clone, Cure Serious Wounds (mass), Resurrection, and Cure Critical Wounds (mass).

Maybe you meant "Stone to Flesh" up there, as it rather strains the imagination to define the inverse as a "restorative" spell of any kind.

But in any case, the Restoration family is absolutely crucial, especially if you have an extraordinary weakness to undead and have to support a party which will be fighting undead.


If you want Restoration spells, take the Healing Patron from UM:

Yes. And so, when I designed a custom group of Patrons for use in my own campaign which you are not a participant of, you will note that I deliberately created one of them to resemble the Healing Patron from UM. Too bad you didn't notice that. Perhaps because looking at words and understanding what they mean is too much "pot scrubbing", and therefore beneath you.


I think the real problem here is the Driver, not the Vehicle. Your GM should probably tailor his combat more to suit your tastes, and your examples about being attacked by 10 orcs at once shows a stunning lack of Cooperation among the players at your table.

It's called roleplay. And sometimes characters (and players) don't or can't or shouldn't or don't want to act as a perfectly oiled, theorycrafted machine of min/max supremacy.


You, and you alone are the problem, the Witch is a very USEFUL ;) and also powerful class.

The Witch class lacked what I wanted, end of story. You have no right to tell me that I can't want what I want.

So if I disagree with you about the Witch's usefulness for my purposes, you show quite a lot of your ass to respond the way you have. Not to mention how wrong your ass is.


Your Four Patrons show that as you looked over her available spell list, she already had everything you had complained that she lacked. And so you filled it instead with already existing spells from other Patron lists, and then you added Restoration and Control Undead and called it a "theme."

Condensing the spells which the published Patrons provide into a smaller list of Patrons was for the purpose of not having to deal with a lot of useless cruft. That is, the published Patrons were 90% spells which the Witch already had on her list, meaning that there were clear "valid" choices and the rest were just traps / fluff. Obviously, this didn't satisfy me.

So now our campaign has four custom Patrons which fit the mythos of our campaign, and provide distinct flavor of their own.



The Witch doesn't need Planar Binding. She doesn't need Restoration. She doesn't need to Command and Create Undead because she's not a necromancer. She's a witch. The 2nd or 3rd most powerful primary caster in the game. Everything you've asserted is uninformed opinion. And don't worry, it only took me 30 minutes to find this information; I'm sure with how amazingly smarter you are than us dumb, lying, plebes, that you can vet this information more faster.

What you think she "needs" is irrelevant to this thread. This is my thread. And the purpose of this thread is to discuss what I'm doing about my perceptions of what needs to be done to fix the Witch.

I also don't care about your opinion regarding her "ranking". It just doesn't matter.


How can someone as seemingly intelligent as yourself be so willfully ignorant?

Perhaps because I'm intelligent enough to know that the DM can adjust the entirely-subjective "difficulty" of the game on a per-player basis and isn't restricted to designing the game at the whole-group level of resolution. This task is, in fact, extremely easy to do in the case of D&D / d20 where the mechanics of casters and non-casters are so distinct.

So... willfully ignorant? How about "not gullible" or "shrewd enough to do the research and experiment at the table rather than just blindly accept what some loudmouth made popular in a meme carefully designed to cater to the aforementioned anti-fantasy folks who really have no reason to be playing D&D in the first place"?

Or just "smarter than you and you don't like it"?

[ngilop]

SO after reading another one of your tirades rally, the only conclusion that I can come to.

and trust me, my friends have used the following sentance to describe me "in the arena of reason and logic youc ome unarmed" mostly becuase of my whismy and discordant mind and behavoir.. Ohs orry rant over now.

The only logicla conclusion a reasonable living creature can come to is.

YOU are somehow failing very very badly at playing a Witch, and instead of taking a step back and trying to see what you did wrong.. you are blaming it on the class.

then you hide behind soem crazy wiccan stuff about crones and maiden's and some kind of 4th sphere of living only its a phase of the moon>

I have to agree with a previous poster on that as well. when you die you DIE, and that means you cease to be alive...

you gripe about the ehaler patron but then go on to create a half useless version of it, due to some kind of semi real -life cultish thing about you are trying to 'capture' in a game

How you fail to see how powerful the witch actually is is beyond me. AT this point I doubt youd actually ever played a witch OR you play a witch like my RL firend level one and you charge inot 10 orcs before you ever attempt to cast spell

and if you cannot see how beast shape or dragon form or any of those other spells is better for you than stone skin.. maybe PF just is not the game for youand you shoudl stick to tiddly winks?

not getting attacked at all is much better than getting attacked in the first place, and by teh time stone skin comes online dr10/ad is laughable as monsters are hitting you for 35+ dmg a swing.

[Gnorman]

So... willfully ignorant? How about "not gullible" or "shrewd enough to do the research and experiment at the table rather than just blindly accept what some loudmouth made popular in a meme carefully designed to cater to the aforementioned anti-fantasy folks who really have no reason to be playing D&D in the first place"?

Again - the tier system is not a meme propagated by a lone voice. It's a useful metric of how versatile a particular class is, and it is neither designed to cater to a particular subset nor to be used as a sacred text. It is as viable in a high-magic universe as a low-magic one.

And, without being too reactionary, I have to say that I believe you have no prerogative dictating who has a "reason to be playing D&D in the first place." Your notions of fun are just as valid (no more, no less) as those of anyone else.

[Paulcynic]

I'm very glad that you've accomplished what you set out to accomplish. Who would have thought that swapping out a couple of spells into existing Patrons was worth pulling so many teeth :)

I'm glad that I could (indirectly) assist you in finding your way to your unstated goals. If you'd ever like to be coy about your aims again, start another thread, and we'll go from there. Oh, and Live Long and Prosper!

[Axier]

So... I came to this thread to see if someone had good ideas for Witch spell list changes. Instead, I got a thinly veiled tirade of insults from someone who is asking for help, and then not accepting it, followed by the making of a homebrew setup instead of actually making the witch "better" using tools already in the game...

Cool story bro.

Anyway, this thread is dead, so yea.

[avr]

One more suggestion, NG. The way you discuss things is a little annoying to me and clearly enraging to some others here. You might find a more favourable audience elsewhere. The Gaming Den Message Board (tgdmb.com) has a number of posters who remind me of you.

They're not terribly impressed by Pathfinder or the tier system, either.

[Akal Saris]

Again - the tier system is not a meme propagated by a lone voice. It's a useful metric of how versatile a particular class is, and it is neither designed to cater to a particular subset nor to be used as a sacred text. It is as viable in a high-magic universe as a low-magic one.

And, without being too reactionary, I have to say that I believe you have no prerogative dictating who has a "reason to be playing D&D in the first place." Your notions of fun are just as valid (no more, no less) as those of anyone else.

To be honest, I think the useful function of JaronK's list (allowing DMs to judge how to balance their encounters) has over time been overshadowed by the list's convenience in ranking the best min/maxing options for players to choose, which is somewhat unfortunate. His ranks were forged with community consensus (I'm on the first few pages of the original thread IIRC), but they certainly have some arbitrary decisions as well.

With regards to the witch, I always thought of the witch as filling the bard's role rather than the wizard or cleric. And from that perspective, the witch does better at many roles than the bard, especially when it comes to the 'debuffer' role, which is fairly uncommon among character classes.

My own witch is the fifth member of a party with a cleric, an illusionist, a fighter, an archer, and a rogue, so I picked the class from the comfortable perspective that I would spend the majority of my time doing debuffs or buffs and a little battlefield control. And with those goals in mind it's worked out quite well.

Sidenote: Spells I think a Witch should have on her spell list (just from my exposure to witches in folklore): ventriloquism, lesser restoration, Magic Circle, the planar ally or binding chain, polymorph, shout, weird

Patron spells that should be core to all witches: invisibility, haste

By the way, Naked Granny, I like the homebrewed patrons. If I intended to play a witch as the party primary healer, then I'd definitely take the Matron patron.

[Manticorkscrew]

Hmm...

Reading this thread, I was inspired to write my own set of house rules for the witch class. Please tell me what you think. (I plan to use these rules for a new Pathfinder campaign.)

(Note: I think it's worth pointing out that I've moved away from the idea that a witch PC or NPC has to be a stereotypical witch from folklore. When I wrote these house rules I had an idea that a Pathfinder 'witch' character could be anyone who gained arcane power by making a pact with otherworldly beings such as fiends and spirits (who might not necessarily be evil or sinister beings).)

Witch Spells and Class Abilities (House Rules):

I think the witch (in the Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide) is a very interesting class with some problems that a bit of editing could easily solve. For example, several spells (such as hideous laughter) do not appear on the witch spell list (even though they are spells that seem very appropriate for the witch spell list). Players should be able to select a witch’s patron to add different spells to the witch spell list, but most of the patrons (in the Advanced Player’s Guide and Ultimate Magic Guide) don’t offer many new or useful spells. Most of the witch hexes are very useful and I didn’t want to change them too much. However, a few of them don’t level scale as they probably should. In this document I have compiled a list of my proposed solutions.

(Also, these are the house rules I want to use for witches in my Pathfinder campaign if I ever get around to running another one.)
I want to add the following spells to the witch spell list: defending bone, hideous laughter (as a 2nd level spell), lesser restoration, restoration, greater restoration, beast shape I, beast shape II, beast shape III, beast shape IV, protection from good/evil/law/chaos, magic circle against good/evil/law/chaos.

New Spells:
Defending Bone
School necromancy; Level cleric/oracle 2, sorcerer/wizard 2, witch 2
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, F (a Medium creature’s skull or femur)
Range personal
Target you
Duration 1 minute/level or until discharged
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

You animate a bone with necromantic energy, giving it the power to float near your body and interpose itself against physical attacks. This gives you damage reduction 5/bludgeoning.
Once the bone has prevented a total of 5 points of damage per caster level (maximum 50 points), it is destroyed and the spell is discharged. This spell has no effect if you have damage reduction from another source.
(Note: In the standard Pathfinder setting, this spell is limited to followers of the goddess Pharasma. However, Pharasma does not exist in my homebrew campaign setting, so I have somewhat nerfed this spell and made it available to all clerics, oracles, wizards, etc.)


Patrons:
The following are alternative patron themes a Witch might choose. Some of them (the ones with “revised” in brackets next to the name of the patron) are edited versions of witch patrons that appear in the Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide or Ultimate Magic. You might prefer to use these instead of the originals. Or you might not. It’s up to you.

Agility (revised): 2nd- jump, 4th- remove paralysis, 6th- haste, 8th- freedom of movement, 10th- polymorph, 12th- wind walk, 14th- ethereal jaunt, 16th- word of recall, 18th- shapechange

Chains: 2nd- animate rope, 4th- arcane lock, 6th- slow, 8th- dimensional anchor, 10th- wall of force, 12th- leashed shackles, 14th- forcecage, 16th- binding, 18th- imprisonment

Deception (revised): 2nd- ventriloquism, 4th- invisibility, 6th- blink, 8th- mirage arcana, 10th- seeming, 12th- programmed image, 14th- simulacrum, 16th- scintillating pattern, 18th- time stop

Elements (revised): 2nd- shocking grasp, 4th- resist energy, 6th- fireball, 8th- wall of ice, 10th- transmute rock to mud, 12th- freezing sphere, 14th- fire storm, 16th- whirlwind, 18th- meteor swarm

Festival: 2nd- grease, 4th- pyrotechnics, 6th- jester’s jaunt, 8th- good hope, 10th- breath of life, 12th- heroes’ feast, 14th- joyful rapture, 16th- euphoric tranquillity, 18th- miracle

Forest: 2nd- endure elements, 4th- barkskin, 6th- plant growth, 8th- grove of respite, 10th- wall of thorns, 12th- antilife shell, 14th- animate plants, 16th- summon nature's ally VIII, 18th- shapechange

Heaven: 2nd- bless, 4th- consecrate, 6th- prayer, 8th- blessing of fervor, 10th- breath of life, 12th- undeath to death, 14th- joyful rapture, 16th- holy aura, 18th- miracle

Insanity (revised): 2nd- memory lapse, 4th- oppressive boredom, 6th- mad monkeys, 8th- overwhelming grief, 10th- dream, 12th- envious urge, 14th- sequester, 16th- scintillating pattern, 18th- overwhelming presence

Liberty: 2nd- expeditious retreat, 4th- remove paralysis, 6th- haste, 8th- freedom of movement, 10th- breath of life, 12th- repulsion, 14th- banishment, 16th- greater spell immunity, 18th- freedom

Light (revised): 2nd- color spray, 4th- mirror image, 6th- daylight, 8th- rainbow pattern, 10th- mirage arcana, 12th- mislead, 14th- sunbeam, 16th- sunburst, 18th- prismatic sphere

Menhir: 2nd- endure elements, 4th- stone call, 6th- stone shape, 8th- stoneskin, 10th- transmute rock to mud, 12th- wall of stone, 14th- elemental body IV, 16th- earthquake, 18th- clashing rocks

Necromancy: 2nd- detect undead, 4th- command undead, 6th- gentle repose, 8th- animate dead, 10th- create undead, 12th- antilife shell, 14th- control undead, 16th- create greater undead, 18th- energy drain

Netherworld: 2nd- bane, 4th- desecrate, 6th- prayer, 8th- unholy blight, 10th- nightmare, 12th- planar binding, 14th- finger of death, 16th- unholy aura, 18th- miracle

Occult (revised): 2nd- anticipate peril, 4th- command undead, 6th- nondetection, 8th- mnemonic enhancer, 10th- snake staff, 12th- veil, 14th- ethereal jaunt, 16th- screen, 18th- gate

Plague (revised): 2nd- deathwatch, 4th- ghoul touch, 6th- contagion, 8th- giant vermin, 10th- cleanse, 12th- disintegrate, 14th- creeping doom, 16th- undead anatomy IV, 18th- energy drain

Portals: 2nd- hold portal, 4th- rope trick, 6th- blink, 8th- dimensional anchor, 10th- dismissal, 12th- shadow walk, 14th- ethereal jaunt, 16th- greater planar ally, 18th- gate

Relics: 2nd- magic weapon, 4th- ghostbane dirge, 6th- prayer, 8th- divine power, 10th- commune, 12th- blade barrier, 14th- statue, 16th- holy/unholy aura, 18th- weird

Sea: 2nd- touch of the sea, 4th- slipstream, 6th- water breathing, 8th- control water, 10th- geyser, 12th- control wind, 14th- vortex, 16th- seamantle, 18th- tsunami

Shadow (revised): 2nd- silent image, 4th- invisibility, 6th- deeper darkness, 8th- shadow conjuration, 10th- shadow evocation, 12th- shadow walk, 14th- shadow conjuration (greater), 16th- shadow evocation (greater), 18th- shades

Spirits (revised): 2nd- ghostbane dirge, 4th- invisibility, 6th- invisibility purge, 8th- spiritual ally , 10th- commune, 12th- shadow walk, 14th- ethereal jaunt, 16th- greater planar ally, 18th- etherealness

Telekinesis: 2nd- floating disk, 4th- knock, 6th- tiny hut, 8th- resilient sphere, 10th- telekinesis, 12th- forceful hand, 14th- forcecage, 16th- telekinetic sphere, 18th- crushing hand

Time (revised): 2nd- memory lapse, 4th- silence, 6th- haste, 8th- freedom of movement, 10th- permanency, 12th- disintegrate, 14th- expend, 16th- temporal stasis, 18th- time stop

Transformation (revised): 2nd- ant haul, 4th- spider climb, 6th- gaseous form, 8th- monstrous physique II, 10th- polymorph, 12th- form of the dragon I, 14th- form of the dragon II, 16th- polymorph any object, 18th- shapechange

Trickery (revised): 2nd- animate rope, 4th- mirror image, 6th- major image, 8th- glibness, 10th- mirage arcana, 12th- mislead, 14th- reverse gravity, 16th- screen, 18th- time stop

The Void: 2nd- erase, 4th- dust of twilight, 6th- displacement, 8th- shadow projection, 10th- nightmare, 12th- planar binding, 14th- reverse gravity, 16th- orb of the void, 18th- meteor swarm

War: 2nd- magic weapon, 4th- protection from arrows, 6th- keen edge, 8th- blessing of fervor, 10th- spell resistance, 12th- globe of invulnerability, 14th- mage’s sword, 16th- iron body, 18th- winds of vengeance

Wisdom (revised): 2nd- shield of faith, 4th- aid, 6th- magic vestment, 8th- blessing of fervor, 10th- spell resistance, 12th- contingency, 14th- spell turning, 16th- greater spell immunity, 18th- mage’s disjunction

(Note: Heaven and the Netherworld are important concepts in my homebrew setting. For the standard Golarion campaign setting I might have 'Abyss', 'Hell' or 'Celestial' patrons instead. Or something.)

Hexes (revised):
Cackle (Su): With this hex, a witch can cackle madly as a move action. Any creature that is within 30 feet that is under the effects of an agony hex, charm hex, evil eye hex, fortune hex, or misfortune hex caused by the witch has the duration of that hex extended by 1 round. From 12th level onwards the witch can cackle madly as a move action or a swift action (or both. In theory, from 12th level onwards a witch could use two move actions and a swift action to cackle three times in one round).

Disguise (Su): A witch can change her appearance for a number of hours equal to her class level, as if using disguise self. These hours do not need to be consecutive, but they must be spent in 1-hour increments. From 5th level onwards, while this hex is in use, the witch’s alignment is concealed from all forms of divination as if by an undetectable alignment spell.

Flight (Su): The witch grows lighter as she gains power, eventually gaining the ability to fly. At 1st level, the witch can use feather fall at will and gains a +4 racial bonus on Swim checks. At 3rd level, she can cast levitate once per day. At 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th and 18th level she gains an additional use of the levitate spell per day (up to a maximum of six uses per day at 18th level). At 5th level, the witch can fly, as per the spell, for a number of minutes per day equal to her level. These minutes do not need to be consecutive, but they must be spent in 1-minute increments.

Ideas for NPCs:
I wanted to use the Pathfinder witch rules as a basis for a diverse range of NPCs. These are some of my ideas:
• A soldier returning from a hopeless war. During the war he gained a certain amount of renown as a wise man and spiritual advisor to his fellow soldiers. He was granted strange powers and insights by the spirits of war. (He would be a fighter/witch with the ‘war’ patron. Multiclassing isn’t usually a good idea for player characters in Pathfinder, but it can produce some quite interesting NPCs.)
• A monstrous clown travelling with a sinister circus. (He would be a witch with the ‘festival’ patron. Some of his minions would be bards.)
• The shaman of a primitive tribe. She prays to the spirits for guidance. (She would be a witch with the ‘spirits’ patron.)
• An escaped lunatic whose madness has given him tremendous power. (He would be a witch with the ‘insanity’ patron.)
• A rebel leader who seems to be gaining magical powers (and those magical powers grow progressively stronger) as the rebellion comes closer to overthrowing the government. She is the chosen vessel of a powerful spirit of freedom. (She would be a witch with the ‘liberty’ patron.)
• The last follower of an ancient religion, a hermit who draws power from a forgotten mystical tradition. (He would be a witch with the ‘menhir’ patron. I know... why not just make him a Druid? Well, you see, the thing about that is... I don't really have a very good answer for you.)
• A charlatan and stage magician, playing with powers he does not truly understand. He will pay the price, in the end. (He would be a rogue/witch with the ‘occult’ patron.)

Please comment/critique/make suggestions for how I could improve these house rules, if you would be so kind.

Sincerely,

Manticorkscrew

[JoshuaZ]

Let's not, because I didn't ask for input on the fluff, and frankly no one else's opinion on my own custom-created fluff is relevant to me or this thread.

So why did you post it?

Edit: The point that certain classical archetypes of witches may be easier if they had a few more spells is probably valid. Planar binding is an obvious one. But adding a few spells would still not put them on the same level as a wizard or cleric, and that's a good thing to some extent. From my perspective as someone currently DMing a party almost completely full of spellcasters, bumping the power level of spellcasters more is not a solution.

[Acanous]

but Bardic music is not an overwhelmingly powerful primary ability either.
I'd like to contest this claim. There's bardic performances that do things as ridiculous as 10d8+10*CHA mod damage by lv 10. If any encounter begins as a non-combat scenerio, the bard has the witch beat no matter what archetypes the two take. If the encounter begins in combat, the bard can take the witch down in a single (Move) action if he is a sound striker, and if he is not, he has illusions to fall back on. Pretty certain that a bard will defeat a witch in 80% of duels.

This may seem a tad off topic, but I am postulating that witches are weaker than bards, which should fit within the bounds of the thread.

[Paulcynic]

Happy Holiday's all :) I hope everyone is having a great December.


Reading this thread, I was inspired to write my own set of house rules for the witch class. Please tell me what you think. (I plan to use these rules for a new Pathfinder campaign.)

Manti, my group is meeting this weekend. I'll toss together a couple of witches using your HB and report back how things go :) I adore your NPC concepts, it shows that you have a talent for character depth and motivation. I'm thinking that I will put together a Str/Int War Patron Witch, and one or two more. Great work bud :)


Edit: The point that certain classical archetypes of witches may be easier if they had a few more spells is probably valid. Planar binding is an obvious one. But adding a few spells would still not put them on the same level as a wizard or cleric, and that's a good thing to some extent. From my perspective as someone currently DMing a party almost completely full of spellcasters, bumping the power level of spellcasters more is not a solution.

Some good points made here. Looking over the UM patrons, there's Spirits. It gives you Spiritual Ally (not as powerful as Planar Ally), but then gives you Planar Ally at 17th level. The UM Occult Patron has Gate as its capstone spell, and Endurance gives you Wish. The drawback to these two patrons is that the witch doesn't have access to a Planar Binding effect until the later levels, but she does eventually 'catch up' to the Wizard in this one regard.

It seems that there are two reasons to use Planar Ally: 1) As a more powerful form of Summon Monster, where you have a tough minion on the battlefield, 2) Wish/Miracle. Planar Bindings require both compensation as well as Opposed Charisma Checks, which means that there are many ways the spell can fail. Its powerful, but not entirely reliable. With all the trouble that goes into the spell, our motivation is probably one of the two I've listed above. In the case of Wish/Miracle, Planar Binding a Glabrezu (or the equivalent) is the only way that a level 11 Character can claim it as (tangentially) a spell in his arsenal. Otherwise, gain it at level 17 and be free of the '3rd pant leg syndrome' that comes with gaining a powerful effect at an earlier-than-intended level.

As for a powerful combat minion, its definitely worth the trouble, but the cost and danger make the other summoning spells more attractive in general.

Last year, my buddy got so tired of the group saying "The Wizard Can do it Better" that he put together a Serpent Skull campaign where we all play a straight-classed Wizard. We're all 7th level now, and going strong :) Its nice to always have a solution at our collective finger tips, but we rarely ever encounter something that we just can't beat with magic. If we can't use magic against something, we buff ourselves and beat the crap out of it, out fighting the Fighter with all of our extra tricks. It seems that at every level gained, we break the game a little more. I can't wait to see how things evolve into the higher levels.


I'd like to contest this claim. There's bardic performances that do things as ridiculous as 10d8+10*CHA mod damage by lv 10. If any encounter begins as a non-combat scenerio, the bard has the witch beat no matter what archetypes the two take. If the encounter begins in combat, the bard can take the witch down in a single (Move) action if he is a sound striker, and if he is not, he has illusions to fall back on. Pretty certain that a bard will defeat a witch in 80% of duels.

This may seem a tad off topic, but I am postulating that witches are weaker than bards, which should fit within the bounds of the thread.

Not sure what to make of this statement: "If any encounter begins as a non-combat scenerio, the bard has the witch beat no matter what archetypes the two take." May we get an example or two?

The Sound Striker Archetype is awesome for those who want to do lots of damage mid level. There are a great number of contingencies that would make any class 'win' if they got the initiative Round 1, however. Assuming that neither of us are buffed, and we start combat 30' apart, if the Witch won initiative, she would win by virtue of spells alone. If the Sound Striker Archetype won initiative, he *might* win. When it comes to dealing damage, one can not ascertain a class' power based on that alone, because only the minimum amount needed to slay something in 1 round is required. Doing 1000 DPR means nothing if it only takes 100 to kill a thing. If the Witch can just barely reach 100 DPR, then she and the guy with all of the overkill DPR are equal in straight-damage killing power.

Damage isn't the total picture, and wouldn't be my first choice in deciding how powerful a class is, mainly because Damage is so easily thwarted. But you are right, the Sound Striker is an awesome mid-level damage dealer :)

[Paulcynic]

My buddy just pointed out that as a Witch, I'm probably going to be flying and farther than 30' up at the start of combat. This isn't to say that the Sound Striker isn't still a great melee-ish range fighter, just that there are too many contingencies to say one is definitively better than the other. And so I go back to rating power on many factors, the least of which is damage. :) Just my take, would enjoy discussing this more if you are interested.

[Manticorkscrew]

Manti, my group is meeting this weekend. I'll toss together a couple of witches using your HB and report back how things go :) I adore your NPC concepts, it shows that you have a talent for character depth and motivation. I'm thinking that I will put together a Str/Int War Patron Witch, and one or two more. Great work bud :)

Hey, thank you! I hope your game goes well this weekend. Have fun! :smallsmile: