Witch character concept

[90sMusic]

So i've been playing a game for the past, i dunno, 6 months I guess, and our characters are all level 10 right now. It is also a Mythic campaign.

One of the fun things I do when i'm bored and not playing D&D is thinking up ideas for backup characters in case my current one dies.

So anyway, I had an idea and I was hoping to get a little insight/advice.

Basically it's going to be a witch and focus on debuffing (evil eye, misfortune, cackle, etc). As a secondary role I was thinking about picking the healing patron and acting as the group's healer. Can heal people up, cure diseases, poisons, curses, dispel magic, basically take care of anything thrown at us.

But here is the fun part... Witches have a hex called Animal Skin where they can just put on an animal skin to assume it's form. So I was thinking, what is to stop me from staying in the form of an animal indefinitely? I was kind of leaning towards a snake. Now if I did this, I know using hexes as an animal won't be a problem because the rules say they are supernatural and dont have any components.

But what i'm wondering (and wanting to do) is be able to cast my spells and also speak in animal form. And so far, i've been rather disappointed. The feats that would help me the most such as Natural Spell and Wild Speech both REQUIRE being a damn druid and have absolutely no consideration for anyone or anything else that can shapeshift that isn't a druid (which seems like a bad oversight imo). But I was wondering if there were any ways around this or if there were any other ways to be able to speak as an animal.

If I could stay a sneaky little snake all the time just whispering in people's ears and casting my magic, I think that would be pretty fun.

So are there any OTHER feats or maybe magical items or enchantments or anything really?

The best thing I can come up with is maybe creating a custom item that has permanent Beast Speak on it, but I don't know if my GM will go for that. I think custom magic items are not his thing. But is there anything else like that I might could use?

[Geddy2112]

A debuff/heal witch is pretty solid. The healing patron is solid, but you will rarely prepare the spells from it unless you need them. I would consider being a hedge witch if you want to heal so you can spontaneously cast heal spells like a cleric. Between that and the heal patron, you might as well be a cleric.

Get a cackling hag's blouse ASAP, even if you have the cackle hex you get 2 a day as a swift action, but it eliminates the hard need to have cackle as a hex. You also might want a corset of dire witchcraft for armor and the ability to juice a hex DC of choice by 2.

Unfortunately, there is no other way to get natural spell or animal speech as a witch. You could dip a level in arcanist to get the shift caster exploit-it is a int based class and you would have enough arcane reservoir to cast on the fly when needed. Eschew materials as a feat eliminates the need for material components, then you can use silent and/or still spell metamagic feats to have key spells ready. Being a deaf oracle means your spells always get modified by silent spell, but you are deaf...

However, animal skin only lasts 1 min/level before you have to use the hex again, because it works like beast shape II. So you are going to be in this form 10-20 minutes before you need to reapply. Likewise, it is a hex-there is no amount of times a day you need to use this. Just shift out if you need to cast, then go back into form. I know it won't work for your concept, but you have enough hexes that you won't need to cast very often in combat so don't be afraid to just shift cycle.

[icefractal]

How cheese-tolerant are you / the DM? Because with Sacred Geometry + traits you could make all your spells Still+Silent at no cost. For the purpose you're using it for, it's probably not that crazy ... although if we're just judging things by practical impact, it'd work a lot better to houserule the prerequisities for Natural Spell.

[bahamut920]

I'd say just ask your DM if you can houserule Natural Spell, but that does render at least one arcanist exploit irrelevant, IIRC.

As has been said, arcanist gives the Shift Caster exploit, which allows you to spend points from your arcane reservoir to cast while in a form that normally can't cast spells. Telepathic Bond or similar spells can be used to communicate with allies while in a form that can't speak.

[Psyren]

You can just cast Beastspeak (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/beastspeak), which can explicitly be cast while polymorphed.

[90sMusic]

Less than two hours of being able to speak per spell cast is not acceptable. That is why I wanted something that gave the effect permanently.

Fortunately, after more digging I found the solution http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-eloquence

That little gem gives me exactly what I need. It lets me speak while in animal form and that also covers verbal spell components. I'm going to be using the Component Freedom path ability to negate the need for somatic components and i'm good to go.

It's also very cheap! Only 3500gp. That is cheaper than the custom item would've been. ;)