Haunted Heroes Wizard Archetype

[dj543210]

In the upcoming pathfinder haunted heroes book, there is a wizard archetype that allows you to choose a witch patron. You get to add the patron's spells to your spellbook, and can spontaneously cast these spells in place of prepared wizard spells.

What do you think the best witch patron for this archetype will be?

[Extra Anchovies]

Healing puts the Restoration spell chain in the Wizard's toolbox, which helps cover a significant hole in their class spell list.

Portents gives the Wizard spontaneous casting of some really good divinations (including Divination and Contact Other Plane).

Endurance has Protection from Energy and Spell Immunity, which are very nice spells to have spontaneous access to.

Boundaries looks very nice. See Invisibility, Protection/Magic Circle against Evil, Dimensional Anchor, and Banishment are all great things to have available without needing to prepare them.

Agility has Freedom of Movement and Polymorph, both of which are good to always have on hand.

Strength has Divine Power and Righteous Might. Paizo is giving the Wizard access to Divine Power and Righteous Might. We're doomed.

[dj543210]

What about for an pact wizard (Note: The new archetype is called pact wizard, let the confusion ensue)/exploiter wizard focusing on control spells? What patron(s) would be good for augmenting that.

Also here's what I know about the archetype. Since I beleive the book has not yet been released physically anywhere, this could be subject to change. As is, it is a really powerful archetype...

Level 1
-Get a witch patron + witch spells added to spellbook
--Ability to spontaneously cast witch spells in place of prepared spells
-Prepare spells in 15 minutes instead of in one hour
Level 5
-Oracles Curse
--Can add any spells it gives you to your spellbook for free
Level 10
-Roll twice and take the better result when rolling concentration/caster level/initial/saving throw checks 3 + (1/2 Int) times per day
Level 15
-Add your int bonus to those rolls
-Reduce spell level of metamagic spells from your patron/oracle curse lists by 1 to a minimum of the original level
Level 20
-If you roll a nat 20 you auto succeed on rolls effected by the level 10 ability, whether or not it’s possible
Lose Scribe Scroll
Lose All Bonus Feats
Stacks With The Exploiter Archetype

[Elder_Basilisk]

Healing puts the Restoration spell chain in the Wizard's toolbox, which helps cover a significant hole in their class spell list.

Nice for a small party, but it's more of a role expansion/dilution than a power increase. Also nice in the kind of game people who talk about the tier system seem to assume--where every player is an island pursuing their own agenda at the expense of others.

But if you can get heal, you can put it in your contingency without jumping through hoops. That's a nice boost.


Portents gives the Wizard spontaneous casting of some really good divinations (including Divination and Contact Other Plane).

Potentially nice in a player directed sandbox game, but limited utility overall due to the ability to simply leave empty slots and fill them with spells at the end of the day. Real abuse of contact other plane, etc will usually depend upon minionomancy anyway, so this makes it easier to use divinations but it's probably not a huge increase in power. If you want to 40 contact other plane spells a day, you probably have a way to do it even without this feature.


Endurance has Protection from Energy and Spell Immunity, which are very nice spells to have spontaneous access to.

Solid spells to have available but not terribly impressive. They're mostly, "cast before the adventuring day" spells which you can just prepare anyway. If it were communal resist energy which is a true, "nerf the encounter" spell, we'd be talking.


Boundaries looks very nice. See Invisibility, Protection/Magic Circle against Evil, Dimensional Anchor, and Banishment are all great things to have available without needing to prepare them.

Meh. These are mostly limited use spells with long durations so it's easy to prepare one, use a metamagic rod of extend on it (or make it permanent) and be done. Banishment is the only one that you really want to be casting in combat and it's actually a pretty good scroll spell (stack the extra items to crank that DC so the limited DC from being on a scroll is less relevant).


Agility has Freedom of Movement and Polymorph, both of which are good to always have on hand.

Freedom of movement is nice if you don't have a friendly cleric.


Strength has Divine Power and Righteous Might. Paizo is giving the Wizard access to Divine Power and Righteous Might. We're doomed.

Too bad Pathfinder divine power is such garbage that clerics don't even use it. (Except maybe at high levels since it does have a much higher cap than divine favor). There might be something you can do to make use of these two with shapeshifting or an eldritch knight build, but my off-the-cuff reaction is that it's much more enabling otherwise marginal builds to be a little less marginal than actually increasing anyone's power cap.

[dj543210]

What about elements for a control wizard? Would let you prepare control based spells while still having access to good damage spells as a secondary focus.

[Elder_Basilisk]

What about elements for a control wizard? Would let you prepare control based spells while still having access to good damage spells as a secondary focus.

If you get a good selection of damage spells, I can definitely see that being a valuable choice. It would let you prepare a wide variety of control spells and still have the blasts when you want them--and not have to worry about how many you prepared as well which can be a big deal.