3rd Ed [3.5] How does the DMG Witch's spell list compare to a PHB-only Sorcerer's? [Archive]

Fizban

2020-06-08, 05:13 AM

Depends on what you expect of a Sorcerer. But even with the more narrow baseline definition of the arcanist role (bypass physical defenses and crowd control), the DMG Witch is severely hindered. This is because of the simple fact that most of the categories of spells they gave it, in their own notes, are intentionally limited to only the lower level effects (even though some of the spell picks immediately break this rule, ha*).

They have an assortment of Will and Fort save spells, the standard enchantments plus a little more- but like a Beguiler they're limited when those don't work (particularly against undead), and unlike a Beguiler they don't have a set of spells hand-picked to make up for it. They have Dispel Magic but not the Greater version. The narrow Will save-only crowd control does give some reason to consider using Giant Vermin, Animate Objects, and Liveoak, but that's not exactly a plus.

Ultimately, the list is fine if what you want are the spells on the list. Compared to other core-only casters (aside from Druid) the lack of fancy class features isn't a problem. But if you're filling the arcanist role, all of the witch's spells for that are on the main sor/wiz list, without any restrictions preventing you from grabbing a Fireball if you need it. And you can't fill the Cleric role because the Witch's healing, while maybe slightly better than an Bard's, is still deliberately missing the most important stuff (the status removal), and you don't have the spells known to take them anyway. So you need to want to play a "sorcerer" with a a very specific set of offensive spells, *and* a very specific set of not-sorcerer spells.

And the higher level you go, the fewer significant non-sorcerer spells there are, again by their intentional design, giving even less reason to be one. They constantly compare to a wizard, say that the witch has "all" of something, when no, they don't, they barely have any spells known**. It would function just fine as an alternate wizard (or even druid) list, which is what it seems pretty clearly written as. The 3.0 entry even makes some point about the first six levels having thirteen spells, as if that matters in any way.

So the only situation where the DMG Witch is particularly more useful than a PHB-only Sorcerer is at the levels where it would be really useful for your arcanist to have Speak With Animals and Cure Wounds. Good Hope without a Bard and Divination not eating the Cleric's 4th level slots are handy, but they're competing with Polymorph and your first real crowd control, and the last non-sorc spells of worth are more cleric divinations. Back when Creeping Doom was 1,000 points of no-save damage it would have been a huge draw, but now it's garbage.

Ironically, one of the things that helps in this comparison is that without splat support, metamagic blasting is more limited. Which means that the standard for the arcanist is lower: when enemies make a save, half damage is lower because the full damage is lower, so the damage you "missed out on" isn't as much. Except the 3.5 change rears its head again and says that Scorching Ray has removed saves from all single target damage spells, so actually you're back to worse off. Note also that Polymorphs where nerfed, Emotion used to be a multifunction spell, Eyebite was nerfed- like half the cool spells on the list really.

*Only middle level illusions, and also Weird. "Only straightforward" divinations, includes more than either cleric or sor/wiz. "No flashy spells or summons or wards": summons Creeping Doom, bugs into giant bugs, animates objects, makes creatures avoid places, conjures objects, etc. And other sillyness like Insanity but no Confusion, Weird but no Phantasmal Killer.

**Unless of course you take the line about using sorcerer spells per day without specifically mentioning spells known to mean that this is actually the first fixed-list spontaneous caster. In that form it probably compares okay to the others actually, spell counts aren't too far off and somewhat more versatile. But it also mentions list over and over, when class spell list is not the same as spells known, which is why the fixed-list classes have to call it out like they do, and first says that it casts like a sorcerer, which means limited spells known unless changed.