Subclass Contest XXXII: Food and Foodies

[Old Harry MTX]

Druid: Witch Doctor

The wheel of life teaches that only from death can new life be born. Therefore it is life itself that demands that nothing be wasted, and that one's prey be celebrated in the best possible way: by eating them!
Witch doctors follow this doctrine, blending their magical and culinary arts in a perfect creamed pathé, with a hint of cannibalism.
Salt as needed.
If you choose to follow your belly and sit at this table, you will learn how to butcher, cook and finally eat your prey to replicate their powers, and share them with your fellow adventurers.
Because nobody should ever go on an adventure on an empty stomach!



Bonus Cantrip

When you choose this circle at 2nd level, you learn the create bonfire cantrip. This cantrip doesn’t count against the number of druid cantrips you know.

Circle Spells

Your mystical culinary art infuses you with the ability to cast certain spells. You learn the goodberry and purify food and drink spells. Also, at 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th level you gain access to additional circle spells, as shown in the Circle Spells table.

Circle Spells

1st	Goodberry, Purify Food and Drink
3rd	Protection from Poison, Icebox*
5th	Create Food and Water, Vampiric Touch
7th	Vitriolic Sphere, Speedy Courier
9th	Immolation, Alchemical Cooking*

*See below for these two hombrewed spells.

Once you gain access to a circle spell, you always have it prepared, and it doesn't count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. If you gain access to a spell that doesn't appear on the druid spell list, the spell is nonetheless a druid spell for you.

Culinary Art

Beginning at 2nd level you gain proficiency in Cook's Utensils and you learn how to cook magical meals using ingredients butchered directly from your preys.

Butchering

Using 1 minute of your time you can butcher up to three ingredients from a creature's corpse. The creature cannot be of the construct, elemental, ooze, or undead type, and, at the DM's discretion, must have sufficient edible parts. You can have a number of ingredients up to your Wisdom modifier + your druid level (minimum of one ingredient).

Cooking

At the end of a short or long rest you can cook and eat up to two magical meals, spending an ingredient and a use of wildshape each. You gain a Skill plus a Resistance, a Trait or a non-lair Action, chosen from the stablocks of the creatures that have been butchered for the ingredients, following the rules below.

• You use your Ability Scores, spellcasting ability and proficiency bonus.
• You cannot choose the same Trait more than once at the same time.
• You cannot choose and gain more than one Resistance with this feature.
• If you choose a damage Immunity, you gain Resistance on the same damage type instead.
• If you choose an Action or Trait that refers to one or more other Actions or Traits, it acts as if you know all of them.
• Change any die depending on the size differences between you and the creature. If the creature's size was smaller, increase the die size for each size difference, decrease it if it was larger.
• To cast a spell of a Spellcasting Trait you must use the spell slots provided by your own class features. This doesn't apply to Innate Spellcasting.
• You must be at least 5th level to gain the Multiattack Action. If it allows you to make more than two attacks, you must choose two.
• The Regeneration Trait can restore a total number of hit points equal to your druid level x 5.
• To use a legendary Action you must spend your reaction and its cost in legendary actions. When you choose it, you gain a number of legendary actions equal to half your druid level (rounded up) + your proficiency bonus. You don't recover them at the beginning of your turns.
• If the creature needed a weapon, a tool or an environmental condition, you also need one of the appropriate size. You are proficient with it if the creature was.

You cannot regain the use of wildshape spent this way until you are under the effect of its meal. The effect lasts until you take a long rest, you decide to stop it with an action, or you replace it by eating another meal.

Intoxication

When you eat a meal made from a powerful prey, you risk getting intoxicated of its malevolent energies. If the CR of the creature was higher than your druid level, make a Constitution saving throw against a CD equal to 8 + the difference between its CR and your druid level. On a failed save, you suffer one level of exhaustion.

Balancing Issues and DM’s Intervention The witch doctor can face and butcher a very high variety of different creatures. For this reason, the rules shown in the Culinary Art feature and the Intoxication mechanic may not be enough to avoid balance issues. The DM may have to tweak or even prevent some choices, in order to prevent the player from becoming invulnerable, infallible, too harmful, or in some way eclipsing the roles of its fellow adventurers. Some ways to tweak a choice can be the following: Reduce the maximum number of ingredients that can be butchered from a prey. Increase the CD of the Intoxication saving throw. Add the use of an action or reaction. Limit the number of uses or add a Recharge X-Y limitation. Add saving throws or ability checks. Reduce damage, range or area-of-effect. The DM may also decide that the player’s choice leaves enough room for something extra and may allow for an additional bonus Trait, such as Keen Senses or Echolocation.

Sharing Gluttony

Starting at 6th level, you can feed your hunting companions with your magical treats. You can now share a portion of one of your meals to a friendly humanoid. It gains a Skill plus a Trait or a non-lair Action (but not a Resistance) of its choice from the stablocks of the original creature, following the same rules of your Culinary Art feature. The rules always refer to the eater unless they explicitly refer to your druid class or subclass.

If you try to feed another creature, the effects on the first one wear off.

Reading Offal

Also from 6th level, while you are butchering a prey, you can cast the augury spell as ritual.

Exquisite Cuisine

Starting from 10th level, when you cast create food and water, the food you create is of excellent quality and you can produce any kind of non-magical drink. You have advantage on all Charisma checks directed at any friendly creature that consumes a full meal made by you this way. The effect lasts for an hour or as long the creature is friendly.

Tribal Feast

Finally at 14th level, you learn to prepare sumptuous magical banquets. From now on the first meal you cook using your Culinary Art feature doesn't cost you a use of wildshape, and you can now cook and eat up to three of them.

Additionally, you can now share a portion of your meals to an additional friendly humanoid when you use your Sharing Gluttony feature.

Original Spells

Icebox

2nd level transmutation

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Target: A crate and all its contents
Components: V S M (A robust wooden crate, 3 feet each side, insulated with wool, worth 50 gp)
Duration: 1 week
Classes: Circle of the Witch Doctor, Artificer, Wizard

You touch a crate to generate the perfect conditions for storing food inside. The crate can contain up to 25 cubic feet of nonliving material.
Once closed, you can then use your action and touch the crate to reduce its size to a tiny box no heavier than a stone, or to restore it to its original dimension.
Casting this spell on the same crate every week for a year makes this effect permanent. This effect ends if you cast this spell on another crate, or if you choose to end it as an action.

Alchemical Cooking

5th level transmutation

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: touch (a magical meal)
Components: S M (a handful of exotic spices worth 25 gp x the CR of the desired prey, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Instantaneous
Classes: Circle of the Witch Doctor

While cooking a magical meal, you transmute it into another meal you have cooked in the past. To do so, the starting meal must have been made with an ingredient butchered from a prey with a CR not lower than that of the original creature of the desired meal.

Original Feats

Guts of Iron

Prerequisite: Constitution 13 or higher, Circle of the Witch Doctor

Your guts have undergone enough training to give you the following benefits:

• You gain advantage on the Constitution saving throws to resist being Intoxicated when you eat a magical meal.
• You gain advantage on saving throws to resist being poisoned by food.