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Actually since your hair is your only natural attack it's treated as a primary attack and you don't suffer the -5 to hit. Throw on the haste arcana and not only do you get another attack your AC, reflex save, movement and attack bonus goes up as well.
As for overpowered, why yes, yes it is. There is a reason I put a note at the top of the defiler entry stating to tread carefully with this build, it is about as close to an ALL CAPS build as you can get without rebuilding AMY Alchemist or AM BARBARIAN and like those 2 it ruins games and infuriates GM's.
ps: I've actually been working on it again and have a new version which is half again as obnoxious and ends fights on the first round. It's just ridiculously, stupidly OP now.
Ah, haste. Fair enough. I was a bit fuzzy on the prehensile hair+white hair combo, but I can see an argument for it. I was thinking the prehensile hair was a seperate attack. Thinking about it, that couldn't be it. I had forgotten that likely you cannot do spell combat and full attack in the same round. At least I hope not, since that would be insane.
I think I'll stay away from your next build, simply because I do not want people swearing blood vendettas against me. Not even it would be able to defend against the mighty spell "rocks fall, everyone dies". I think I'll be happy with only being massively overpowered.
Ah, haste. Fair enough. I was a bit fuzzy on the prehensile hair+white hair combo, but I can see an argument for it. I was thinking the prehensile hair was a seperate attack. Thinking about it, that couldn't be it. I had forgotten that likely you cannot do spell combat and full attack in the same round. At least I hope not, since that would be insane.
I think I'll stay away from your next build, simply because I do not want people swearing blood vendettas against me. Not even it would be able to defend against the mighty spell "rocks fall, everyone dies". I think I'll be happy with only being massively overpowered.
Spellcombat is a full attack. It just has spellcastign tacked on to it. The "extra attack" from the hair is delivered via Spellstrikes free attack.
This is a bit of a noob move, but since I do not have much experience with such large amounts of optimization and builds relying on multiclassing magic users like this, I have a few questions:
1.) You suggested the king crab as a familiar in the guide. It suffocates if you take it out of water for an hour or so. Does this mean that I'd have to carry around a bucket or something for it? Admittedly, with this build there would always be the free hand, but it still seems like a big restriction. I'd hate to divert the entire quest just to get another bucket of water.
2) Magus prepares spells with a spell book, but witches use their familiars like spell books. Would the 1 hour spent to prepare spells by studying the spell book and the 1 hour communing with the familiar be separate, or could it be accomplished at the same time? I ask since adding an extra hour to spell preparation would end up being a burden on the rest of the party by reducing available travel time, and would eventually force me to question the value of preparing the witch spells at all outside of periods of long rest.
3) I'd hate for my familiar to just be a +2 item. Because I feel lonely for the poor thing, might as well ask: does the fact that Magus can get a familiar count enough for the levels between the classes to stack for the familiar level? I realize, most likely I would need the familiar arcana....but one can hope against hope, eh? I mostly hope since I would not go that far out of my way for it since again, the use of the familiar is already questionable for this build.
4.) This is a more build related question: since you need normally need broad study to use spellcombat and spellstrike on spells from another class list, what about spells that are shared between the two lists? You focused on frostbite in your defiler build, and I just want to reassured about the legality of this move.
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Well lemeres there are no bad questions so lets address yours and see if we can clarify a few things.
1. Yes you put the crab in a bucket, put the bucket in a bag of holding/handy haversack and forget about for the day. If you want to be really nice just fill the whole bag with water so it has more room to play in. For the first few levels your familiar really is just a +2 bonus and adds nothing to the game so ignore it. Past 5th-6th level swap it out for an improved familiar and interact with that one. At that point you won't need the +2 bonus as much and can start RP'ing with your interesting familiar.
2. You never prep the witch spells in the morning, these are your utility spell slots. Here's a little known rule for you that will explain. You can prep a spell anytime you want with 15 minutes rest so you leave all/most of your witch slots empty and if you run across a situation where you need a rarely needed spell (comp languages, damp powder, air bubble, etc) you sit with your fam for 15 mins and mem that spell and cast it then. In general I prep 1-2 witch spells at the beginning of an adventure and leave the rest empty to fill as needed based on the situation. Look at those slots like reusable scrolls that take 15 minutes to use.
3. If you burn an arcana for a familiar and grab the improved familiar feat it can definitely be worth it. There are a 1001 uses for a level appropriate familiar and if you have the feat/arcana free for it I say go for it.
4. The rules for spellstrike and spell combat specifically state spells that are on the magus list NOT that use the magus spell slots. This means as long as the spell you want to cast one that's on the magus list of allowed spells you can use these two options to cast it even if you are using your witch spell slots to power it.
However if you use the witch slots then you will suffer from arcane spell failure so you'll need to make that roll if you are wearing armor when you cast it. Not a big deal but something to keep track of.
Ah, so besides get a couple of extra frostbites as a precaution after a long day, you can use it for the highly specialized spells. Makes sense. I suppose with the spell failure, the slots are mainly useful for when there was time to take off and put back on the armor.
While I understand the logic of just putting the crab away and calling a day.....part of me would like the cheese of carrying it around. Remember, this build already has her stabbing enemies to death with hair empowered by arcane ice. Having a large crab with its long legs sticking out of a bucket would just be icing on the cake of insanity. Maybe put a portable or just a bag of holding in the bucket? I assume the crab could get out on its own.
That image also would make we want to take Improved Familiar (Elemental....shaped like a crab). I wonder if I could (jokingly) argue for more rounds on the entanglement of a rimed spell if I had it drenched by a water elemental....
If you are a half-elf you can take the archetype that replaces your familiar with Arcane bond for witch, and take amulet to save an item creation feat for AoMF. That would solve your Familiar problem.
Maybe I want a familiar though? Plus, if you read the guide we were talking about, the familiar was suggested as a way of getting extra on the cmb of grapple early on. It has also been stated that there are advantages to an improved familiar, which I might be willing to invest in. And while AoMF would be helpful the magus/witch suggest there would not only be using int to hit, but also getting extra to hit from arcane accuracy. Also, you can add various effects with you arcane points, lessening another of its uses necessity. Sure, all this would cost a lot of points, but you must realize: this build would be able to focus almost everything into int. There will be insane numbers towards the end of its career.
And this is just me, but I'd rather not limit this concept to either human or half elf. To many of either of those running around.
I think a white hair witch with a wand of create pit, 15 foot reach grapple, and fly would be intresting.
All of her damage would come from fall damage, so I she might feel very useless when a large creature comes around. Aside from that.
Hilarious.
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Has anyone come up with a detailed guide to make this work?
As to the flurry ruling, I have *never* seen anyone apply it. I think theyre comes a point when a fix is so poorly thought out that the community takes precedence over the devs views. Sorry devs, try again and this time do it on work time, not over a coffee. the monk class should have been fixed as compared to 3.5 instead it was nerfed even further, first by the elimination of stacking twf line with flurry and now with this idiotic ruling. A flawed ruling. I can claim the witch has only one natural weapon - her hair. (handcuff her hands together if necessary lol). Similarly this ruling gives a 1 armed monk with a weapon an advantage over a 2 armed monk with 1 weapon. Very silly.
Nonetheless, I feel that it must be possible to make a WHW combo that is a valid mellee combatant, focusing on battlefirled control.
We also porbably have to ignore the errata to convert the hair actions to swift actions, but frankly if the devs dont know their arse from their elbow then what else can we do. Fixing an abusable ability by a blanket nerf that destroys an already very weak archetype is not acceptable. What they clearly intended was to say 'You may not use the hair to simultaneously apply more than one combat manoever to the same target in the same attack.' Why they didn't say this is beyond me.
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I'm wondering if a whw/monk/rogue build might work. Focusing on int and dex. Weapon finesse, feral combat training and monastic legacy, and using the hair to sneak attack as well as grapple.
The high int would feed the rogue skills, and the hair would allow sneak attack at range as well as disable device and sleight of hand at range.
