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Most witches are taught the secrets of the arcane by their patron through the needle-eye of a familiar. Enchantresses instead command the eldritch energies of their mysterious patron through sheer force of personality and self-control, their familiars becoming potent conduits and agents of both the witch and patron.
Class Skills:
A witch gains Bluff and Diplomacy as Class Skills, but loses Knowledge (Nature) and Knowledge (History) as Class Skills. This alters the witch's class skills.
Spells: An enchantress replaces several of her patron spells with the following: 4th - Alter Self, 12th - Dominate Person, 14th - Veil
Eldritch Force:
Unlike most witches who parse out the logic of magical lore parcelled out by your patron, you conduct the powerful energies of your patron through yourself. You use your Charisma, rather than your Intelligence, to determine all class features and effects relating to your witch class, such as bonus spells per day, maximum spell level you can cast, the save DCs of your spells, and the save DCs and the save DCs of your hexes
Familiar Agent:
At 6th level, an Enchantress unlocks magic that allows her familiar to operate within civilized society. As a standard action the Enchantress can transform her familiar into a small or medium humanoid as the spell Alter Self, and also grant the familiar the ability to speak one language she knows. This effect lasts 1 hour/witch level. The familiar can maintain this form at any distance from the Enchantress, and the enchantress can end this transform her familiar into its true form as a free action. This ability replaces the hex a witch gains at 6th level.
Familiar Conduit:
At 16th Level the Enchantress' control over her magic and familiar allows her to draw upon whatever spell she needs in a time of desperation. Once per day, a witch can as a standard action spontaneously cast any spell her familiar knows. The Enchantress' familiar must have line-of-sight with the Enchantress in order for the spontaneous casting to occur. This ability replaces the hex a witch gains a 16th Level.
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Essentially I built this archetype to fill a niche of the witch as an exotic temptress, or someone who is less being taught by their patron as being loaned their powers by their patron.
Any comments or suggestions?
Oh, I like this. It all looks good to me, I'll be interested to see if anyone else has a problem with it.
The potential issues/considerations I see are the following:
The "Familiar Conduit" ability. It's essentially the bonded item feature, with fewer weaknesses. It allows the casting of one "spell known" spontaneously, which increases available resources (spells cast per day) for the which, but at a point in time where the witch is already swimming in large amounts of spells. It's one use of flexibility per day for emergencies, at the cost of a hex. Some people might think it needs to use up two spell slots, or a higher level spell slot instead. It'd be fairly minor tweaking either way.
Familiar Agent: How much the familiar gets to do while in this form. It essentially allows a follower/cohort to run errands for the witch, and so is open to something some GMs might view as "abuse".
Eldritch Force: Like the Wildblooded Sorcerer archetypes of Sage and Empyreal, changing the casting stat is a fairly significant mechanical alteration, with new races/skill combinations becoming available. Obviously the witch has some hexes which mesh with this synergy far more than as an INT-based caster. Charm Person and Disguise come to mind immediately, and these were indeed intentional synergies.
Spell replacements: The spells fit to a theme, and I did my best to make sure that the spells matched up to the levels of spells the witch would acquire from her patron at those levels. Alter Self has stat changes and grants abilities, but they're of minimal use to a witch. Dominate person is always fairly useful, but it is very flavorful. Veil also has loads of flavor for the archetype.
Alternate Class Skills. The witch trades out two INT-based skills for two CHA-based skills. I was briefly tempted to swap Spellcraft out for Disguise, but wasn't sure if it was a balanced trade-off.
Overall, these are all issues I could live with, but it never hurts to have others go over something to see if a particularly glaring issue got under the radar.
Gains Diplomacy, can still eat children. I like it.
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Gains Diplomacy, can still eat children. I like it.
Perhaps you can add the caveat that the children must be named Hansel or Gretel. :D
Enchantment, though a powerful school, is one of the, if not THE, most easy-to-shut-down schools there is - by a level one spell of all things and vast amounts of immunity to mind-affecting, types, and so on.
Charisma in place of Intelligence seems fine, though I would admittedly be tempted to have them use the Sorcerer Known Spells and Spells per Day mechanics.
Familiar Agent is a very neat ability, but allows very little cheese that isn't already allowed by Improved Familiar (use of wands, etc.). I love it.
Familiar Conduit is, in many ways, a sort of crappy power, sorta neat power - in my opinion. It is thematically appropriate, but you're giving up a Major Hex for the ability to cast a spell spontaneously. I, personally, would rather have my Hex, but for the purposes of balance, I don't see it as being particularly out-of-line.
Although the word "enchant" is in the archetype name, this set up does not shackle a player to enchantment schools. One patron spell is replaced by an Enchantment school spell, Dominate Person. Beyond the change in class skills and the stat synergy that comes with the CHA casting stat instead of INT, an enchantress could very well opt to use transmutation, conjuration, illusion or evocation spells if they wanted to.
I was tempted to add a "Spells Known" and "Spells Per Day" mechanic, but this in my mind made the archetype too mechanically similar to a sorcerer that has acquired a familiar by other means (Arcane Bloodline, Eldritch Heritage, etc.). As it stands now the Enchantress would have a unique position as a CHA based prepared caster.
I agree that Familiar Conduit does serve as a balance. A witch can easily regain the hex by taking the "Extra Hex" feat. Witches are likely to take this feat regardless, and given that the class ability is essentially the same as a bonded item, which could itself be gained through Eldritch Heritage > Arcane Bloodline > Bonded Item, I felt that it was about the same in value. That said, it is a major hex that is potentially given up, so a possible tweak could be to have it take the place of the 8th level hex.
I like the name Enchantress. It's a good name.
Heh, I know. That is what made me click the class to begin with.
Any update for this archetype? I think it has potential to be great, it may already be good as is but perhaps others have something else to say.
As it stands, I like how it is, although I wonder if the Familiar Folio has given any options mechanically similar to "Familiar Agent".
Beyond that any additional tweaking would be trying to nail down what players want exactly, which would hit and miss broad swaths no matter what one does. The matter of alternate class skills is particularly notable on this side, but thankfully traits can cover that sort of thing as it stands (would like to have disguise or Knowledge Nature for a Morrigan-esque character? There be traits for that).
Placement of when Eldritch Conduit is gained depends mostly on whether one thinks that losing a basic hex or a major hex pushes the archetype too far into either the over- or under-powered camps.
In a few months I may ask one of my players if they'd like to play-test it out. None of them have played a witch in our current campaign, so maybe they'd go for it.
The companion aspect calls to mind the films The Brothers Grimm (2005) and Maleficent (2014). Is this great for a PC? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly gives good mechanical support for role-playing a certain type of character.
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I like it a lot, but I think the lose of Knowledge (History) hurts the Archetype. History seems to be exactly the kind of thing that an manipulative Enchantress would exploit to achieve their ends, especially in a political intrigue kind of environment.
Dotting this. Im really digging this archetype.
Stumbled upon this totally by accident.
Whether in this archetype or another one (or maybe even more than one), I'd like to see a Sorcerer-Witch hybrid that is different from the Ley Line Guardian.
Which reminds me: Enchantress/Enchanter Witch should get a way to switch into a Psychic casting mode (or maybe ven default to this), for stealth casting reasons (if you're going to be messing with people's minds, you don't want everybody to be able to see and hear it, do you?).
Actually, come to think of it, maybe what you want for this archetype is a Witch/Psychic or even Witch/Mesmerist hybrid. Another approach could even be to make this a Hexcrafter Mesmerist archetype (or alternatively, make that a separate archetype, since I still like the idea of a Witch/Psychic hybrid that is maximally casting focused).
Seems very much a CHA based witch idea... Lady Galadriel ???