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The general premise of the character is that he merely doesn't know much about how he has these powers, hes had them since he was a small child. He signed up for the society because they seemed like great guys and would be able to help him find out about things. He was not expecting to actually be forced into a life and death situation on a daily basis, he was not expecting people wanting to kill him every second of the day. He certainly wasn't planning on actually having to explore horribly dangerous places.
Here are the PLANNED stats
Int:18
Con:7
Dex:14
Wis:13
Char:12
Str:8
I need some help with the patron and familiar, I have the core rule book and the advanced players guide
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Just to chime in on the 7 Con:
Witch is a d6 class, IIRC.
7 Con is a -2 modifier.
Best case scenario, with FCB and the Shoanti tribal boon feat, means you have 11 hit points, with a 6 point cushion between unconsciousness and death, and you start with a DC 13 to stabilize if you are at -1.
With only the FCB, you are at 5 hit points, 8 if you also burn a feat for Toughness.
That means that 11 hit points of damage, not counting feats and FCB, is dead dead at first level.
Our old buddy, L, does 1d10+7 on a hit, ignoring criticals. That is an average of 12-13 points of damage. And there are plenty of opponents out there that do XdY + 4 damage, so minimum would leave you staggered.
And, at higher levels, being in the AoE of some of the more common spells, like Fireball, can easily kill you outright. I know of at least one sub-tier 6-7 encounter that includes a caster that opens combat with an Empowered 9th CL Fireball.
Do not dump Constitution. End of. No class can afford to dump Con, least of all a full caster with a d6 hit die.
Dump Charisma instead, and if you really have to, Wisdom as well. You're a full caster, you get a good Will save. You need Charisma for nothing except maybe UMD.
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Its an elf, thats kind of the plan. I dumped it from the fact it was already being penalized. The theme is more of someone who isn't actually known for combat, he is in the grand lodge and is NG. I pretty much have him as a more bookish and less combative character, one who would stay very very far away from the bad guys and throw healing/buffing spells at his allies, hope it works and then try to not die terribly.
I wrote a lot of it while half awake and out of caffine, so I kinda can see now that dumping consitution is a bad idea, however elves are already given less consitution than normal
When one person in the party drops it tends to snowball for the rest of the party. The cleric, instead of dropping enemies has to run over and heal you, putting them in danger. The rogue has to cover your corpse instead of zipping to he back to take out the shaman,
Yeah, I wouldn't leave the house with less than 12 Con on a d6 class. If you need the points, dump Str and Cha more. Although it's always been a dream of mine to run an Elf wizard with 5 Con, and recruit another PC to push him around in his wheelchair.
Roleplay-wise, what is your character going to do after his first mission, when he discovers that he is going to have to keep exploring dungeons and fighting monsters, etc.?
You don't always have the choice of staying far away from enemies. A lot of buff spells have a range of touch or close, healing spells almost always have a range of touch. A lot of combats take place in small rooms, and you're not going to run far in a 15-by-15-foot room.
Alright, so now that the "don't dump Con!" message has been thoroughly drubbed in, I would use the following stat array as a guideline (before racial modifiers):
Str 10 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 16 Wis 10 Cha 10
You can play with it from there--for example by dropping Str to 7 and bumping Wis and Cha by 2 points each to more closely approximate your initial idea.
I've found that cranking a single stat at character creation produces severely diminishing returns--for the price of buying an 18, you could instead buy a 15 and a 16.
EDIT:
As for Core/APG familiars, the humble Rat and the equally humble Toad both help your survivability, with the Rat remaining relevant longer. The Owl's perception bonus is also very useful. A Pig would also let you be a backup face if your Charisma as decent (or if you've traited for Diplomacy). Just be sure to name it Henwen.
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Actually, I forgot, I am going to be getting the animal archive, I just need a store that has one, the gaming store that had a copy sold it the day after I got my ten bucks.
Here are the better stats:
Int:18 (this will always stay the same, I perfer to maximize the main stat for the class so I don't feel like I am doing something wrong)
Str:7
Dex:14
Con:10
Wis:11
Char:8
my math might be incorrect, I am extremely stressed from midterm exams and my teachers choosing to tell me that if I don't do above average, they will kick me out.
after finding out that being murder stabbed is a rather normal thing for the society, he will more than likely choose to not quit, because he is somewhat scared of grandmaster torch. He will generally resort to grumbling and complaining about stuff, unless theres a high ranking pathfinder around, then he shuts up. He is far too stubborn to give up on the idea that the grand lodge is going to kill him if he quits.
Are those stats before or after racial modifiers? If before, you've only used 17 points. If after, you've used 9. I'm guessing after, and would advise that you put all remaining points into Con to bump it up to 12.
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I like your idea @snickersimba, so let me offer up a more optimized PB that I think will lend the same flavor Without being terribly gimpy. I am currently playing a wizard with a 10 con and its not so bad. The idea here is you will use your 4th level ability point on int to save 5pts during the point buy
Before elven stat changes:
...
STR 7...(-4pts)
DEX 14 (5pts)
CON 12 (2pts)
INT 17 (13pts)
WIS 12 (2pts)
CHA 12 (2pts)
TOTAL...20pts
After elven racial
STR 7 -2
DEX 16 +3
CON 10 +0
INT 19 +4
WIS 12 +1
CHA 12 +1
He is a frail book wormy type that is hyper intelligent and, because of his inquisitive nature is a little better than average at talking to people.
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character creation.... SO many choices. sounds like you're more focused on backstory and "fluff" vs optimization. So for patron, pick the one that sounds good for your backstory. You didn't really give any info on how the character perceives the powers. Does the character view it as a curse or gift? Is it evil or good in nature? These are things that might help you narrow down the list of patrons.
familiar... optimization says take a familiar that boosts your initiative, but again... being backstory driven, what animal do YOU think your elf witch might have befriended? Or what animal symbolizes the patron you choose.
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Well, I have only the advanced players guide, so I have literally the bare basic witch stuff, traits are one thing I haven't even touched yet, Thank you for reminding me, I am in extrodinary need to move to canada, where pathfinder books are easier to get. Also, what bonus elven languge is the most useful? Im eying slyvan. Hexes are another thing, I don't know what ones are extremely bad or rather good. The healing hexes seem bad, but they save a few spellslots, they seem to suck though, once per person is not exaclty amazing.
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Well, until I get my animal archive, he will have a rat. I might go with wisdom for the patron. Seems the most fitting. I don't really have a backstory for how he got the powers, if he is asked what he is, his typical answer is either a sentence composed of mostly swear words or "I am like a wizard, just I am in every way superior to a wizard".
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personally I think evil eye is your must have 1st hex. it allows you to apply -2 attack, -2 AC, -2 save, -2 skill check. or if you give use it every round on same target, you can get all of these applied at same time. use your 1st level feat for cackle and even if the enemy makes his save, you can keep the penalty applied indefinately.
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Yeah, now that my copy of the advanced players guide arrived, I can look through it and I already have an idea of what I will do. I am taking evil eye and cackle. Though the character is going to be either CN or NG, so I honestly don't know. I did choose to give him a goatee because an elf with a beard is hiliarous and awesome. I have chosen to name him karkus, he most likely is going to be CN because he is slightly lacking in moral grounds. For example, if he needed to get someone to hand over a book, he would ask once for the book, then the threats come out and then the inflict spells start flying.
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Well, hes going to be a mixture of a support and a debuffer, because combat is not something he knows a lot about, the most he knows is that he has a dagger and that will work fine, but he doesn't exactly have anything going for him outside of spamming as many debuffs and buffs as possible and then hiding
EE is nice because you can hit the same enemy over and over again with it, applying a different penalty each time as opposed most other Hexes that only give you something to do against a particular villain once.
Be aware that Witches are really awful to play in scenarios with mostly undead or other creatures immune to mind affecting abilities. Plan on healing or have some buff type spells if you can so you don't end up twiddling your thumbs like I did through the majority of
I would only suggest being careful of the slumber hex.
Our local area has a lot of witches with the slumber hex. To the point where now when you see one, everyone rolls their eyes and say god's not another one. I'm told we even have a guy that has 3 different witch PC's and every one of them is a slumber witch.
Having said that, most of us would be ok with a new guy that has it. It isn't really as all powerful as some people seem to think. But it is one of the better ones. So it is perfectly reasonable that a new person to PFS wouldn't know that it might be overused in his area and logically pick it.
The Plague is a nice patron, but might not fit well with you bookish type of personality. Wisdom is solid.
Evil Eye and cackle is a decent debuff at low levels.
Flight, Fortune, and Misfortune are also pretty good ones.
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If anything like that occurs, I would ask for a new character sheet when I cannot do anything and get to work writing up my oracle of waves. Thats another story for another time, also, am I the only one who thinks that any book that includes things that add on to classes or add classes themselves should include two character sheets per class? I found that extremely dissapointing that there wasn't a character sheet in the back of the book so I could start writing my warlock instantly.
To be honest, I haven't seen hardly anyone use the provided character sheets in a while. There are just so many possibilities and options that the character sheers very quickly become overwhelmed.
Most people write them out by hand, use some sort of spreadsheet, or a program like HeroLab.
There is also a free program, but I can't remember the name at the moment. I sure someone can chime in with the name of it.
Actually it's not quite as bad as it seems at first glance. I've seen several acid, cold, or electricity sorcerers.
To a certain extent it is carry over from previous versions. Also many people have the attitude that fire should be the most damaging.
Fire generally does the most damage. You are resistant to the thing you are most likely to be attacked by. More targets are also likely to be resistant to your attacks.
Also some of the others have some options that fire doesn't.
Cold/water has some spells like hydraulic push or rime metamagic effects possible.
Acid arrow will inflict ongoing damage.
Shocking grasp has a bonus to hit guys in metal armor.
Sonic does the least damage, but almost nothing has resistance to sonic damage.
Things like that.
Fire is most common for a strictly damage blaster.
Cold is most common for a status effect blaster.
Electricity is most common for a magus.
Acid seems to be most common with guys who want to combine a bunch of things.
Regardless, witch is usually a pretty poor choice to make an elemental specialist.
I love snickersimba threads
they are like watching a train full of clowns hit a bus full of lawyers
in slow motion
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Looks good. Thanks! I am looking over the patrons right now. All I know is the shadow patron might not work, while awesome, yes, only one race has darkvision naturally, meaning that I might end up f&#~ing my party over more than the bad guys. If you cannot hit them, you can't win the fight.
Healing Patron gets the witch even more of the "Healer Essentials" spells like remove disease and lesser restoration, which will basically mean you'll be wanted at any table for helping recover between combats, however, the shadow patron is actually considered very good for granting access to Silent Image, Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation. Darkness is slightly less useful, but remember that it effects an object that causes it to shed darkness. This means that you can cover it with a blanket, and have your party get normal light conditions with greater ease.
For in-combat, evil eye, fortune, misfortune and cackle all go well together, without having to worry about people who hold a grudge against slumber. If you can get evil eye and misfortune to stick on the enemy at the same time, hitting them with your debuffing spells will be much easier.
As for who your biggest friends will be on the battlefield:
- Intimidate builds, shaken imposes a -2 to saves, helping your spells and hexes stick. If they've built themselves well with some of the options that exist, they can easily impose the sickened condition as well for another -2 to saves.
- Reach/trip/grapple builds, those sweet attacks of opportunity and prevention of mobility mean that enemies will either focus on someone that doesn't have a 300-pound beef stick standing next to them, or die in the process of trying to get to you.
- Other offensive casters: You're weakening enemies, they're weakening (or if evocation focused, killing) enemies too. Stack on the penalties to saves to help one another.
- Martials in general: These guys finish off the enemies you've turned into walking tissue-paper cut-outs.
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When it comes to patrons, the biggest thing to look for is making sure you get spells that aren't already on your spell list. My Pharasma-loving witch rocks Spirit mostly because it gives Invisibility.
The Evil Eye/Misfortune/Cackle trinity is the classic shutdown combo, but it doesn't seem to fit your character. Plus it eats up a ton of hex slots that you might want to spend on flavor/utility stuff. Either go full ham or avoid them outright if you want satisfying results. Healing, Flight and Slumber are good for the first few levels and beyond.
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I love snickersimba threads
they are like watching a train full of clowns hit a bus full of lawyers
in slow motion
Should I be offended or thankful? Because I feel honored for being known for something on the board. Even if it is my somewhat constant complaining about my state not having pathfinder books. Enjoy knowing you atleast made me feel honored, have a cookie.
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Looks good. Thanks! I am looking over the patrons right now. All I know is the shadow patron might not work, while awesome, yes, only one race has darkvision naturally, meaning that I might end up f&#~ing my party over more than the bad guys. If you cannot hit them, you can't win the fight.Healing Patron gets the witch even more of the "Healer Essentials" spells like remove disease and lesser restoration, which will basically mean you'll be wanted at any table for helping recover between combats, however, the shadow patron is actually considered very good for granting access to Silent Image, Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation. Darkness is slightly less useful, but remember that it effects an object that causes it to shed darkness. This means that you can cover it with a blanket, and have your party get normal light conditions with greater ease.
For in-combat, evil eye, fortune, misfortune and cackle all go well together, without having to worry about people who hold a grudge against slumber. If you can get evil eye and misfortune to stick on the enemy at the same time, hitting them with your debuffing spells will be much easier.
As for who your biggest friends will be on the battlefield:
- Intimidate builds, shaken imposes a -2 to saves, helping your spells and hexes stick. If they've built themselves well with some of the options that exist, they can easily impose the sickened condition as well for another -2 to saves.
- Reach/trip/grapple builds, those sweet attacks of opportunity and prevention of mobility mean that enemies will either focus on someone that doesn't have a 300-pound beef stick standing next to them, or die in the process of trying to get to you.
- Other offensive casters: You're weakening enemies, they're weakening (or if evocation focused, killing) enemies too. Stack on the penalties to saves to help one another.
- Martials in general: These guys finish off the enemies you've turned into walking tissue-paper cut-outs.
Can I have the fourty or so dollars to purchase ultimate magic? Because I don't have the healing patron theme, personally, healing should of been placed in the advanced players guide because of how essential it is.
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When it comes to patrons, the biggest thing to look for is making sure you get spells that aren't already on your spell list. My Pharasma-loving witch rocks Spirit mostly because it gives Invisibility.
The Evil Eye/Misfortune/Cackle trinity is the classic shutdown combo, but it doesn't seem to fit your character. Plus it eats up a ton of hex slots that you might want to spend on flavor/utility stuff. Either go full ham or avoid them outright if you want satisfying results. Healing, Flight and Slumber are good for the first few levels and beyond.
unless I am allowed to reskin evil eye into dull lecture about whatever theories karkus cooked up to explain his magical powers
my first two hexes are slumber and ward.Because ward seems to be the most fitting one.