Feats / Traits for human witch with infernal ancestry?


Advice


Are there any feats or traits a female human witch can take to indicate Infernal Ancestry? I'm considering making a beautiful red haired female human witch from a family called the Glassbreakers who have mysterious ties to the Infernal Duke Zaebos (aka "The Prince of Broken Glass"). The thing is this witch does not embrace her infernal ancestry but rather fights to make her destiny her own! Any suggestions?


Try being a Tiefling instead

Silver Crusade

Racial Heritage Tiefling gives you access to all the tiefling traits and feats


Velxir wrote:
Racial Heritage Tiefling gives you access to all the tiefling traits and feats

I don't thinks that would work. Tiefling are not Humanoid.


Cleru wrote:
Velxir wrote:
Racial Heritage Tiefling gives you access to all the tiefling traits and feats
I don't thinks that would work. Tiefling are not Humanoid.

Correct. Tieflings aren't a Humanoid race, and Racial Heritage requires choosing a Humanoid race.

Silver Crusade Contributor

Look up the Infernal Influence trait. ^_^


Infernal Sorcerer Bloodline could fit. Since you want a Witch, and Witch doesn't have Arcanist's option for Bloodline Development or even Blood Arcanist, and no Sorcerous Witch archetype exists yet (Ley Line Guardian is interesting but doesn't count), you will need the Eldritch Heritage feat chain (gets you the Bloodline Powers faster and leaves you more feat flexibility (including the option to skip the lacklustre 3rd level or or even more lacklustre 9th level Bloodline Power -- unfortunately you can't skip both), but the later part requires serious investment in Charisma), or VMC Sorcerer (Infernal) (your 9th and 15th level Bloodline Powers will be VERY delayed, bat at least you don't have to meet a minimum Charisma requirement to get this). The 15th level Bloodline Power is actually quite good, so you don't want to delay it if you are going to get it at all, although the option to get the Flight Hex makes it less necessary, so if you cant' hack the Charisma requirement for Greater Eldritch Heritage, just get Eldritch Heritage (Infernal) to get Corrupting Touch and call it good, er, I mean evil. By the way, if you do go the Eldritch Heritage route, the Skill Focus (Diplomacy) that you need as a prerequisite could actually be useful (and if you stay Human, see Focused Study below), but it is not a class skill unless you take a trait that makes it one (or dip into something that does, but you probably don't want to do that). A whole load of different traits in several lists get you Diplomacy in class, and they fall into different lists (including several campaign traits, or alternatively Student of Philosophy lets you make it Intelligence-Dependent instead of Charisma-Dependent, but doesn't give it to you in class and doesn't work for information gathering) -- see the 2 traits guides linked from the Zenith Games Guide to the Guides.

Other Human Stuff: If you end up being really MAD, you can take Dual Talent instead of the Bonus Feat and Skilled to get +2 to 2 ability scores (however, giving up the Bonus Feat will make you even more feat-starved). If you really want to pump your Familiar's ability scores and also want a bonus to Sense Motive, you can trade your Human Bonus Feat for Eye for Talent, which does both. Fey Magic gives you some terrain-dependent spell-like abilities AND **2** skills of your choice (not a full-house list, but pretty big) in class, in exchange for the Skilled racial trait. If you want Skill Focus (for instance, to get Eldritch Heritage), replace your general Human Bonus Feat with Focused Study, which gets you a Skill Focus at 1st level, another one at 8th level, and another one at 16th level. If you REALLy want to crank Diplomacy, trade out Skilled for Silver-Tongued (also cranks Bluff) or Social Ties (helps recruit members and teams for an organization, including a bonus to Leadership). If you REALLY need to break through Spell Resistance often with actual spells instead of or in addition to Hexes, you can replace the Human Bonus Feat with Unstoppable Magic, and then get Spell Penetration and eventually Greater Spell Penetration later, and they all stack. Humans also have a decent set of racial feats, although many of them are martial- and/or skill- focused; also some of them (including some non-martial ones) have a Charisma requirement, so that also fits well with your concept (and fortunately, Witch already has Intimidate in class, since some of these have an Intimidate requirement; note that Intiidate will also help make enemies more vulnerable to your spells and Hexes). The Human Favored Class Bonus for Witch is a trap unless you have serious reason to fear losing your Familiar before you can get a Stone Familiar for backup -- otherwise, just spend gold to get more spells.

If you are willing to go Tiefling instead of Human, generic Tieflings have the Intelligence boost to be proficient at Witchcraft, and the Dexterity boost is also nice, but the Charisma penalty will hurt the concept that it looks like you want. Daemon-Spawn Tieflings, on the other hand, put the penalty on Wisdom instead, although this is a step away from being Infernal (Devil-Spawn Tieflings put a penalty on Charisma and no bonus on Intelligence, unfortunately). Depending upon how Human you want her to appear, Tieflings have a decent set of alternate racial traits and feats that you could get good service from. In particular, Pass for Human lets you appear to be Human without a Disguise check, although it also keeps you from having useful Tiefling features like a tail, which you can otherwise upgrade to a Prehensile Tail in exchange for the useless (to you) Fiendish Sorcery. If you don't replace Fiendish Sorcery with a Prehensile Tail, you can instead replace it and your spell-like ability (Darkness once per day or Death Knell once per day) with Soul Seer (Deathwatch at will, unlimited times). The Tiefling Favored Class Bonus for Witch isn't very exciting -- if you are going to get hit with AoE elemental energy attacks enough to make this worthwhile, they are probably often going to be big enough to make it worthless. Tieflings also have some decent feats -- in particular, if you couldn't get Prehensile Tail with an alternate racial trait, you can essentially get it anyway with Grasping Tail (and if you have both Prehensile tail and Grasping Tail, your tail gets even better); Fiend Sight is also worth looing at -- if you take both ranks of this feat, you get the See In Darkness Universal Monster Ability (and before this, the first rank improves the range of your Darkvision and gives you Low-Light Vision).

I wish the sub-races of Tiefling (Devil-Spawn, Daemon-Spawn, etc.) Were further sub-divided according to the particular type of Outsider subtype they were connected to (Erinyes, Osyluth, etc.; or Astradaemon, Piscodaemon, etc.).

Also see the Guide to Races on (not just linked from) the Zenith Games Guide to the Guides, but it hasn't been updated for some of the newest things above.

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