a witch can be mistaken for?


Advice


I am play a winter witch. what can I pretend to be and be passable at it? witches are despised in the game i am playing. in character no one know what my character is while out it is known that my PC is a witch. I would say wizard or mage but i just want to make sure that it is passable.


To pretend to be a wizard you'd need to carry a book with your spells in and hide the communing with your Familiar at the start of the day. Also depends on the hexes you pick.


you could also pretend to be a shaman or druid i suppose, they both talk with animals. also what race is your character? can you use that to hide behind some pseudo-cultural mumbo jumbo?


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Pseudo cultural mumbo jumbo is a good idea.


When I started playing my witch I was mistaken for a shaman. My character wouldn't know how to explain her magic and as I spoke about having been enlightened by a spirit people thought I was a shaman.
I think that you shouldn't try to pass for a wizard as they are too well known and your powers are probably too weird for a wizard. A less common class would be easier to impersonate.


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Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:
To pretend to be a wizard you'd need to carry a book with your spells in and hide the communing with your Familiar at the start of the day. Also depends on the hexes you pick.

Or you could just pretend to be a Sorcerer -- that eliminates the need for the fake spellbook.

You might also want to ask what witches do that people find objectionable and be sure not to do that thing either at all (if the objectionable thing is "cook children") or in the presence of enemies that you expect to survive (if the objectionable thing is "hex people"). You definitely want to have the trust of your party in the latter case, as I am sure that they want you to feel free to use your most disabling hexes against enemies.


you cast arcane spells and have a familiar
you will be fine


What about an oracle? They are supposed to be mysterious and diverse. The fact you are talking with an animal might be simply party of your 'mystery'. Having healing spells available actually points to a divine caster. And you can explain your hexes as revelations / 'mysterious powers granted by the gods'.

I guess only few NPCs are able to distinguish between arcane and divine magic. And if they can, they will probably recognize a witch anyway.


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Your average commoner probably should not be able to make the distinction between a shaman, a witch, a druid, or a cleric of some nature deity provided what they observe is "nature-oriented magic".

So just don't do anything especially witchy (like cackle) and talk about the spirits of the wind and the north, or w/e and you should be fine. The risk I think would run the other way; if witches are so despised you should see some non-witches get accused of witchcraft.


David knott 242 wrote:

You might also want to ask what witches do that people find objectionable and be sure not to do that thing either at all (if the objectionable thing is "cook children") or in the presence of enemies that you expect to survive (if the objectionable thing is "hex people"). You definitely want to have the trust of your party in the latter case, as I am sure that they want you to feel free to use your most disabling hexes against enemies.

I think this is probably the most important thing. If their dislike of witches is based on a misattribution (like cooking children-- you don't have to be a witch to do that), then it should be easy enough. Pretend to be a druid or a familiar-having sorcerer to explain your familiar, and then largely do whatever you would otherwise do anyway. If their dislike of witches is based on witch magic (like hexes, or debuff/control spells) then your job is harder but you could still play it off as some other kind of caster. Focus on party-buffing hexes and pretend you're a mesmerist; focus on usually-divine spells (like command) and pretend you're a cleric.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:
The risk I think would run the other way; if witches are so despised you should see some non-witches get accused of witchcraft.

(Source: actual human history)


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A Duck!


Mage? Surely you don't mean Magus. That would be impossible; you can't do Spellstrike. Similarly, I'd say shaman due to the fact that they also get hexes, except that shamans are physically marked for their spiritual affiliation in some way, and their spirit animals even more so. An ordinary familiar isn't going to pass.

~~~

Of course, by mage you may mean sorcerer.

Sorcerous armor & weapon proficiencies are identical with those for witches. You would need to take Eschew Materials as a regular feat choice, and account for getting a familiar. It's possible, and I'd think that a sorcerer regaining spell-slots would want to do so with her familiar at hand. Unfortunately, while sorcerers only need 15 minutes of concentration after their 8 hours of rest to regain their spell slots, you will need an hour of communing with your familiar to prepare your spells, which may cause RP issues.

You'll want to be sure to skip the divine spells on the witch list, of course -- or better yet, invent a foreign birth & an unknown bloodline for sorcerer that offers a divine or witch-only spell/level. (Max one divine spell/level, learned a level later than normal for witches, but sorcerers can learn arcane spells from other lists with "some understanding" through study.) You'll also want to restrict which spells you use very tightly, to imitate spontaneous casting of a more limited number of spells than your familiar knows.

Your ostensibly bloodline powers would be a mask for some of your witch hexes, then. For your other hexes, you'll need (I'd think) a maxed-out Bluff to make hexing someone look like casting a spell on them. Otherwise, your hexes would likely be a dead giveaway for any charade. Even so, you're obviously going to have to be careful about your hex selection as well as spell selection. (Cackle is right out.) In favor of faking spell-casting, it doesn't say that hexes need somatic or verbal components. You'd be hoping that anyone you meet with a high Knowledge (arcana) is either friendly or about to become dead.

You'll also have to address the fact that you'll have a high Int rather than a high Cha. The Sage wildblooded version of the Arcane bloodline addresses this -- but you won't have its other bloodline powers.

~~~

Alternatively, you could imitate a bumbling wizard, which could make for fun RP. Bumbling because you have so few spells/day, and so many look so odd. (Assuming your GM lets you fake hexes as spellcasting with a Bluff check.) Also, you have such trouble learning spells from ordinary wizardly scrolls that anyone wants to gift you with -- if they're not on the witch list, of course.

Be sure to check with your GM not just whether you can fake casting spells when you hex someone, but also whether you can fake entering a scroll into your big, heavy, useless faux-spellbook while actually helping your familiar learn the spell. And you may need a Bluff check to make it look like you're learning spells for the day from that big, heavy, useless volume you'll be toting around, while actually communing with your familiar. At least wizards take the same amount of time for that as witches, 1 hour a day. And unlike sorcerers, they may have a spell available one day but not the the next.

I can't think of a way to get divine or witch-only spells as a wizard. (But I don't play them. Maybe someone else here knows of one.) If not, it limits your spell selection -- or the circs when you could cast something.

Also, while witches get the full set of simple weapon proficiencies, "wizards are proficient with the club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, and quarterstaff." You'd obviously need to limit yourself to using wizardly weapons. But armor/shield proficiencies are the same as for witches: nada. {And you'll still need a regular feat choice to mimic a class bonus feat: Scribe Scroll.}

~~~

TL;DR: With a maxed-out Bluff & careful selections of weapons, spells, and hexes, it should be possible to fake being a sorcerer or a wizard. Both have perils. Check with your GM on all the fakery involved, especially re: pretending to cast spells while actually hexing others.


To be honest, just dont dress in all black with a pointy hat (esp one that sez "Witch!" on it in sequins), and have a slightly different familiar that is stereotypical. Dont fly on a broomstick, keep cackling to a minimum. ;-)

They'd have to have a awesome spellcraft to determine you are a witch as opposed to a wizard as opposed to a sorcerer, as opposed to a oracle, as opposed to a arcanist, as opposed to a adept, as opposed to a cleric, as opposed to a druid, as opposed to a shaman as opposed to a mystic theurge....

I mean, there is nothing the witch has which other classes dont, with the exception of some odd hexes such as "Cook People'.

Many classes can cast both arcane and divine spells, and even fighters can have a familiar, and who is to say it's a familiar instead of a animal companion?


PS: A one-level dip into whatever class you do decide to imitate may be necessary if a gleeful GM gifts the party with a wand for "your" spell-list. (As opposed to the witch list, I mean.)

I don't know how much fun your GM likes to take with this sort of thing.

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