Circle of the Sisters

[Erdrix]

I'm a little confused about the three Annis hags in Harrowing the Hook. In their tactics section it says "they put up a fight for a few rounds, favoring their more powerful coven spell-like abilities like bestow curse and forcecage at the start of the fight".

I don't see anything in their stat block about coven spells. All I see is alter self and fog cloud. Am I missing something?

[Latrecis]

See the Green Hag write-up in the Bestiary for details on Hag covens.

And yes, it would be convenient if a reference to the appropriate location for information on covens had been placed in the Annis Hag write-up.

[Jhaeman]

We must be right at the same part, because I had the exact same confusion before poking around online. My PCs should get to the hags next week or the week after. Yeah, the Coven abilities make them much tougher!

[Erdrix]

Latrecis wrote:

See the Green Hag write-up in the Bestiary for details on Hag covens.

And yes, it would be convenient if a reference to the appropriate location for information on covens had been placed in the Annis Hag write-up.

Thank you! That makes much more sense.

[Erdrix]

Jhaeman wrote:

We must be right at the same part, because I had the exact same confusion before poking around online. My PCs should get to the hags next week or the week after. Yeah, the Coven abilities make them much tougher!

I suspect we'll be there next week as well.

[Misroi]

Yeah, the coven rules are in a bad place. If I could travel back in time to when Pathfinder was being created, I'd have them create a hag subtype, and include the coven rules there.

[Meirril]

Coven rules make them much more powerful spellcasters, but without anything to stop the players from attacking them and each coven casting being a full round action they maybe get off one spell before at least one of them are dead.

If you want to make this an actual combat encounter give them a few guards. They don't need to be tough, just good enough to stand in the way for a few rounds. Like maybe 2 stone giants, or 2 ogrekin. Heck, even 2 bears would be fine.

[Bellona]

For those using hag covens, I recommend Blood of the Coven (Player Companion line). Some of it is actually more useful for a GM than a player, particularly the two-page spread on hag covens and what each type of hag brings to her coven's magic. Hint: a coven with three different types of hags will have far more options available for their coven magic than a coven with just one type of hag.