Oblivious's page

Plain Jane D20 has body slot affinities, but this doesn't seem to exist in Pathfinder.

Witches are a lot like rogues; they're skill monkeys and utility casters with a fairly narrow combat niche (save or dies). You can't just throw the same problems at a witch as you would a wizard and then be upset that the witch found them too hard/easy. That would be like presenting a mechanical trap to a rogue and getting mad that he handled it more easily than a fighter would have.

One thing I never see in these threads is a suggestion to provide good alternative courses of action to witches:

-provide an avenue to circumvent or mitigate combat using skills or utility powers.
-provide a means of gaining forewarning of combat. Witches prepare spells, so they likely have a strategically appropriate spell to prepare if given the opportunity.
-give the party reliable rest time so the witch isn't paranoid about using spells per day.
-give the witch a staff. The witch spell list is broad enough that they can charge most staffs, but narrow enough that they benefit disproportionately from them (using UMD to fake that the spell is on their spell list). This also expands their precious few spells per day. Provide sufficient down time that the witch isn't paranoid about running out of charges. A Staff of Fire is a good mid-level option.

A rational squishy caster will want to use more safe and reliable strategies than getting up close risking it all with a SoD. But if you only present a witch with nails, don't be surprised if she reaches for her hammer.

Darken has a pretty similar plot. Evil warrior is saved by a demon and tasked with the collection of evil artifacts (with the help of his party). Some ideas from that comic:

Has it occurred to your wizard that this is a potential source of revenue for him? He can scribe scrolls for cheap, sell them to the sorcerer at a profit, and then he doesn't have to memorize the spells himself. He wins all around.

Fire Shield can give you improved evasion with respect to fire-based attacks.

Monte Cook wrote this article which includes some comments about why in the heck he would write such a lemon of a feat as Toughness (+3 HP). The basic idea is that not all feats are designed to be included in a 20 level build.

Arcane armor training doesn't make a lot of sense if you're building a 20th level Wizard, but might make more sense if you know your game won't go beyond 10th level. I suspect the designers were looking for a way to make low-level caster less squishy without buffing high level casters (since high level wizards didn't really need buffing).