As terrible as the other two witch PDFs from the same author. That pretty much sums it up.
These are supposed to be feats, but power wise, they are more like traits...or weaker than traits.
For example there is a feat that adds bluff to your class skill and grants you a bonus to "influence" indifferent or better creatures. I'm not sure why the term "influence" is used here, because that's a diplomacy term...otherwise, this is nearly the same as any of the "add class skill to your list" traits. Except this comes with a disguise penalty.
Other lack luster feat options include the ability to see ethereal undead, and identify them as ethereal undead. Note that this does not grant you the ability to identify the exact type of undead, just that they are ethereal undead. So its like a free see invisibility spell that only works on ethereal undead, unless your character is too stupid to recognize a ghost as, well, some kind of undead.
Another example that the author is not well versed with the rules and cannot be bothered to do a quick search in the SRD is this feat here, which allows you to cast healing spells on allies with spell resistance, without requiring them to lower said SR, assuming the witch can meet the WIS requirement. SR does not in any way prevent you from healing your allies.
So far 3 PDFs from this author look like they were rapidly put together, with zero playtesting involved and without basic understanding of Pathfinder rules that can be easily found on any SRD. I would strongly suggest staying away from this author.
This book is even worse than the Witch Hex one from the same author. Again, we see the same problem : Rules based on the "rule of cool" with little to no regard paid to practicality.
It's obvious the author is not very well versed in the rules given that the Desert witch archetype adds flare to the class spell list, which is a level 0 spell, but specifically says the spell is not automatically known. Witches automatically know all cantrips in the first place. And hexes are being written as spell like abilities for some reason.
The desert witch itself is yet another terrain based archetype that is of little use unless your DM sets an entire campaign in that particular terrain.
Even then a normal witch would fare better. I mean one of their hex options is seek water, which does exactly what it sounds like. Or you could ask the party cleric to cast create water, a level 0 spell with infinite uses a day. I'm confused as to how they somehow made a hex that is worse than a level 0 spell, and i'm pretty sure your DM wouldn't mind letting you buy a 3/day magic item to cast create water for cheap.
In return for familiar and patron restrictions, you do get (eventual) free fire resistance, which is potentially useful. So you don't really lose anything if you were planning to restrict your familiar/patron anyway...but other than that, just avoid this archetype.
The grisly fetishist is basically a heavily nerfed gravewalker witch.
You get a familiar that is worse than a standard witch familiar AND gives you none of the actual familiar bonuses (such as a handy +3 initiative). Terrorize is an ability that only intimidates opponents who can hear, but not see the witch. I'm trying to picture an adventurer sneaking around and trying to intimidate monsters with this...the strangest part is that this grants a bonus on weapon damage rolls.
Witch. Wielding a weapon. And trying to melee something. Note that this archetype still restricts you to no armor and does not grant you any improved BAB, hit dice, or anything that makes her decent in melee. The ability to use a pick or scythe does not count. To top it off, this ability REPLACES a hex.
You then have an ability that replaces the 4th level hex, and all it does is help you intimidate a flat footed opponent. Wow, really?
Maleficum : Can no longer cast healing spells, but can cast inflict/harm spells at one higher caster level. So from the start, this is a pretty huge downside unless you have an all undead party.
The signature abiltiy is a 60 ft hex that causes 1d4 non lethal damage to targets with a fort save for half. Maximum of 10d4 at 19th level. Targets that fail the saving throw convert some non-lethal damage to lethal damage.
Its useless for both killing an enemy or knocking them unconcious. And this replaces a hex.
At 8th level, you lose a hex but get a free wrackling blight against any target that fails to save against a hex. Note that the target still gets to save against the wrackling blight, and there is the usual 1/24 hour restriction. Still pointless.
At 16th level you can stack a free harm spell onto any target currently affected by one of your hexes, ending all hexs on that target immediately. So its a potentially free 150 damage, which is good, except that this replaces one of your grand hexes, most of which are far more powerful than this.
It is obvious that there was little to no playtesting involved when designing the options here. For example, the maleficum archetype might have been a decent option if all the wracking blight options had been free abilities attached to any hexes the witch used, instead of giving up THREE hexes for them. Being able to deal extra non-lethal damage is honestly a moot point when the rest of the party are dealing full lethal damage to the target and most combats ends in 3 rounds or less.
Given that the other witch hex PDF from the same author has shown the same lack of effort in designing the rules, i would strongly suggest staying away from any products released by this author entirely, as they are likely to be of the same low standard.
All the hexes in this book were clearly designed with the "rule of cool" in mind rather than actual practical usage.
For example there is a hex that causes unattended items to break down. Useful if you are a low level NPC villain terorrizing villagers, not very useful for adventuring. That and any DM could easily give a NPC villain a curse that does something similar, without nerfing a boss fight by using a hex slot for something useless.
There are also attempts to synergize the hexes with paizo hexes, but it is horribly done. One of the hexes here duplicates the effects of alter self, a level 2 spell. It does not scale except in duration, when many paizo hexes are more powerful than a low level spell or can scale to a more powerful version. You can use this as 1 hour uses of disguise self....assuming you have the disguise self hex, which already works in 1 hour increments...
Major hexes dissapoint as well. A major hex that curses the target with your dying breath. Except that all it does is make them "worry", with no penalties, and they can keep saving every day to fight off the hex. This is worse than a bestow curse effect...oh and as a bonus, the witch can't be resurrected for as long as the curse persists. Completely useless without major house ruling.
Other major hexes include the lack luster ability to take the better of two rolls for bluff under heavy restrictions or to duplicate the effects of detect thoughts with a shaken condition, with the added downside of making the target aware that he is being mentally spied on.
Its really sad that so many 3rd party products these days are clearly being released with no attempt at playtesting or designing it with feedback involved, and are a little more than a bunch of "cool" ideas shoved together with unworkable rules.
Looking through the feats presented here, sadly most fall into the trap of "cool idea, impractical for actual gameplay".
For example the very first feat is one that reduces ability damage taken. Hmm. How often is ability damage a problem? Certaintly not enough to have the party healer run around with restoration memorized 100% of the time, except possibly for an undead focused campaign.
There are a LOT of feats dedicated to counterspelling and dispelling...again, counterspelling is not a viable option, and spending feats to make it partially viable doesn't make sense when the witch is a feat intensive class (all those extra hexes you need, not to mention metamagic options).
Perhaps most puzzling is a craft magic tattoo feat...when there is an existing inscribe magical tattoo feat, that doesn't reduce con score. The authors seem to be under the assumption that giving any character a magic item that can duplicate a spell is a big deal...when existing magic items already exist for that very purpose (boots of haste anyone?) and there are already existing magic item creation rules to make items that can duplicate spell effects, again, without the con score penalty, or needing CL 9 before being able to take the feat and start crafting.
Expert healing at first glance looks like a great idea, although the heal skill has a rather underpowered option to do something similar (treat deadly wounds). The main problem with expert healing is that the DC check is extremly high...most witches would only be able to take 10 on this skill at level 5, at which point healing 1d4 damage is essentially pointless. One use of a healer's kit costs 5 gp, and a wand of infernal healing is 15 gp for 10 hp in the same amount of time...except no checks are needed.
There are also a large number of familiar related feats that are mostly for niche uses. For example, you could take a feat that lets you use your character instead of class level for witch familiars. Any character that is dipping into witch for a hex or two is not going to care about having a high level familiar anyway.
Linked Resistance is just not useful...by the time your familiar does have spell resistance, having it out in the open is essentially suicide, and the SR would only block an equal level caster 25% of the time or so, and you are taking a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity to get it for 1d4 rounds. Instead of doing that, you could shut the enemy caster down with a save or lose spell or do anything else that would not endanger your familiar and yourself.
Despite all that, there are some very nice feats here. Opportunity counterspell allows more counterspells to potentially happen...assuming your campaign does reach level 15+. Potent hex is a nice way to increase your hex DCs, but might make your DM pause...especially if used in conjunction with Ability Focus. Rememorize gives the witch more versatility spell wise...although the 1 hour timer does seriously limit it's uses (no switching out utility spells unless you have plenty of time to spare, which isn't often).
Unfortunately even many of the feats which have good rules suffer from far too many restrictions. Seduction is potentially great for both roleplaying and for having the witch contribute to social encounters...but the cha 13 requirement essentially limits it to players who roll exceedingly well for stats, and honestly could be done much better with the typical kitsune sorcerer. The requirements for being able to take a second patron is also far too high...pay a feat to get some more utility spells? Sure! Needing to take a pre-requisite feat just to take a feat for more utility spells? Na.
Several pages are also devoted to sample builds which are unfortunately, poorly done. For example the Arch Witch is built around counterspelling...which is a really terrible idea unless your DM throws mostly spellcasters at you (which the rest of the party is unlikely to appreciate, given the number of save or lose spells which they would be facing). Not only that, but she is nearly defenceless until level 4 where she gets the slumber hex (casting burning hands is unlikely to help much. Does anyone even take burning hands these days when you can take sleep?).
At $4, i honestly expected a lot more practical rules that would fit a wide variety of campaigns. It's unfortunate that too much of the stuff in it is simply based on the rule of cool or underpowered because the authors were too cautious.
At 7 pages, i was expecting a lot of good stuff. I was rather dissapointed.
It seems that many of the hexes fell into the trap of "cool idea, lackluster rules for actual gameplay" trap (much like cursing crops to die, that's not very useful for an adventurer...).
For example one hex basically duplicates the rage spell, except that it only scales in terms of duration and only affects one target once per 24 hours, and it has a touch range limitation. This really is not worth taking when you can simply throw enlarge persons around. The rage spell itself is pretty lackluster, and that affects multiple targets at range.
Another hex duplicates the darkness spell, but only to the point of dim lightning. The entire point of the darkness spell is to plunge an area into darkness so that you (presumably with darkvision) has an advantage over the opponent who would be effectively blind. Dim lighting only gives you a 20% miss chance, and thats not worth a hex slot when a level 1 spell does that (obscuring mist).
Many of the hexes here fail to scale, which renders them rather underpowered at higher levels. Another hex duplicates the effect of the sanctuary spell...which happens to be a level 1 spell. It does not scale in any way.
There are many hexes that duplicate the effects of combat maneveurs, but they are not very impressive because combat maneveurs themselves tend to not be impressive. For example, attempting to disarm or sunder a monster that doesn't wield a weapon is going to do nothing, and monsters like that are extremly common. Even the trip hex fails to work on a large variety of enemies, either because their CMD is far too high or because the target cannot be tripped. It also forces a feat tax on the witch as she now needs to take a feat to give the CMB a decent chance to work.
There are also several hexes which are inferior to existing paizo hexes. For example, why get a bonus to climb when you can feather fall, levitate or fly? There is also a major hex that duplicates the effects of the evil eye hex, except that well, it's a major hex instead of a normal one.
And a grand hex which is a finger of death, except that you have to kiss a helpless or willing target, is pretty silly in practice. Just picture a witch trying to seduce a hideous monster in a dungeon to kiss it to death.
That aside, there are a number of very useful hexes here. Balm is fantastic for patching up the party in between encounters and beautific smile is a decent buff. But they are a very small portion of what is a relatively large PDF.
There are also some nice feats, but they are potentially overpowered. One feat, Hex Focus, essentially duplicates Ability Focus (which does work with hexes, as they are supernatural abilities). Hex expertise is mostly a gimped version of Accursed Hex, as 1/24 hour hexes are often meant for enemies. Quicken hex combined with enlarge hex is a DM's worst nightmare...throwing out a quickened 60 ft misfortune followed by a 60 ft slumber on the BBEG who thought he was safely out of hex range. Expect your DM to react badly to this.
