chellter's page

Witch was always my favorite class to play in Pathfinder 1. I always thought their hexes gave them fun versatility and flavor that attracted me to them over other spellcasters. I can’t tell you how many witches I have played but they all stand out as different in my mind.

This love does not translate to witch in it’s current state in PF2. Hexes just feel too limited and aren’t interesting enough for me to feel the need to cast them over base spells. When I use them they feel underwhelming and not as fun or interesting as they were in the original game. I sometimes found myself ignoring hexes and choosing to cast spells instead because the hexes just weren’t that fun.

Witch fine spell caster and I enjoy having a familiar but hexes are such an integral part of what makes a witch that for me having them be so lacking really ruins the class. I think more focus needs to be made to make using a hexes truly an interesting and fun option for a witch to make. I also think it would be nice if they had a less hex option that serves as a cantrip like bard song.

Also I feel some work could be done on a patron right now they feel a little bland and I would love for them to offer a bit more flavor to the class.

The Bard class has a serious issue with lack of choice. They have by far the fewest class feats of all the classes. They have about twenty-three class feats with Sorcerer coming next with a totally of twenty-seven feats. All the other classes fall above thirty. These numbers only count what is in in the initial release to making counting easier for me. But if you add the feat that allows bard to gain access to tenth level spells then that brings their total up to twenty-four.

This lack of choices comes from two things:

1) The influence of the Bardic Muse is very low. When you make this choice at first level the only thing it gives you is a feat and a spell. Beyond that your muse does not influence your play in any way. If you compare this to other casters who get things like bloodlines, schools, orders or domains it’s pretty lacking. I feel when picking a muse, it should influence your class more. Such as giving you specialized compositions or changing how the class plays. But as it stands I can barely remember which muse I choose because it has such a small impact.

This also means that the muse has a smaller effect on class feats. A lot of classes will have feats that can only be chosen if you picked a certain thing at first level. This also makes your choices at first level feel more significant. While some bard feats are influenced what you pick at first level you can easily pick up these feats using an ancestry feat if you are human.

2) Bards also lack a lot of the feats many the magic casters share. Things like Widen or Reach are completely missing from the bard class feat list. While I understand Bard went from 6th level casters to 9th level casters I do not feel this is enough of a change to exclude them from things that some of the other spell caster get. If I was a new player, I would not know a bard as a 6th level caster and this lack of choice would just stick out. So why not give the bard these choices or if the desire is to make the bard have their own thing why not give them more metamagic feats that play into the idea of their song? They have a few of these but I would argue not enough.

I like bards because they are unique in the ability to make the party better through buffs. Their spell list is great and they do have some feat choices. But their limited choice means a player has less options to customize them and after one play you feel like you have fully experienced the class. This sucks in a game that should be about choice and replayability.