jason mercado's page

Tell the witch to stop sucking the fun out of the game for you by essentially using a powerful, unlimited save-or-die on every single opponent they encounter.

God, I hate the sleep hex. Just the concept of being able to choose a will save or die spell as an at-will ability at first level is ridiculous. I mean, you might have sleep prepared as a wizard, right? That's fine. You have like, three, maybe four spells, so choosing sleep is like picking a grenade for your arsenal. You take color spray-- a room sweeper automatic shotgun-- and magic missile-- an SMG-- coupled with acid splash or ray of frost-- a sidearm-- and you're good. The witch dials in a code and gets a frickin' golden gun.

One of my players used it in CotCT, and he used it I think maybe ten times total from level 1 to 16. He got a few important creatures with it, but he didn't spam it at every single encounter. If you can convince your player to do the same thing, then the game can actually continue.

Your comparison had me dying of laughter. Best thing i read all day.

So I've been DMing a 'Legacy of Fire' group which started using the new Advanced Player's Guide. We have an experienced group of players who enjoy the new options but are always aware when a certain power or ability seems destabilizing to the game. The power in question is the Witch's Sleep Hex. Currently, we've run through two of the six modules using the following build:

Elven Witch 6
Elven Barbarian 4, Oracle 2
Elven Monk (Zen Archer) 6, Ranger 1
Elven Oracle 6
As the first module progressed, it became obvious that the power of the witch's sleep hex seemed on par with that of a Sleep spell, though slightly weaker with more limitations. The only thing that stood out were a number of encounters with the module's Beasts and Magical Beasts. Despite having more than 4 HD, 3 out of 4 of the module's unique fauna fell prey to the instant coup-de grace of the Sleep Hex combined with the Barbarian/Oracle of Battle's ability to immediately move on the witch's turn and set up for the kill. When the module's final encounters against the BBEGs were set up (cover-boy and the final monster), I knew by their stats that they had an even chance of falling prey to the instant-kill of the Witch and Barbarian, forcing me to fudge their saves (which ended up failing) so the encounter would at least be climatic. By the first module's end, I knew something might be overpowered with the ability.
Our second module progressed, with similar results to the first one. I began to notice something that generally doesn't occur at 5th/6th level of play: monsters were being forced to make a save-or-slumber, when effects that outright incapacitate a monster are usually very limited in their scope (such as Hold Monster) or didn't outright render a creature helpless (such as Hideous Laughter). More wandering magical beasts, humanoids, and pretty much anything that wasn't undead or a dragon fell prey repeatedly to the slumber. Understand that I had spent a great deal of time Pathfindering out the stats of all the NPCs and monsters in the...

I know what you mean about the hex making things too easy. When i ran a witch i stopped using it because it was too overpowerd.

How would the affects of Unwilling Shield and Shield Other stack, assuming the person who was taking the damage was protected by both. I see three possible ways you could do this, but nothing is raw:

Option 1) Each person takes 1/3, just evenly splitting the damage.

Option 2) Damage applied in some sort of order, so Caster and Sheildy split the damage .5/.5, then the caster splits their .5 with the other sheildy for .5/.5. Leaving total damage .5/.25/.25. In this case order matters. So determining order, by spell level, caster level, order they are cast in, or arbitrary.

Option 3) Friend takes half, foe takes half, protected person takes zilch.

Any thoughts?

To me it seems that if the target of your shield other spell gets hit, then you would take half, and the target of your unwilling shield would take half of that(or 1/4).

northbrb wrote:

is there anything stopping you from using this on a charge attck?

Nope.

Frankly, this feat is awesome for anyone with a 3/4th BAB or anyone who wants to, say, trip as their first attack, but doesn't want to suffer the -4 on the trip and potentially waste it.

Very cool, just not quite that amazing for fighters, who will likely always hit with their first attack anyways.

Even for a fighter it still is a solid feat. Having that extra attack when you confirm a crit is helpful.