Hello
I bought the rule books and starter kit not too long ago. After reading all the rules in the kit and most of the core book, I asked a colleague to come up with a class and race. And the choice fell on the dragonkin witch. After a little digging on the internet, I figured out what was what, I think. But still want to clarify some details.
Patron traditions have spell lists written on them. Rune, for example, has an arcana. That means I can take any 10 charms and 5 spells in the Arcane list, right? If the descriptor says necromancy, still allowed? Or is the main thing that the tradition line should say arcane?
From this comes the next question. At level 4, you can choose Rites of Convocation feat, which gives you the ability to choose a summoning spell from the arcane spell list.
But if I can take any spell from the arcane list, then I can also take the summon animal or Animate Dead. Then there's no point in this trait, is there? (In this example) Or is it necessary to have a witch descriptor in the spell? Or an Transmutation, evocation or something? I didn't see that, but maybe I overlooked it? I'm confused.
I've never played a tabletop role-playing game before. Especially not pathfinder. Going to DMing for a colleague and company next month. Want to be prepared for the game, at least in knowing the witch class.
Due to this, the following question.
How much will it affect the balance of the game or the course of the game, if you give Cackle on the first level and make it not needed focus point? As I said before, while digging through the internet came across some debate on this, but very little was said about the consequences of this.
And the same thoughts about lessons as bonus feat.
Will this make the class overpowered or will the game go downhill after such a homebrew?
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Patron traditions have spell lists written on them. Rune, for example, has an arcana. That means I can take any 10 charms and 5 spells in the Arcane list, right? If the descriptor says necromancy, still allowed? Or is the main thing that the tradition line should say arcane?
From this comes the next question. At level 4, you can choose Rites of Convocation feat, which gives you the ability to choose a summoning spell from the arcane spell list.
But if I can take any spell from the arcane list, then I can also take the summon animal or Animate Dead. Then there's no point in this trait, is there? (In this example) Or is it necessary to have a witch descriptor in the spell? Or an Transmutation, evocation or something? I didn't see that, but maybe I overlooked it? I'm confused.
I've never played a tabletop role-playing game before. Especially not pathfinder. Going to DMing for a colleague and company next month. Want to be prepared for the game, at least in knowing the witch class.Due to this, the following question.
How much will it affect the balance of the game or the course of the game, if you give Cackle on the first level and make it not needed focus point? As I said before, while digging through the internet came across some debate on this, but very little was said about the consequences of this.
And the same thoughts about lessons as bonus feat.
Will this make the class overpowered or will the game go downhill after such a homebrew?
To clarify a couple of foundational things:
Spells have a tradition and a school. Most also have traits. Those are all separate things.
There are only four traditions: Arcane, Primal, Occult, and Divine. You will have access to one of them based on your choice of patron.
The school of a spell - such as Necromancy or Conjuration - is not very important to a Witch. Or most anyone else. I believe that those categories are either going away entirely or being reworked in a few months.
So as a Rune Witch, at first level you get 10 cantrips (or charms if you want to call them that for some reason) and 5 1st level spells in addition to one more 1st level spell that your patron teaches automatically. But you only have 5 cantrip slots and 2 1st level slots to prepare those spells in. You have to choose each morning which spells to have available for the day. For the cantrips, those will be available permanently. For the spell slot spells, once the spell slot is cast, it is not available again until the next day. If you want to cast Magic Missile twice in one day, you will have to choose to put Magic Missile in both of your 1st level spell slots in addition to having it be one of your 1st level spells known during character creation. You do have the option of teaching your familiar additional spells to have them available to prepare into spell slots each morning.
Normally, once you have prepared your spells in the morning, you are not able to change them. Wizard has an Arcane Thesis that allows changing the spells prepared during the day, and Rites of Convocation is a limited form of that. If you chose to prepare two instances of Magic Missile in the morning, and then found during your adventures during that day that there was an important, but very small, item well out of anyone's reach that you needed to retrieve, Rites of Convocation would let you spend 10 minutes to replace one of those Magic Missile spells with Summon Animal. Then you would be able to cast it to summon a Raven to fly up and retrieve the item for you.
As for Cackle, it is a very useful ability. Several classes including Witch and Wizard get a similar ability to sustain a spell (such as Summon Animal) for free once per round - as a level 16 feat. So giving that automatically at 1st level is a rather large boost in power. A more balanced improvement would be to give the benefits of the Cackle feat automatically at 1st level, but have casting the Hex still cost a focus point as normal.
For Basic Lesson, I think it is a rather good idea to give Basic Lesson as a bonus feat at level 1 as part of patron benefits. I am hoping that something like that will happen as part of the Witch class rework coming out towards the end of this year.
Thanks for the explanation
Hopefully it will be easier with the other classes.
I'll try to give Cackle as a 1st class feat as normal, and a lesson as a bonus. If session 0 goes wrong, I'll know how NOT to do it.
About charms, English is not my primary language, got lost in translation. I meant cantrips. Sorry if I confused anyone.