Trying out the witch class for PFS

[Nebelwerfer41]

I'm making a witch for Pathfinder Society play and am looking for some ideas on traits/feats. I would like to be Osirian, modelling the character off of an ancient Egyptian priest. Very mysterious. I'll probably be taking the Deception patron and I'll have a jackal (fox) familiar.

Any thoughts?

[Phneri]

Early on you want to look for a party role and ways to not die.

Witches make fairly ok skill monkeys. Plenty of traits can give you diplomacy or one of those other missing skills, and getting a billion skill points/level (human + high int) means you can spread that out reasonably well.

At level one think of a role for yourself. Crowd control means you'll enjoy the slumber hex and charm spells. Buffing/debuffing means things like ward, evil eye, etc. are quite good.

By mid-levels you'll have enough spell slots and options to do most of this, but early on you'll want to go for specifics.

Cauldron can be an awesome level 1 hex. Half-price potions of CLW (not as good as a wand, but still nice) and enlarge person are pretty sweet, and something like this keeps mage armor off your daily spell list.

Flight is also awesome, and ranks up to wonderful things very quickly.

Toughness is a handy early feat, as is improved initiative for a caster. Throw anything can also be nice if you wind up crafting lots of alchemist's fire/acid flasks, as those are relatively useful shots at low levels when you're confronted with something you can't handle easily (for example, undead or swarms).

[ZenithTN]

Phneri wrote:

Cauldron can be an awesome level 1 hex. Half-price potions of CLW (not as good as a wand, but still nice) and enlarge person are pretty sweet, and something like this keeps mage armor off your daily spell list.

The Cauldron Hex is not available for Pathfinder Society, as it involves an item creation feat.

[Thazar]

Since you will be in PFS play I would recommend focusing on the Slumber Hex and feats to increase the DC for that for combat.

Additionally if you have a fair Charisma/Wisdom score you can do well to take some traits to give you some social class skills. Combine that with the Disguise and Charm Hex and that can play well in many social based PFS sessions. Both of those play well into the Deception patron concept.

Finally I am also a fan of the healing and flight hexes. Evil Eye and Misfortune can be a great debuff for BBEG fights to help out the rest of the party as well.

[tadrinth]

How do you increase the Slumber Hex DC? I didn't think Spell Focus would work since it's a supernatural ability, not a spell.

Slumber, Charm, and Evil Eye are all mind-affecting. Misfortune is not. Most of the debuff-oriented spells for witches seem to be either mind-affecting as well (Sleep, Ill Omen) or require Fortitude saves (Pox Pustules) and therefore won't work on undead/constructs. You may want to have a backup plan (Enlarge Person on the Fighter, Burning Hands, etc) to use against enemies that your usual approaches don't work on.

Evil Eye has the wonderful property of sticking for a round even if they save, and you can then extend that with cackle.

Slumber is less amazing early on since you can start off with the sleep spell, but it does have the advantage of being precisely targetable. Useful if an enemy drops straight down onto your party from above and is higher HD than your allies... because in that case your sleep spell will target your allies first and probably not target the enemy at all.

[Thazar]

I believe the Ability Focus feat would work but you may need to have your DM's permission. I would also house rule in Spell Focus... as it is basically school focus anyway. But you are in PFS play so I would have to look through the newest edition of the rules to see if there is a feat that covers it. If not I would expect Ultimate Magic to have something to help out the "Casters" that are not "Spell Casters" with feats to raise the DC just like they have with channeling.