My GM has hinted profusely that our next session could be quite the bloodbath and we should all have backup characters ready to go. Of course, he professes at the start of every encounter that it could be a bloodbath, but we still tend to believe him after all these years.
I'm not very experienced with arcane casters, but since the class debuted, I've toyed with the idea of a witch that hinders his foes so effectively that he has no need of using damaging spells or abilities, leaving the hit point game to the other PCs.
A little campaign info to start: The GM rolls one set of stats and everyone in the group uses those.
The stats for this particular game are: 16 16 15 15 12 11
Fairly high, I know, but he's good at adjusting encounters on the fly and he's quite stingy on magic gear.
The setting is homebrew; Steampunk Victorian Horror is how the GM tends to describe it. The PCs try to maintain normalcy while battling horrific monstrosities and evil masterminds in a city-centric setting. Lots of aberrations and undead as well as humanoid foes abound.
Other current PCs (subject to change pending the outcome of next session) include a two-handed weapon paladin, fire cleric, grapple barbarian, bladebound magus, and my character, a ranged combat-focused urban ranger.
The loss of my ranger shouldn't impede the party's ranged capability too badly since the cleric and magus love their fireballs and lightning bolts and the GM prefers cramped quarters with lots of stuff to climb on or hide behind.
So. Is it possible with the witch's plethora of debuff abilities to never inflict hit point damage and yet remain viable in a party of 5 PCs? What would you suggest for race, feats, hexes, and spells for this concept?
Yes, Witch is good; and I don't recall a build that tried to do any damage except with desperate AoOs with longspear at level 1 (str dumped)
Generally I would try to boost allies beforehand with spells, if smelling combat, & use hexes during battle. I like cackle, evil eye hex, fortune hex and misfortune hex. Last two have the advantage of not being mind affecting.
Here is another take:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1avH5AFYaZ838OC_W7BY_Bnt1TH9KGCc2yg TOb0CiYu0
So. Is it possible with the witch's plethora of debuff abilities to never inflict hit point damage and yet remain viable in a party of 5 PCs? What would you suggest for race, feats, hexes, and spells for this concept?
If you work well as a team, there is no reason why you could not be the buffer / debuffer in the party without ever dealing damage. I believe that the witch is better than any other class at filling a useful role without needing to do damage. For more information on how to build this concept, check this guide:
I agree with above posters, Witch is the way to go for this style of play. Take the feat "Extra Hex" early and often, as well as "accursed hex" so you can re-attempt hexing if you've nothing better to do.
Also, I want to point out that Evil Eye can target the same thing more than once. So even if you're fighting the big bad evil guy, you can Evil Eye once for AC, then Attack, then Saves, etc etc, rather than do damage.
Honestly, I have a witch (that I love) and even though it isn't in her character concept, the ONLY time I do damage is against swarms and hordes of undeadies (where I am kind of otherwise a bit on the worthless side). Otherwise Im just a flying, mad-cackling, buff/debuff machine.