White-Haired Witch and stats


Rules Questions


33 people marked this as FAQ candidate. Answered in the FAQ. 3 people marked this as a favorite.

So, I was looking at the new White Haired Witch archetype, and it seemed pretty neat at first...

The general mechanical-concept is to take the Prehensile Hair Hex and greatly expand its abilities and utility with some cool thematic elements... however in practice, this isn't the case.

Why? Unlike Prehensile Hair, there is no provision for using Intelligence for anything but Damage Rolls (and then, 1x Intelligence instead of 1.5x Intelligence if your Prehensile Hair is your only natural attack) and triggered Grapple checks from the not-Grab grablike ability.

This means you're needing a good strength to make use of your primary class feature, because you need to hit via Str+Half BAB for any of the supplemental features to work, but you dont even get to recieve your strength on damage rolls... that's governed by Intelligence. Hope you can afford good scores in both.

As well, as written, Pull is a near useless ability, as there is no provision for not moving a grappled foe adjacent to you when the grapple begins, which I believe is part of normal grapple rules, right? Seems like you should probably not move the opponent when initiating the grapple, similarly themed to how the witch doesn't gain the grappled condition herself.

Anyways, I was hoping for clarification as to whether this is the intended functionality (which sadly would imply that one of the stronger class features in the game, Hexes, would be replaced by an ability which is arguably less useful than one of said Hexes with the same theme), or if it may have been intended that attack rolls should be Intelligence based as well which may have been ommited or assumed, which would make the archetype more viable.

If anyone else wonders the same, lets hit some FAQ buttons.

Silver Crusade

The book hasn´t been out for a long time so give people some time to come to the messageboards and complain ^^

White haired witch sounds cool though, reminds me about the jackie chan movie where he is a drunk ..... ok that's not very helpfull he is drunk in all the good ones.

Monkey King had a white haired witch, could be cool am am already seeing a build with arcane archer^^


KrispyXIV wrote:
Why? Unlike Prehensile Hair, there is no provision for using Intelligence for anything but Damage Rolls (and then, 1x Intelligence instead of 1.5x Intelligence if your Prehensile Hair is your only natural attack) and triggered Grapple checks from the not-Grab grablike ability.

Can't you finesse it? Or is that Unarmed strikes only and not all natural attacks? Either way I did FAQ.


Mr.Alarm wrote:
KrispyXIV wrote:
Why? Unlike Prehensile Hair, there is no provision for using Intelligence for anything but Damage Rolls (and then, 1x Intelligence instead of 1.5x Intelligence if your Prehensile Hair is your only natural attack) and triggered Grapple checks from the not-Grab grablike ability.
Can't you finesse it? Or is that Unarmed strikes only and not all natural attacks? Either way I did FAQ.

I'm fairly certain you'd need both Weapon Finesse (to hit) and Agile Maneuvers (for any maneuver check other than initiating a not-grab or a trip/disarm/sunder) to make this Dexterity based. Either way, adding additional feat tax does not improve the situation.


I was curious about this archtype, because as-written it is a ridiculously powerful set of abilities.
The flaw, as stated is the lack of int to hit and using the half BAB progression.
The build I ended up coming up with caps at lvl 11, but is perfectly functional every step of the way.

Key points:
3 levels of Magus, taking arcane accuracy as magus arcana
rest white haired witch
Elements patron for shocking grasp
King Crab familier for +2 grapple
Magical lineage (shocking grasp) combined with intensify spell feat, allowing for lvl 1 shocking grasp up to 10d6 damage
Weapon finesse + combat reflexes and make dex your secondary stat
then just take Grapple feats and maybe extra arcane pool
Ring of wizardry 1 as soon as possible

This gives you a large number of intensified shocking grasps to spellstrike with your hair with, granting the +4 to hit if they're wearing metal. Then the extra +int to hit when you need it from the arcane pool.
Magus also gives you access to true-strike, that can be spell-combat casted for an equiv of +18 to hit when you really need to make the hit to get the grapple.

Once you have the money, get a lvl 12+ wizard (pref lvl 20 if your setting allows) to cast Greater magic fang and permenancy it on you for another +3-5 hit/damage (total cost 9100 for 20th level to cast it)

So if anyone moves within your increasingly long reach, you get your AoO, which you can trip or grapple them with.

The final lvl 11 build I made around this is +16 to hit, +24 when using one of my 9 arcane pool for accuracy, and +28 if they're wearing metal. With 15 intensified shocking grasps I can reliably do 11d6+13 damage with my attacks, and then grapple with a +20 CMB, maintaining the grapple as a move action allowing me to continue to cast spells as normal while doing 1d6+13 constrict damage to that target each round and a 35 CMD to break free.

Edit:
figured I'd post the final build:
White Haired Witch/Magus build

It's in my relative shorthand for making a character, I hope it's understandable.

In conclusion though, I agree that adding int instead of str to hit would make this ability a lot more intuitive to make a character around, I made the above character as a thought experiment to see if I could make it work. The character concept behind it is based on japanese combat anime, as that's a great way to roll with the hair being your weapon.

In addition I would rule that you get int for all of the maneuver checks within the grapple by your hair. for the same reason I'd rule that you can't grapple more than one person at the same time with your hair.

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KrispyXIV wrote:

So, I was looking at the new White Haired Witch archetype, and it seemed pretty neat at first...

The general mechanical-concept is to take the Prehensile Hair Hex and greatly expand its abilities and utility with some cool thematic elements... however in practice, this isn't the case.

Why? Unlike Prehensile Hair, there is no provision for using Intelligence for anything but Damage Rolls (and then, 1x Intelligence instead of 1.5x Intelligence if your Prehensile Hair is your only natural attack) and triggered Grapple checks from the not-Grab grablike ability.

This means you're needing a good strength to make use of your primary class feature, because you need to hit via Str+Half BAB for any of the supplemental features to work, but you dont even get to recieve your strength on damage rolls... that's governed by Intelligence. Hope you can afford good scores in both.

As well, as written, Pull is a near useless ability, as there is no provision for not moving a grappled foe adjacent to you when the grapple begins, which I believe is part of normal grapple rules, right? Seems like you should probably not move the opponent when initiating the grapple, similarly themed to how the witch doesn't gain the grappled condition herself.
Also the fact that it does damage of 1D4+int does not preclude you from getting the 1.5 multiplier on damage if it's your only attack. It's worded poorly but nothing states it counteracts the standard natural weapon rules.

Anyways, I was hoping for clarification as to whether this is the intended functionality (which sadly would imply that one of the stronger class features in the game, Hexes, would be replaced by an ability which is arguably [i]less useful than one of said Hexes with the same theme), or if it may have been intended that attack rolls should be Intelligence based as well which may have been ommited or assumed, which would make the archetype more viable.

If anyone else wonders the same, lets hit some FAQ buttons.

[/i]

I'm still getting the hang of this archetype but I think you've made a mistake in your interpretation of the Pull ability.

Pull (Ex) wrote:
: At 6th level, a white-haired witch who successfully strikes a foe with her hair can attempt a combat maneuver check to pull the creature 5 feet closer to her as a free action.

Pull doesn't require you to grapple your target it only needs you to successfully strike them. this way, every time you hit an opponent you yank them out of position and pull them to you (which could be very painful for them if you are flying at that time).
Also because it states the damage is 1D4+int doesn't state you don't add your strength to it or you don't get 1.5 times it for it being an only attack. Prehensile hair uses the words Int INSTEAD of Str this power doesn't.

Now, after stating that, this is a HORRIBLE witch archetype and no one should ever consider taking it... for more than 4 levels.

As a 1-2 level Dip class however it is amazingly good especially for a Hexcrafter Magus or Natural Weapon fighting Ranger.

For the Magus take Magical Knack and 2 levels of this archetype and pick up a permanent 10' reach weapon to channel through that allows you to use a 2hd weapon and still cast (use the touch option instead of spellstrike so all your attacks are against touch AC instead to counteract the secondary natural attack penalty). You also get back all the Hexes you gave up taking this archetype as well as adding all the witch spells to your spell list for wands and scrolls.

For the Ranger it's even more powerful, take Magical Knack and 2 levels of this archetype and pick up a permanent 10' reach grab ability (which you have the BaB and Str to maximize) and add a bucket of arcane spells to your spell list. It also bumps you up to 4 primary Natural attacks a round at witch 1/ranger 2 (Bite, Claw, Claw, Hair) and freely lets them grapple, constrict AND trip a target every round without suffering any penalties themselves (you get past the Int requirement by taking Weapon Finesse to use your Dex instead) so all your REAL damaging attacks are against an opponent with those penalties. You are pretty much going to auto-hit every time and you will murder everything you see.

(ick, now that I look deeper this build seems more and more brokenly powerful. Let me build a PFS legal character with it and see what happens)


While I do not know if this will make any difference in how you play this character, this new errata for it was posted a few days ago in another thread:

Patrick Renie wrote:

While I can't speak for the Synthesist at the moment, we have come up with some errata for the White-Haired Witch.

On page 23 of the Dragon Empires Primer, in the White-Haired Witch archetype, in the Constrict, Trip, and Pull paragraphs, change "free action" to "swift action".


woops, my post has the damage at 1d6 base when it's 1d4, not a big change.


Enevhar Aldarion wrote:

While I do not know if this will make any difference in how you play this character, this new errata for it was posted a few days ago in another thread:

Patrick Renie wrote:

While I can't speak for the Synthesist at the moment, we have come up with some errata for the White-Haired Witch.

On page 23 of the Dragon Empires Primer, in the White-Haired Witch archetype, in the Constrict, Trip, and Pull paragraphs, change "free action" to "swift action".

Woah, what? They made it more terrible?

I'm glad that Prehensile hair is still a great Hex for this sort of thing...

Thats what really bugs me. Prehensile Hair does almost everything this archetype does, or at least what you could want it to do for a full caster, and represents the barest fraction of the cost of the archetype itself.

It IS a halfway decent two level dip for a few people though, I guess...


Half way decent. Are you mad? ;) -smiley face of just kidding.

As soon as I looked at it I started have horrific compulsions to take a two level dip as a nat attack alchemist/Masterchymist and grab the final embrace chain. A fourth attack that qualifies for final embrace? Particularly that cannot be attacked merely escaped. No sir I don't have any problems wandering about as an invisible madman with claws, teeth, and hair that lets me grapple and apply sneak attack damage. Nope no problems at all.

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The final embrace option is nice but my mind was more thinking of making a bad touch Magus.

So far with Witch 2/Magus 4 I've found a way to apply:
Grappled, Prone, Shaken, Fatigued, Entangled and Flanked
twice a round every round with a single first level spell.

If I can find an efficient way of adding Sickened, Frightened and Staggered to the mix I'll blow away the bad touch cleric build and make every GM I meet cry.


the thing is to make this archtype work you really need to get a high cmb and I can't really see how it's done. by lvl 10 you'll be an npc wizards worst nightmare but everything else will shrug you off as insignificant.


even if you can use your int for that initial hair attack, you still got half BAB.

Now you've got a nice trick up your sleeve against a few ennemies at lvl 8, however thinking out of the box would let you cut down that hair with a simple dagger (it's not RAW, but it's not forbidden either).

Also at lvl 10, you gain what another class gets at lvl 1, and at lvl 12, you get that but only very limited. 18 and 20 abilities seem to be a joke compared to other capstone abilities, severly limited ability another class gets at lvl 10.

In my opinion, you loose an awesome, fun, class feature, to get 1 good ability (that ain't fun or verstatile) at lvl 8, and some very narrow uninteresting abilities.

I like witches, I like rogues, I like ninjas, but I can't see anyone taking this class, even with errata...

the good side seems to be that there is no power increase.

Edit: just saw, hair cannot be sundered or attacked, that's just ad-hoc ruling, and seems badly designed, so your hair is indestructible or what? really?

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Mojorat wrote:
the thing is to make this archtype work you really need to get a high cmb and I can't really see how it's done. by lvl 10 you'll be an npc wizards worst nightmare but everything else will shrug you off as insignificant.

Actually your CMB will wind up being one of the highest in the game with this build.

Base CMB for this toon is = Magus level (instead of Bab) + Dex mod (instead of Strength) + weapon enhancement bonus (+3 from arcane pool) + Arcane Accuracy Bonus + Flying Bonus on a touch attack to start the attack. Can easily see 21+ CMB at 10th level with no problem and 30 is doable if you burn some resources.

Also remember combat maneuvers are still flagged as attacks that strike an opponent, with the 2nd level bonus from white hair it triggers the grapple attempt.

So, spell combat (Frostbite) and use the free touch attack to attempt to trip the opponent, succeed on that and the spell goes off and target is tripped (prone + Entangled + Fatigued) and you get to use your Enforcer feat to Intimidate (Shaken) wand also trigger the grapple check and when that goes off (it will with the -8 to CMD from the 4 above penalties) it automatically moves the target to an adjacent square (you pick which so Flanked now).
You then automatically Constrict the target for more damage AND THEN you make a second trip attempt with your hair on a different target repeating all of the above on the 2nd target (or the first if the trip attempt failed) before unleashing all the attacks from your actual weapon (keened, bursting scimitar or such) on your nearly helpless foe burning off the rest of the charges of Frostbite and beating your target senseless.
At this point the rest of the party can nearly auto-hit the victim and kill it on the first (second at the worst) round.

Icky, Nasty watch your GM cry builds make me feel warm and fuzzy.


Mathwei ap Niall wrote:

Actually your CMB will wind up being one of the highest in the game with this build.

I think the sentiment is that an archetype should be valid on its own, not just as a two level dip. ESPECIALLY when the archetype has class features (Rogue talents) that dont even get considered because they dont come into play during most campaigns.

Sure, its an ok two level dip. But I think it should stand on its own as at least viably OK, even if its not great.

As is, the issue is that a normal Witch with Prehensile hair is as good if not better at doing cool stuff with her hair (at least partially because that does so much BEYOND just being a natural weapon)

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KrispyXIV wrote:
Mathwei ap Niall wrote:

Actually your CMB will wind up being one of the highest in the game with this build.

I think the sentiment is that an archetype should be valid on its own, not just as a two level dip. ESPECIALLY when the archetype has class features (Rogue talents) that dont even get considered because they dont come into play during most campaigns.

Sure, its an ok two level dip. But I think it should stand on its own as at least viably OK, even if its not great.

As is, the issue is that a normal Witch with Prehensile hair is as good if not better at doing cool stuff with her hair (at least partially because that does so much BEYOND just being a natural weapon)

Oh no, this is a horrible archetype as written and is nearly unplayable as is.

The regular Witch with Prehensile hair is 10 times better since all the class features work together and make the whole even stronger.
this archetype forces the player into an impossibly convoluted mashup where none of the class features actually help the class at all.

The only advantage this archetype has over the regular witch is it doesn't need a standard action to start using the hair.


I am aware that white haired witch/hexcrafter may not be optimal, but i really like the flavor and enjoyed the examples posted above and i actually like having a limited spell list(i am terrible at making decisions). My question is would a build like those above survive in an AP such as Skull and Shackles (which my group will be running)? I dont mind being non-optimized but i also don't want to handicap my party.


Ps sorry about the necro

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