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A witch's patron is the source of their magic. By making a pact and communing with this entity/force, a witch is granted spells, hexes, a familiar, and other goodies. However, I haven't seen much talk about what people have done with the patron in game: no stories about the details of the pact, interacting with the patron, nothing.
I'm sure its out there and you all have good ideas, so let's here them! What is your witch's patron like? How is their relationship?
For example, a player of mine made a tengu witch with the Trickery patron. I asked if he wanted to come up with a patron or let that be something I come up with. He said no, so I decided his patron would be Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Seeing his face when the tengu learned who he had made the pact with was priceless. Much hilarity ensued.
I've swapped the term "patron" out for "path" in my games until I can decide on a better word. Neither the players or I care for the common trope of power-through-an-entity; I wonder if this holds true at other tables.
I've swapped the term "patron" out for "path" in my games until I can decide on a better word. Neither the players or I care for the common trope of power-through-an-entity; I wonder if this holds true at other tables.
Interesting, care to elaborate? The class description does say it does not have to be a personified entity, so the Path is perfectly acceptable.
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I've swapped the term "patron" out for "path" in my games until I can decide on a better word. Neither the players or I care for the common trope of power-through-an-entity; I wonder if this holds true at other tables.Interesting, care to elaborate?
Sure, I've never been a fan of D&D/Pathfinder's magic divisions; arcane and divine seem pointless as magic is simply magic. Since both are here to stay, I've altered the flavor a bit:
Arcane deals with manipulating the immediate reality/sphere. This type of magic is anchored to the caster's material plane, but not necessarily limited to that world. Arcane means changing local physics to suit the mage's needs.
Divine involves cosmic elements and is invoked from an opposite perspective. This color of magic snakes its way to the caster from either Lovecraftian paradoxes (oracles & yet-to-be-named-cleric-alternate-class) or fey-world/Hedge/First World dreams (druids & rangers). I use a combination of archetypes to keep paladins spell-less, but useful; I don't use inquisitors at all at this point unless using Golarion, FR, etc. Divine means bringing new laws of physics to the prime.
With the witch sharing divine abilities and remaining an arcane caster, I flavor the class as a weird, "unnatural" variant to the wizard.
The idea of a patron for a witch is a long debated topic in Dungeons and Dragons. Some players like it, some hate it. Even some real-life persons that are into witchcraft fall on both sides of the debate, either liking to play witches in D&D or finding them highly offensive.
The way I see it, a witch is a kind of arcane cleric. But, her source isn't necessarily a god(dess) but it can be. The pact part is I think the part that many players (be they non-RL witches or RL witches) have a problem with, because we think of making a pact as making a pact with the devil, and that's bad.
Now, I think that witches are fine making pacts with their patron because as I said, your patron can be good or evil but it's more fun in my opinion that your patron is a sort of mystery... are they good? Are they evil? A witch in D&D/Pathfinder doesn't truly know. That's roleplaying fun for me right there, because a Cleric of Asmodeus? Well Asmodeus is Lawful Evil. We all know that if we make our religion checks. But the witch... she claims to be good and she does good things... but just who IS her patron? She doesn't even know...
In fact, I once made a witch who had the Moon domain along with Beast Bonded and traded the +1 level bump it gives my familiar to have a wolf familiar. Now, she was Chaotic Good, but it was my idea that her patron was in fact Jezelda. Now, she doesn't know this... she's not going to suddenly have her alignment changed to Chaotic Evil and such to match Jezelda, but little things, little hints... and just what does Jezelda want from her? Just what is Jezelda's grand plan in giving this mortal with a love for wolves the ability to do GOOD in the world?
The idea of a patron for a witch is a long debated topic in Dungeons and Dragons. Some players like it, some hate it. Even some real-life persons that are into witchcraft fall on both sides of the debate, either liking to play witches in D&D or finding them highly offensive.
The way I see it, a witch is a kind of arcane cleric. But, her source isn't necessarily a god(dess) but it can be. The pact part is I think the part that many players (be they non-RL witches or RL witches) have a problem with, because we think of making a pact as making a pact with the devil, and that's bad.
Now, I think that witches are fine making pacts with their patron because as I said, your patron can be good or evil but it's more fun in my opinion that your patron is a sort of mystery... are they good? Are they evil? A witch in D&D/Pathfinder doesn't truly know. That's roleplaying fun for me right there, because a Cleric of Asmodeus? Well Asmodeus is Lawful Evil. We all know that if we make our religion checks. But the witch... she claims to be good and she does good things... but just who IS her patron? She doesn't even know...
Didn't know it was a debated part of Pathfinder, but good to know. Seems a bit silly to debate it since you can house rule anything you dislike (especially fluff like this). Mysterious patrons can be interesting if played right, but like the amnesia-based backstory, its usually just the result of laziness.
Didn't know it was a debated part of Pathfinder, but good to know. Seems a bit silly to debate it since you can house rule anything you dislike (especially fluff like this). Mysterious patrons can be interesting if played right, but like the amnesia-based backstory, its usually just the result of laziness.The idea of a patron for a witch is a long debated topic in Dungeons and Dragons. Some players like it, some hate it. Even some real-life persons that are into witchcraft fall on both sides of the debate, either liking to play witches in D&D or finding them highly offensive.
The way I see it, a witch is a kind of arcane cleric. But, her source isn't necessarily a god(dess) but it can be. The pact part is I think the part that many players (be they non-RL witches or RL witches) have a problem with, because we think of making a pact as making a pact with the devil, and that's bad.
Now, I think that witches are fine making pacts with their patron because as I said, your patron can be good or evil but it's more fun in my opinion that your patron is a sort of mystery... are they good? Are they evil? A witch in D&D/Pathfinder doesn't truly know. That's roleplaying fun for me right there, because a Cleric of Asmodeus? Well Asmodeus is Lawful Evil. We all know that if we make our religion checks. But the witch... she claims to be good and she does good things... but just who IS her patron? She doesn't even know...
Well, don't know if anyone has debated it since PATHFINDER but I do know I've over the years seen arguments about the witch in 2nd edition and even 3rd edition, and one particular player I still talk to (but don't play as he moved far away) occasionally is on the "Witch class is offensive" camp even today. It was originally a "kit" (like an archetype basically if you don't know 2nd ed D&D) for wizards that pretty much is what the Pathfinder witch is like story wise with the mysterious patron and such.
Could you recap some of the reasons why your friend thinks the witch is a bad class? Is it just because they don't like the idea of their power being tied to a deity (essentially) while being an arcane caster?
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Witches and Patrons. (All IMC of course)
Witches and their patrons are possession, one step removed.
So why not just be a wizard?
The witch is more subtle than a wizard. They both may smell funny from spell components, but the wizard is going to have a book, and spend the morning studying it. Wendy the Witch just takes longer when milking the cows, or sweeping the barn, and no one notices the big cat that follows her as anything more than a (well fed) stray.
So what does the patron get out of it?
What does this mean for Witches in my games?
If GM and player agree, the GM might pick the ‘spells per level’ the familiar knows, hinting either at future events or the patron’s true nature.
“Gee Mr. Scruffy. You sure are teaching me a lot of fire spells. Why is that?”
“No worries child, have you ever thought about going to Irrisen?”
Otherwise you can have the familiar be as bland as a wizard’s spellbook, but I personally like the potential of the patron being more fleshed out.
“Oh crap, a pit fiend! I cast summon monster”
“You cast the spell and a glowing mist pours out of your fox’s mouth, the fox falls limp and the mist coalesses into a huge fox headed winged humanoid, with bow and flaming sword.”
“I, um, I, um, help?”
“I have always helped you my child, this just requires a more Personal touch.”
While she’s a Mage and not a witch KAM’s Penelope Anne Drizkowski’s relationship with her familiar is kind of how I picture the witch/patron relationship.
A patron has to be at least a pseudo-deific entity powerful enough to grant another being control over life, death, nature and spell levels 0-9.
I do like the concept of a somewhat powerful spirit that initially makes you a witch that learns more powers instead of you directly knowing them. This removes some amazingly powerful force somewhere granting abilities. It could just be auntie Agatha who dabbled in some magic who couldn't rest and took to an animal to help you. That does open the possibilities.
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There was no official Witch class in AD&D (1 or 2) or 3/3.5 D&D. There was a Dragon Magazine version of the Witch in 1st Edition AD&D, and likely third party Witch classes out there. In 3rd/3.5 D&D, there was a prototype Witch (Sorcerer-like) class suggested in the DMG.
Witch kit in 2e. It also had a patron.
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Maybe your patron is actually a powerful witch herself? Witches all the way down?
I think the Patron concept is interesting; you can dial it from vague to definite depending on taste. I'm actually thinking of having some of the patrons be powerful scheming wizards in my next campaign, using witches as their counterpart to gods having priests.
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I find it offensive that grown men and women call themselves witches and think that gives them the right to make demands on someone else's fantasy game.
To the original question, I have played several witches, they are quite fun, but I have never really considered the patron something accessible to me. From the lines "This patron is a vague and mysterious force, granting the witch power for reasons that she might not entirely understand. While these forces need not be named, they typically hold influence over one of the following forces." I kind of always thought of it a deistic type creature that occasionally turns a knob. I don't really talk to it and it doesn't talk to me, rather it discreetly sets up the pins in my path.
That being said, if I had a DM willing to make the patron some sort of recurring NPC, I would think the idea awesome and would be happy to play it up.
I just hate it when GM's find the patron as a way of screwing with a player and nullifying them.
ie oh you have a patron.. lemme make up some dude as him/her/it and then conflict with you and eradicate your spells unless you comply
Unless a gm is planning to screw with basic game mechanics of everyone in their group, its just lame to do this to a witch because "having a patron" can open that door.
On a side note, I played a Binder ( from ToM ) in a game once, and the gm saw fit to mess with the vestiges I wanted to bind, and blanket nullify all the effects in game for them. Specifically, Tenebrous and the turning undead power... trying to turn undead. "Oh, you can turn undead, oops.. *shuffles papers* sorry nothing happens you can't turn them."
I just hate it when GM's find the patron as a way of screwing with a player and nullifying them.
I completely understand, and that's the sign of a bad DM. What I plan on doing is having the patron require the witch to do something that will benefit the patron without making too many problems for the witch. Maybe its a ritual every new moon, where she must commune with her familiar by the sea. I had the PC with Puck as his patron come up with ways to amuse the fairy, essentially becoming Puck's jester. A new player who has taken the Deception patron will be asked to never reveal her true name to anyone she meets (as a new girl in the city this shouldn't be difficult).
I think if the patron requires things like this its not terribly difficult for the player to accomodate.
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So what does the patron get out of it?
Magic defies the second law of thermodynamics, and the patron is trying to delay the heat-death of the universe by giving more people magic powers?
:D
Kind of the opposite direction, but the Scarred Lands had 'heat' as a side effect of wizard/sorcerer arcane magic. The heat was the result of using energy, and that helped restore the titan Mesos.
So a patron could be using witches to spread its 'footprint' and make entering our world easier. :-)
As to 'screwing over the player' Witches can be as bland as wizards and their spellbooks. But if you have a neat hook (as a player) why not use it? Now I mean player and GM working together, not "GM screwing over the player."
Here's an example... a witch gains three new spells every level, but the GM picks them. In that example I assume the GM is not going to pick all situational/useless spells, but it does allow him to build a theme. Especially if they (player and GM) decide the witch doesn't know who her patron is. If the spells have a law/fire/light theme going on, is it a Solar or a Pitfiend providing the spells? :-)
Finally, people getting their knickers in a bunch over 'witches' and real life religions. I have a pagan friend who said she felt conflicted over watching The Avengers, because she honors Loki and the movie made him a villian. I said "Yeah, don't fret over it. I laugh at Dogma and have survived The Last Temptation of Christ, Sarah Silverman and all sorts of attacks on my faith. Just remember it's not your god on the big screen."
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So what does the patron get out of it?
** spoiler un-redacted **
A spirit might be too strong to be bound, but instead can insinuate itself into an animal, taking it over and turning it into a familiar. It then finds a witch, growing with her until the time when it no longer needs her, or can move on to possess a more powerful form.
Back in the days of Al-Qadim and Sha'ir, we had a flavor 'rule' that Gen were immature genies, and that years of service to a Sha'ir they would siphon off magical power and become able to ascend / transition / pupate into full Genie status (at which point, they'd be replaced with another Gen, with most Sha'ir not even noticing the subtle replacement, unaware that they are being used as a incubators / babysitters for genie kids!). Because Sha'ir were (unknowingly) serving to grow immature geniekind into full genie status, genies tended to be a bit more tolerant of their shenanigans, and allowed them to think they were 'on a higher level' than most mortals, accepting a bit of arrogance on the part of an uppity mortal in exchange for the service they were providing to the genies. Wishes? We can always grant more wishes, but genies? Those are precious and harder to replace.
Having a pact patron very much 'getting something' out of the deal as well, would be very cool.
Perhaps every spell that the witch learns 'the old-fashioned way' is knowledge being passed on to the patron, who only parcels out to her the standard two spells per level, ensuring that, in most cases, the patron ends up receiving far more magical lore than it has to dispense to any given witch.
A similar mechanic / flavor enhancement could apply to the eidolon, with the protean / whatever outsider at the other end of the link gaining greatly increased abilities on it's native plane, at the price of sending a dumbed-down manifestation or avatar or astral projection of itself to the material plane to serve some overconfident fool who has no idea what role he is playing in the magical and spiritual 'evolution' of the creature that his 'eidolon' is merely a pale shadowy reflection of...
As for Witches, I prefer that the vast majority of them have no idea what exactly their patron is, or if it's even an entity at all. Many might be *positive* that they know who or what their patron is, but few, if any of them, would be *correct* in that assumption.
Even the winter witches in service to Baba Yaga might make assumptions that Little Grandmother is their 'patron,' and yet she herself is a Witch, and may have a patron of her own... (Or not. Still, the idea of being your own Witch patron smacks of being a 'Cleric of Me.' "I pray to myself for my daily spells. Then I grant them, of course. It gets a little head-spinny when I commune with myself for information that I didn't know until I cast the spell, but as long as it works, I just take a swig of absinthe and wait for the cognitive dissonance to pass...")
I just hate it when GM's find the patron as a way of screwing with a player and nullifying them.I completely understand, and that's the sign of a bad DM. What I plan on doing is having the patron require the witch to do something that will benefit the patron without making too many problems for the witch. Maybe its a ritual every new moon, where she must commune with her familiar by the sea. I had the PC with Puck as his patron come up with ways to amuse the fairy, essentially becoming Puck's jester. A new player who has taken the Deception patron will be asked to never reveal her true name to anyone she meets (as a new girl in the city this shouldn't be difficult).
I think if the patron requires things like this its not terribly difficult for the player to accomodate.
As long as the player is cool with it, I guess it's okay.. otherwise I would still say it's meddling with a game mechanic that wasn't meant to be meddled with.
I have just seen too many bad DM's who take it that one step too far...so in the example you plan to use, what happens if the witch misses that communion? By game rules, nothing should happen =P
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Well for one my Patron is a Tree Stump :)
To elaborate a little, my character is a witch with the Hedge Witch archetype who also has several ranks in profession herbalist.
She is definately a healer kind of woman and before meeting the party and being dragged into all sorts of weird adventures, she made a living selling herbs and healing the ailments of the common folks.
By now I should probably mention that my character has very little knowledge of what her patron actually is. She just met a hedgehog one day in a forest that just so happened to be able to speak with her.
This hedgehog had little personality while I had it as a familiar, but it was a dear pet-like friend of my character so when I chose to gain improved familiar, i knew it would have an impact on her.
The way it happened was that we had some downtime in Magnimar (we're playing Rise of the Runelord) and since she's a major goodie-two-shoes, my character went to the slum area of Magnimar to offer healing for free.
While there weren't many 'customers' she did get the attention of a local gang who then asked her to share half her income if she wanted to stay. Being the way she is, my character simply flew away in order to avoid conflict and decided to be more alert the following days.
Unfortunately this didn't turn out very well at all.
One of the following days the local gang found my character again, and this time they were far more competent.
The first thing that happened was that a big ugly thug grappled my poor witch and the others began hitting her. I failed three or four concentration checks before she fell unconscious...
She woke later that day after sundown, beaten and bruised, but (luckily) alive. She flew home to where the party was and healed herself to full health before taking a bath to calm down.
At this point she was trying her best to keep up a tough front and even managed to bluff our rogue into thinking nothing was wrong despite having a bluff of -1.
Things got a little weird in the bath however as suddenly the steam began materializing into the shape of a cat.
My character was at first suspicious, especially since this cat had some serious attitude problems, but after a few minutes it became clear that the cat had been sent by "the force we both serve" in order to make my character stronger (something the cat noted was needed).
It was at this point my character began asking to her beloved hedgehog, and to her horror, she realized that the empathic bond she was used to having with it had dissapeared.
The emotional trauma that followed by having one of your dear friends turn from an intelligent creature into a basic animal was more than she could handle, and she spent the night crying her eyes out in the baths :(
So in short my character mainly knows her patron as some sort of force that she and her familiar serve, and she believes it to be good since it gives her healing powers, but she knows little of it's actual nature.
I on the other hand have talked with my GM, and he offered to invent it for me, which I agreed to :)
Right now I know as much:
My patron is a tree stump of a life tree
And it has enough good power to summon and send an agathion to my side, so I assume it is somewhat good aligned.
TL:DR:
My patron is the treestump of a Life tree, My Witch knows it as she force she serves, and assumes it's good because it gives her healing.
I assume it's good because it has sent me my Agathion familiar.