I just had this image of a half-Orc witch doctor making a paint with scroll ashes and mystic paste and using his own hand to imprint his mask-familiar.
Eventually the mask will have tons of different colored hand prints, each one glowing when the witch doctor casts his corresponding spell!
Please, continue the discussion... just had to share the image!
The scarred witchdoctor's mask is a horribly worded ability as it doesn't say what it is meant to do.
If you want to play it as a familiar there are so many unansweres questions that it's no fun.
We decided to play it as a bonded item. But not the half-elf witch bonded item, which is horribly weak but a real bonded item.
It IS your spellbook, so why should you not be able to cast any one of your spells once per day through it?
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@Umbranus: Because it's based on the Witch's Familiar, not on the Wizard's bonded item, and the witch's familiar doesn't give you an extra spell cast per day. In fact, witches don't have spellbooks, they have familiars!
What the mask DOES let you do is enhance it as if it were a wondrous item, which is pretty awesome. (For example, you can give it the abilities of a Medusa Mask for only 5000gp!
The mask isn't a familiar, and it's not a Wizard's bonded item. It's a weird combination of the two, but it still works as intended.
@cartmanbeck: as the wording it has to be intelligent, because it is a familiar (it nowhere states it is not) but which cha and wis does it get as intended? Which saving throw bonuses does it use?
If the intend is for it to be a bonded item, why didn't they just say that?
This ability otherwise functions like and replaces the standard witch familiar.
So RAW the mask is a familiar, not a bonded item. Bit I don't think that's RAI.
Actually, reading the text itself, it only says it functions as a familiar for a couple very specific purposes.
Her fetish mask acts in all ways like a witch's familiar for the purpose of preparing and gaining spells.
Everything else is spelled out as its own rules. The Witch in question gets spells from the patron directly instead of through their familiar (which they don't have, obviously), and preps their spells by meditating on the mask and its meaning:
Her spells derive from the insights her patron grants her while she's enduring the cuts, burns, and other sorts of mutilations she inflicts upon herself.
Rather than communing with a familiar to prepare spells each day, a scarred witch doctor hangs her mask on a wall, tree branch, or something similar and contemplates the agony it represents.
So the Scarred Witch Doctor has neither a familiar nor a bonded item.
So the Scarred Witch Doctor has neither a familiar nor a bonded item.But they get to use their frakking CON modifier for spells, so who really cares.
Agreed.. The fact that u only have to pump con and have a decent dex makes it prob the least mad class/archetype out there.. No more i dont wanna start with a 20 main stat and have 12 in con and dex.. I mean dump str or cha and start with a 20 con and a 14 dex.. I love the archtype and if i ever play a witch it will deff be my choice..
If there are problems in using the mask as either a familiar or a bonded item, then that is simply the price for having such an awesome ability as using CON as your casting stat. I somewhat doubt it would be that difficult in practice, but if this board has taught me anything, there are rule lawyers that will make it their jobs to make it difficult. It is still a great trade.
Bah! Why Banjo, when you could worship Giggles!
Let me go get some pies and the two of you can settle this...