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I have ran into a serious problem that I'm sure many casters deal with. My AC and HP blows. I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to bump it up to reasonable levels.
My stats as it stands are:
(WARNING: Min-Maxed stats below.)
Level 8 Human Witch
Standard:
Str - 8
Dex - 14
Con - 14
Int - 26
Wis - 9
Cha - 8
HP 57
AC: 14 (Silken Ceremonial + Mithral Buckler) / 16 with Mage Armor
With Threefold Aspect cast, adopting elderly form:
Str - 6
Dex - 12
Con - 14
Int - 30
Wis - 9
Cha - 8
HP 57
AC: 13 (Silken Ceremonial + Mithral Buckler) / 15 with Mage Armor
Some ideas to get my AC higher:
+1 shield / armor
+1 Amulet of Natural Armor
(Maybe increase these to +2's when I have the gold. I'm sitting on 6007 GP right now.)
Even with these two, I am up to 17 normal / 19 Mage armor, or 16/18 with Threefold Aspect. This is abysmal when creature CR 5-8 are hitting with +10-20. Any advice on how to handle this overall squishyness?
witches are proficient with shields? hmm interesting.
at least lower level, and i assume mid/high, focus on control seems to be the best defense.
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Fly Hex.
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witches are proficient with shields? hmm interesting.
at least lower level, and i assume mid/high, focus on control seems to be the best defense.
No, but without Shield Proficiency you take the following penalty:
When you are using a shield with which you are not proficient, you take the shield's armor check penalty on attack rolls and on all skill checks that involve moving.
So, as I'm not attempting to attack people anyways, it works out.
Fly Hex.
This is about the only thing that has kept me from buffing my defenses thus far.
Well, it's hard to get too worked up about the "weakness" of a level 8 witch with almost 60 hit points and an int of 30.
Witch that smart shouldn't need AC. :)
Tactics are a lot of it. Have friends who stand between you and the enemy. Use cover if it's available on the battlefield.
Increasing the enchantment on your buckler would be good. +1 is only 1000, cheaper than amulets of natural armor or rings of protection. Speaking of which, a ring of protection is better than an amulet of natural armor most of the time, as it gives a deflection bonus to AC, which also applies to touch armor.
Also, look for miss chances, which beat any amount of AC. A wand of mirror image wouldn't be cheap (maybe get a level 2 pearl of power and see if a party wizard would cast it for you? He likely has the spell for himself.) Even a smokestick to shroud yourself in a small cloud of miss chances wouldn't be bad. Or a wand of obscuring mist instead of mage armor.
Well, there's always the Beast Bonded 20 HD Improved Homunculus Familiar as Permanent Magic Jar trick.
(they haven't plugged that hole yet have they?)
or, if you going to use a shield... why a buckler...>.> tower shield, drop it for total cover.
At level 8 beej?
Sorry, didn't expand the Spoiler tag.
Yeah, I'll just go with your previous comment. If your intelligence is that high, be smart about staying out of combat.
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"I have a problem. I can't play my character's intelligence, it's too high." :p
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Well, there's always the Beast Bonded 20 HD Improved Homunculus Familiar as Permanent Magic Jar trick.
(they haven't plugged that hole yet have they?)
They've kinda plugged it (for PFS) so I've fallen back on option number 2.
Improved familiar -> Imp ->shield companion spell -> Familiar Melding.
This drops you into a REASONABLY safe body (AC 21 before spells and items, Fast healing, effectively double your hit points, immunity to fire and poison, Resist 10 to acid/cold/lightning (if you take evolve familiar once) DR 5/good & silver, see in darkness (a massively underrated power), and at-will Invisibility and Beast Shape II.
If you want to be REALLY safe throw on Familiar Image (a MUCH better version of mirror image and a few grand in items and you can easily be rocking 30 AC and so many offensive/defensive abilities you'll be almost impossible to kill for 24 hours a day.
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How much money you got?
Corset of Dire Witchcraft. 22K, +4 armor bonus. For witches. Also gives a Hex buff.
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Also, look for miss chances, which beat any amount of AC. A wand of mirror image wouldn't be cheap (maybe get a level 2 pearl of power and see if a party wizard would cast it for you?
Mirror Images is a personal only spell and not on the Witch's spell list. The wizard can't cast it on her and she'd need a UMD check to use the wand.
I know a witch who uses flight to stay away from melee and fog cutting lenses and fog effects to get cover from ranged attacks. It works pretty well except obviously against flying melee.
or, if you going to use a shield... why a buckler...>.> tower shield, drop it for total cover.
A buckler has an ACP of -1 and a spell failure chance of 5%. A mithral buckler has no armor check penalty (mithral items have an ACP 3 lower than the usual for the item) and no arcane spell failure (mithral items have their arcane spell failure chance reduced by 10%), so they're perfect for squishy casters to wield, since with a buckler you can cast a somatic component spell with the shield hand (you just lose the AC bonus for any turn you cast with the buckler hand).
Also, tower shields weigh 45 pounds. Even characters with a STR of 12 can't carry one without medium encumbrance.
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Blur, Displacement, Mirror Image, smokesticks, anything that gives concealment. Not good if your opponent has Seeking, but that is fairly rare.
Note: It is possible to bypass the UMD requirements for non-list spells by using an item that provides spell storing. Have a caster of the appropriate type use the spell storing item and put the spell into it, then cast the spell later from the device.
+1 to your armor would be 1,000 gp
+1 to your buckler would be another +1,000 gp
Ring of Protection +1 is 2,000 gp
Amulet of Natural Armor +1 is another 2,000 gp
That will cost 6,000 of your 6,007 gp, but up your AC by 4. It'll reduce by 1 the improvement you get from Mage Armor, but the target, really, if you wear armor at all, is to remove the need for Mage Armor except against incorporeal undead.
i've been playing an old age elf witch for the past 15 months or so, and she had around a 26-28 Int at that point.
Sleep hex is your friend, as is the Accursed Hex feat. at level 10 or 11 (whenever you get to pick up Split Hex), take that immediately. Spell Hex is very nice as well, and the level 1 spell Command is a fantastic choice (falling prone and dropping held items are great control affects).
The level 1 spell Ill Omen is right up your alley too, especially combined with a Lesser Quicken Metamagic Rod. Swift action - Ill Omen, the enemy has to roll twice on his next two d20 rolls and take the lower of the two, and the spell has no save and no spell resistance, so it just happens. Standard action - sleep hex, hold person, fear, really it's your control affect of choice, but i prefer sleep hex since it sets up a coup-de-grace (or at the very least takes an enemy out of combat for 10 rounds).
But yeah, an arcane caster should never really have to worry about AC / HP. If the GM is a caster killer and specifically targets you every combat, well, there's not much you can do, and after a while you have the right to say "look, i've noticed this and it seems like meta-gaming at this point...".
But if you aren't keeping the party between you and the enemy, or if the party isn't offering you any type of cover or protection, then you need to start rethinking your positioning and/or stop relying on the rest of the party to help you out. A broom of flying is cheap and a very nice toy for a witch, as is a 5' carpet of flying. If your party really isn't good at locking down the enemy, then use a Web spell over the entire melee combat area to keep both PCs and NPCs locked into that area with entanglement/difficult terrain... that way if someone comes at you, you have plenty of time to notice it and adjust accordingly.
It doesn't seem like metagaming to me for the bad guys to target the arcane caster. If the party allows monsters to reach the Witch the results might be dire.
I think the suggestion to meld into an Imp familiar seems very interesting, but if you'd rather keep the familiar independent you might try some other approaches. In addition to stuff like +1 ring and an ioun stone for +1 AC remember that you can decrease the average enemy's chance to hit you by -4 with Evil Eye. If you slap some +2 benevolent studded leather armor (a little over 5,000gp) on your familiar it could raise your AC against the first attack each round by +4 with Aid Another.
If you want to employ an even wackier method you might consider summoning a Large creature (or polymorphing your familiar into one) so you can hop on it and use a Ride check DC 15 to take cover for +4 AC. You have to use a move action to recover, but as a caster that's not a big deal. Being mounted can also help you move around a bit while casting. Other options for a mount include a figurine of wondrous power, a friendly Druid's animal companion, or even the lowly Mount spell.
Overall I'd expect that melding with your familiar or just staying in the back of the party would be a lot easier, but mounted combat is such fun that I can't help trying to spread the joy.
"It doesn't seem like metagaming to me for the bad guys to target the arcane caster."
it all depends on how it pans out. if every monster ALWAYS targets the witch first, with having no reasonable way of knowing that PC is the only arcane caster in the party and/or ignoring all other considerations (tactics, how the monster would normally act, how many AOOs getting to the witch would provoke, etc.) then yes, i'd argue it *is* metagaming.
again, it depends on how it's happening. if the DM is looking to kill PC casters as a DM prerogative, it's much different than a monster realizing a couple rounds into combat that the PCs have a spellcaster that should be neutralized.
I have ran into a serious problem that I'm sure many casters deal with. My AC and HP blows. I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to bump it up to reasonable levels.
My stats as it stands are:
(WARNING: Min-Maxed stats below.)** spoiler omitted **
Some ideas to get my AC higher:
+1 shield / armor
+1 Amulet of Natural Armor
(Maybe increase these to +2's when I have the gold. I'm sitting on 6007 GP right now.)Even with these two, I am up to 17 normal / 19 Mage armor, or 16/18 with Threefold Aspect. This is abysmal when creature CR 5-8 are hitting with +10-20. Any advice on how to handle this overall squishyness?
You seem not to be paying attention to the kinds of bonuses you are getting. For example mage armor is an armor bonus and your shield is a shield bonus. Thus they stack.
Your threefold aspect is an enchantment bonus. So going elderly wont help your int assuming you have an int hat. I am guessing you do unless you had a 24 starting int. However going young age will boost con and dex.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What did you pick as your Patron? Deception can provide you with access to Invisibility (which combines marvelously with Flight -- not only can walkers not melee you, they also can't really shoot at you until you directly target them with a hostile effect. So drop your Webs and spam Fortune with impunity). Shadows provides Deeper Darkness (as well as the Shadow Conj/Evoc family) which is absolutely amazing as a defense against anything because even Darkvision can't pierce it if you can drop the illumination level down to Supernatural Darkness levels. And Trickery provides Mirror Image and later Mislead. Even Winter can provide you with Wall Of Ice, Agility provides Freedom Of Movement (no more grapples!!) and Time gives you Silence and Haste.
Also remember that UMD is a class skill for Witches. Almost all protective spells can be UMD'd as effectively as they could be cast (for the purposes of in-combat defense anyway). Spells like Invisibility (or even just Vanish!), Blur, Protection From <Alignment> and Protection From Arrows can be quite cheap as Potions, but cheaper still as Wands or Scrolls which you should be able to UMD pretty easily even at low levels. A Ring of Invisibility may be expensive and higher level foes will be packing See Invisibility more frequently, so... your call. There's a cloak that provides Blur as long as you're wearing it. Remember that, unlike Displacement, Blur makes you immune to Sneak Attacks.
Even just the Witch list has a few important self buffs. Heroism boosts your saves (morale bonus, so it stacks with Cloak of Resistance), Reduce Person improves your AC (if you're already Small... what happens? ;D), Death Ward is on your spell list, and you can even Shadow Step to outrun chasers.
Mostly though, the Witch is expected/designed... uhh... FORCED to be incredibly offensive in order to stay alive. Pick targets for your SoDs according to which ones threaten YOU. Shooters probably will be your number one enemies of course, but if there's a BSF edging toward you, don't be afraid to take him out. The idea is to drop a battlefield control spell in between you and possible chargers (Solid Fog is great for this! Especially if you have, as someone else mentioned, an item or ability which allows you to ignore the cloud...), and then spam SoDs (probably Slumber unless they're immune) on any hostile target in range. For those who aren't within 30' of you, you should have spells like Blind/Deaf and Feeblemind (medium range) and Sleet Storm (long range) ready to go. There's a very important spell to remember: Spectral Hand. Deliver touch-range spells at range without ever endangering your Familiar or yourself! That would be Bestow Curse, in case you're wondering. But also, you could use it to deliver Cure Wounds (in an emergency) without standing next to the big, muscled boys slinging sharp metal at everyone nearby.