Our group has a new member who in first place wanted to be a Paladin, but our group already has a fighter and a barbarian so I advised her to choose a non-melee character.
Now she wants to be a good alignment witch.
According to the advanced player guide a witch can have any alignment and I like the flavor
(well-doing wicca) but; is this character going to be horribly underpowered?
Hexes don't have descriptors like spells to note if they are evil, but can a good character really cast "evil eye" (and misfortune)? Is the spell list going to feel it if we remove the evil and undead creating spells ?
A "normal witch" can go round debuffing saving throws to cast save or die spells,
I can't really see a good alignment character use an evil eye on a creature so see can cast a baleful polymorph on it.
Has anybody had a good witch in a party before, was it any good, and what was her role in the party?
Should I advice to switch to neutral to avoid being underpowered?
Ps
The player who wants to play this character is really a "lawful good" person and this is her first adventure.
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Our group has a new member who in first place wanted to be a Paladin, but our group already has a fighter and a barbarian so I advised her to choose a non-melee character.
Now she wants to be a good alignment witch.
According to the advanced player guide a witch can have any alignment and I like the flavor
(well-doing wicca) but; is this character going to be horribly underpowered?
Not inherently.
Hexes don't have descriptors like spells to note if they are evil, but can a good character really cast "evil eye" (and misfortune)?
Uh...Bestow Curse doesn't have the Evil descriptor either, and is way worse than either of those. 'Evil Eye' is a term from real-world beliefs about witches and just means they look at you and 'evil' (in the sense of badness) happens. It's not a moral judgment. If the Hexes are Evil, they do in fact say so (Cook People is an excellent example of this).
Is the spell list going to feel it if we remove the evil and undead creating spells ?
No more than the Wizard or Cleric list. Witches really don't rely on undead.
A "normal witch" can go round debuffing saving throws to cast save or die spells,
I can't really see a good alignment character use an evil eye on a creature so see can cast a baleful polymorph on it.
Why not? Good-aligned Wizards do it.
It's actually nicer and more benign than Smiting them as a Paladin since it does them no permanent harm (you can return them to normal fairly readily), while the Smiting renders them rather permanently dead (barring Raise Dead...which unlike Break Enchantment has no assurance at all of working). And even if Baleful Polymorph is overkill Evil Eye + Slumber is one of the scarier options in a Witch's arsenal and completely harmless in the long run, like using a tranquilizer gun in a gunfight.
Has anybody had a good witch in a party before, was it any good, and what was her role in the party?
The same as a non-Good one, only nicer. Really, a Good witch can easily specialize in non-lethal means of subduing enemies so they can be brought back to the authorities and be no less effective. What's more LG than that?
Should I advice to switch to neutral to avoid being underpowered?
No.
Ps
The player who wants to play this character is really a "lawful good" person and this is her first adventure.
Then let them, y'know, be nice. Make sure to grab Slumber, it's a great way to take out enemies humanely and one of the most powerful Hexes Witches have. Misfortune, Cackle, and Evil Eye are also excellent of course.
Healing's also great thematically, though mediocre mechanically. Maybe think about grabbing something like the Healing Patron and the Hedge Witch archetype. Very goody-two-shoes, and lets her be the party's primary healer as well as doing save or die stuff.
There is nothing inheriently evil about evil eye, no matter the name, and misfortune. How is evil eye then baleful polymorph any more "evil" than running someone through with a sword or blasting them with lighting?
The only spells she can't use are one with "evil" descriptor and a few hexes like "eat people". Actually she can cast the "evil" spells it would just, by raw effect her alignments
I have a with in a game right now, he works just fine and is not evil at all.
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Along with what's been said already, if ability names are a hang-up there's always the reflavoring option. "Evil Eye" doesn't have to be an "evil eye" and such. "Owl's glare", "soul-piercing sight", etc. :)
And yeah, a lot of witch abilities actually make for excellent merciful good-aligned characters. Though some cases can dip into "cruel mercy" at times.
But hey, witches practically scream "karmic trickster" don't they? ;)
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The Witch class can definitely be played as Good-Aligned without too much trouble. Think of Fairy Godmothers, Village Wise Women or various other roles from fiction (Bewitched?) or history that fit in. The Healing Patron could fit well here, giving access to useful restoration spells and so on. The Hedge Witch archetype does allow for spontaneous healing, but the tradeoff of a number of Hexes is pretty steep - I'd be tempted to just memorise the healing spells or use a wand of CLW.
With regards to Evil Eye and Misfortune - as people have said, they're not inherently damaging or permanently harmful. A Lawful Good Witch could use them as a punishment or lesson to evildoers. With misfortune I have an image of a Disney-style "good witch" using misfortune on a villain and watching as he trips over his own feet, knocks pots off shelves onto his head, that sort of thing. He could also get impaled on a Greatsword, but that's probably the Paladin's fault.
*Edit* Evil Eye + Baleful Polymorph is actually a great example of a non-violent comeuppance. An arrogant Lord is dismissive of his subjects' hard labor and plans to increase the length of working days and enforce working through holidays. A week as a mule toiling in the fields changes his perspective.
Thanks for the comments, very helpful and I really like the karma idea. I can really see a witch using curses and phantasmal killer without thinking of herself as a bad person when considering karma. The spellbook is incredible for non-lethal game enders. Just gonna link this threat to her now. Thanks
Another option, if she's still interested in a paladin, is to build an archery paladin rather than a third melee character.
...Witch might be better in this case, though. It sounds like your group is lacking in spellcasting ability.
And then I cast suggestion and send him home to his mother...:) Really starting to love this character.
Well, the druid is CN so they are going to argue. But the rogue and barbarian are CG (I can really see the rogue an the witch become a good team) and the fighter is true neutral.For roleplaying LG is a nice addition to the team
Hexes don't have descriptors like spells to note if they are evil, but can a good character really cast "evil eye" (and misfortune)?
Of course they can. Your actions determine your alignment, not the other way around. Barring the cleric/druid rule, any character can cast any spell. Consistently casting an evil spell while not performing good deeds will, eventually (I stress, EVENTUALLY) lead to an alignment shift.
Plus, unless an effect is noted as 'evil', it is not.
As best I can recall, the Cook Children hex is the primary hex that good witches should steer away from.
A LG witch can certainly work. Some spells and abilities maybe considered taboo, or only used in extreme circumstance. There are still a great many spells and abilities to choose from though.
The closest my group had was a NG witch that focused on healing magics. The more debilitating cursing, or punishing magics were reserved for hostiles or for meting out some sort of karmic punishments.
A LG witch could certainly have evil eye and certain curse magics, yet would certainly hesitate to use them, and would only use them as some sort of codified punishment. In short, only when it's absolutely known that the recipient of said curses were guilty of particularly heinous crimes and were not repentant of them - and likely to continue to do so unless stopped.
A LG witch might never likely run across a situation witch would require some of the more....questionable....abilities. (Can't think of many things cook people would be acceptable for a LG witch to use, yet there are a few should your villains be THAT over the top and graphic with. Caution - said graphic villains are controversy at best and could easily spoil the fun for some players).
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A LG witch could certainly have evil eye and certain curse magics, yet would certainly hesitate to use them, and would only use them as some sort of codified punishment. In short, only when it's absolutely known that the recipient of said curses were guilty of particularly heinous crimes and were not repentant of them - and likely to continue to do so unless stopped.
This is true of Curses, but not Evil Eye or Misfortune, which only last a few rounds. Those can be used tactically vs. even party members who've been mind-controlled or other innocents you're forced to fight for the good and simple reason that they have no bad effects long-term.
A LG witch might never likely run across a situation witch would require some of the more....questionable....abilities. (Can't think of many things cook people would be acceptable for a LG witch to use, yet there are a few should your villains be THAT over the top and graphic with. Caution - said graphic villains are controversy at best and could easily spoil the fun for some players).
Cook People is a Hex, not a spell, a Good Witch should basically never acquire it. An Evil descriptor spell? Yeah, that could happen.
Keep in mind a 'witch' need not necessarily use the witch class. Perhaps the shaman from the advanced class guide playtest might fit the concept better? With something like the Life or Nature spirits, you could make an effective character that functions much like a witch, but with far more 'good witch' abilities.
Never called Cook People a spell, just said ability.
To keep on topic - my main point is that you can actually play a good aligned witch, and there are plenty of abilities (hexes and spells) that lend themselves to such a build. Not all of them, jut a good enough number of them that it is a viable option.
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Never called Cook People a spell, just said ability.
To clarify my point: You mention that a Good person might have circumstances under which you use Cook People...but Hexes are permanent, difficult to learn, at will to use, abilities. Having the ability to cook people is, y'know, Evil, and thus not something a Good character is ever gonna have...while spells are easy to learn and there's no reason a Good person couldn't learn an Evil one and use it, y'know, once or twice in exceptional circumstances.
So I was agreeing that Witches could do morally shady things occasionally under exceptional circumstances and remain Good, but saying Cook People was a bad example.
To keep on topic - my main point is that you can actually play a good aligned witch, and there are plenty of abilities (hexes and spells) that lend themselves to such a build. Not all of them, jut a good enough number of them that it is a viable option.
This I agree with entirely.
Funny how no one bothers good fighters or rogues for, you know, hurting, maiming and killing someone "who deserved it" with swords, bows, clubs or what have you - compared to a knife in the gut, give me a few seconds of being cursed or sickened any day ;) .
Anyway, I think a good witch should have no problems using most of the class options - including many of the most powerful ones - when the situation warrants it. Sometimes people deserve what they get, and you are the one who is going to give it to them. Lawful good characters in particular usually understand ideas such as guilt and punishment, so even lethal measures are sometimes acceptable to them.
Is there anything particular that the player is worried about using?
A Lawful Good witch is absolutely possible. Champions of Purity introduced numerous hexes that favor good-aligned characters. There's also the Hedge Witch archetype that focuses on healing, along with the Healing patron.
If you have trouble envisioning how a witch would be LG, just imagine a kind and eccentric young woman who lives on the edge of her village and is attuned with nature. She has powerful magic at her disposal, desires to help the poor and weak defend themselves against evil, and supports the rule of law. I think it'd be really cool to pick up Improved Familiar at 7th level and get a harbinger archon as a familiar, becoming something of a "heaven-witch". I don't know how effective a harbinger is, but I think it's a cool idea.
Playing a good witch in a Reign of Winter game (this is her). Playing her like Elsa from Frozen, sans the general fear of people finding her powers out (more fearful of actual winter witches finding her or her sister).
While combat has yet to be engaged, I plan on building her as a party buffer/enemy debuffer, with a few utilities thrown in. Not a damage dealer, in any event.
The only issue is that, I would assume a lot of the enemies in that AP have cold resistance/immunity?
Other then that, I hope your Perform (Oratory) is high. ;)
The scarred witch doctor I played was true neutral but could have been good as well, the way she behaved. In 10 levels she only used two evil spells if I remember right and apart from that the behaviour was rather nice.
Her usual combat actions have been: rimed frost fall or rimed ice storm, evil eye, cackle, misfortune.
In my opinion a good, even slightly pacifistic witch using debuffs instead of hurting people directly should be a flavourful and viable pc.
If she wants to go that route a Halfling witch with malicious eye could work well.
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Funny how no one bothers good fighters or rogues for, you know, hurting, maiming and killing someone "who deserved it" with swords, bows, clubs or what have you - compared to a knife in the gut, give me a few seconds of being cursed or sickened any day ;) .
THIS. Also, though there are those who insist otherwise, just because a spell has an [alignment] descriptor does NOT necessarily mean using it will shift your alignment - that's one of the privileges of arcane magic, actually: Your power is subject to your own conscience alone, and its morality is determined by its use. Think of Harry Potter: He cast 2 out of 3 "Unforgivable Curses" (spells which, if Rowling had been writing a Pathfinder Adventure Path rather than a series of novels, she would have applied the [Evil] descriptor to) before his saga was through - once in anger and once premeditated - and he still turned out a hero, didn't he? Also, consider the case of an Evil party whose main campaign enemies are other Evil forces (think of the D&D cosmology's Blood War between devils and demons), and the Wizard has a habit of casting protection from Evil (which has the [Good] descriptor) on his compatriots, because it helps protect them both from those enemies AND his own area-of-effect spells - that shouldn't start shifting him to Good, should it?
My flagship Pathfinder Society character is a Good-aligned Witch (who took the Evil Eye first thing), and he's pretty darned powerful, thank you very much.
Also: A little bit about the Evil Eye. Note that the Evil Eye was also a prominent feature (that made no discrimination between alignments) of both TSR's AL-QADIM setting and Green Ronin's ETERNAL ROME.
The only issue is that, I would assume a lot of the enemies in that AP have cold resistance/immunity?
Other then that, I hope your Perform (Oratory) is high. ;)
Ah, yes, cold resist/immunity. Well, I plan on going the way of the Winter Witch prestige class to reduce/negate those!
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Here's a fun idea. Give your player's witch a +2 bonus to CHA. Remember, only bad witches are ugly.
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Good witches only eat bad children.
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Good witches are a thing that exists in fiction, fairly commonly. They're not quite as stereotypical as evil witches, but they're not rare.
I play a good aligned witch. I don't take any spells with the evil descriptor or do anything in particular with undead (except maybe use the healing hex to harm them), but that's not much sacrifice. I have no plans to take the grotesquely evil hex options. You get only limited hex choices, so just because something is available on the list doesn't mean you'd ever end up with it.
I don't view misfortune or evil eye (the latter is a figure of speech) as inherently evil. They're just debuffs, and temporary, painless ones at that. You don't go around debuffing everyone you meet, you debuff people you are fighting, which if you are good aligned means almost entirely evil people (or occasionally neutral beasts).
If anything, I have the least blood on my hands out of anyone in my party. The noble good aligned of other classes are all stabbing into flesh and breaking bones and charring people to ash, and nobody ever thinks anything of that. I never actually damage anyone, nor directly kill them.
My core abilities are to just to harmlessly make them less effective at killing me. That's about as self-defensive as an offensive ability can possibly get. In fact one of my signature abilities allows me to non-violently put someone to sleep and end a fight without anyone dying, which most other classes would virtually never do. Now the bloodthirsty warriors are likely to kill that sleeping person, sure, but morally that's on them at least as much as me, if not more.
A hex that painlessly makes them less effective for a few rounds is about as gentle and friendly as you can possibly get in terms of D&D combat, short of being a pure healer. The very worst thing I might do is blind someone who is trying to kill me, but that's better than virtually any other class that would straight up murder that person. And blindness in this world just means you need to visit a cleric.
The only issue is that, I would assume a lot of the enemies in that AP have cold resistance/immunity?
Other then that, I hope your Perform (Oratory) is high. ;)
If she's going the Elsa route, she will want Perform (Sing).
I like to call Evil Eye as 'The Stink Eye', because it amuses me, but also because it's not actually evil.
And here I thought this was gonna be a thread examining the moral and ethical implications of serving morally and ethically ambiguous 'Patrons'.
In a world where atheists know that gods exist, but are actually just super-powered Outsiders I'm pretty sure serving a "patron" isn't too different to being a cleric.
The difference is that clerics get a handy portfolio and alignment. Meanwhile, nobody knows what these Patrons want, what they're getting out of the deal, and whether or not they're, well, evil.
Patrons are described as a "vague and mysterious force", and don't necessarily need to be named. A Healing patron NG Witch who helps overthrow a Daemon invasion might actually be recieving help from a Devil, but it could equally be the assistance of a benevolent Azata. Paizo seem to want the entire thing to be mysterious, and I guess each player and GM can work things out differently.
The main lore difference between a Witch and a Cleric seems to be that the Cleric knows exactly who they're serving and have it codified. Witches seem to gain help from somewhere lower in the divine/extraplanar pecking order and may not know exactly where from.
I am playing a NG witch in the Carrion Crown campaign, who follows Pharasma. She has the healing patron. Our party is primarily good, although we have a N elven ranger with some moral ambiguities, in my opinion. My witch has focused primarily on healing and buffing, at lower levels (she's 9th level at the moment), but is branching out a bit as she gains access to some pretty powerful attack spells. She has the Flight, Healing, Ward, Cauldron, Tongues, Prehensile Hair and Evil Eye hexes (took extra hex for a couple of feats). Her hair has saved our plate encased paladin from several potentially deadly falls, and she was the one one who dealt the killing blow to the big bad at the end of the 3rd book, using a lightning bolt. Her Ward hex, which now grants a +3 bonus to saves, has prevented some negative permanent levels on party members, and the party adores having her around (even that N elf).
Because she is a follower of Pharasma, she does not have any of the create undead spells, but there are numerous necromancy spells that have little or nothing to do with actually creating or controlling undead, and she has no qualms about learning them and making liberal use of them, although part of that is the fact that her goddess is the goddess of Death who does not frown upon White Necromancy, so your mileage may vary. Spectral Hand is awesome, as it can deliver touch spells. So many of the spells on the witch's list are touch attacks, and she avoids getting in up close and personal as much as possible, since she is very squishy. She has also taken the Metamagic Reach Spell feat to help with the touch attack problem.
I have had a blast playing this character and would recommend a Good aligned Witch any day.
If you don't like calling your witch's Evil Eye hex the Evil Eye find the name of a suitable light or sun god call it [insert sun/light god]'s Eye or [insert sun/light god]'s Wrath. Helios, the Greek titan of the sun, was the divine source of the evil eye, so it only makes that a witch's Evil Eye hex comes from a sun god. You could also make one of her parents a sun god/goddess or have your witch's dear old dad be Solar and have her parentage be the source of her Evil Eye. Don't think of it as your witch using malevolent magic to curse her foes, think of it as your witch's way of smiting the wicked with misfortune using holy light streaming from her eyes like laser beams.
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Your point? Taking (non-binding) cues from relevant-genre fiction is something RPGs have always done. That's where it all came from.Thing is ... Rowling wasn't writing something...
OTOH, I don't think anyone's claiming that casting a couple of evil spells will automatically turn you evil.
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Ah, how naive we were in those days.
I am no native speaker, but according to my translation page 'evil' has more possible meanings than the alignment. Of course PF players will likely think about the alignment first, but that can also be used as hook for presenting the char concept, either in character or out of character...
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Has anybody had a good witch in a party before, was it any good, and what was her role in the party?
Remember, there are THREE types of witches:
A Good Witch
A Bad Witch
And a Sandwich.
:D
Has anybody had a good witch in a party before, was it any good, and what was her role in the party?Remember, there are THREE types of witches:
A Good Witch
A Bad Witch
And a Sandwich.
:D
The problem, of course, is determining which witch is which.
If she's going the Elsa route, she will want Perform (Sing).The only issue is that, I would assume a lot of the enemies in that AP have cold resistance/immunity?
Other then that, I hope your Perform (Oratory) is high. ;)
Don't forget the Crystal Tiara for scaling items, starting price 1000gp if you're just buying early
If you don't like calling your witch's Evil Eye hex the Evil Eye find the name of a suitable light or sun god call it [insert sun/light god]'s Eye or [insert sun/light god]'s Wrath. Helios, the Greek titan of the sun, was the divine source of the evil eye, so it only makes that a witch's Evil Eye hex comes from a sun god. You could also make one of her parents a sun god/goddess or have your witch's dear old dad be Solar and have her parentage be the source of her Evil Eye. Don't think of it as your witch using malevolent magic to curse her foes, think of it as your witch's way of smiting the wicked with misfortune using holy light streaming from her eyes like laser beams.
I'm not debating your post. Great info. However, I just wanted to add that some traditions and lore IRL have an "evil eye" that's either a spell or ritual that's a psychic projection that can cause various ailments and even kill powered by pure malice. So, it's not just some vague sense of evil or misfortune. It's the embodiment of a hatred and desire of destruction so intense that it causes physical, instant death.