Having trouble with the Super Genius Games Witch Youxia Archetype

[Groggarioth]

This has been a constant trouble with the layout of the Super Genius Games stuff on the SRD, but I can't understand how it works due to the layout. Suffice to say that a friend and I have got into an arguement over how the Witch "Youxia" Archetype works.

According to the Archetype table on the witches page it replaces all the Hexes, Greater Hex and Grand Hex abilities, while on the Youxia page it gives them the ability to use Hexes, Greater Hexes and Grand Hexes, and my friend says all it removes is his familiar, replacing it with a dagger he can use as his sole spell focus.

I'm confused, he keeps accusing me of accusing him of cheating, and I just want to put an end to the whole fiasco, before I have to leave the group or everyone else throws me out for "Constant Rules Lawyering", "Stopping the game to look stuff up" and "I know how it works, stop asking me how it does that"

[Jayder22]

I just looked through the book to get a greater understanding. Here are my thoughts on the matter.

Youxia is not a Witch archetype. This is an archetype that can be applied to any class, in exchange for giving up a certain package of abilities. On pages 3-5 of this book, it explains what abilities each class must give up to take one of the archetypes in the book (Youxia being one of them). This book further categorizes the abilities of each class and puts them into their own named groups. Some classes get 1 group of abilities to trade out for archetype, others get 2.

I'll give 2 examples.

The Paladin has 2 packages of core abilities, Avenger and Divine Guardian. It can trade either of these for the Youxia archetype, or a different archetype listed in this book

The Witch has only 1 package it can trade for the Youxia archetype. This package is called Hexen, and includes "The witch's hex, major hex and grand hex abilities Without this template, the witch
never gains any hex abilities."

So, your friend has interpreted the archetype and the way it interacts with the witch incorrectly. A witch with the Youxia archetype does not lose their familiar class ability, nor can he use a dagger as his sole spell focus. He just loses the ability to use Hexes (of any kind) and instead gains the benefits of Youxia

[Justin Sluder]

Jayder22 is correct.

[Caedwyr]

Yeah, the d20pfsrd.com page for the Super Genius Games archetype stuff is not perfect. Ideally, all the other class stuff would be collapsed and only the header that describes how the archetypes are applied + the witch specific stuff would show up. I wasn't able to do this because of the Google Sites limitations on the types of scripting you can put on pages (and didn't know any other advanced html tricks to reproduce the same effect). The end result is you need to do lots of scrolling around to be able to see all the explanations for how things work.

The long and the short of it is, Jayder22 is correct, as is the Archetype table on the Witch page. The archetype table is consistent with the Youxia page, but the information is more spread around because it isn't possible to collapse all the unneeded info on that page.