White haired witch fixes

[sunbeam]

Has anyone tinkered with this? It is a pretty interesting idea, but it is mechanically awful, so much so I wonder why they did it the way they did. It is a pretty common and pretty valid argument to say the best White Haired Witch is a normal witch or a hexcrafter magus with the prehensile hair hex.

So far what I have come up with is to have caster level be the bab with attacks and maneuvers made with the hair, along with int being the bonus for attack and damage with it.

I'd also adjust the base reach of the hair to be 10 feet at level 1, meaning it would top out at 35 feet of reach if you ever made 20. I would add any blurb from the prehensile hair hex about the hair being usable as an extra hand to the archetype.

Also I never understood why the grapple attempts were changed from free to swift actions. Even though the hair can attack as if it were large for maneuver attempts, that is still not saying much. You really have to have a little more than that to make maneuvers practical as you level up.

What really gets me is what to do with the Rogue talents instead of hexes. That addition really makes no sense, so does anyone have an ideas? The hair is pretty good if my changes go in, but by no means would it be an even trade for full hex potential.

[Eltacolibre]

The fix already exists...it's a shaman.

[Mortuum]

Not sure how relevant this is to your topic, but there's a really spectacular build out there where you take two levels of white haired witch, two levels of cavalier with the order of the penitent and one level of anything else. At 5th level, you take the Final Embrace feat.

The effect of all this is you can use your hair to latch on to people and immediately make two grapple checks, one to grab hold of them and one to tie them up with a rope.

[sunbeam]

Mortuum wrote:

Not sure how relevant this is to your topic, but there's a really spectacular build out there where you take two levels of white haired witch, two levels of cavalier with the order of the penitent and one level of anything else. At 5th level, you take the Final Embrace feat.

The effect of all this is you can use your hair to latch on to people and immediately make two grapple checks, one to grab hold of them and one to tie them up with a rope.

That sounds like a good tactic. But while I don't have the slightest idea what the Order of the Penitent is, or what book it comes from, what keeps the grapple viable as you level? You get +1 bab from 2 levels of Witch, and at most 3 from your other classes, then whatever you get from anything else as you go. Then you have int as your stat for attack and damage with the hair. Just not seeing how this should work as you level. You have to have some kind of kicker to make maneuvers viable as you level, because CMD goes up way faster than the bonuses you have to apply. Strength Surge, whatever a tetori has, Lore Warden bonus, shape change, something has to be the gimmick.

I mean a straight fighter with all feats and every stat increase to strength is not viable using maneuvers at level 20 unless he has some kind of gimmick from an item.

Maybe taking Magus so you have true strike on the spell list? Or a level or two of wizard or sorcerer than Eldritch Knight? Because you will need something like true strike and quickened true strike at that) to make maneuvers viable the longer you go.

[Mortuum]

That's a reasonable point. I can't remember all the details, but getting to make two attempts in a row certainly helps. The order of the penitent is about redemption, mercy and non-lethal techniques. At 2nd level it removes the -10 penalty for attempting to tie up a creature you have grappled but not pinned, allowing you to adopt the touch, grab and tie routine.