What about Sorcerer?

[Egnoder]

What about the Sorcerer class? It is a mostly overshadowed class in the core, but the Oracle and Witch overlap it and often do the Sorcerer class's things better. A Sorcery has tradition selection, focus spell advancement, and 1 extra spell slot per level.

The Witch and the Oracle both have focus spells as a primary class feature and can advance and recover them just as well, but they each do things better. Lessons allows a Witch select her focus spells (hexes) individually and even gain extra ones. The Oracle's have a risk/reward exchange that boosts their focus spells.

The Witch's Lesson also allows for the selection of casting traditions excluding divine. The Oracle, while only divine, it does gain access to spells other spells through feats.

It leaves the Sorcerer with only one class feature to stand out with: 1 extra spell slot per level. Reducing a player's ability to have fun to class abilities and power isn't exactly fair but it does carry some weight when it comes to having "that moment when..."

[Grankless]

If you leave out the bloodlines, blood magic, signature spell, and different spell lists out, sure, Sorc seems to lose out, but in actuality it has class features other than "one extra spell" and there isn't really very much overlap between bloodlines, lessons, and mysteries at all.

[kripdenn]

Also Sorcerers automatically refocus and get some pretty great focus spells which makes using their focus spells really rewarding.

[Mellored]

33% more spells seems pretty stand out to me.
As much as +2 to hit makes the fighter stand out anyways.

Simple, sure, but effective. Which fits the the base game, not the "advanced" players guide.

[[e-mail]]

I think the biggest problem is that the Witch has the same spells/day progression as the Sorcerer, which when coupled with prepared casting and the mix and match nature of Lessons makes for a class with a slight uptick in flexibility of build, without the disadvantage in stamina that every other prepared caster has compared to the Sorcerer. The only thing the Sorcerer has over the Witch is access to the Divine spell list. Not much of a brag to be left, and honestly a little confusing that the Witch can't have a Fiendish or Angelic Patron. If anything, I would have expected the Witch to not have access to the Arcane list.

What makes it even stranger is that the Oracle, which was effectively the "Divine Sorcerer" in PF1, has been set to the same spells/day chart as every other non-Sorcerer casting class. This lack of spell-casting stamina pushes the Oracle to lean a little heavier on their Revelation spells, activating their curse, which once activated cannot be turned off until the next day.

[Squiggit]

[e-mail] wrote:

I think the biggest problem is that the Witch has the same spells/day progression as the Sorcerer

And wizard.

[Bandw2]

[e-mail] wrote:

If anything, I would have expected the Witch to not have access to the Arcane list.

I think it's written somewhere in there, but if a fiend or celestial is going to go and be very explicit about them being their patron (which a divine spell list could signal) then they might as well have a cleric do it, since they're bound by anathema.

so you can still have fiends and celestial giving out lessons, but those lessons aren't likely ones that can be tracked back to them.

[Bandw2]

Squiggit wrote:

[e-mail] wrote:

I think the biggest problem is that the Witch has the same spells/day progression as the Sorcerer

And wizard.

wizard has at most 3/day sorc and witch have 4/day

[Xenocrat]

Bandw2 wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

[e-mail] wrote:

I think the biggest problem is that the Witch has the same spells/day progression as the Sorcerer

And wizard.

wizard has at most 3/day sorc and witch have 4/day

Wizards have 4/day via school or if a universalist their bond.

[Bandw2]

Xenocrat wrote:

Bandw2 wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

[e-mail] wrote:

I think the biggest problem is that the Witch has the same spells/day progression as the Sorcerer

And wizard.

wizard has at most 3/day sorc and witch have 4/day

Wizards have 4/day via school or if a universalist their bond.

hmm, i suppose i understand what you mean then. but all of them have limits. like a universalist technically gets 3 and can recast 1 of those 3 per day. they can't prepare 4 different spells.

[Henro]

Personally I’m hoping Witch ends up being Occult-only, with bonus spells from other lists granted by patrons. I’d like this for a variety of reasons, and one of them is to let Sorcerers keep what I believe to be a cool part of their identity.

[TheGoofyGE3K]

Problem with that is it creates mostly one kind of witch. Having a Primal witch let's the old Shaman class come back. Occult witches are spooky, and arcane witches are like Charmed and whatnot. I'd love to remake my half-orc shaman, and with Witches being how they are in this playtest I kinda can lol

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

I liked the 1E witch spell list, it was kinda of a mix between nature spells with some arcane. I think that a problem I saw was that sometimes patron spells were spells you could already learn and for the most part, did not add to your spell list.

[Henro]

TheGoofyGE3K wrote:

Problem with that is it creates mostly one kind of witch. Having a Primal witch let's the old Shaman class come back. Occult witches are spooky, and arcane witches are like Charmed and whatnot. I'd love to remake my half-orc shaman, and with Witches being how they are in this playtest I kinda can lol

I don't feel the same way (I suppose that's not too surprising, given my comment). I think bonus spells from each patron can fill this gap adequately, a primal patron could give 1 primal spell per spell level which I believe to be enough to get that shaman-y flavor. It wouldn't be a huge dealbreaker for me if Witches got to pick a list but I would prefer if they didn't.

[TheGoofyGE3K]

Alas one spell per level wouldnt give the same feel as the old shaman class did, which was more similar to a druid's spell list than a witch (to the point where when I made my shaman in 2e for fun, I ditched the hexes and went druid for it). Rather than make a witch class that uses occult spells and a shaman class that is almost the same but with the primal list, having just a primal witch works out very well for making 2 classes from one.

Though if they're really trying to cover shaman, theybreally need a wisdom option for the spellcasting on primal casters