I'm in the process of building a Ley Line Guardian witch. This archetype gets rid of the familiar. The character will be small with a 16 DEX and 8 STR.
I'll have some good touch spells and am torn between using weapon finesse, or going the Eldritch Heritage for the arcane bloodline route in order to deliver touch spells via a familiar. Without bonus feats I don't think I can do both, not for a long while.
Going the familiar route means I can barely hit with melee touch spells until level 3. So I'm considering whether I should just tough it out, or forget about the familiar and take weapon finesse at level 1.
Opinions?
What melee touch spells are you going to be using at levels 1-2? Chill touch, frostbite and touch of blindness are barely worth casting for 1-2 touches each.
Edit: and Conduit surge being likely to stagger you doesn't seem like a good idea with a melee touch spell either.
Probably touch of blindness and touch of fatigue. Maybe touch of gracelessness. The character will have a bonus to save DCs on shadow spells he casts (it's a Wayang).
I can use conduit surge for free on cantrips because if I fail the saves I am staggered for 0 minutes. So touch of fatigue would be a go-to spell at 1st level, assuming I had weapon finesse.
If I didn't take weapon finesse I probably wouldn't do so much with touch spells until I got the familiar.
If I get the familiar, I would get one that gave a bonus on fort saves which would help with the fort save from conduit surge.
Touch of gracelessness isn't a witch spell. Touch of fatigue doesn't do enough to the enemy to make it worthwhile being in melee IMO unless you have a natural attack to deliver it or spellstrike or similar, which a witch doesn't get. The usefulness of touch of blindness depends on how much your allies get out of it - since the blindness lasts only one round you can't make use of it yourself.
Basically I think you don't get good enough touch attack spells for it to be worth trying to use them before 3rd level anyway. At that point you can look at rime spell + frostbite or touch of bloodletting perhaps.
Yeah, I'm coming around to your way of thinking.
I was originally thinking that touch of fatigue would be my spam spell at first level. That way I could save the spells for an encounter-winning move. Witches don't get ray of frost or acid splash, and daze only works on humanoids. So at 1st and 2nd level, when you are not casting spells you are probably just plinking away with a crossbow.
For a cantrip, touch of fatigue is a decent debuff. -1 to hit and damage, -1 to AC, -1 to reflex and fort saves, and -1 hp per die. That's not terrible. Too bad it's not at range.
I'd probably need to use longarm to make touch of fatigue work as a level 1 strategy.
Good catch with touch of gracelessness. Though why it's not a witch spell, when ray of enfeeblement is a witch spell, is beyond me.
Touch of bloodletting is good but is a second level spell for witches. It is also restricted to worshipers of Zon-Kuthon. Not sure if I want to go there, though I could do a true neutral ZK worshiper maybe.
Maybe i'll start with point-blank shot and then precise shot at level 3. I'll have ray of enfeeblement by then and it will last long enough to be worth it. And my crossbow will be a lot more effective too.
Fatigue: A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a –2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity.
i.e. ToF doesn't hit Con. If it did, it'd be pretty solid, better than a crossbow at least.
I'm sure I read somewhere that the spells from Inner Sea Gods weren't restricted to the religions which created them.