Hey everybody, I am playing a cartomancer witch in in a Way of the Wicked campaign, and we just leveled up to level seven. That's the level when everybody starts taking the leadership feat. I convinced my GM that along with my group of witch minion followers, that my cohort should be an Ash Hag.
I am very excited for the various spell like abilities my personal coven will be able to accomplish, however, I am not sure how I should level up the ash hag at higher levels. So I would love your advice on class levels to add to the hag that would synergize well with the cohort's base abilities.
Thank you!
I would be surprised at allowing an Ash Hag to be treated as a level 5 cohort (the highest that can be had at level 7.) I'd expect it be considered at least a level 7 cohort before class levels.
That being said, since the Hag special abilities won't increase with class level and any spell casting from classes will be so far behind that it won't matter much anyway, I'd probably stick with martial, most likely I'd just go with fighter. If you gm does treat the base hag as a 5th level cohort, it will end up having a BAB equal to the martial PCs in the party, and fighter levels and feats would end up making it quite a beast in combat.
Even though the Ash Hag had 7HD, it is rated as a CR5 creature, and all of the other cohorts were allowed PC stats and nearly PC level wealth to start (making them somewhere between CR4 & CR 5)- so the Ash Hag was only slightly more advanced than the other PC cohorts. Also - it had been decided that I wouldn't level up the Hag until the other cohorts were reaching Level 7.
Part of my concern was that, when looking at the Game-mastering rules for advancing monsters with PC class levels, it shows that for this Hag, it would take up to 10 PC levels before it was increasing its CR on the same 1:1 basis that the full PC Class cohorts would be advancing at.
For example when our PCs are level 12, we could have a 10th level cohort. A 10th level Alchemist Cohort with PC stats would be a CR 10 Creature. My Hag would be a Ash Hag/Fighter 4 at that level, and per the game-mastery rules, would only be a CR 7 creature.
Do you know if the Hag's CL for her SLAs increases with the class levels, in the same way PC's SLA CL's increase with each new level?
While there are three hags listed under monster rolls, the Ash Hag is not one. While monstrous humanoids are usually combat role, I would place this as the Special role.
Note that the feats are caster focused, not combat focus.
Looking at the SLA, all but 2 are on the Witch spell list. The hag also has high Int, but lesser Str. I would call the hag as the equivalent of a Witch 7. [Witches also can get the coven hex, so it fits.] If you add levels of Witch, I would allow that to stack for CL. Any other class would be multiclassing.
Note that if you do get a coven going in the party [easy with the hag and one other character having or gaining a level in witch], you gain a massive power boost with the coven spells. Be sure the GM is OK with that. However, the power drops off as you level.
/cevah