This looks like the best spell list in the game for my purposes. Defensive illusion (not on the Mystic), some low level (4th and below Charm/Hold/Suggestion) mind control (not on the Technomancer), some blasting in between the two on both the AOE and single target blast front, all the mobility effects (fly and dimensional travel) from the Technomancer list, and all(?) the crowd control options from both other lists.
Naturally I hate Charisma casters, so I can't wait to dig into this and see what else it has.
For the unique spells, Shifting Surge is a very nice Supercharge Weapon alternative - less damage boost, but change the element. It clearly has more late game use than SCW.
I'd hope the spell list would be the best of the lot; keying off Charisma tends to be a lot weaker than Intelligence (skills) or Wisdom (Will, and Best Skill Perception). The fact that it only has one good save in Reflex is odd.
I'm building a level 4 character for a fantasy game of Starfinder, I think I'll got for one of these here scarlet witches. There will be an envoy, so I won't be taking the face spells, but there's a lot of hard choices even so.
I'm surprised Shadowy Fleet isn't on the list. That seems reality bendingly enough to have made the cut.
Still, looks amazing.
They split the baby on blasting. It gets some of each other list, but not Mind Thrust (the best consistent single target blast) or the big AOEs (Heat Leach, that chain lightning, think, Shadowy Fleet) from Technomancer.
Plus they avoided the Technomancer illusions that don't effect individuals. Shadowy Fleet is clearly an exterior illusion in its existing write up that won't be changed, so it doesn't fit even if it could in a different reality...
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Most of the Technomancer blasting options seem out of place because they are explicitly flavored as being tech based. Overheat is maybe ok (you divert energy from an adjacent reality) but Caustic Conversion (some nanites are just sitting around in the adjacent reality? no) and Explosive Battery (what do my powers have to do with used up batteries?) don't fit. And why isn't Irradiate on there? That one would make more sense (I diverted energy from an alernate reality where the sun had gone supernova at a convenient moment). They do get Remove Radioactivity, c'mon.
Wall of Fire/Force and Resilient Sphere are nice to have and I want them, but I'm not sure they're on theme. Not sure they aren't, either, but they could be on the chopping block if you need to cut space for the additional unique spells that I assume will be in the final product. Wall of Steel seems to make the least sense.
Why are Augury and Contact Other Plane on there, but not Divination? Getting hazy advice from adjacent dimensions seems to make more sense than getting advice from extraplanar entities.
I like the status removal and Reincarnate/Raise Dead without Heal, but if they can't heal, why do they have Rapid Repair? You can hurt people with alternate realities and polymorph them, but not repair them? And you can for constructs? Be consistent.
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@Xenocrat: On the Healing front you forget that they might be getting more custom spells in the final product. One thing you have to remember about Mystic Cure and it’s vairents is that they actually specificly work off Wis, rather than being keyed to whatever your class’ caster stat is. Thus, if the class was intended to have healing spells they would need to be new, class-custom healing spells that worked off Cha as if they just had Mystic Cure slapped on them it would heal far too little due to the Wis dependence and give them some MAD they would not otherwise have. Since a lot of other people have pointed out how the lack of healing spells dosen’t seem right, there is a chance they might give it a class-specific line of healing spells.
What I find odd, however, is the lack of Animate Dead and friends. You mean to tell me they can’t drag Negative Energy or the “T-Virus” from another world to raise and control some undead?
I actually don’t want healing. I also don’t want construct repair. And no undead seems fine, too.
Starfinder Design Lead
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One of the things we are looking at with the witchwarper spell list is that we could justify anything.
"Why can you turn people into trees?"
"I swap them for alternate realities where they are trees."
"Okay, but then why can you make undead robots?"
"I grab necrotechnomagic from a universe where necrotechnomancers are common."
Now when it's thematically appropriate, we may do just that. And there are some common tasks spellcasters can all be expected to perform which I consider "spellcasting 101" I'd expect any spellcaster to have access to.
But after that, we want witchwarpers to make sense both from the viewpoint of in-world logi, and as a thematic play style.
Which is one reason we went with mostly borrowed spells for the playtest, which lets us focus on the class features for now. We're working on new spells, but fine-tuning those will be easier once we have the class itself more nailed down.
It’s on their spell list.
I don't understand what there is to know, it's a brand new class but the spell list is only 2.5 pages long, and it's clearly there at every possible level.
Are you playing SFS? Because nothing from AA2 has been approved for SFS yet. I suppose illegal spells on a temporarily authorized class are still illegal. But this isn't a specifically witchwarper issue or have anything to do with what is on their spell list.
Edit: AA2 was added to SFS's Additional Resources yesterday, and Baleful Polymorph wasn't included as a legal option.
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The book is approved now, I just looked and it doesn’t mention counting it as illegal. I am playing SFS, but even if the book wasn’t approved it’s on the classes spell list. As far as playtest I’d think would be concerned is it’s part of the class...so it should be usable. He mentioned a post saying it wasn’t allowed but I can’t find it. I was checking this section because if a spell wasn’t approved for use I’d assume to see the ruling here.
Things have to be explicitly added to SFS via Additional Resources. Polymorph was added with restrictions, Baleful Polymorph wasn’t mentioned and there was no “all other spells are legal language.” So it’s illegal.
There’s a dev post confirming that in the SFS forum.
It doesn’t matter that it’s on the class spell list anymore than having small arms proficiency would let it use a small arm not approves for PFS. No class can use BP in SFS.
(...)
Which is one reason we went with mostly borrowed spells for the playtest, which lets us focus on the class features for now. We're working on new spells (...)
That's also fantastic news, keep up the good work! I feel like more distinctiveness in the spells list would benefit the feel of playing this class. It should feel weirder than your "every-day" mystic or technomancer, in my opinion