So, blood hexes are special feats that give you special hex-like abilities printed in the Magic Tactics Toolbox. Said feats are especially effective when used by witches or shamans, as one might expect. The general idea is that they require you to have damaged the enemy before using them.
Now, most blood hex feats are not really worth using. There are two, however, which have some effects which I think are pretty strong. They are the following:
You can disrupt your opponent’s connection to its own magical power.
Prerequisites: Int 13, Spellcraft 5 ranks, Use Magic Device 1 rank.
Benefit: As a standard action, you can drain the innate magical ability of a creature you’ve dealt damage to with a metal weapon since the beginning of your last turn. That creature must succeed at a Will save or be unable to access any spell-like abilities it can use more than once per day, until it is healed of all hit point damage, or up to a maximum duration of 1 minute.
Special: If a shaman or witch uses this blood hex, the target is unable to use any of its spell-like abilities for the hex’s duration.
You curse a bleeding opponent with uncertainty.
Prerequisites: Int 13, Use Magic Device 5 ranks.
Benefit: As a standard action, you can curse an enemy you’ve damaged with a melee attack in the last minute to become hesitant. The target must succeed at a Reflex save or take a –10 penalty on any initiative check it makes in the next minute.
Special: If a shaman or witch uses this blood hex, the target is unable to take a full-attack action for 1 round. This effect can be extended with the cackle hex.
Preventing enemies from using any of their spell-like abilities and making it impossible for them to full attack seems pretty strong to me. Am I wrong?
I feel like each of these can end up being situational. And you pay quite a cost since it usually takes two turns to set up (1 stab, 1 activate).
The first has an effect that relies heavily on how good your party's knowledge checks are. If you want to shut down SLAs, you need to identify which targets are worth your time to stab and then hex. For some creatures, you will completely and utterly in incapacitate them because their entire gimmick was their SLAs. For others, they can still smack you around or use a myriad of supernatural or extraordinary abilities.
The latter... can help, but its effect relies heavily on the design of the encounter. If you are talking about a single boss creature with a massive amount of melee damage... then yes, it will also break the encounter. This is particularly true if the enemy relies on rider abilities on a hit (like doing energy drain). But in a lot of fights, there are more than one combatant, and the other guys are still running around. In the latter, the cost of two standard actions is too much- you are a hexer, and you could have been doing a lot of other utterly debilitating things with that time.
I guess the key question is this- what is your GM's boss fight design like? The more he tends towards a single powerful, tricky creature, the more these feats might be appealing.
Well, now I am seriously considering taking those blood hexes with my White-haired Witch/Sylvan Trickster Rogue build. At least, the Hinder one.
I feel like each of these can end up being situational. And you pay quite a cost since it usually takes two turns to set up (1 stab, 1 activate).
I could not agree more.
I often play witches and trying to stab someone, especially someone tough, is very likely to miss and leaves you in melee which is a bad place to be.
Why do all that when you can just use another hex eg slumber which you can activate and one action and takes effect if they fail the save. Quicker and much less chance for things to go wrong. And the effect is more powerful.
A character that is going to be in melee like a fighter could get some use out of them, but I think they are too situational and hard to use.
Hinder requires you hitting them with a melee attack, that could be done with a touch spell (e.g. Quickened Frostbite), but you better pray that the target fails its save, or you're in melee range to a multi attack martial enemy.
Abeyance requires you hitting them with a metal weapon, I don't really see a way to cheat that. Even if you get to count a crossbow bolt as such, you'd still need to hit regular AC first, very unlikely.
Abeyance requires you hitting them with a metal weapon, I don't really see a way to cheat that. Even if you get to count a crossbow bolt as such, you'd still need to hit regular AC first, very unlikely.
Shaman might be able to do it well enough- they are close enough to clerics in general casting ability to not worry too much if they have a buff. If they lack a buff... well, it depends on whether they abandon anything fancy like +damage/-attack feats.
I think we can all agree that witches should take a cold, sobering look in the mirror before considering these feats (mostly so they can see their big, red, pulsing evil eye and remember other things they could be doing).
Argh, somehow, I was only thinking about Witches, not Shamans (even though I have one in my current campaign, and she hits plenty of enemies with a metal weapon). Sorry!
Although you might be able do do something with Seducer Witch + Desna's Shooting Star.
Mini necro, but I noticed something- the action cost can be much, much lower if you use these defensively.
Actively seeking to use these hexes requires two standard actions- one for the hex, and one for the attack. But if you hit the target via an AoO, then it is more like a regular hex.
The prime target for this strategy would be hinder. The idea is simple- a melee opponent decided to come up to your poor, poor hexer. The opponent wants to stay in close so it can full attack next turn, potentially killing you. But you have a long spear, so you hit it with an AoO when it approached.
This is the ideal set up for hinder- you have hit the target already, and you have more than enough reason to want to remove its ability to full attack. Even a caster witch might enjoy this (...if it somehow gets an AoO hit in with its terrible BAB).
Abeyance is harder to get off reliably. If it is a target with SLAs WORTH shutting down (ie- it doesn't just eat you at melee ranger afterwards), it might be a caster type monster that would want to play the classic mage keep away game. The best option would be to get in close and keep it at AoO range... but that might not work out if it 5' steps away to cast instead.