For what it's worth, no matter what happens to Patrons mechanically I'm going to ignore them for the most part. The way it is now makes them super easy to ignore which is nice for me.
If they go toward requiring a specific patron to get access to specific lists of lessons, or introduce anathema or alignment requirements, I'd be pretty unhappy without an unlocked/patronless option.
I really don't need the whole patron concept for witches at all.
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That doesn't seem like a problem with the class so much as a problem with how you're choosing to play the class though.
So, if I take a sharpie to everything in the book that has the word "patron" on it, what does that do to the class?
Does the class cease to function? Or does it continue to work just fine?
Did this for s++%s and giggles. Aside from some grammatical missing words or awkward phrasing, things generally continue to work. Mostly it goes along the lines of "Something something your patron, so you gain..." that just becomes "You gain..." and everything continues on its merry way.
Eg:
You’ve learned to better control the power your patron has
granted you. Your proficiency ranks for spell attacks and
spell DCs for your witch spellcasting increase to expert.
Becomes:
You’ve learned to better control the power ███████████████████████████. Your proficiency ranks for spell attacks and
spell DCs for your witch spellcasting increase to expert.
Grammatically awkward, ("control your power," "control the power you have," "control magic" whatever), but the rules portion stays intact: your proficiency increases to expert. This is true all over the entire witch class. "You’ve achieved mastery over your █████████ magic," "You███████████(something something whatever)██████████████ the power to command incredible works of magic," etc. etc.
https://i.postimg.cc/DwYxP4G3/patron-1.png
https://i.postimg.cc/9f61v31x/patron-2.png
https://i.postimg.cc/YSGbn2NG/patron-3.png
The fact that you have a patron does not, in any way, mechanically influence the class. There are no feats that require that your first lesson was a specific one. There are no abilities specifically tied to the patron.
The closest thing is the section on your familiar dying:
If your familiar dies, your patron takes note. A new
familiar appears during your next daily preparations,
but this familiar’s magical connection to your patron is
newly forged and still weak. When it appears, it knows
only three cantrips and one spell per level, chosen from
the spells your previous familiar knew. After 1 week,
its connection to your patron is restored, and it recalls
almost all the spells your previous familiar knew, though
it loses one such spell for each spell level. These spells
are determined randomly, but never include the spells
your familiar learned through your lessons—your patron
ensures your new familiar learns these spells.
Sure, the mechanical crunch is left intact (you gain a new familiar after a day, it relearns most spells after a week, always relearns the ones from Lessons) and doesn't really matter who or what your patron is (or even if you have one at all), but generally most of this crunch is stuff that just screws over the character anyway. You gain 2 spells when you level up, but your familiar died, so now you lose about a quarter of those forever? What? Why? Wizards don't have this penalty when their spellbook is destroyed or lost.
(Well, ok, until you do the "learn a spell" downtime activity, but you didn't need to do that to learn them the first time).
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I like the idea of a patron determining your spell list, so that was good, and I'm thinking I could get back on board with broad patron themes like PF1 in the sense of "winter", "trickery", whatever, but maybe they only grant access to certain groups of lessons while deliberately excluding others? So you have options but it isn't too zaney?
Like how the winter witch archetype could choose winter, trickery, transformation, etc. as their patron but couldn't choose fire or summer. But instead, we just sort of do that out the gate since patrons would be a bigger role over the kind of witch you play.
So if you pick a Winter patron, you can choose the snow lesson, the dreams lesson, the death lesson, etc. but not fire or being good at cuddling (since your cold flesh precludes this.)
Does anyone else like this?
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Does anyone else like this?
Do it like Bard. Bard works already. Do that thing.
But sure, the vague malarkey of PF1 is better than what we have now.
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I lik-I like the idea of a patron determining your spell list, so that was good, and I'm thinking I could get back on board with broad patron themes like PF1 in the sense of "winter", "trickery", whatever, but maybe they only grant access to certain groups of lessons while deliberately excluding others? So you have options but it isn't too zaney?
Like how the winter witch archetype could choose winter, trickery, transformation, etc. as their patron but couldn't choose fire or summer. But instead, we just sort of do that out the gate since patrons would be a bigger role over the kind of witch you play.
So if you pick a Winter patron, you can choose the snow lesson, the dreams lesson, the death lesson, etc. but not fire
or being good at cuddling (since your cold flesh precludes this.)
I hate it.
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Does anyone else like this?Do it like Bard. Bard works already. Do that thing.
But sure, the vague malarkey of PF1 is better than what we have now.
Finally looking at Bardic muses, I'm not as into it as my idea, but I respect the idea of trying to streamline things through functionally identical mechanics. I just like my idea a *tad* more.
Edit: Rysky if you join me I will recant that portion and offer free cuddles to those who desire them.
Imagine if Deities worked the same way as Patrons and all the cleric could do to choose a deity was pick domains, no anathema, no edict, no bonus spells; all you got was a free choice of any domain. Then on top of that, dont mention any deities besides what species or title they have; and describe how the GM can without even telling you change the deity you picked at 1st level because you spent a feat to get an extra domain which doesnt fit the original choice as there are no other lessons that fit.
That's exactly what the Witch is doing.
and it's exactly what makes a witch a witch and not a cleric...
i know you were writing an analogy to show how out of whack it is, but everything you said, sounds perfectly fine to me.
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Does anyone else like this?Do it like Bard. Bard works already. Do that thing.
But sure, the vague malarkey of PF1 is better than what we have now.
Finally looking at Bardic muses, I'm not as into it as my idea, but I respect the idea of trying to streamline things through functionally identical mechanics. I just like my idea a *tad* more.
Edit: Rysky if you join me I will recant that portion and offer free cuddles to those who desire them.
Sold!
Either is better than the current version.
Just need to be careful about making it mimic deity pages/stats too much. Definetly no edicts. Anathema (if any) maybe only in the type of spells they can cast? but that could be a feat or archetype. Ex: winter witches cant cast fire descriptor spell.
Hmm that might be a nice feat: You cant cast spell that oppose your patron/lessons, spell related to your patron/lessons get X benefit.
I'm definitely on board with that. I'm not looking to provide edicts or anathemas, only to distinguish witches without being either too vague or too rigid in regards to other classes. A potential downside to my model is that old patrons wouldn't benefit from the printing of new lessons (although this is true in regards to spells and patrons in PF1.)
Still, I feel like it makes the choice consequential and interesting without leading to choice paralysis or restricting concept.
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Finally looking at Bardic muses, I'm not as into it as my idea, but I respect the idea of trying to streamline things through functionally identical mechanics. I just like my idea a *tad* more.
Like I said, the old way was better than what we have now. But the muse way friggin works for the Bard. Might not be perfect, but its a solid mechanic that people are pretty happy with. Could do some mix-mash with bard, cleric, and the old idea and get a unique blend.
What I mean by that is that the "vague mysteries" informs a couple of keywords (like domains) and grants a few unique spells, hexes, or whatever.
Then you can build feats that key off the different keywords, like the bard and muses. "Feat: Personal Blizzard. Prereq: your patron has the Ice, Winter, or Weather keyword."
i thought of something that kind of exemplifies why i don't think limiting the witch to themes is needed.
to me, it's more or less a Sorcerer with say, the elemental fire bloodline, getting spells that don't have the fire descriptor as spells known.
it's not exactly that crazy of a deal to be allowed to break thematic boundaries.
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i thought of something that kind of exemplifies why i don't think limiting the witch to themes is needed.
to me, it's more or less a Sorcerer with say, the elemental fire bloodline, getting spells that don't have the fire descriptor as spells known.
it's not exactly that crazy of a deal to be allowed to break thematic boundaries.
I wouldn’t want Witches to be limited to their Themes either, but in fact similar to how Sorcerer’s Bloodlines work.
They get extra stuff associated with their Theme/Patron (Winter getting some cold spells automatically maybe certain hexes) but aren’t locked into them and solely them.
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Do themes basically just restrict player choice until paizo decides to pring the theme that actually fits your concept.
This is only really an issue if you think that there's something inherently wrong with restricting choice. I do not.
As for why do clerics have to be constrained if witches get free pick? Versatility versus raw features. The cleric package has so much more going for it than the witch, what the witch gets in return is the a ability to pick and mix better.
For this, I'd say then that the answer is to give the witch more to play with. I think something like Instincts would be a good source of inspiration.
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It helps that making custom deities is extremely easy. Just throw together some domains, a favored weapon, some spells and alignments and viola!
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I'm hoping the devs will at least consider my middle ground idea rather than "choose whatever, it makes no difference" or "tie everything into niche and very specific flavor." In any case, I'll be playtesting the class as we received it soon and we'll see how I feel about my own idea after that. Hopefully I can post (useful) results.
What if different lessons had traits, and your choice of patron gave you a list of traits you could learn lessons from? This idea may have problems of its own, but I think it could be an interesting middle ground - keeping customizability while giving the choice of patron a much clearer tie to lessons.
Example: Cthulu patron lets you learn lessons with the Anomaly, Cosmic and Fear traits. The lesson of night has the Darkness, Moon and Fear traits. Since your patron allows one of those traits, you can learn the lesson. However, you can’t learn the lesson of protection, since it has the Energy, Ward and Warmth traits.
I made up the traits on the spot so they may or may not be fitting.
What if different lessons had traits, and your choice of patron gave you a list of traits you could learn lessons from?
That is literally what I suggested last night ~11 hours ago and was immediately pooh-poohed for either locking you into choices too much, to generating too many keywords (uh, people, HOW many domains are there for clerics?).
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i thought of something that kind of exemplifies why i don't think limiting the witch to themes is needed.
to me, it's more or less a Sorcerer with say, the elemental fire bloodline, getting spells that don't have the fire descriptor as spells known.
it's not exactly that crazy of a deal to be allowed to break thematic boundaries.
I wouldn’t want Witches to be limited to their Themes either, but in fact similar to how Sorcerer’s Bloodlines work.
They get extra stuff associated with their Theme/Patron (Winter getting some cold spells automatically maybe certain hexes) but aren’t locked into them and solely them.
sure but people were talking about getting like a patron and that restricting what lessons you can take.
I like how it is i can take a ice lesson and then a fire lesson next if they're written.
basically i can't work for a cabal of elementals or what not unless paizo would explicitly write it out.
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What if different lessons had traits, and your choice of patron gave you a list of traits you could learn lessons from?That is literally what I suggested last night ~11 hours ago and was immediately pooh-poohed for either locking you into choices too much, to generating too many keywords (uh, people, HOW many domains are there for clerics?).
Must have missed the comment - thread is getting pretty big.
The benefit of trait-patrons is that it would be super easy to homebrew new patrons. You don’t need to wait for Paizo to make “the elemental cabal”, just make your own.
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I think players/GMs should absolutely be able to make their own idea for patrons and what lessons are available. It shouldn't have to be homebrew to do that. Every witch should be able to decide on their patron for themselves.
Some suggested Patrons in a side bar sounds about right.
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Do themes basically just restrict player choice until paizo decides to pring the theme that actually fits your concept. Like right now I can choose a group of ancient elementals as my patron and get an array of elements. Cool! But if we restrict the themes then unless paizo specifically writes that in (or something close enougj) welp that character is put aside.
As for why do clerics have to be constrained if witches get free pick? Versatility versus raw features. The cleric package has so much more going for it than the witch, what the witch gets in return is the a ability to pick and mix better.
I, for one, am not asking for such strict definitions of patrons. I agree that doing so would just limit and pigeon-hole the witch. I think the best way to do it is to say "You have an arcane patron that provides the arcane spell list, and sent you a familiar with these abilities choices". Same for the Occult patron and Primal patron. The book can then offer suggestions of who or what a patron of that type could be, whether the PC knows them or it's a secret like Charlie from the old Charlie's Angles show. This way, you could thus pick Primal and describe your patron as a group of ancient elementals, and someone else could also pick Primal and say their Patron is Jack Frost, King of the North. Each of you can then choose powers and abilities that fit your patron.
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What if different lessons had traits, and your choice of patron gave you a list of traits you could learn lessons from?That is literally what I suggested last night ~11 hours ago and was immediately pooh-poohed for either locking you into choices too much, to generating too many keywords (uh, people, HOW many domains are there for clerics?).Must have missed the comment - thread is getting pretty big.
The benefit of trait-patrons is that it would be super easy to homebrew new patrons. You don’t need to wait for Paizo to make “the elemental cabal”, just make your own.
And then my gm thinks I'm minmaxing. The whole point of witches is patrons teaching outside their normal bonds anyway...
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i thought of something that kind of exemplifies why i don't think limiting the witch to themes is needed.
to me, it's more or less a Sorcerer with say, the elemental fire bloodline, getting spells that don't have the fire descriptor as spells known.
it's not exactly that crazy of a deal to be allowed to break thematic boundaries.
I wouldn’t want Witches to be limited to their Themes either, but in fact similar to how Sorcerer’s Bloodlines work.
They get extra stuff associated with their Theme/Patron (Winter getting some cold spells automatically maybe certain hexes) but aren’t locked into them and solely them.
sure but people were talking about getting like a patron and that restricting what lessons you can take.
I like how it is i can take a ice lesson and then a fire lesson next if they're written.
basically i can't work for a cabal of elementals or what not unless paizo would explicitly write it out.
I could see the starting Lesson and/or one major one locked to it but I wouldn’t want all the Lessons locked. Not even Specialist School Wizards are that restricted.
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And then my gm thinks I'm minmaxing. The whole point of witches is patrons teaching outside their normal bonds anyway...What if different lessons had traits, and your choice of patron gave you a list of traits you could learn lessons from?That is literally what I suggested last night ~11 hours ago and was immediately pooh-poohed for either locking you into choices too much, to generating too many keywords (uh, people, HOW many domains are there for clerics?).Must have missed the comment - thread is getting pretty big.
The benefit of trait-patrons is that it would be super easy to homebrew new patrons. You don’t need to wait for Paizo to make “the elemental cabal”, just make your own.
We wouldn’t even need extra traits, Bard already set the groundwork with their Muse paths. The class Feats depending on certain Muses don’t have them listed as Traits, but as Prerequisites.
And then they also have Feats to get around the Prerequisites too.
Traits on lessons tied to patrons is a bad idea. The cardinality of that list is just way too big. There are dozens of Patron themes in PF1
Again, Cleric exists. Cleric dieties already have "dozens of domains" so I don't see how this is bad wrong.
Domains don’t have Traits.Again, Cleric exists. Cleric dieties already have "dozens of domains" so I don't see how this is bad wrong.Traits on lessons tied to patrons is a bad idea. The cardinality of that list is just way too big. There are dozens of Patron themes in PF1
Sigh. The trait keyword whatchamahoozits that I've been saying Patrons grant and Lessons require ARE domains. One to one equivalence. I just wasn't using the word "domain" to avoid namespace clashing.
Deities have two domains, different focus powers the cleric can acquire are tied to what domains the deity encompasses.
Patrons have some number (probably two) keywords traits, different hexes the witch can learn are tied to what traits their patron grants.
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Domains don’t have Traits.Again, Cleric exists. Cleric dieties already have "dozens of domains" so I don't see how this is bad wrong.Traits on lessons tied to patrons is a bad idea. The cardinality of that list is just way too big. There are dozens of Patron themes in PF1
Sigh. The trait keyword whatchamahoozits that I've been saying Patrons grant and Lessons require ARE domains. One to one equivalence. I just wasn't using the word "domain" to avoid namespace clashing.
Deities have two domains, different focus powers the cleric can acquire are tied to what domains the deity encompasses.
Patrons have some number (probably two) keywords traits, different hexes the witch can learn are tied to what traits their patron grants.
... i would stick with the actual name rather than replacing it with Trait since that’s a very specific thing this edition.
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Having patrons as requirements wouldn't be hard (it was done before). But having traits on the patron to determine which lessons to take based on the traits they possess is just making things too complicated.
When compared to bard muses, there are 3 muses who themselves are used as traits.
When compared to cleric domains, there are 40 domain who themselves are used as traits.
When compared to witch patrons in PF1, there are 50+ patrons who themselves are used as traits.
When using your system with 2 traits per patron and having the same number of patrons that's 100+ traits (counting duplicates).
Again, Muses and Domains don’t have Traits.
Prerequisites are not Traits.
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would it work, if instead of/in addition to choosing the patron, the player chose the style of relationship?
E.g. is the witches relationship to the patron:
Voluntarily entered contract
Quid pro quo (a series of trades)
Enforced (e.g. blackmail, or there is a hostage of some sort)
Mysterious
Temptations
Stolen (The witch somehow takes the power against the patrons will or knowledge)To me this seems potentially just as impactful, sometimes perhaps even more so, than who the patron is.
I really love this. What an amazing way to characterize the relationship and enforce an abstract integration of the concept.
Heck they need to take this a step further and have the relationship with the patron directly dictate your familiar relationship too.
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would it work, if instead of/in addition to choosing the patron, the player chose the style of relationship?
E.g. is the witches relationship to the patron:
Voluntarily entered contract
Quid pro quo (a series of trades)
Enforced (e.g. blackmail, or there is a hostage of some sort)
Mysterious
Temptations
Stolen (The witch somehow takes the power against the patrons will or knowledge)To me this seems potentially just as impactful, sometimes perhaps even more so, than who the patron is.
I really love this. What an amazing way to characterize the relationship and enforce an abstract integration of the concept.
Heck they need to take this a step further and have the relationship with the patron directly dictate your familiar relationship too.
I, on the other hand, hate the idea. Choosing between arcane, primal, or occult is a real choice with real consequences for the witch. Having them choose between tempted, stolen, and enforced tells you nothing about the witch or her abilities, and most any consequences they create based on them would be artificial and meaningless.
I say offer those choices as part of the character creation backstory, but leave them entirely story driven, not a way to create paths/sub-classes for the witch.
When using your system with 2 traits per patron and having the same number of patrons that's 100+ traits (counting duplicates).
By "counting duplicates" you make the issue seem like a lot larger than it really is.
Just ten unique keywords (pick 2) gives 45 possible combinations. For just five more unique ones we end up with 105 possible combinations. For reference, there are 37 unique domains (that's 666 combinations, under a pick-two schema!) each with its own unique domain spell and advanced domain spell.
... i would stick with the actual name rather than replacing it with Trait since that’s a very specific thing this edition.
...That's why I literally used the word "keyword." I'm the only one who didn't say Trait, Domain, or Muse when referring to a hypothetical witch mechanic revolving around a similar idea.
What I mean by that is that the "vague mysteries" informs a couple of keywords (like domains) and grants a few unique spells, hexes, or whatever.
Then you can build feats that key off the different keywords, like the bard and muses. "Feat: Personal Blizzard. Prereq: your patron has the Ice, Winter, or Weather keyword."
And you know what? You want one keyword per Lesson? Fine by me. The only reason I didn't was because there's no reason why there couldn't be some level of mix-and-match. Your patron is a vague unidentified entity. Winter Witch is going to key off the "Winter" keyword, whereas your Elemental Witch keys off "Ice" and "Fire". But what stops them both from being able to have Personal Blizzard?
But if you think that's Bad, I'm not married to it. I was making a suggestion. But apparently its "too complicated" and "requires spreadsheets" and has "too many levels of indirection" (seriously? Patron is to Deity as [Witch Keyword] is to Domain as Lesson is to Devotion).
on the muse thing, i don't quite get how you could get an equivalent for witches. aren't they just the bardic subclass system? i don't see how this would map well to somnething like a patron, as they only every seem to come in groups of 3.