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Just to have it said, something (evil) witches can do effectively. They can send in their familiar and cast final sacrifice, the next day, the familiar is back!
I'd prol allow chaotic req instead if the witch knows the familiar is comming back and the Patron said it's ok.
Witch have some flavour around it people like, but comparing inspire courage for bards and witches cantrip hexes, we can see what cantrip was made better. Still, single action cantrips should not be looked down upon and spells such as wilding words feel like a good place to flavour that the animal (or plant etc.) just avoids attacking the witch.
I can hope for good familiar abilities as all the balance went in to the familiar in addition to the hex cantrip.
The playtest is what led to lessons become feats, they were a feature at first
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Last encounter of the day or against the BBEG? Why wouldn't you send the familiar in? Isn't that actually thematic to a Witch as a latch ditch effort?
Because you have a rabit familiar and you were looking forward to a nice stew at the end of each day.
Seems like a witch thing to do.
Thankfully Divine Access and archetypes that give out focus spells are both things. Splash in Blessed One dedication and bada bing, bada boom, you have a ton of Lay on Hands points to heal up the party with. Flavorful too. Even if you actually want to use your curse it gives you something to do with the spare focus points you may or may not have that doesn't put you further into your curse state.
Divine Access really does carry the Oracle's overall poor feat selection. The bit on archetypes with focus spells, preferably with minimal feat investment like Blessed One, is a big deal too. Each new deity and generic method that grant focus spells is something an Oracle can look forward to even if it doesn't directly support the class. I wish I could say the same for the Witch.
Thankfully Divine Access and archetypes that give out focus spells are both things. Splash in Blessed One dedication and bada bing, bada boom, you have a ton of Lay on Hands points to heal up the party with. Flavorful too. Even if you actually want to use your curse it gives you something to do with the spare focus points you may or may not have that doesn't put you further into your curse state.I've noticed this too. Building oracles kind of sucks due to their uninspiring feat choices.That does mean they’re effectively taxed out of feats to get the spells they need though, and it’s contingent on having a deity with the right spell.Oracle's feat list is kiiiiinda lackluster so getting taxed out of feats isn't that big of a deal for the class unless there's some shiny archetype you want a lot of feats from or if you actually want one of the focus spells from your mystery.
My Ancestors oracle never casts Revelation Spells so no worries about a curse! It pretty much leaves all my class feats for archetypes and the off Divine Access. Blessed one IS a winner for a 2nd level lay on hands and a 3rd focus point. The extra ancestry feats are perfect for snagging extra innate cantrips/spells. ;)
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My Ancestors oracle never casts Revelation Spells so no worries about a curse! It pretty much leaves all my class feats for archetypes and the off Divine Access. Blessed one IS a winner for a 2nd level lay on hands and a 3rd focus point. The extra ancestry feats are perfect for snagging extra innate cantrips/spells. ;)
Thankfully Divine Access and archetypes that give out focus spells are both things. Splash in Blessed One dedication and bada bing, bada boom, you have a ton of Lay on Hands points to heal up the party with. Flavorful too. Even if you actually want to use your curse it gives you something to do with the spare focus points you may or may not have that doesn't put you further into your curse state.
In this case why pick Oracle over Divine Sorc? Genuinely curious.
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Last encounter of the day or against the BBEG? Why wouldn't you send the familiar in? Isn't that actually thematic to a Witch as a latch ditch effort?Because you have a rabit familiar and you were looking forward to a nice stew at the end of each day.
Seems like a witch thing to do.
Actually I think I'm on to sometime here. You could easily count a 6 kg pig as a size tiny creature. That would be about 3kg of usable bacon. More than enough to feed 6 hungry adventurers a day. If you kill it every day for breakfast it come back free of charge in your prepartions.
But the Create Food spell is a level 2 spell. That's not bad a free level 2 spell slot every day. Or if you are tired of bacon, I'm sure you could sell it to make a few coins.
Fantastic! The witch value proposition is solved.
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Actually I think I'm on to sometime here. You could easily count a 6 kg pig as a size tiny creature. That would be about 3kg of usable bacon. More than enough to feed 6 hungry adventurers a day. If you kill it every day for breakfast it come back free of charge in your prepartions.But the Create Food spell is a level 2 spell. That's not bad a free level 2 spell slot every day. Or if you are tired of bacon, I'm sure you could sell it to make a few coins.
Fantastic! The witch value proposition is solved.
The thing I always find funny about this aspect of the witch is the weird dichotomy of "Familiars are useless!" paired ever so closely with "I never put my familiar in harms way!"
Like if they are useless, then why do you care if they are in harms way?
I mean strictly from a meta perspective, if you aren't losing your familiar by the EOD then you didn't maximize its effectiveness right?
I personally don't even see it as evil, because all parties are aware of the Familiar's semi-immortality.
In fact I'd love to play a Witch that's "stuck" with their familiar and every day it just keeps coming back much to the Witch's detriment.
"Hello again sir bacon"
"How did I taste sir?"
"We did a stew this time, was lovely actually. Nice change of pace."
"Shall we begin the day?"
"Sure, but you'd better not die. I promised ribs for dinner."
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Have you considered that players never want to put their familiars in harms way because of RP reasons, and that they are useless for gameplay reasons?
Have you considered that players never want to put their familiars in harms way because of RP reasons, and that they are useless for gameplay reasons?
Exactly my outlook regarding my Envoy character in Starfinder. I loved the hell out of playing him and the backstory I crafted, but the class itself I chose was no fun at all in play. Always lots of hurdles to jump, low impact in my effects and outright dislike when having to choose Improvisations.
That's why its important to separate things in these kinds of discussions. Familiars may be useless bags of HP, but they're still a meaningful part of your character's story, specially a Witch's since they're tied to a core mechanic of the class, the Patrons. So, just sacrificing them willy nilly may be "good" mechanically, but in-character things are far different.
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Actually I think I'm on to sometime here. You could easily count a 6 kg pig as a size tiny creature. That would be about 3kg of usable bacon. More than enough to feed 6 hungry adventurers a day. If you kill it every day for breakfast it come back free of charge in your prepartions.But the Create Food spell is a level 2 spell. That's not bad a free level 2 spell slot every day. Or if you are tired of bacon, I'm sure you could sell it to make a few coins.
Fantastic! The witch value proposition is solved.
The thing I always find funny about this aspect of the witch is the weird dichotomy of "Familiars are useless!" paired ever so closely with "I never put my familiar in harms way!"
Like if they are useless, then why do you care if they are in harms way?
I mean strictly from a meta perspective, if you aren't losing your familiar by the EOD then you didn't maximize its effectiveness right?
I personally don't even see it as evil, because all parties are aware of the Familiar's semi-immortality.
In fact I'd love to play a Witch that's "stuck" with their familiar and every day it just keeps coming back much to the Witch's detriment.
"Hello again sir bacon"
"How did I taste sir?"
"We did a stew this time, was lovely actually. Nice change of pace."
"Shall we begin the day?"
"Sure, but you'd better not die. I promised ribs for dinner."
My whole thing with familiars is that I'm really good at putting them to imaginative use, and so is everyone I play with, to the point where they get a lot of "screen time". I think they're valuable, but after a certain point they're a drag so I have to portion out their usefulness in a narratively satisfying way. Asking the familiar to scout ahead once in a while is fine, but pulling them out in every situation starts to cause people to tune out as you do your familiar thing. Like in Shadowrun when the hacker does their hacker stuff.
One of those naturally self limiting aspects is "Well, I don't want my familiar to get hurt or die." Even beyond the cost associated with getting them back, our party's little helper getting hurt is high on the list of things we don't want to allow to happen.
But adding in rules that allow me to throw them into harms way willy nilly both encourages giving them more screen time and solving more problems, often to the detriment of the party's engagement, and removes one of the fun roleplay aspects of having a familiar: actually caring about it.
So again, the "powered up familiar" aspect of the witch misses the mark for me because 1. I already liked familiars on certain characters and don't need it to be especially beefy and replaceable and 2. Them being beefy and replaceable is actively detrimental to what I want out of the game.
Which is why I want a Witch Archetype that trades it out so that I can pick up a normal one if I want one through other means.
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Have you considered that players never want to put their familiars in harms way because of RP reasons, and that they are useless for gameplay reasons?Exactly my outlook regarding my Envoy character in Starfinder. I loved the hell out of playing him and the backstory I crafted, but the class itself I chose was no fun at all in play. Always lots of hurdles to jump, low impact in my effects and outright dislike when having to choose Improvisations.
That's why its important to separate things in these kinds of discussions. Familiars may be useless bags of HP, but they're still a meaningful part of your character's story, specially a Witch's since they're tied to a core mechanic of the class, the Patrons. So, just sacrificing them willy nilly may be "good" mechanically, but in-character things are far different.
I find that argument equally weak because if the primary focus of the Familiar is for it to be narratively meaningful, then a Familiar actually has a LOT of ways to be explored in that space anyway.
And even then, what narratively is affected by putting your Familiar in harms way?
What's the narrative reason? My immortal being that my Patron gave me as a guide was not present for a few hours of the day?
And I'm not saying sacrifice them willy nilly, I was only pointing out that mechanically you could to be optimal because the primary mechanical consensus on Familiars is "they are useless". The fact is they are not nearly as weak as people make them out to be nor are they as easily killed especially with Phase Familiar.
Choosing not to use abilities for narrative reasons is something any class can do.
"Has anyone ever considered that people say fighters are weak because they don't narratively like the idea of taking advantage of people who expose themselves? It's not honorable to use Attack of Opportunity."
shrug doesn't really seem like a valid argument to make when the Class is designed around not only preventing that loss but also making it consequenceless.
One of those naturally self limiting aspects is "Well, I don't want my familiar to get hurt or die." Even beyond the cost associated with getting them back, our party's little helper getting hurt is high on the list of things we don't want to allow to happen.
But adding in rules that allow me to throw them into harms way willy nilly both encourages giving them more screen time and solving more problems, often to the detriment of the party's engagement, and removes one of the fun roleplay aspects of having a familiar: actually caring about it.
I don't really see how having your familiar be a part of combat does either one of those things though.
Like using a familiar means you don't care about it? Why?
Because it can't die permanently you don't care about it?
Do you feel that way about Summoner's Eidolons? I'd wager no, but it's really not that different.
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In this case why pick Oracle over Divine Sorc? Genuinely curious.
More skills, trained in light armor, improved refocus along with the almost complete lack of interesting feats I don't mind spending on something else. With a sorcerer, I'd be torn about using most of the feats on archetypes but since I have NO interest in interacting with the curse mechanic, I can ditch the majority of the class feats.
That would be about 3kg of usable bacon. More than enough to feed 6 hungry adventurers a day.
A sprite witch with a corgi familiar works best: tiny witch with a small familiar means a literal feast every day! Even better if the whole party is tiny. ;)
A sprite witch with a corgi familiar works best: tiny witch with a small familiar means a literal feast every day! Even better if the whole party is tiny. ;)
By the rules, I'm not sure that works. The Corgi Familiar is coming from an ancestry feat, and the easy-return familiar is coming from a class feature. Can you blend those?
On the other hand, I can't help thinking about Thor's goats. Maybe name your corgi Sæhrímnir?
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The point of witches is on top of their hats.
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By the rules, I'm not sure that works. The Corgi Familiar is coming from an ancestry feat, and the easy-return familiar is coming from a class feature. Can you blend those?
You can blend any kind of familiar abilities because you can only have one unless there is something that specifically spells out it's not compatible. In much the same way, you could get a specific familiar. Nothing prevents a witch from starting out with a Spellslime as they start with 3 familiar abilities and that specific familiar requires 3.
A sprite witch with a corgi familiar works best: tiny witch with a small familiar means a literal feast every day! Even better if the whole party is tiny. ;)By the rules, I'm not sure that works. The Corgi Familiar is coming from an ancestry feat, and the easy-return familiar is coming from a class feature. Can you blend those?
On the other hand, I can't help thinking about Thor's goats. Maybe name your corgi Sæhrímnir?
There are some small rules problems. The Corgi is small not tiny. So not technically qualified as a normal familiar. Then again, there are lots of familiars that don't fit the normal rules as they aren't animals. I think most GMs will be open to a reasonable compromise. But like many parts of this game some small GM interpretation is required.
I don't see it as a significant problem but doubtless a feww people will.
A sprite witch with a corgi familiar works best: tiny witch with a small familiar means a literal feast every day! Even better if the whole party is tiny. ;)By the rules, I'm not sure that works. The Corgi Familiar is coming from an ancestry feat, and the easy-return familiar is coming from a class feature. Can you blend those?
On the other hand, I can't help thinking about Thor's goats. Maybe name your corgi Sæhrímnir?
There are some small rules problems. The Corgi is small not tiny. So not technically qualified as a normal familiar. Then again, there are lots of familiars that don't fit the normal rules as they aren't animals. I think most GMs will be open to a reasonable compromise. But like many parts of this game some small GM interpretation is required.
I don't see it as a significant problem but doubtless a feww people will.
Witch itself offers a non-animal familiar [an OBJECT] so IMO it's a pretty good indicator that the class isn't wedded to the normal tiny animal familiar. Between that and the specific familiars, I personally don't see an issue. Since these familiars just plain do not work if you require tiny animals, I can't see it being much of a question as one should expect abilities to work, especially when there are multiple instances. I think the starting part of specific familiars answers it myself.
"Most familiars are Tiny animals, though a few are unusual, such as a leaf druid's leshy familiar." It shifts familiar standard expectation from Tiny animals to "most" of them are as it leaves the door open for other types. ;)
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Actually I think I'm on to sometime here. You could easily count a 6 kg pig as a size tiny creature. That would be about 3kg of usable bacon. More than enough to feed 6 hungry adventurers a day. If you kill it every day for breakfast it come back free of charge in your prepartions.But the Create Food spell is a level 2 spell. That's not bad a free level 2 spell slot every day. Or if you are tired of bacon, I'm sure you could sell it to make a few coins.
Fantastic! The witch value proposition is solved.
The thing I always find funny about this aspect of the witch is the weird dichotomy of "Familiars are useless!" paired ever so closely with "I never put my familiar in harms way!"
Like if they are useless, then why do you care if they are in harms way?
I mean strictly from a meta perspective, if you aren't losing your familiar by the EOD then you didn't maximize its effectiveness right?
I personally don't even see it as evil, because all parties are aware of the Familiar's semi-immortality.
In fact I'd love to play a Witch that's "stuck" with their familiar and every day it just keeps coming back much to the Witch's detriment.
"Hello again sir bacon"
"How did I taste sir?"
"We did a stew this time, was lovely actually. Nice change of pace."
"Shall we begin the day?"
"Sure, but you'd better not die. I promised ribs for dinner."
My player forgets he even has a familiar. And as a DM, I forget too. Familiars are very forgettable and unnecessary. That's the main reason it never ends up in harm's way.
I liken them to World of Warcraft cosmetic items. They're kind of just there. Not a very interesting class feature, not useful, maybe someone who likes cute furry animals or cosmetic items to roleplay with might make them seem alive.
But the player and DM can completely forget about them and not even notice other than the occasional extra focus point.
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Familiars are nice for getting a focus point back once per day. That's... basically it, really.
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Familiars are nice for getting a focus point back once per day. That's... basically it, really.
Extra spell slot and or cantrip, regain focus and/or innate spell... yeah, not a lot. I guess you could use it as an expendable distraction with Master's Form.
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As long as you don't take the Tough familiar ability. That is going to affect the flavour too much.
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As long as you don't take the Tough familiar ability. That is going to affect the flavour too much.
It just means it needs more tenderizing first... ;)
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Problem with this "familiar is for RP only anyway" approach is that it consumes part of the Witch power budget. And people like their familiars having actual gameplay mechanics rather than being something that is just RP.
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For the Witch, I would trade their status as "having the strongest familiar" in a heartbeat for an actual patron with more mechanics tied to it.
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Problem with this "familiar is for RP only anyway" approach is that it consumes part of the Witch power budget. And people like their familiars having actual gameplay mechanics rather than being something that is just RP.
I have little faith in any form of adhered to power-budget in class design. It's clear that some sort of internal rationing happens, but the fact that the Bard and Witch reside in the same nominal space implies that the ability to pick traditions is costed too high.
I would love to see some form of official dev-kit for PF2e. So many class issues might become clearer if we actually understood what the game was trying for under the hood.
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I have little faith in any form of adhered to power-budget in class design. It's clear that some sort of internal rationing happens, but the fact that the Bard and Witch reside in the same nominal space implies that the ability to pick traditions is costed too high.
I would love to see some form of official dev-kit for PF2e. So many class issues might become clearer if we actually understood what the game was trying for under the hood.
I fully agree, and I'm not saying it's costed properly in the power budget. Just that it takes up some space, and if the animal is limited to RP opportunities only, well... It explains part of the imbalance.
We know from Wizard that devs see access to Familiar roughly in the same terms as other Wizard thesis.
And we can see in Sorcerer that devs see access to different traditions as a big power budget item.
Therefore it makes sense that Witch suffers in power budget terms, since it pays power budget for both a Familiar (much like a Wizard, potentially even stronger) and for access to different traditions.
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I think "pick-a-list" casters should get more spell list mixing to justify the class budget it seems to fill.
I think "pick-a-list" casters should get more spell list mixing to justify the class budget it seems to fill.
You treat magic like a science, cross-referencing the latest texts on practical spellcraft with ancient esoteric tomes to discover and understand how magic works.
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I think "pick-a-list" casters should get more spell list mixing to justify the class budget it seems to fill.
You treat magic like a science, cross-referencing the latest texts on practical spellcraft with ancient esoteric tomes to discover and understand how magic works.
I love/hate that line. It has so much flavour with almost no mechanical cash-out.
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In this case why pick Oracle over Divine Sorc? Genuinely curious.More skills, trained in light armor, improved refocus along with the almost complete lack of interesting feats I don't mind spending on something else. With a sorcerer, I'd be torn about using most of the feats on archetypes but since I have NO interest in interacting with the curse mechanic, I can ditch the majority of the class feats.
Not to mention that Oracle is a master at nabbing spells from other lists. You want both Fireball and Haste on a divine caster? It's pretty easy with Oracle.
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You guys have way different experiences with familiars than my group. Even just looking at the ability list shows me lots of good stuff.
Familiar Focus, Spell Battery, Innate Surge, Share Senses (in tandem with the movement options), Spell Delivery, Spellcasting, Touch Telepathy, Skilled.
All thats without getting into niche strats.
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Familiars can be good (or okay) while Witches are bad. As people will choose the best abilities from the ability list first, getting more of them has diminishing returns if you can't manage to get OP combos.
At higher levels you can one action to get your Familiar to cast a spell like Hideous Laughter and then sustain it for free with Independent Familiar. That's powerful, but any caster can do it while being significantly stronger than a Witch in most areas.
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Familiars can be good (or okay) while Witches are bad. As people will choose the best abilities from the ability list first, getting more of them has diminishing returns if you can't manage to get OP combos.
At higher levels you can one action to get your Familiar to cast a spell like Hideous Laughter and then sustain it for free with Independent Familiar. That's powerful, but any caster can do it while being significantly stronger than a Witch in most areas.
Yea, outside of a class budget familiars seem fine power-wise. As a part of a class budget I wouldn't rate them as high as the p2e witch wants them to be rated without witch specific game changers.
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I think familiars are fine-ish for the most part. Not amazing, but they don't need to be.
I just don't think they're enough to carry the Witch on their own and I can understand why people might not like the narrative of turning their familiar into a hyper-disposable time bomb, even if that's potentially the most optimal way to leverage one given the Witch's mechanics.
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This is why I was saying that I would love something like a dev-kit, where we can see all the costings and see internal metrics laid bare.
While it would be good in a general sense so we could stop having these threads, it would help us, as a community, answer a simple question. “Did Paizo just plain screw up with the Witch?”
I am in no way saying they actually did. They might have worked out a deep internal costing for various options that makes perfect sense, and it just so happens that the Witch sits at the junction of several high cost options that just don’t work in practice.
A few flip sides also exists however.
Either (a) The witch doesn’t actually cost all that much and has several points left sitting in the table, and is legit underpowered by the games own internal math; or (b) Paizo don’t have a well worked out costing system for class functions and the idea of the existence of one is an attempt by the community to rationalise just outright bad design.
We just don’t really know.
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You can sort of look at that right now.
If there was a wizard archetype that traded away arcane bond for simple weapon proficiency and replaced the extra spell slots from your school with +1 to recall knowledge and perception, would you take it? I don't think many people would.
That just doesn't seem like an even trade to me. Is the ability to suicide and recycle your familiar really supposed to be the thing that covers that gap?
I mean the obvious answer here is "but witch feats", particularly basic lesson. That's kind of fair, but also a really problematic answer because it assumes a big part of the class' power budget is tied to correctly selecting your feats, which turns feat selection into a trap.
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It seems pretty clear to me that the lessons should be class features, not feats; it also moves witches into an appropriate niche of having a ton of focus spells since you'd start with two and be guaranteed four over the course of your career. Hell, change the familiar benefits from getting extra largely useless abilities to a supercharged version of familiar focus and you're in business.
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That’s why I would like to see some hard math from the developer side really.
We can speculate / try to reverse engineer a system, but without an actual reference point, we’ll never be able to get it right, plus is has the back-door approach of assuming is the system is correct and perfect in it’s costing right now.
I disagree that witches are bad. I think their feats are mostly bad, but their core chassis is fine.
The familiar is forgettable, but not a net negative and has a few helpful uses like Familiar Focus and additional spellcasting. It can be fun to roleplay. And I imagine at times a creative player can come up with some interesting ways to use their familiar.
The hex cantrips are solid, definitely better than wizard focus spells. I don't think they need the 1 minute immunity as they aren't so powerful that using them every round would be overly powerful. I think evil eye, clinging ice, and stoke the heart are all worth using often.
Main issue with the witch is the feats. They seem likely mostly role-play feats you would use for an NPC witch against the players. Not many seem like something a PC witch engaged in dynamic combat would use. They require strange set ups that aren't particularly worth doing for the end effect.
The familiar feats aren't worth getting. You have enough familiar abilities to get all the useful familiar abilities without spending feats to further develop the familiar. You can get the extra focus point and spellcasting with the allotted familiar abilities from the base class.
It makes for very underwhelming build options from witch feats. Might as well pick up multiclass archetypes.
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The hex cantrips are solid, definitely better than wizard focus spells.
If that was the trade it might be fine. But it's not hex cantrip for wizard focus spell. It's arcane bond, 1 spell/day/level and your focus spell for a hex cantrip.
A hex cantrip that, for the arcane witch (i.e. the one most comparable to the wizard), is just +1 to recall knowledge checks and seek with a cooldown.
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The hex cantrips are solid, definitely better than wizard focus spells.If that was the trade it might be fine. But it's not hex cantrip for wizard focus spell. It's arcane bond, 1 spell/day/level and your focus spell for a hex cantrip.
A hex cantrip that, for the arcane witch (i.e. the one most comparable to the wizard), is just +1 to recall knowledge checks and seek with a cooldown.
Or so we are rationalising at least!
#ReleaseTheDevKit
#ShowUsTheMath
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I disagree that witches are bad. I think their feats are mostly bad, but their core chassis is fine.
The familiar is forgettable, but not a net negative and has a few helpful uses like Familiar Focus and additional spellcasting. It can be fun to roleplay. And I imagine at times a creative player can come up with some interesting ways to use their familiar.
The hex cantrips are solid, definitely better than wizard focus spells. I don't think they need the 1 minute immunity as they aren't so powerful that using them every round would be overly powerful. I think evil eye, clinging ice, and stoke the heart are all worth using often.
Main issue with the witch is the feats. They seem likely mostly role-play feats you would use for an NPC witch against the players. Not many seem like something a PC witch engaged in dynamic combat would use. They require strange set ups that aren't particularly worth doing for the end effect.
The familiar feats aren't worth getting. You have enough familiar abilities to get all the useful familiar abilities without spending feats to further develop the familiar. You can get the extra focus point and spellcasting with the allotted familiar abilities from the base class.
It makes for very underwhelming build options from witch feats. Might as well pick up multiclass archetypes.
The flavour is good and its really nice to see in the system. If you want to play it, play it. The class works good enough.
Familiars arre better and have more options that you are seeing. They were initially a bit flat, but they really improved with the release of APG. They have a lot of good options.
Some of the Hexes are reasonably good. Just like some of the Sorcerers Bloodline powers are good. Many of the Hexes are awful though. Its not quite the same as the Druid where all of their basic 4 focus powers are useful in 90% of encounters. The one minute cool down seems like a totally uncesseary restriction though, but its per target so its not that bad.
The class feats as a set, don't have enough good options. In that regard it seems in much the same boat as the Wizard and the Cleric. The feats can be OK but they don't make your sit up and say wow that same way that they do for the Rogue/Barbarian/Druid/Sorcerer/Bard.
From a pure powergaming point of view I'd always be drawn to one of the other casting classes. The real role for the witch is as a debuffer with Evil Eye but I don't think that sort of caster works really well mechanically in PF2.
I disagree that witches are bad. I think their feats are mostly bad, but their core chassis is fine.
The familiar is forgettable, but not a net negative and has a few helpful uses like Familiar Focus and additional spellcasting. It can be fun to roleplay. And I imagine at times a creative player can come up with some interesting ways to use their familiar.
The hex cantrips are solid, definitely better than wizard focus spells. I don't think they need the 1 minute immunity as they aren't so powerful that using them every round would be overly powerful. I think evil eye, clinging ice, and stoke the heart are all worth using often.
Main issue with the witch is the feats. They seem likely mostly role-play feats you would use for an NPC witch against the players. Not many seem like something a PC witch engaged in dynamic combat would use. They require strange set ups that aren't particularly worth doing for the end effect.
The familiar feats aren't worth getting. You have enough familiar abilities to get all the useful familiar abilities without spending feats to further develop the familiar. You can get the extra focus point and spellcasting with the allotted familiar abilities from the base class.
It makes for very underwhelming build options from witch feats. Might as well pick up multiclass archetypes.
The flavour is good and its really nice to see in the system. If you want to play it, play it. The class works good enough.
Familiars arre better and have more options that you are seeing. They were initially a bit flat, but they really improved with the release of APG. They have a lot of good options.
Some of the Hexes are reasonably good. Just like some of the Sorcerers Bloodline powers are good. Many of the Hexes are awful though. Its not quite the same as the Druid where all of their basic 4 focus powers are useful in 90% of encounters. The one minute cool down seems like a totally uncesseary...
My group is mostly combat optimizers. One player has been making good use of the witch as a healer. Stoke the Heart can add quite a big damage and affects everything. You use electric arc, the damage increases. You use a bow, boosted damage. Two weapons? Damage boost works. Stoke the Heart is a very good hex.
Evil Eye is like a sustainable intimidate.
Clinging Ice is like a 1 action cantrip you can use once per target and sustain.
The fact these hex cantrips are 1 action makes them valuable because they are usable with other action combinations. You could make a good witch blaster with clinging ice and the primal spell list.
He is also getting good use out of Lesson of Life. He will often use it in conjunction with a heal or another action. He can one action Life Boost with another heal on a different or the same target to boost healing.
He can also use Life boost in conjunction with Medicine to heal targets. The 10 minutes you have to wait to do medicine is the same amount of time takes to refocus. So he uses them in conjunction for very quick recovery.
As far as familiars, they aren't very useful the way we play. If it isn't good in combat, we don't care that much about it. Our game is very combat centric. That which cannot be used in battle is not viewed favorably. Familiars are not good in combat save for the occasional sacrifice Aoe Spell, extra focus point, or a little extra spellcasting.
If you're in a more role-play or exploration type of campaign, maybe you'll get more use out of the familiar. But from a pure combat focused perspective, you can forget about them and have no material impact on the combat. When a class feature is forgettable, it's not very good. Sort of like Wizard focus spells or many cleric domain spells.
Abilities with a strong and obvious impact are what attract my players. Niche abilities or abilities that take special circumstances to use well, they don't even bother with. That's why Familiar Focus gets use and some of the spellcasting boosting abilities of the familiar, but skillful, share senses, movement, and the like no one cares much about.
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"I disagree that witches are bad. I think their feats are mostly bad, but their core chassis is fine."
I think the Witch core chassis is fine just because it follows the same formula as all the other prepared spellcasters. But I disagree that the class isn't bad just because its "core chassis is fine".
This class as everyone said has so many issues and needs to be revisited.
The hex cantrips are solid, definitely better than wizard focus spells.If that was the trade it might be fine. But it's not hex cantrip for wizard focus spell. It's arcane bond, 1 spell/day/level and your focus spell for a hex cantrip.
A hex cantrip that, for the arcane witch (i.e. the one most comparable to the wizard), is just +1 to recall knowledge checks and seek with a cooldown.
Or so we are rationalising at least!
#ReleaseTheDevKit
#ShowUsTheMath
I mean developer insight would be nice, but I don't think it's really rationalizing per se either. It's a summary of the differences between the wizard and the witch kits. Health/Saves/Armor are similar. Spell lists (for Rune) are identical. Wizards get 4 spells per day and arcane bond. Rune witches get +1 to recall knowledge and seek, one trained skill, simple weapon proficiency and can recycle their familiar.
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That’s all true, but we have no idea how much it “cost” the Witch to be able to pick a tradition to begin with.
The options, once picked, may not be equitable. But it’s entirely possible that that difference is accounted for, at least in the design point of view, by being able to pick traditions to begin with.