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Does Cackle extend the duration of Bouda's Eye when the Witch also has the Evil Eye hex?
Bouda's Eye A bouda’s gaze can bestow ill fortune on her enemies. This hex can affect a creature within 30 feet that the bouda can see. The target takes a –2 penalty on one of the following (bouda’s choice): AC, ability checks, attack rolls, saving throws, or skill checks. The hex lasts for a number of rounds equal to 3 + the bouda’s Intelligence modifier. A successful Will saving throw reduces the duration of the hex to 1 round. Once per day when the bouda uses this hex, she can impose two different penalties on the target instead of just one. If the bouda takes the evil eye hex, it increases the number of different penalties she can impose on the hex’s target by 1. At 8th level, the penalties imposed by this hex increase to –4. This is a mind-affecting effect.
Evil Eye The witch can cause doubt to creep into the mind of a foe within 30 feet that she can see. The target takes a –2 penalty on one of the following (witch's choice): AC, ability checks, attack rolls, saving throws, or skill checks. This hex lasts for a number of rounds equal to 3 + the witch's Intelligence modifier. A Will save reduces this to just 1 round. This is a mind-affecting effect. At 8th level the penalty increases to –4.
Cackle A witch can cackle madly as a move action. Any creature that is within 30 feet that is under the effects of an agony hex, charm hex, evil eye hex, fortune hex, or misfortune hex caused by the witch has the duration of that hex extended by 1 round.
"Bouda's Eye: This hex must be taken as a bouda’s 1st-level hex, and only a bouda can take this hex."
It is a hex, so Cackle affects it.
Evil Eye adds to the number of penalties but doesn't change the fact that it is a hex.
Except Cackle does not affect all hexes, just specific ones it lists, and Bouda's Eye is not one of them. So should it be? That is RAI guessing and house rule territory.
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RAW, no. It's a distinct hex from Evil Eye, and there's no text that makes Bouda's Eye be affected by Cackle. Even if you have Evil Eye, the hex used (and put upon the enemy) is still Bouda's Eye.
Interesting. That fact that you can give a negative to two things is nice, but not be able to use cackle to extend it is not.
The standard tactic I've seen is to use evil eye + cackle to make landing save or suck/die spells much easier. At 8th level you're decreasing the likelihood of a successful save by absolute % (assuming they don't succeed on a roll of 1-4 or succeed on a roll of 17-20).
Yeah, being virtually without a save when combined with Cackle is Evil Eye's saving grace to what's otherwise a pretty weak hex. I seriously doubt making Bouda's Eye weaker than Evil Eye was intended.
The archetype was apparently written by someone who didn't really understand the class. The 10th level ability says "This ability replaces the major hex granted at 10th level.", but you don't get a major hex at 10th level, you get 1) the Major Hex class feature, and 2) a hex (that can be used for a major hex because of the class feature). The way it's worded, a Bouda never gets any major hexes.
I think that we could write at least a good-sized booklet with all the "probably unintended consequences" of published archetype/rule/spell etc.
And a couple of full-sized hardbound if we add a choice of 3rd party products.
It'd be an interesting group project, but a lot of it is super subjective.