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Hello! I'm on my "downtime" resting from my last adventure. So I have time and decide to make a homebrew for the Witch class. I think the class is very good, but it leaves something to be desired in some specific builds. This time I decided to pay a visit to Eldritch Nails and despite being just a draft I would like to have feedback from anyone who wants to comment.
Eldritch Nails (Feat 4) Reaction
- Trigger: A creature within your range deals damage to you.
- Frequency: Once per day.
- Fluffy: Your nails temporarily grow to be supernaturally long and sharp.
- Make an attack using your Spell Attack modifier. Your attack deals 1d6 slashing damage + Strength Modifier and it is considered magical and cold iron.
- You can deliver Hexes through your attacks. You can only use Hexes with two to three actions that does not require an attack roll. If you miss the attack the hex has no effect.
Vicious Revenge (Feat 8)
- Requirements: Eldritch Nails
- Fluffy: Your nails become deadlier against those who dare lay hands on you.
- When using Eldritch Nails you can choose to deal piercing damage instead of slashing damage. If you cast a Hex Focus Spell against your target, the target will also take persistent bleed damage equal to the level of the Hex used by you. The damage persists as long as you sustain the. Focus Hex spell or until the target successfully rolls a flat check.
Empowered Nails (Feat 10)
- Requirements: Vicious Revenge.
- Your nails are now Silver and Cold Iron. It Deals two dice of damage. It has a frequency once per hour. And it gains an extra effect according to the magical tradition granted by your patron.
- Arcane: As part of your reaction to Using Eldritch Nails you can make a knowledge recall check about your target with a +1 Status Bonus. While the target is taking persistent bleed damage, you can attempt a new recall knowledge check about your target when sustaining your hex focus spell.
- Occult: Your Nails gain the properties of the Ghost Touch rune.
- Divine: Choose between positive or negative damage. When using Eldritch Nails you now deal 1 extra damage based on your choice.
- Primal: When using Eldritch Nails to deal persistent bleed damage you can replace it with persistent poison damage.
Honestly, I would drop the part about casting Hexes through the nails. Not unless the restrictions about what Hexes are compatible are drastically reduced. There are no Hexes that cost 3 actions. And only a few that cost 2 actions, and all of them are high level (one 3rd level Hex, the other two are 5th level Hexes).
If it was compatible with all hostile Hexes and you could cast them separately as part of the reaction (so that they succeed or fail independently of the success or failure of the nails attack), that might be worth it. But it might also be too powerful.
If you do keep the Hex casting, you will also want to explicitly state how it interacts with the limitation of one Hex per round. Without stating that it becomes ambiguous if your reaction is part of your regular turn in initiative or not.
As for the nails themselves, it is actually a pretty good idea. Witch doesn't really have many reaction abilities. So a reaction to retaliate against an enemy that makes a melee attack is rather good. The damage is fairly low, but that is to be expected.
If you do remove the casting of Hexes as part of the reaction, then you would want to make the level 6 upgrade feat always do the bleed damage.
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Honestly, I would drop the part about casting Hexes through the nails. Not unless the restrictions about what Hexes are compatible are drastically reduced. There are no Hexes that cost 3 actions. And only a few that cost 2 actions, and all of them are high level (one 3rd level Hex, the other two are 5th level Hexes).
Initially I thought about removing all these restrictions, but I chose to leave them the same as the original feat. I chose to leave it that way because if paizo were to release a hex expansion in the future this expansion would probably fill the gaps left by the restrictions of the original feat.
If that were the case this homebrew would still be useful in the future.
If you do keep the Hex casting, you will also want to explicitly state how it interacts with the limitation of one Hex per round. Without stating that it becomes ambiguous if your reaction is part of your regular turn in initiative or not.
Yeah i'll keep that in mind
As for the nails themselves, it is actually a pretty good idea. Witch doesn't really have many reaction abilities. So a reaction to retaliate against an enemy that makes a melee attack is rather good. The damage is fairly low, but that is to be expected.
Witch is a spellcaster class and it definitely don't want to be on the front lines attacking its enemies with its nails. The original Eldritch Nails feat never made sense to me.
Witches don't have good proficiency progressions in physical attacks nor they have the Strength attribute as relevant for the class. So I thought why not make it a reaction then?
So she would continue delivering her attacks with her nails keeping the tradition hahah :D
Witch is a spellcaster class and it definitely don't want to be on the front lines attacking its enemies with its nails. The original Eldritch Nails feat never made sense to me.
Witches don't have good proficiency progressions in physical attacks nor they have the Strength attribute as relevant for the class. So I thought why not make it a reaction then?
So she would continue delivering her attacks with her nails keeping the tradition hahah :D
Yeah. My current thought on a less drastic change to the nails is to give them the Finesse trait so that they can use Dex for attack bonus and then just ignore the Hex delivery part. It is still way below par for a feat of that level, but it does at least make a decent emergency weapon.