What do you prefer? Is the Familiar and their feats from Witch powerful enough to contend with other spell-casters, especially Wizard if you're an Arcane witch with the fact you get 1 Hes Cantrip vs 1 addition but limited Spell Slot.
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Comparing just the arcane options I sort of prefer Wizard. Your focus spells in general are worse, but the Arcane Witch's hex cantrip is mediocre and their familiar ability is so tragically bad I assume it was specifically designed to push people back toward the Wizard.
Having 1-2 extra top level spells (even with limitations) is just much better.
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witches have actually decent upsides instead just kind of existing.
Yeah, that is my thought too. After the Remaster buffs, Arcane Witch has its own thing that it does rather than the raw spellcasting power that Wizard has. So trying to generically compare the two is hard.
It is sort of like asking which is better: Cleric, Divine Sorcerer, or Oracle? The classes are different enough that it depends on what you actually want the character to do.
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The witch has actual class/subclass abilities and flavorful, engaging feats as opposed to being purely a bag of prepared spell slots. By merit of not being a bowl of unflavored oatmeal the witch rockets ahead of the wizard in my estimation.
Isn't Discern Secrets one of those silly Focus spells which does infinite Recall knowledge rolls?
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The Familiar alone doesn't make the witch better than the wizard, in my opinion. Not even with the patron abilities of the remaster witch.
The main draw of the witch compared to a wizard are of course focus spells and feats.
The Witch has a much broader selection of focus spells and while some are lacking, there are definitely good ones in there. The focus cantrips are still a bit hit or miss but unless you want an arcane patron, you can have at least one decent to good focus cantrip.
Feat selection for the witch seems vastly superior in the remaster. Stitched/Spirit Familiar, Ceremonial Knife, Patron's Clain, Cauldron, the lesson feats... It has become quite easy to fill all 10 class feat slots with good or even great stuff on a witch. Wizard feats got slightly better in the remaster but at least for me it's still impossible to find more then a few class feats I'm really looking forward to.
So... I would say the Witch is the better class, but Wizard is the better caster. If I wanted to play an arcane spell slinger first and foremost, I'd pick Wizard (and most likely grab the Witch Archetype).
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If you are going for an Arcane Witch, you would still probably be better overall with a Wizard and poach just Witch feats via archetyping.
If you are going for anything other than Arcane, Witch is the better class now.
The Wizard's legacy of having largely dull/marginally useful feats has the "benefit" of meaning you can trade most of the away for archetypes without feeling too much pain.
Isn't Discern Secrets one of those silly Focus spells which does infinite Recall knowledge rolls?
That's the one, yes. Discern Secrets as currently written gives the target an ability to use Seek, Sense Motive, or Recall Knowledge as a free action with no trigger or limit.
Isn't Discern Secrets one of those silly Focus spells which does infinite Recall knowledge rolls?That's the one, yes. Discern Secrets as currently written gives the target an ability to use Seek, Sense Motive, or Recall Knowledge as a free action with no trigger or limit.
It's the only hex cantrip that kept their 1 minute immunity restriction. All the other hex cantrips had their 1 minute immunities removed in the Remaster.
It's the only hex cantrip that kept their 1 minute immunity restriction. All the other hex cantrips had their 1 minute immunities removed in the Remaster.
All of the other Hexes that were reprinted had their 1 minute immunity removed. There are a couple that have a 1 day immunity still.
So it is really confusing why Discern Secrets got the changes that it did. Having it be Seek, Sense Motive, or Recall Knowledge 1/round when cast or sustained and removing the immunity would make so much more sense.
I don't think arcane witch is better than wizard outside of very specific comps.
Occult witch, on the other hand, tends to be better than wizard. Higher performance floor due to class features, only marginally worse spell list (if worse at all), and so on.
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I was going to say that the Seneschal Witch new cantrip, Manifest Will, might have introduced a possible reason to play an Arcane Witch. But then the 6th level feat, Multifaceted Will, let's you do what you want with that route.
Personally I'm really digging the Seneschal right now for it's more unique line of play.
Comparing just the arcane options I sort of prefer Wizard. Your focus spells in general are worse, but the Arcane Witch's hex cantrip is mediocre and their familiar ability is so tragically bad I assume it was specifically designed to push people back toward the Wizard.
Having 1-2 extra top level spells (even with limitations) is just much better.
The Inscribed One familiar ability isn't so much tragically bad as it is awkwardly dependent on party composition. If the melee folks already have reliable dance partners it's pretty pointless. But if there's usually someone needing a flank buddy, then with independent/patron's puppet you can provide it as a free action accuracy booster. With flight and fast movement it can rocket around the battle field, ignore difficult terrain, move through enemy spaces, and provide flanking even against fliers, making it quite reliable.
And then as mentioned there are some quite strong witch feats to take into account. One could argue that the disappointing part about the Inscribed One isn't that it is weaker than wizards but that it is weaker than other witches.
I was going to say that the Seneschal Witch new cantrip, Manifest Will, might have introduced a possible reason to play an Arcane Witch. But then the 6th level feat, Multifaceted Will, let's you do what you want with that route.
Well presumably you want the arcane list in this situation as much as you want the spell weakness aura, so the 6th level feat is just nice flexibility for everyone. What continues to suck with this path is that bad familiar ability that Seneschal doesn't replace.
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At least this thread had only been dead slightly less than a year before it was revived by the spam bot "Whats1953".