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I see one way of building them with the claw option. This build would have a mix of battlefield spells for limiting movement, can provide flanking with their familiar to allies or themselves as needed, and uses their lower defenses as bait to decide where fights take place and deliver extra damage. The goal isn't to stay in melee in every situation but to have and make moments where it makes strategic sense. But anything glaring issues with the viability?
Claw WitchWitch 8
N
Medium
Human
Aiuvarin
Humanoid
Perception +10; Low-Light Vision
Languages None selected
Skills Acrobatics +14, Arcana +13, Athletics +18, Crafting +13, Lore: Warfare +13, Nature +10, Occultism +13, Religion +10, Society +15, Stealth +14, Thievery +14
Str +4, Dex +4, Con +2, Int +3, Wis +0, Cha +0
Items Unarmored, Handwraps of Mighty Blows (+1 Striking), Amphisbaena Handwraps, Wand of Smoldering Fireballs (3rd-rank spell), Steel Shield (Hardness 5, HP 20, BT 10)AC 24 (+26 with shield raised); Fort +14, Ref +14, Will +12
HP 80
Shield Block Speed 25 feet
Melee +1 Weapon Striking Special Unarmed (1d6) +15 (Agile, Finesse, Nonlethal, Unarmed, Magical), Damage 2d6+4 B, P or S +1d6 precision
Trick Magic Item
Amphisbaena Handwraps
Precision Damage Sneak Attack 1d6
Arcane Prepared Spells DC 25, attack +15; 4th Fire Shield, Fly, Vision of Death; 3rd Haste, Vampiric Feast, Wall of Wind; 2nd False Vitality, Mist, Blood Vendetta; 1st Mystic Armor, Mud Pit, Sure Strike; Cantrips Electric Arc, Light, Frostbite, Shield, Ignition
Focus Spells (2 points) Discern Secrets
Patron's Puppet
Needle of Vengeance
Additional Feats Aiuvarin, Basic Lesson, Combat Climber, Martial Experience, Quick Jump, Rapid Mantel, Sneak Attacker, Steady Balance, Titan Wrestler, Toughness, Wild Witch's Armaments, Witch's Armaments
Additional Specials Basic Lesson (Lesson of Vengeance), Familiar, Familiar of Flowing Script, Hex Spells (Patron's Puppet), Patron (The Inscribed One), Sneak Attack, Surprise Attack, Witch Spellcasting, Witch's Armaments (Eldritch Nails)
At level 8 this build is going to be facing things with around 27 AC +20 to hit and dealing 2d10+9 damage like a chimera. A chimera will melt through the HP of this witch too quickly if not prepared. so don't consider the build as if its attempting to tank. Its just attempting to use the right moment to take attention.
Scrolls, and wands are also good to vary up your options for situations where you absolutely cant step into melee at all. Theres litterally no downside to this, if you can step into melee to help you do when your facing something like a clay golem witch makes most of your magic effects null you make sure to have a set of scrolls to help in other ways.
A lion's shield kind of seemed like a cool addition too to stack on more retaliation effects (not a fan of anything that cannot be upgraded to keep up as you level though or doesn't have higher level equivalents seems like wasted design forcing me as a GM to homebrew or wave restrictions
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I think you may have answered your own question here. By your own admission, your Witch is far too squishy to stay in melee for very long, and instead has to opportunistically dip in and out of melee to make their armament attacks. I see you started with a +2 to Int, meaning your spells were the equivalent of a proficiency tier behind other casters' in accuracy up until level 5, and gave up Witch feats for a Rogue multiclass archetype, all so that you can make attacks with less damage and accuracy than the typical martial class. If giving up that much to gain the benefit of opportunistic melee attacks from time to time is acceptable to you, then no, Witch's Armaments isn't a bad feat, but a lot of other players don't seem to consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.
What makes the Armaments Nails bad is that you could save yourself a couple of feats and bump your spell attack attribute back up to max at the cost of dropping your STR and getting a dagger or other Finesse weapon. It would be a couple points lower in damage, but you aren't a high damage dealer anyway.
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Yeah, I'm confused as to why you boosted Strength as a Witch, when your claw attacks already have the Agile and Finesse traits, meaning you already key your attack bonus from Dexterity anyway, and it's not worth the bonus 3 or 4 damage to your claw attacks to sacrifice your casting stat or your Wisdom. Losing flat damage is painful in the lower levels, but it's not worth it in the long run.
I did see you take Rogue dedication for Sneak Attacker, which isn't a bad damage boost for a non-Strength combatant, but the Mobility feat is so awesome for a squishy to avoid reaction-based attacks via movement, especially when you are running around with 35 base movement (45 with Tailwind Wand). This lets you skirmish as needed (such as if you're wanting to avoid casting spells, or if you need to get out of a bad spot to cast a spell), with bonus points if Haste is active, so you can Strike, Mobility Stride, then cast a spell, all in one turn, in most any order you wish.
Teridax since you mentioned martials. Agreed not to martial capability.
But it shouldn't be if your getting all that witch casting ability.
what matters is if the hit chance is enough to hit things and if the damage when you hit is enough to have been worth the action.
At level 8 the witch is hitting on a 12 or up against a 27 AC in the chimera example. With off guard achieved (and probably not worth clawing until it is) its on a 10 or up. at this point the hit chance is bearable for a third action or for 2 actions if using the double venom attacks from the handwraps. The damage is 3d6+4. Thats reasonable damage. The creature will probably attack the witch and trigger a basic save for 8 damage if needle is up, if fire shield is up thats 2d6 damage.
So the build is not comparable to a martial like a fighter or barbarian or champion in melee.
Its more of an opportunist looking for an opening and punishes the enemy for attacking them. In the mean time while waiting for openings spell casting to limit enemy maneuverability and positioning the familiar for allies and discerning weaknesses is on its own a decent contribution.
I would also guess that spell selection might need to take into consideration party composition.
Finoan.
I think going with a dagger is fine it just is different.
with the Amphisbaena Handwraps you get one turn per hour where you actually can do a lot more than normal. making sure its a turn where you have advantages like frighten and off guard on an enemy just a good idea for any big attack round. On that turn though you get the 2d6+4+1d6 precision+1d6 poison on the first attack and 2d6+8+1d6 precision+1d6 poison on the second. This doesnt include property runes which are available at this level.
The dagger with max Int is 2d4+2 and if you are not using feats for melee capability as suggested then it stops there right? 2d4+2+1d6 precision at least if getting sneak attacker like I did. If wanting to double slice it would take a second archtype and a third feat in invested in rogue to get out of it.
Yeah, I'm confused as to why you boosted Strength as a Witch, when your claw attacks already have the Agile and Finesse traits, meaning you already key your attack bonus from Dexterity anyway, and it's not worth the bonus 3 or 4 damage to your claw attacks to sacrifice your casting stat or your Wisdom. Losing flat damage is painful in the lower levels, but it's not worth it in the long run.
I did see you take Rogue dedication for Sneak Attacker, which isn't a bad damage boost for a non-Strength combatant, but the Mobility feat is so awesome for a squishy to avoid reaction-based attacks via movement, especially when you are running around with 35 base movement (45 with Tailwind Wand). This lets you skirmish as needed (such as if you're wanting to avoid casting spells, or if you need to get out of a bad spot to cast a spell), with bonus points if Haste is active, so you can Strike, Mobility Stride, then cast a spell, all in one turn, in most any order you wish.
I did want to go all in on the armaments and use casting differently accepting less DCs.
But also I didnt think of everything I could do here. Tailwind and mobility with haste are good ideas.
Yeah, I'm confused as to why you boosted Strength as a Witch, when your claw attacks already have the Agile and Finesse traits, meaning you already key your attack bonus from Dexterity anyway, and it's not worth the bonus 3 or 4 damage to your claw attacks to sacrifice your casting stat or your Wisdom. Losing flat damage is painful in the lower levels, but it's not worth it in the long run.
I did see you take Rogue dedication for Sneak Attacker, which isn't a bad damage boost for a non-Strength combatant, but the Mobility feat is so awesome for a squishy to avoid reaction-based attacks via movement, especially when you are running around with 35 base movement (45 with Tailwind Wand). This lets you skirmish as needed (such as if you're wanting to avoid casting spells, or if you need to get out of a bad spot to cast a spell), with bonus points if Haste is active, so you can Strike, Mobility Stride, then cast a spell, all in one turn, in most any order you wish.
Actually looked back at the nails, they are agile but not finesse. That was part of why strength was needed.
Only the hair armament has finesse. Curious though with the hair all the athletics based traits make str still good to have.I guess with hair you can have wands and staves in your hands and use hair to trip or whatever.
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Casters cannot do melee well. You'd be better off playing a martial and taking witch archetype if you want to be good at fighting with hair. This game isn't built for casters to do martial fighting well. It's a very secondary form of fighting for them.
There is a conceptual space for available for a more hag-like character that can function as a magical isolator, but it would need a great deal more support. The most thematic direction is Sympathetic strike, but it's too hard to land and the benefit isn't worth coming into melee range.
There needs to be an easy way to boost attack chance and defense against at least one target, like a Ranger, and a bigger payoff for doing so, like getting to benefit from targets being flanked or prone for an effective +4 to hit with a hex if the armament attack crits.
Something should be available for normal spells so that melee doesn't become horrible once the hexes run out.
Actually looked back at the nails, they are agile but not finesse. That was part of why strength was needed.
Only the hair armament has finesse. Curious though with the hair all the athletics based traits make str still good to have.
I guess with hair you can have wands and staves in your hands and use hair to trip or whatever.Another 'why it is bad' argument is that you can get similar or better from a couple different ancestries, freeing up a class feat for other things. Some examples include a slag may's iron claws if you want to go str, or a nephilim's or catfolk's d6 finesse attack if you want to go dex.
IMO Paizo puts feats like this in to function as a third action option. If you think about it as 'this feat gives me an extra MAPless attack if I can't get out of melee and I've already cast a spell...but with my proficiency and attributes it's about like another PC's MAP -5 attack' then you're probably thinking about it right. If you're thinking about it as 'I want to use this feat as my build-defining, go-to attack option' then I think it's not really designed to be that.
Yeah, this is a good way to look at it.
This kind of option (something like Witch Armaments) is not intended to be a "main" action, but to round out options you have and provide an occasional 3rd action. To me, this is a bit similar to a martial character picking up spell casting dedication. Rarely are offensive spells going to be effective due to lower casting stat and proficiency, but it can be worth it just for access to self buffs. Or you can think of it a bit like picking up skill feats for things like Bon Mot.
You're not building your entire character around only doing those things, but they're nice to have in certain situations.
Now, even with that in mind I personally think a witch is better served by simply finding options that will get them out of melee range and let them engage the enemy with something they are better at. Heck taking the Acrobat dedication just for better tumble through is probably a better use of resources in my opinion, but Acrobat gives a lot for the cost of a class feat.
There should really be more archetypes that promote skills for free, or they need to remove it from Acrobat (and I think there might be like 1 other offender).
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Teridax since you mentioned martials. Agreed not to martial capability.
But it shouldn't be if your getting all that witch casting ability.
I completely agree. To be clear, I don't think the Witch ever needs to be even remotely close to a martial in terms of fighting in melee, at least not without a class archetype that cuts down on their spellcasting. Given how the Witch has just about the worst possible stats for fighting in melee, being able to make even some semi-competent melee attacks at all at a heavy investment shows just how flexible Pathfinder's character customization options can be given its strong niche protection. It's also for this reason, however, that I feel the Witch is a poor starting class for a melee build in a way similar to how I would probably not pick a Fighter for my spellcaster build. In my opinion, the expectation that the Witch should be able to fight well at all in melee is about as unreasonable as expecting a Fighter to be able to be good at casting spells, and trying to make either even decent at that requires a heavy investment for limited returns.
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Agreed, and honestly if I were going to make a character that used the witch armament feat specifically....I'd probably make a fighter mostly using the free hand fighter feats and take witch's armaments to get some different attack options (probably the teeth and hair followed up by wild witch armaments for the ranged hair attack).
Probably not as good as going straight fighter, because you're wasting a few feats on picking up attacks that aren't any better than buying weapons, but for a theme it's not debilitating.
Have to look at what synergy there might be to gain from witch dedication.
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IMO Paizo puts feats like this in to function as a third action option. If you think about it as 'this feat gives me an extra MAPless attack if I can't get out of melee and I've already cast a spell...but with my proficiency and attributes it's about like another PC's MAP -5 attack' then you're probably thinking about it right.
Which is why the Hair one is the only one that is even remotely viable - because it does have Finesse and you don't need to drop DEX and your resulting AC in order to use it with more than a +0 attribute bonus.
The Nails having Agile and not Finesse is just bonkers. No Witch should be using two STR-based melee physical attacks in one round.
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For me it's basically just that the returns aren't very good on a class that desperately needs above average returns here.
When you put melee feats on a class that isn't designed to be in melee combat, the feats need to be especially high value, otherwise they're just never worth taking. Instead, Armament's weaponry are somewhat low value.
The proposition of spending precious class feats on something that's not very good and also aimed at a niche you're already lagging in is really bad.
This isn't just "witches suck at melee" but even if you want to take the challenge and build a witch with melee capabilities, Armaments still kind of sucks.
Sympathetic Strikes improves the value proposition, but now you're two feats down and still stuck with a bad weapon (to be honest, it's really disappointing sympathetic strikes is attached to armament, because it just makes the melee witch archetype that much worse for no real reason).
I agree that sympathetic strikes should have just been included with the first armaments feat. I actually didnt even pick it up in this build.
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Casters cannot do melee well. You'd be better off playing a martial and taking witch archetype if you want to be good at fighting with hair. This game isn't built for casters to do martial fighting well. It's a very secondary form of fighting for them.
This.
Entering melee in a dangerous battle is a death sentence for 6 h.p. folk. And spending so many resources on abilities one only uses in easier battles seems silly, especially if it cuts into one's dangerous-battle resources/durability.I've explored these Armament options because I also like the imagery, and I can't say they do much better on a martial since weapons/Stances are so good, and getting an unarmed attack via Ancestry is much simpler (and earlier, and often with perks available). Which is to say if I were to make a witch-themed or hag-themed melee combatant, I doubt I'd even dip into Witch. I'd toss a whole bunch of witch flavor onto a different chassis (which would vary by what emphasis I was going for).
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Monk with witch archetype would probably make the best hair martial. Then pick up the generic martial feats like Flurry of Maneuvers and Mixed Maneuver to do interesting things with your hair.
Spell casting coming from archtypes is very slow though.
Very few slots and they are lower in level than when a caster gets them.
Even with using a third of slots to mitigate damage and be able to spend a round or two in melee a caster still has more spell power left over than a martial archytping for spell slots.
Not to mention the damage this build puts up with calw attacks is actually ok. Adding a shock rune in the mix would put it at 4d6+4 on first attack and if the situation is one where a second attack has a reasonable chance of hitting it gets 4d6+8 on the second.
Those magic handwraps from the howl of the wild really bring in a nice special attack round for a total of 5d6+4 on first and 5d6+8 on second and both at no MAP. (of course you would not attempt this without at least off guard, but the familiar ability helps you get it when not otherwise available)
Monk with witch archetype would probably make the best hair martial. Then pick up the generic martial feats like Flurry of Maneuvers and Mixed Maneuver to do interesting things with your hair.
Yeah. Pretty much Clinging Shadows but 4 levels earlier, takes up an archetype buy in, and costs two feats instead of one.
It is good if you already want Witch archetype on your Monk for other reasons.
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Monk with witch archetype would probably make the best hair martial. Then pick up the generic martial feats like Flurry of Maneuvers and Mixed Maneuver to do interesting things with your hair.
First off: yes.
Second: I already played a White-Haired Witch in 1e. Why you have to give me flashbacks like that?
Lets say the witch grabs a creature that came at it last round, casts needle of vengeance on it, and raises shield.
If the creature strikes thats going to trigger the needle but what if the creature attempts to escape with any of its actions?
Escape has the attack trait, seems hostile when escaping another creatures grab.
And yes this build will want to do this under the right circumstances like if they cast fire shield last round and have temp hp from false life for a vampiric feast and still have most of their hp.
After doing this once they wouldnt want to try it again that fight.
Lets say the witch grabs a creature that came at it last round, casts needle of vengeance on it, and raises shield.
If the creature strikes thats going to trigger the needle but what if the creature attempts to escape with any of its actions?
Escape has the attack trait, seems hostile when escaping another creatures grab.
And yes this build will want to do this under the right circumstances like if they cast fire shield last round and have temp hp from false life for a vampiric feast and still have most of their hp.
After doing this once they wouldnt want to try it again that fight.
So when everything's lined up perfectly, and you've spent more resources than the net effect would grant you, not to mention built around it, then a grappling Witch might not be so bad (assuming it's not fighting a boss). Hmm...
To me Escape doesn't seem hostile at all, for example I wouldn't have trying to escape end Invisibility. I read it that it exerts the same sort of physical effort so as to qualify as an attack (or simply balances well to give MAP in the cost/benefits of grappling).
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A Hostile Action is defined, even if it is defined loosely. And it is definitely defined as something different from the Attack trait.
A hostile action is one that can harm or damage another creature, whether directly or indirectly, but not one that a creature is unaware could cause harm.
Escape is my go-to example of an action that has the Attack trait but is not inherently a Hostile Action.
There are some others, but they are more situational. Such as using Grapple to prevent an ally from stepping off of a precipice because they are confused or fleeing or fooled by an illusion. That usage of Grapple definitely does not qualify as a Hostile Action.
Grappling an enemy to hold them down while you or an ally stabs them repeatedly is a Hostile Action. The stabbing is also Hostile, but the Grappling is itself Hostile as well.
Kinda seems like a good play in the right situation.
Foe has to decide to try to escape to go after allies or to strike the witch and potentially take some damage. At level 8 in my example the Witch could set up to ignore 20 damage through temp hp and hardness. And in exchange for being the creatures pinata for the round can deal back up to 24 mental+2d6 fire damage.
An ally can take advantage of the moment and flank with the witch doing more damage also providing flanking to the witch to use the venom double attack from the handwraps for a decent chance at 5d6+4 and 5d6+8.
Lots of ifs here sure but also lots of other options for a witch to do instead of this too.
Or less damage than you could do with 2 3rd Rank Force Barrages without putting yourself in any particular danger or changing your build.
(If you're already stuck with this build, I apologize for being unhelpful, but if you're merely considering it, the most helpful I feel I could be is to dissuade you from this concept (unless playing at a particularly lenient table in which case it looks fun)).
Or less damage than you could do with 2 3rd Rank Force Barrages without putting yourself in any particular danger or changing your build.
(If you're already stuck with this build, I apologize for being unhelpful, but if you're merely considering it, the most helpful I feel I could be is to dissuade you from this concept (unless playing at a particularly lenient table in which case it looks fun)).
6d4+6 twice for the same two rounds is good too.
There are some differences though.The witch is taking damage instead of allies(probably)
The witch has probably immobilized the creature for a round(especially if they took the bait and attacked with all its actions)
The witch is providing an off guard target for allies for the round.
Uses a rank 3 and a rank 2 slot for defenses and a focus point for needles. For those two rounds.
None of this is worth taking the damage?
Or less damage than you could do with 2 3rd Rank Force Barrages without putting yourself in any particular danger or changing your build.
(If you're already stuck with this build, I apologize for being unhelpful, but if you're merely considering it, the most helpful I feel I could be is to dissuade you from this concept (unless playing at a particularly lenient table in which case it looks fun)).
Just wanted to clarify Castilliano, i havent actually made this build.
I GM for my group but havent had the opportunity to actually be a player.So all your thoughts are welcome.
Also i expected to push back a bit since casters in melee are not considered good or popular.