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Are you playing a Remastered Witch or a Premaster? The Witch got a lot more unique and stand-outish in the remaster, so if you aren’t using the remaster, I would look into that!
The second thing I’d ask is what drew you to the Witch initially? Perhaps it’s not right for what you want to be doing and another class does make sense!
Also, it would be wise to chat to your GM if they are constantly targeting your familiars. While there is meant to be a risk/reward element to using familiars directly in combat, if it happens constantly, your GM may need to alter their game style. It’s not intended for the Witch to consistently lose out on a chunk of their class features everyday.
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Yeah, this has to be for pre-master, right? I don't see how anyone could think the witch is less interesting and unique than the wizard after Player Core.
Also don't forget that your familiar doesn't just die at 0 HP. It goes to dying 1, just like any player character.
Having played a Witch up to level 10 the most standout ability was Stitched Familiar (I was a Primal Witch). Combined with my Elemental Scamp Breath attack and a Potion of Dragon Breath (thanks to Cauldron), my Familiar was a rather significant part of my damage output on top of my own spells, allowing me to cast 3 damaging effects (with Quickened Casting) in a single round. Rolling 26d6 of damage as an opener is rather cathartic.
But ultimately, the main differences between 2 spellcasters are their tradition and main attribute. The class features of spellcasters are rather limited.
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Do you mean in terms of playing one? Look at your lessons and maybe consider talking to your GM about retraining your patron if you're unhappy with how you're playing. It's one of your main decisions and patron balance is very haphazard.
If you're talking about houserules, I think the class really needs a way to get at least a second hex cantrip. It's basically the cornerstone of your class but also writes you into a corner pretty badly since you only ever get the one.
Are you playing a Remastered Witch or a Premaster? The Witch got a lot more unique and stand-outish in the remaster, so if you aren’t using the remaster, I would look into that!
The Remaster is nice, but it doesn't really help that much, especially if you're playing one of the many patron themes that doesn't have an amazing familiar ability (and even then, you're basically relying on your GM playing around you to make it work).
Fundamentally it's kind of just a second rate caster by design: it combines a wizard's chassis and spellbook with a druid's spellcasting mechanic. Ostensibly it does this in exchange for having potent focus spells and unique hex cantrips, but those don't carry water by themselves and the class has been largely overshadowed both as a pure spellcaster and as a focus spell expert by modern movements in the game (not that it ever really was exceptional in the first place).
In some ways the remaster made things worse, by polishing but not fixing a number of core options, muddying up the storytelling with the bizarre hex lore rewrite, and while some familiar abilities are okay, the risk and the GM buy-in are really somewhat problematic given both the benefits to the witch and the downsides. In practice familiar abilities are almost bait, or just designed to be a source of animosity if the GM doesn't enable it enough.
There are some genuinely good witch builds, but fundamentally they all tend to rely on finding one specific good thing and centering your whole identity around it, which isn't really a good look for a class.
I agree with Squiggit, the Witch stays one of the worst casters in the game. But it's much more fun than it used to be, in my opinion, as you have more abilities (and more abilities is more fun, even if they are not stellar).
My experience with a Wilding Steward Witch is that Familiar of Keen Senses is really powerful but asks for a specific tone of the campaign (if all you do is cleaning dungeons from top to bottom you don't care about it, but in a campaign heavy on infiltration for example it's absolutely gorgeous).
Patron's Puppet is super fun. When you go down, your Familiar can still do things (and that's great). It's also a nice combo with Stitched/Spirit Familiar.
Stitched/Spirit Familiar is also excellent. That's nearly free damage, it compensates the class lack of damage bonuses putting it on par with Sorcerer and Oracle.
Overall, the Witch Familiar is much more impactful than it used to be and that's what you want from a class where it is supposed to be the big selling point.
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Patron's Puppet is super fun. When you go down, your Familiar can still do things (and that's great).
You can't use Patron's Puppet if you're unable to act.
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You can't use Patron's Puppet if you're unable to act.
It's not that clear. There are multiple sentences in the description that indicates you are not the one acting ("At your unspoken plea", "your patron simply moves its agent directly"). So there's an RAI case to be made that Patron's Puppet is not directly used by you. And I personally think it's the intent behind the ability: You are not acting, your patron is.
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It's a focus spell you Cast as a free action to Command your familiar. You can't take free actions, Command a minion or Cast a Spell if you're unable to act.
Even the flavor text "at your unspoken plea" indicates that you still have to do something to get it to work, even if it is just a fleeting thought.
"Your patron simply moves its agent directly" is taken out of context. The full sentence is "Your Command does not have the auditory or concentrate traits; your patron simply moves its agent directly." So it's just a flavor explanation for the removal of the traits for the Command action.
I see no room in the RAW here to say you can use this while unconcious. The GM might still allow it, of course, but it simply doesn't work that way by RAW.
I see no room in the RAW here to say you can use this while unconcious. The GM might still allow it, of course, but it simply doesn't work that way by RAW.
Yes, it's a classical RAW vs RAI case.
Per RAW, there's no action you can do without being able to act. But this action describes how your Patron intervenes to move your familiar outside your command and as such there's an RAI case to make.
That's why I say it's unclear. There are 2 interpretations of how Patron's Puppet work and I don't see one being a clear winner.
I personally favor the RAI interpretation that your patron intervenes to command your familiar. But I can see someone prefering the RAW interpretation. Anyway, it doesn't happen often, it happened to me only once in the course of 10 levels and it was more of a funny moment than a decisive one.
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Fair enough
But if you know its not RAW, maybe say things like "Your GM might allow your familiar to act while you're down." instead of making a rather absolute sounding statement like "When you go down, your Familiar can still do things".
Could have saved us both a couple of posts. :)
I can empathize with the criticism in the OP. The Witch was certainly improved in the remaster, but I don’t think the class necessarily became all that strong either with the changes, with the exception of a few subclasses that received truly amazing familiar abilities.
If we’re staying within the rules of the game, then I would recommend picking cackle and lessons, both of which are unique and powerful feats the Witch can access. If your GM allows homebrew, OP, you might be interested in these variants, most which can be easily plugged into the class immediately. One of the variants lets you resurrect your familiar during exploration at a price, so you don’t find yourself lacking your biggest class feature for the rest of the day, and another basically makes you an occult caster with access to every spell, a significant power-up that in my opinion should have formed the basis of the Witch in the first place.
Fair enough
But if you know its not RAW, maybe say things like "Your GM might allow your familiar to act while you're down." instead of making a rather absolute sounding statement like "When you go down, your Familiar can still do things".
Could have saved us both a couple of posts. :)
Well, before the conversation I was not aware there was a conversation to have :)
+1 to the idea of allowing the Witch to have multiple hex cantrips at the ready. It's kinda their only real "thing" that has mechanical teeth to it while also being super flavorful.
We kinda already lost the chance, but it would have been a perfect remaster change for every Lesson feat to also include a new hex cantrip (& or a f. hex ability) and not just the focus spell.
Without that, hombrewing at a table is a lot harder to justify. Maybe once the PC hits Expert in Witch, the GM could allow them to spend a familiar ability slot to gain a 2nd hex cantrip + matching ability from another patron. Mixing and matching the cantrip + ability effects would be both mechanically interesting, and "powerfully(?)" helpful.
(and thanks to Resentment being so absurdly top tier (both in cantrip & in hex ability), it's hard to say any combo could be much more imbalanced than just plain Resentment is now, lol. )
It's "obviously" in an imbalanced trade in the Witch's favor, but considering Cantrip Connection, it's not that much of a "free power boost."
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+1 to the idea of allowing the Witch to have multiple hex cantrips at the ready. It's kinda their only real "thing" that has mechanical teeth to it while also being super flavorful.
Being able to dip your toe into other subclass options is something most classes should have at higher levels. It just gives classes that bit more internal depth.
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The entire premise of this thread seems off. It feels like the argument is that Witch should be head and shoulders above all of the other spellcasters in terms of flavor and unique mechanics. So you have seven generic spellcaster classes to choose from - or you could play a Witch and have something actually interesting to play.
That's a bit much to ask.
Witch does have some unique mechanics that set them apart from the other spellcasters. And all of those unique mechanics were specifically disregarded and discredited in the OP. So of course Witch looks like a generic spellcaster after stripping out everything that makes it unique - like the ability to have your familiar die and come back the next day, or having familiar abilities powerful enough to draw the ire of enemies in the first place.
The same is said for all other spellcaster classes too.
How many threads do we have saying that, "The new Oracle is just a Sorcerer locked to the Divine tradition... because I refuse to interact with the new Curse mechanics."
Or, "Psychic is just a spellcaster that gets one less spell slot per level. They used to get some special Refocus benefits, but now all the spellcasters get that."
Why should Witch be left out of the snarking target list?
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I kinda wish this conversation had happened 6 months ago. Like, when player commentary about things to put into Rival Academies would have mattered. A second cantrip hex per patron seems like a really easy add for that, and is fully in-theme with the idea of casters from different backgrounds and continents coming together to learn how the other peoples in the same class/subclass may yet do things differently. 'Your silence in snow patron grants you a snow hex? Oh, for us it grants a silence hex.'
I've been arguing that the Witch class should be focused on hex cantrips since day 1 of the Witch playtest.
Paizo has decided that familiars is the witch's "thing" and that the PF1 rad-as-heck hex-slinging witch is dead and buried.
The entire premise of this thread seems off. It feels like the argument is that Witch should be head and shoulders above all of the other spellcasters in terms of flavor and unique mechanics. So you have seven generic spellcaster classes to choose from - or you could play a Witch and have something actually interesting to play.
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I disagree strongly with that characterization. As a class, Witch genuinely is missing "the sauce" of an interactive possibility space.
Most classes have a unique mechanic that interacts with many other options. Psychic has [amp], [mindshift], and [psyche] traits. Without sidebaring too much, unleash psyche is akin to a rage mode where your spell damage is increased and an entire suite of options is available, from healing allies to feat-gained actions or reactions. It certainly can leave the class feeling binary, but learning when and when not to pop unleash psyche, and which mode to prioritize in your build, is the core forever question of the class.
Wizard is a case where it is "intended" to be the "pure caster" caster. And similar to how even a Fighter gets to play with things like [Press], different Wiz features revolve around spell slots. A feature might be to take 10 min and swap what is prepared in those slots, or it might be more and flexible access to metamagics that can then apply to all their spells, or it might be a custom staff. Even the core feature of Drain Bonded Item is a generic once per day re-cast of a spell, so it becomes an open question of when to use and which spell to use it for.
All of these are super vanilla, but they all interact with the blank-check of spell slots, and have large room for "mechanical interaction" because they get to play with the whole spell list. Yes, it's rather boring to just have a better staff, but that staff can hold a large variety of possible spells.
(Imo Wiz's Imp Familiar Attunement option should kinda get deleted, as it's just bonus feats w/ 0 unique "meat". Staff Nexus is imo the closest to "opting out" of the meta-spell stuff that should be possible. Even Exp. Spellshape has the daily meta-magic selection. Just saying.)
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Witch as a class does not offer that kind of chassis mechanical interactivity in the same way. Their single selection of patron is set in stone. It provides no core difference to the class' capabilities like Wiz Spell Blending. Some of the patron cantrips and abilities can be evergreen and useful, but their fixed nature means the *only* interaction with them is to cast, or not to cast. They are actions, instead of modifications to your other possible actions. Overall, the feature fails to spark questions/interactions *between* other options like the Wiz thesis can.
The hex cantrips + f hex abilities are great, but are the definition of a one dimensional feature.
There's no "meat" on it. Part of the reason why Resentment is so discussed is not just because of it's perceived power, but because it genuinely has some sliver of "meat" and interactivity that gets the neurons firing. Figuring out which debuffs are compatible is fun, as is trying to get your familiar in range. But the fun kinda stops there. There's not much thought to it beyond trying to invoke it over and over again with the best debuff available. It is... a one-dimensional feature.
It's clear they attempted to make (some) the f.abilities spark complexity (like R i t Deep's 5ft push), but they overall fail at this, rather badly imo.
Witch's (class unique) designed decisions / mechanical meat always was their familiar ability slots. It's the one spot that you can change per day, and your loadout of f.abilities can theoretically change your gameplan in combat.
But in general, a Witch's familiar abilities will be much less relevant than things like what spells are loaded in a staff, which focus spells they have, etc. All things that are "caster generic." Meanwhile that Spell Sub Wiz is constantly having their neurons rustled between combats with the possibility of swapping a spell or two.
Personally, I find it very interesting that the mechanics of witches and wizards are very similar.
If we look at the most diverse stories about witches and wizards, we will see that they are very similar. They both "study" magic, make pacts with extra-planar creatures, fairies or creatures from the great beyond, and have relatives. But their stories usually have very different foundations.
The classic wizards of great tales, such as Merlin or Gandalf, are beings who study magic in its essence almost for the pleasure of studying and mastering magic itself. In this process, they sometimes interact with the world. In search of this understanding, they make pacts with powerful beings linked to magic to learn more, and eventually have familiars to help them.
Witches in stories (almost always evil, but not all, especially those linked to nature) do the opposite process. They seek ways to access magic for their own interests and to increase their power or to help others (usually starting with someone they love). To do this, they make pacts with powerful magical beings, who in turn provide them with powers and magical knowledge so that they become even more powerful and serve their interests or whims. From there, the witches themselves tend to seek to learn and improve their magic on their own and become stronger, and they also have familiars to help them.
That's why I think Paizo ended up making the mechanics of the witch very similar to those of the wizard because of this context. Wizards and witches are very similar and sometimes even mixed in stories, with subtle differences to those who see it from the outside, but with very different motivations and origins, and these differences are also reflected in a subtle way in the mechanics of the classes.
The wizard, as someone who studies magic for magic's sake, ends up receiving the skills to manipulate it better and in more personalized ways. This is where the theories and schools come from as a representation of these characteristics.
While the witch, who begins by receiving her powers from a pact made with a powerful being, ends up receiving and focusing on the power of this pact itself, manifesting it in the form of a hex, and using the familiar as a conduit with her patron. Furthermore, due to the more diverse nature of this pact and the fact that they study and learn magic normally for improve their power and not for the knowledge about magic itself, it allows them to access a range of different and more obscure traditions than those that the wizard normally uses, based on the nature of their patron, which is precisely the basis of their power.
In short, these are classes whose mechanics are reflected in the very similarity between them, being much more subtly different according to their fundamental differences, but which often pursue similar paths, with different objectives.
Maybe it's also the RP dimension that's important? Is the patron ever actually playing a role, communicating desires in any way? Or is it just an abstract game mechanic?
This is one area I think also feels a bit underexplored and even kind of muddied up by the Remaster.
The subtle adjustments to the lore and the change to the Hex feature (you no longer cast Hexes but instead beg your Patron to cast them on your behalf) implies that your patron is directly involved to an absurd degree. A Cleric beseeching their deity for direct intervention is a high level mechanic, a Witch does it every six seconds.
But then there's no anathema, no real work put into defining the Patron as a person or creating mechanics where you interac twith the patron. . Which suggests the Patron itself is not meant to be a major factor of the Witch's story.
Premaster when the Witch cast their own hexes you could kind of safely define the Patron as a background element, a teacher but not necessarily directly involved, and build your narrative around that. Now I think it's in a much stranger position.