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Man oh man, have I been looking forward to releasing this.
Just in time for Halloween, spooky/scary month culminates with the Witch, the first full class I've ever released! An impressive endeavor clocking in at 14 pages of content and three full subclasses, the witch joins the ranks of Strongholds and Merchants as one of the larger projects I've ever worked on.
The witch weaves both natural magic and the arcane, carrying on a magical tradition that harkens back to the first casters to receive magic from the gods. A witch can curse or heal, dispense potions, fly on brooms, animate their house to walk on chicken legs, and much, much more!
Let's see if I can't list off everything this class does:
FEATURES:
- Casts with INT or WIS, enabling you to play either an academic or a wild witch!
- Jinxes! Magical effects halfway between Invocations and Channel Divinities.
- Make potions with Brewcraft and Imbue Potion, two companion features for all your potable needs.
- Dark Moon, Full Moon, and Half Moon Coven subclasses, focusing on cursing and stealth, healing and inspiring, and trickery and illusions, respectively!
- Familiars as a core feature, with increased durability and the capacity to sass-talk their witch.
CONCERNS:
- Oh, so, so many. Where to start?
- Is INT/WIS casting a good idea?
- Are jinxes roughly balanced, against one another and in general?
- Is the Beast Skin jinx too derivative of the druid's Wild Shape?
- Are the number of spells per day right? They're midway between sorcerers and wizards, but still!
- The spell list seems large, but is smaller than the wizard and missing some of their more esoteric spells. Is that reasonable?
- Are all the various subclass features balanced roughly against each other?
- Is Light of the Half Moon too powerful for what it is?
- Is Dream-Eater too similar to the GOO warlock's level 14?
- Is the idea of 1 free subclass spell per long rest a good or bad idea?
- Does the class do a good job of capturing flavor?
WHAT I LEARNED:
- Building a class is exponentially harder than a subclass in every single way. I can see why Wizards sticks to subclasses, most days of the week.
Hello again! A new class? Let's go over it!
ReplyDeleteQuick overview nitpick: Evil Eye may be a bit too powerful. Disadvantage in 1 save is okay - disadvantage on *three* is ridiculous.
You thinking 2 saves is where I should cap it?
DeleteI'd like it to have some progression, to keep it competitive. Keep in mind this'll be as used as a Channel Divinity, so it's okay for it to be a LITTLE powerful.
Three saves honestly isn't that bad. Especially seeing as inflicting poisoned gives disadvantage to all saves.
DeleteYou could make it so tier 2 is disadvantage to 2 saves and tier 3 is disadvantage to 2 saves to 2 creatures.
The thing is that most of your attacks will rarely target more than 2 saves. Give disadvantage to DEX and WIS and that's the majority of the "best" combat spells covered.
You could also make it so it targets more people instead of more saves.
IT'S HERE AT LAST. FINALLY.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty hyped to see you finally tackle a full class instead of subclasses - something on par with the strongholds for size.
HP progression same as other casters. The weapons proficiencies are actually worse than the wizard's weapon proficiencies but blowgun is a good choice for the class. On the other hand, the proficiencies are more generous than any of the core classes. Charisma and wisdom are "good" saves, wisdom is arguably the best good save and charisma is the best bad save.
I feel like three skills may be better than two. Why are stealth and survival on the class skill list?
The witch gets more spells than any core class besides the wizard (even if the wizard doesn't scribe any new spells, he still gets 44 by level 20). The witch's 'spells known' are basically the same as the wizards except the spells they automatically get are a little stingier. I'd suggest removing the spells known column from the class table and explaining how they get new spells under the spellcasting feature, so it's formatted the same way as the wizard.
The fact that they can use both arcane and druidic focuses is actually pretty good because it allows them access to a much wider variety of magic item benefits - there are a lot of wands, staves and orbs that give bonuses when used as the focus. That's not a bad thing, I just wanted to point it out in case you missed it.
Ritual casting is par for the course and there's the same minutia all spellcasters have in their class writeups.
Jinxes are a great idea and mirror my favourite part of the warlock - invocations. D&D has a very 'fire and forget' class system, outside a handful of things like combat maneuvers or invocations there's virtually no choice in character design past your archetype, so it's always nice to see something like jinxes that gives you choices all the way though. I'm not sure how I feel about tying all jinxes to the same cooldown but the witch has access to lots of other stuff - full spellcasting, potion brewing etc - that it's probably a good balance.
Honestly, I'd rather the familiar feature of the class be it's own thing rather than based on the find familiar spell - because find familiar can kick up some really weird and off-theme stuff, Celestial Octopus anyone. Still, the familiar feature is good for a rough draft, the familiar is viable in combat but doesn't turn the witch into a pet class and the skill proficiency make them useful for non-combat challenges. I can image a witch calling up her not-cat to ask for some advice with a magic item from the lower planes.
Brewcraft is really nice, (Potions, on a reasonable timescale, what is this? witchcraft?) and I can't really think of anything I'd do to improve it except for one small detail - players can't use it in urbanised areas. I'd also like a rule to clarify what happens if you use herbs worth more than the potion - like if I used some starspine to make a batch of healing potions.
Imbue potion is a good addition to this. I can see some concentration busting shenanigans that 5E doesn't like in the future though - a witch could put fly, stoneskin, eterealness and barkskin on the person. The fact that potions permanently need a slot but can also be remotely rendered useless is interesting. The first part also prevents a witch carrying around a sack of dozens of spell potions.
Enchant broom is great as is. Simple, thematic, not too powerful. I can fly around on my broom and shoot poison darts at people who displease me.
Grande Olde Witch (Should be Grande Olde Wytch) is a solid capstone, in line with the monk and bard's capstones (except better). I don't really like forced fluff though, maybe move "there are only ever nine GOW's at any one time" into a sidebar or just make the phrasing less absolute.
The "Your Moons May Vary" sidebar is a nice touch.
[Part 1]
The dark moon spell list is very nice, containing the better 'curse' spells. Evard's Black Tentacles feels too brute force to me though, being the only outright damage spell on the list. I feel like confusion would be a better choice, maybe compulsion or even dominate beast (like getting a knight's horse to freak out and buck him).
DeleteAs it's written, Night's Friend affects magical light sources. Is that intentional? Otherwise, the wording is pretty solid.
Familiar Shroud is a great skulduggery enabler. I've got mixed feelings on familiar based abilities which I brought up with the city druid. I like abilities that work together, but I don't like that it's useless once the familiar dies and familiars in D&D aren't very robust.
Dream Eater has some very cool effects. They're all creepy and weird and even though they're not that powerful compared to just hurling a fireball or raging, the idea is great. I can imagine in a more political campaign, using the hunger or thirst to wither away an enemy. I can also imagine all these abilities working great for villains.
All in all, the dark moon witch makes for a great anti-hero or cursey witch. A witch of vengeance, if you will.
The full moon spells are a good selection. I'm not sure about Aura of Purity. The effect fits the full moon fine but it's a Divine Spell AFAIK.
Peaceful slumber is nice. I can't imagine it ever being super useful but it's handy - especially if you have a DM that likes nighttime ambushes.
Familiar mending is a nice force multiplier for the healwitch. It’s useful, but not so useful I’ll be mad I can’t use it when my familiar is inevitably dead.
Life binder is...interesting. I’m not sure if 3d10+10 absolute damage is worth it, though. It’s basically death ward that takes a chunk of your HP instead of your spell slots. It’s an average of 26, at a point where you’ll have 84 HP with a +2 con mod. I don’t think that just over ¼ of your HP is worth a not-death-ward.
Full moon makes a good healwitch. Nothing too sexy, but good at keeping the party alive.
Half moon spell list has some good spells on it. Nothing really to say here.
Light of the half Moon
The fact that it reveals invisible creatures isn’t OP, faerie fire can do that and it’s a first level spell.Considering it’s a tiny area - only five feet wide - giving a shapeshifter a dex save to get out of the light isn’t a bad idea.
The main issue is that it’s an “I win, suck it DM!”” button against illusions as it stands. Personally, I’d give each creatures caught in it a CHA save against the witch spell save DC and illusions make their save with a bonus equal to their spell level.
If this was the capstone, it wouldn’t be as bad, but you get this at level 2 and for a level 2 ability it’s crazy.
Honestly, I’d suggest reworking it. Maybe reduce it’s power a lot but allow the witch to use it more often. Or just replace it. As it stands though, it’s enough for me to not let a player play a half moon witch in one of my games. It is contextual - it’ll never give you treasure or kill a target - but it’s still a “Haha, I win!” button.
Holy block-of-text batman. Well, I guess these are *those* types of abilities that need lots of text.
Disguise familiar’s power is going to be very player and campaign dependent but it can be a great tool. Nothing stands out as needing fixing. I have the same opinion of curse of false faces. That can be really good if used right.
Half moon makes a good trickster/illusion witch but Light of the Half Moon needs a fundamental rework.
[Part 2]
At last, I arrive at the jinxes!
DeleteShame that my shield and greatsword, Glam Metal witch is no longer viable. I feel like this jinx should give some benefit to hair itself, like making the hair strong as steel wires or allow you to expend a spell slot or a use of the jinx to restore your hair. While I can see some campaigns getting a kick out of looking for some magic hair tonic, I don’t want to have to wait months for my hair to regrow after any enemy with more than 8 INT cuts it off to escape a grapple.
Animate hut is some great fun and will please anyone trying to be Baba Yaga. I don’t have any complaints other than the one I made on twitter - five rooms is not a good limit. A grain Silo counts as one “room” but is obviously much, much larger than any peasant hut.
Beast skin is great for similar reasons to wild shape but not good enough for a witch to overshadow a druid, let alone a moon circle druid.
Conjure Effigy is pretty good, especially seeing as it’s saveless damage. I’d recommend giving the creature a charisma save if it’s aware of the witch making the doll - like if they’re watching them create it - with advantage if the witch doesn’t have anything of them like hair or spit. If the witch can use conjure effigy mid fight then the limitation that the damage from the effigy cannot kill means diddly squat.
Enlarge familiar will be great for having my celestial octopus crush the enemy. On a serious note, it seems fine, though maybe make it’s damage magical at level 11 or 15 because immunity to non-magical attacks is very common at high level.
Evil eye. Simple, thematic, useful. Too simple to say much about but I can say with some confidence this will probably make it to the final draft without needing to be changed at all.
Headology? At least, a discworld reference. Fittingly enough, great for Grannyweatherwaxing unruly people. If I ever play a witch, I’m going to use the term grannyweatherwaxing a lot.
Poison briars is very fun. I feel like there should be some limitation, like requiring you to throw some seeds if the ground is man-made or otherwise incapable of supporting anything natural.
Share pain is...weird. I had to read it twice to see exactly what it was saying. As it stands now, you halve damage then may reflect some back to the attack. This is odd because why would you halve the damage the original target (I’ll call them the victim) takes. If you justify it as the harm you deflect not harming the victim, then how can it reduce the damage but then deal no damage to the attacker. CON also seems like an odd choice, CHA or WIS seems more appropriate. I’d phrase it more like this:
“As a reaction, when you or a creature you can see within 60 feet of you are hit with an, you may deflect some of the pain inflicted back on the attacker.
The attacker must make a constitution saving throw, on a failure the original target suffers only half the damage it would otherwise receive (rounded up) and the attacker takes damage equal to the target.”
I know the way I’ve worded it makes it so that the victim’s resistances protect the attacker and their vulnerabilities cause the attack to take more damage but that way the pain shared is based on the pain the victim suffers. Personally, I’d have it so the target takes full damage and the attack takes full damage, instead of the damage being halves.
Warding misfortune is like evil eye. Works fine.
At this point my brain is getting a bit mushy so I’m skimming over the spell list but I’ve noticed that they get the best non-damaging wizard stuff on top of the druid stuff with some cleric stuff thrown in. Each spell list generally lacks something - wizards/sorcerers don’t get healing, druids don’t get the really good damage spells, bards aren’t great at direct damage, clerics have small spell lists that lack the genuinely crippling damage/debuff spells. The witch’s spell list seems to cover all the bases. I’d recommend removing some of the really nice stuff and moving them onto sub-class spell lists and then also trimming the fat.
[Part 3]
Is INT/WIS casting a good idea?
DeleteI like the idea of giving the witch the choice. It doesn't add any baggage because all you're doing is switching one modifier for another. Still, I have to ask the question...why do it?
Are jinxes roughly balanced, against one another and in general?
More or less, yes, though it doesn’t really matter because the jinxes aren’t competing with each other. I can’t imagine animate hut coming up much, not because it’s bad or unbalanced, but just because most campaigns don’t have space (literally in a lto of cases) for a giant, rampaging hut.
Is the Beast Skin jinx too derivative of the druid's Wild Shape?
No. The druid’s wild shape is still vastly superior. It’s no worse than the Eldritch Knight or the Arcane Trickster using not-wizard spellcasting.
Are the number of spells per day right? They're midway between sorcerers and wizards, but still!
It’s a full spellcaster so it should be. It’s certainly not game breaking.
The spell list seems large, but is smaller than the wizard and missing some of their more esoteric spells. Is that reasonable?
Yes.
Are all the various subclass features balanced roughly against each other?
I think so, in general. The subclasses don’t step on each others toes. I can’t ever see a person wanting to play an illusionist but the going “I can’t play half moon, dark moon is just too good”.
Is Light of the Half Moon too powerful for what it is?
As it stands, definitely.
Is Dream-Eater too similar to the GOO warlock's level 14?
No. Dream eater has far more effects while the GOO's level 14 ability doesn't allow a save and requires remove curse or greater to end it.
I can see adoration being a little similar but in practice they're very different.
Is the idea of 1 free subclass spell per long rest a good or bad idea?
I'd say good, however you may want to make sure there are no outright damage spells you can use this for, or some of the really good utility spells. It's essentially one free spell slot that's limited to a specific group of spells which isn't as powerful as it could be.
Does the class do a good job of capturing flavor?
Absolutely.
IN CONCLUSION:
All in all the witch class is fun, interesting and flavourful and while it comes out near the top of the strength pile of 5E - full spellcasting, potion making, extra spells, wizard damage with healing abilities - it isn’t *broken* and I don’t see the witch overshadowing the rest of the party on a regular basis unlike, say, 3.5E wizard. *thunder clap and screaming of small children*.
Ugh, I think it took me about 2 hours to type all this out. Notice me, Walrock-senpai. *thunk*
[Part 4]
Personally, regarding Light of the Half-Moon, I don't think it's that much of a “Ha, I win” as you might have thought. But to go through your worries:
DeleteFirst, it's something that can be used once per short rest, and it’s range is tiny. Up against a illusory wall? You see a tiny window only.
Secondly, it's not that difficult to see through illusions - disguise self, Silent Image and the like is ruined by physical touch and even better illusions can be seen through with a high enough check. So tapping around the floor with a 10foot pole works just as much as shining this light around.
And finally, dispel magic works as a way to outright destroy illusions, and it works in an area instead of a small circle.
One thing that I do agree with is that it shouldn't reveal shapeshifters- but that's mainly because that's more of Moonbeam's thing.
The issue I have is that it automatically works. No save, no check, just removes illusions. And it does that for all illusions. The slightest doubt that a creature in the woods isn't what they are? Boom, illusion broken.
DeleteIf the DM is using a shapeshifter or illusion using villain like a Hag, Doppelganger or Rakshasa then that villain can't use their shapeshifting/illusion powers because of the good chance light of the half moon will get shut down.
Tapping with a 10 foot pole or using dispel magic at least requires one check.
Oh man, let's dig into that x-tra long, in-depth criticism!
Delete>I feel like three skills may be better than two. Why are stealth and survival on the class skill list?
Three might be good, to show the witch as a generalist. Stealth is there mostly for Dark Moon witches, and Survival is there as a practical counterpoint to Nature. I may change them later, uncertain.
>I'd suggest removing the spells known column from the class table and explaining how they get new spells under the spellcasting feature
I did this first pass, but couldn't seem to make it work right, mostly because the spell progression is uneven (going up by 1 or 2 per level, depending on: it's a direct average of wizard and sorcerer spells known).
Might take another crack at doing it off the table, because that'd lend itself more properly to the writing-spells-in-a-spellbook design schema.
>I'd rather the familiar feature of the class be it's own thing rather than based on the find familiar spell
I mostly tie familiars to Find Familiar due to redundancy issues. You have to cover your butt a whole lot with specific text preventing familiars from overlapping with the spell otherwise, it's easier just to use the spell, even with the oddities that brings.
>Brewcraft & urban areas
Aggggh, that was actually in there the first pass, and I accidentally edited it out. This happens ALL THE TIME with longer projects.
Good catch though, will put that back in!
>Grande Olde Witch (Should be Grande Olde Wytch)
Agree. And will work on retooling the fluff.
>I feel like confusion would be a better choice
DeleteAgree. Evard's is cool, but slightly unthematic with the subtle angle the Dark Moon witch plays.
>As it's written, Night's Friend affects magical light sources
Unintentional! Will fix.
>I've got mixed feelings on familiar based abilities
This is the exact reason that, if I do familiar abilities, I like to give out familiar hitpoints like candy and slap free uses on Find Familiar. You should ALWAYS be able to have your familiar out and active, or, like you said, the abilities mean nothing.
It helps that this particular ability is about the familiar NOT being seen, but that's not true for every familiar ability I've done.
>The full moon spells are a good selection. I'm not sure about Aura of Purity
There's a certain amount of thematic "cheating" allowed with spells, I feel. If it mostly fits, and people can see where I'm going with it, I shrug and let it pass.
The 5e spell selection has too many blindspots for me to do much else, really.
>I don’t think that just over ¼ of your HP is worth a not-death-ward.
Yeah, the point of balance on that one was hard to find, so I trended high.
One thing it has over Death Ward is its ability to be used as a reaction, whereas Death Ward requires some pre-planning as to who you think is going to die. But still, it should take less of a damage hit overall to use.
>Personally, I’d give each creatures caught in it a CHA save against the witch spell save DC and illusions make their save with a bonus equal to their spell level
This is a good plan. I REALLY didn't want this one to be an iwin button, which is why I gave it a relatively small radius, but adding a save could be a reasonable thing to do.
>Holy block-of-text batman
YUP. Turns out, illusions require a frankly stupid amount of that, especially when you're making them do weird things there's not much groundwork for.
>Shame that my shield and greatsword, Glam Metal witch is no longer viable.
DeleteHah! While cool, it was too dang difficult to work in a way to NOT be able to two-weapon fight while using a shield in your hair.
The intent is that the hair grows out to 5 feet every time the jinx is used, and retracts to its regular length after the jinx ends. Thus, cutting the hair wouldn't be a permanent effect, and would just last until the jinx is reused.
I like the idea of making it as durable as steel wires, that makes sense.
>five rooms is not a good limit
Yeah, this was intended as a sort of vague, handwavey approximation. I should do something like "five NORMAL SIZED rooms" to idiot-proof it a little further.
Also, a walking grain silo sounds absolutely horrifying for some reason.
>Conjure Effigy
The intent was to have the witch be able to whip this out mid-fight, and have it replicate cantrip damage for the most part (until you set it on fire and "cash out"). I'll toy with the idea of a save, but I'd like the witch to always get something out of this ability, and to have this ability be available as a staple in combat.
>Enlarge Familiar
Good thought on making its damage magical. Gotta add that in.
>Poison Briars
I like the seeds-if-ground-is-manmade bit, it makes you think a little more if you're a city witch and is properly thematic.
>Share Pain
Worded that the way I did to make sure the witch got something out of her use of jinx. Regardless of whether the save was successful or not, the witch's ally took less damage.
I agree with switching the save and the language up, there's definitely a way to streamline that one.
>The witch’s spell list seems to cover all the bases. I’d recommend removing some of the really nice stuff and moving them onto sub-class spell lists
Good idea. I was trying to make the "thing" witches missed out on be heavy damage, but I think I need to do a bit more pruning before that's the reality.
>why do INT/WIS casting?
DeleteI like the idea of a thematic divide in witchcraft, and I saw a lot of people very adamant about witches casting with one or the other. Decided to give it a try, see if I like it.
If anything, I feel like compressing them into WIS with a spellbook, which is already different enough to carry itself.
>Ugh, I think it took me about 2 hours to type all this out. Notice me, Walrock-senpai. *thunk*
Noticed. ;)
Sorry it took me so long to respond, I've been juggling a few things right about now. Don't want you to go thinking I don't value this extensive criticism, though, because this is exactly what this project needs!
>Survival as a practical counterpoint to nature. Stealth as a dark moon thing.
DeleteI always saw survival skills as things like tracking, trapping and navigation while nature as knowledge of herblore and animals. The former doesn't seem very witchy and survival isn't a hard skill to pick up through backgrounds if the player really wanted it.
You could also just give dark moon witches stealth proficiency in one of their features.
>Find familiar
Maybe just add a clause changing the creature types they can summon then. Maybe fey/fiend/beast/plant/ooze instead of fey/fiend/celestial.
> why I gave it a relatively small radius
The other issue I have is the small radius makes the ability more difficult to use but doesn't actually avoid the "Hah, I win!" uses of the ability.
>Conjure Effigy
The thing is that the effigy deals unavoidable damage and as written there's no way to block it. It's a jinx which makes that less bad, but it's still unavoidable damage. The only other source of unavoidable damage in 5E so far - magic missile - does cantrip level damage despite needing a spell slot and still has a way to block it, the shield spell.
>Share Pain
Maybe make it so the use of share pain is only expended if it actually works?
>compressing them into WIS with a spellbook
Please don't do that, we already have four WIS casters (including monk). Also, INT is explicitly learned magic - why wizards and Eldritch Knights use INT. Having a class use learned magic with a spellbook but then work off WIS doesn't fit the way 5E uses the stats for casting.
We need more INT casters, dangit. (I wish WotC didn't cave and kept Warlock as an INT caster).
Thanks for appreciating the feedback.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI would absolutely add Alter Self to the list of available Imbue Potion spells. It feels so thematically appropriate for what the Witch is, to me.
ReplyDeleteMakes sense.
DeleteI think the reason I chose not to add it is that it's distinctly self-only, but I'll review it and see if that'd be acceptable to add.
Only thing I would like to mention after reading all the comments here is that I would add some fluff about a witches spellbook. Just personal opinion but its always been the main difference between witches and wizards (once you take out the question of gender) in my mind that wizards rely on great written stores of knowlege whereas witches live thinking on their feet (with either WIS or INT).
ReplyDeleteMaybe something to do with a witches spellbook being filled with diagrams and herblore, or tatooed on her/his back or something? Not sure how you would fix this but it seems a bit out of place, thematically.
Thought here. What if the witch's spellbook was her focus? She doesn't remember spells as much as cast them by reading them from the book. This drains energy from the book and so only so many spells can be cast each day. As the witch grows in power she learns how to use this energy better thus being able to cast more spells and more powerful spells as she levels up.
DeleteI like that actually yeah. it's a different way of thinking about it but it works.
DeleteLooking forward to an update for this class as I feel it is almost there. Any chance you will be getting time to put into it anytime soon?
ReplyDeleteSo I know this is really really REALLY late, but I noticed that your level 1-3 spell lists are a little mixed up in the R-S spells. You have a couple of second level in the first and third in the second, etc... I just wanted to give you a heads up!
ReplyDeleteI think I missed where it's defined in the various Covens which of Int or Wis is used as the Spellcasting stat. Should that be in the "Spellcasting" section of the Covens?
ReplyDeleteIn this version of the witch, whether you use INT or WIS is determined when you first take the witch class. It's outlined in the Spellcasting feature, under the Magical Traditions header.
DeleteI absolutely love this. I've found several Witch class homebrews but this one is my fave. :3 Like I really wanted to convert the Pathfinder Witch over to 5e but I was both worried it'd suck and figured it had already been done. Turns out there's a bunch of wildly different versions, and this is the only one with the jinx feature (I really wanted the Witch for its hexes, so this is a godsend).
ReplyDeleteI do have one thought/suggestion, though, if you're willing to hear it: increasing the number of jinx uses (3 per day just feels pitiful, y'know?) and maybe adding lesser ones and splitting them into minor and major jinxes.
Like maybe the 3/day thing could remain for major jinxes, but minor ones (like maybe the Pathfinder Witch's "cackle" hex) could be unlimited, but with the stipulation that only one jinx can be active at a time? Effects like causing fear, dizziness or illusions would be a great addition, I think.
I was also thinking it might be neat to add new moon phases, such as a solar or lunar eclipse? Has that already been suggested? Cause it'd be really interesting. For example, a solar eclipse Witch could have fire- or light-based magicks, and a lunar eclipse Witch could have cold- or fog-based ones. Worth considering?
Nice Blog.
ReplyDeletewitchcraft spell