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It's been a long time coming, but the second take on the witch is finally fully revised and ready to go!
This time, the witch has two new subclasses, several new jinxes, the inclusion of Xanathar's spells, not to mention new, beautiful art by the talented Diana Nock (@jinxville)!
This is a full rules revision, and not a single part of the witch remains untouched. Let's give a rundown of what's been changed.
CHANGELOG:
- General reorganization of features, giving the class a more reasonable progression in line with existing classes
- Added rules for applying potions to food and drink with Imbue Potion
- Added a new feature: Fine Fettle
- Streamlined casting to be INT-only, though WIS casting exists as an optional rule
- Revised the spell list, adding Xanathar's spells and defining the witch's role as a support caster
- Added personality tables and roleplaying advice for familiars
- Coven of the Dark Moon has received a re-kit, adding undead and scarecrows to their repertoire
- Coven of the Full Moon is now the only coven that can heal, focusing strongly on doing excellent healing with low-level spells
- Coven of the Half Moon has a new low-level feature, and has had its capstone expanded significantly
- Coven of the Crescent Moon, a gish-witch, has been added!
- Coven of the Eclipse, a subclass focusing on forbidden magic and demonology, has been added!
- Added several new jinxes, and revised existing options
CONCERNS:
- Balance, as always!
- How does the class scale vs. other classes?
- How do the subclasses measure against each other?
- Is the familiar sufficiently survivable?
- Are jinxes clear in their functions? Are they well balanced against each other?
WHAT I LEARNED:
- Commission art for everything, all the time. All. The. Time.
Looks great so far! I noticed a small wording error on the Conjure Effigy Jinx. "On hit, retrieving one inconsequential personal item of your choice on a hit."
ReplyDeleteI'll definitely comment more after a few more look-throughs.
Some of the jinxes, like Walk the Crescent Path, seem to just be passively active. To clarify, would producing this jinx use up one of your usages of the Jinx class feature? If you know more than one jinx, and you take a short rest, can you produce another passive jinx without losing the first one produced? Finally, RAW, it seems like one could interpret that Walk the Crescent Path (and other jinxes) use up a Jinx class feature usage when they're triggered, not to activate them. Is that the proper interpretation?
ReplyDeleteUsing any jinx requires expending a use of your jinx feature, unless otherwise stated in the body of the jinx (as with certain parts of Conjure Effigy).
DeleteBasically, any time you want to teleport with your Attack action, you'd need to expend a use of your Jinx feature to do so. The verbage governing that is found in the core text of the Jinx feature.
Nice work, I love this class and I'm going to play it in my future game, I love the lore and the features. There is one thing that concers me about balancing though, and it is the Conjure Effigy jinx. Even with now it always needing an item from the target, there is still not range, sight or number of attack restrictions (except for Open Flame).
ReplyDeleteMy concern is: With this RAW, can't you, for example, steal something personal from a Dragon's hoarded treasure or other similar powerful creature and then proceed to leave it at 0 HP from very far away without it even noticing, at level 5? Then you could just go there and finish killing it. I mean, in one hour you can make 600 attacks with the pinprick...
The lack of range is part of the reason I made that jinx work the way it does.
DeleteFor a start, "personal item" doesn't mean just anything owned by the target. I tried to illustrate with the examples that only items of personal significant value, or actual parts of the creature, will suffice.
Further, one of the important parts of this jinx is that it doesn't kill. Reducing a creature to 0 hit points renders the creature unconscious but stable if done with this jinx.
So yes, if you got (say) a dragon's scale you could stab them unconscious from the other side of the planet, but they wouldn't die, and your ability to do so would be a one-time thing unless you had a whole handful of that dragon's scales.
I'm a DM with a player running one of these, and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this very spell issue. I generally assume that if my players can do it, so can their enemies, and here's the scenario I laid out for them, which none of them want to face in game.
DeleteLet’s say you’re a 9th level party of four and you stay at an inn on the road. You have a 6th or 7th level Witch, or a pair of 5th level Witches, as enemies. She bribes the maid or slips into your rooms herself after you’ve left and lifts a few hairs from your pillows and saves them for later use. Some later day, either from a window or an inn’s common room or what have you, she casts Conjure Effigy four times to get a doll for each of you. (Casting Time: 1 action, 120’ range, must be able to see you.) Duration: 1 hour, no concentration slot required. Unless you spot her casting the spell, at no point do you know that she’s done it, and no saving throw.
She takes 10 minutes (100 rounds) to get to a safe place, location unknown to you. She starts the stabby-stabby game. Spell attack roll, 3d8 piercing damage, 1/round. No matter how high your AC, a natural 20 still hits 5% of the time, and does 6d8.
If she can’t see you, she can just rotate through all 4 dolls for the remaining 500 rounds of the spell. The party Witch might recognize what’s happening, but there’s no way to track the link and no way to break it, and it isn’t even limited by planar travel.
This can’t kill you, but will eventually overcome all of your healing resources and render the whole party unconscious. At that point, all she needs is a single commoner minion to walk up and slit your throats. Or other permutations: sitting on a hilltop with a spyglass watching your outdoor camp could also work. It’s worse than classic scry-and-die tactics, all for a quartet of 3rd-level spell slots and some advance preparation.
Another issue I’ve got: if you’re within 5’ of the target, you can grab a personal item (such as a hair), no save or attack roll or anything. This seems a little absurd in actual combat, but it’s even worse when you consider that it works on a Wraith, which is incorporeal! (The spell works on any “Creature,” which includes basically anything animate, constructs, undead, etc.)
I think the spell needs a few limitations:
1. The spell only works on Corporeal creatures. Since it works on bodies, not souls, I think it’s OK to target Constructs.
2. Takes a concentration slot
3. The 5’ casting rule needs an attack roll (or maybe a dex save)
4. The link needs to be vulnerable to Remove Curse, Greater Restoration, possibly Dispel Magic.
5. If the doll has reduced someone to 0 hp, the damage has also destroyed the doll.
Note: the player bought the class and gave me a printout, v1.2, so maybe some of this has been addressed in later updates?
I love this class, and I bought the pdf sight unseen, knowing that it would be great. It oozes flavor. My favorite bit, just for ambience, is the table of quirks for the scarecrow. Sad, but brilliant.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to a Wisdom option for casting, do you see them still having a spellbook and a a limited collection of spells? Could they get their spells by communing with their familiar, as SOME OTHER game has them do? The description says that they meditate or pray for their spells like divine classes, but no other divine class keeps a spellbook, so I was fuzzy on that.
I'm glad you added a gish in the Green witches, though I want to understand your thoughts about them. I feel that the caster gishes, the bladelock (before the Hexblade) and the Bladesinger suffer from the fact that casting is ALWAYS the better option, though a little bladework is feasible given their armor and hit dice (bladelock) or special defense perks (bladesinger). But the green witches don't seem to be survivable, with only a d6, mage armor and shield to protect them. The benefits they get are only useful if they do go melee, otherwise, they are much less useful than the perks for the other covens. Am I missing something?
>Wisdom casting and spell prep
DeleteI didn't want to flesh out the Wisdom casting option too much, though maybe I should have. The v0.1 treated Wisdom casting as prepared casting (as opposed to spellbook casting), and you'd be well within rights to do the same.
Were this the case, I'd recommend eschewing the spellbook entirely, and not being able to copy down spells found in the wild.
>Green Witches
Having played a bladesinger and suffering the exact problem that casting is always better, I tried to remedy that here with Crescent Strike. Your melee damage progression should* always be viable, if nothing else.
In regards to survivability, my intent was that your familiar go into the danger zones while you yourself skirmish with less powerful entities. Your familiar deals guaranteed damage, so it's great against creatures with a high AC, and it can be resummoned out of combat should it fall.
Jinxes like Witchwarp and Walk the Crescent Path are designed to get you into a more favorable position, allowing you to evade the clutches of larger foes. Enlarge Familiar is intended to make your familiar more of a tank / more DPR, to make it a more viable target than you yourself.
Maybe I should throw another jinx into the mix that'd grant tHP and (double maybe) a temporary AC bonus. It'd be a pretty hefty jinx-tax for the Crescent witch, but that sort of thing isn't really unheard of for gish-casters.
Thinking more on this:
DeleteIt's probably not the best design decision to assume the familiar is expendable, as no one wants to see Snuggles the talking cat ganked in melee by a raging owlbear.
Expect a revision on this. I've got a couple ideas on how to change it up.
I agree about it being weird to regularly sacrifice your familiar. We all do it, of course - especially in 5e where re-summoning your familiar is no big deal. But it always felt weird and game-mechanical to me. I should care that I'm sending a small creature into danger, especially one so valuable to me, and one I have a relationship with.
DeleteI also think that reliance on the familiar as a fight surrogate has some kinks. If your toad can hop in and do guaranteed magical damage, then scoot out without provoking opportunity attacks, that leaves you in melee range and still the primary target. If it just stands there and draws aggro, it's wasting its best defense ability. Maybe that trade-off decision is intended?
Since this has been out for a while now, have you gotten feedback about the in-combat performance of the Crescent coven? Just curious. I haven't had a chance to do my own testing in a game yet.
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ReplyDeleteI agree? I think?
DeleteThere are a lot of homebrew witch classes out there but this is by far the best.
ReplyDelete2 questions:
Does a Grand Olde Wytch have unlimited uses of the Jynx feature?
Does Hastened Arcana (Green witch) require you to concentrate as if concentrating on a spell?