D&D 5E So Where my Witches at?

[Guest 6801328]

Machism/Male chauvinism or mysogyny is when you despise all the women, not when you use a nasty word only against one woman with a bad behavior but you show respect for the rest of ladies and misses.

/facepalm

 

[Lanefan]

This is my idea of what a Witch/Occultist class is and how it is different from a Wizard or Warlock.

Witchcraft/Occultism is an old art, far older than Wizardry. It is the first arcane craft, and was much more difficult to master and more restrictive than Wizardry is, which is why Wizardry is much more common nowadays than Witchcraft/Occultism.

OK, so how do you gate that restrictiveness in mechanical terms to force the Witch/Occultist to be less common? Minimum stat requirements?

 

[Remathilis]

Well, two things here.

One, heroic and PC are not synonyms.

Two, if the class is open to PCs it's also open for the DM to throw at 'em as opponents, which is far more likely where-how they'd appear; and just feeds right back into the whole witch=evil stereotype that people are otherwise trying to overcome.

Unless I made such a class so bland as to be nearly unplayable, I'd get backlash from my own table!

Designing a Witch class would for me be nothing more than an exercise in walking on eggshells; as it would be for WotC only writ much larger.

The way D&D markets itself is that the PC options are primarily to be used for PCs and that the PCs are generally the heroes of the game. There are very few outright "evil" options in the game, and the few that are there are mostly marketed as antiheroes rather than villains. As far as I know, there are two overtly evil options and they are both in the DMG.

Now, can D&D be played with purely evil PCs or can PC options be used for evil NPCs? Of course. There is nothing stopping that, any more than making a LG paladin the antagonist of your game. Heck, those overtly evil options are there to do exactly that. But I think it's fair to say that WotC designs most of their PC options to work with thier adventures, and those adventures assume PCs who are fit the role of hero to a greater or lesser extent. A witch option would be treated no different than the current assassin, necromancer, or fiendlock subs as a dark, edgy antihero option rather than an evil NPC option to be fought.

That said, I still have a hard time believing that witch is such a polarizing, offensive concept that WotC would be raked over the coals for using the archetype for a PC-facing mechanic, esp if said archetype has no overt mentions or requirement of being female and/or evil. I mean, Paizo hasn't faced backlash for putting out a witch class in Pathfinder (the 2e version recently was released) so I fail to see what WotC would.

Yeah, someone will be offended. Someone is always offended. Someone on this board is offended by the cleric class because it mentions gods and polytheism. You can't please everyone. But I feel the backlash from a witch option would be minimal as long as WotC keeps it gender neutral and alignment neutral.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'll toss in here they should also be the best at potion-making; maybe even being able to brew basic potions as a baked-in class feature right from 1st level.


Also, if one's game has any sort of system for magic herbs, this class should shine here also.

Agreed.

As someone who is thi-i-i-is close to getting rid of Find Familiar forever as they're such a bloody nuisance, please forgive my lack of support for this one.

I get where that comes from, but my issue with familiars is that they don’t do the main thing I would even want them in the game for, which is help a Wizard or alchemist do their stuff. To me, the familiar should be a utility and downtime asset above all. It should give advantage on lore checks, reduce crafting time, aid in spell research (which should be a thing), etc.

I'd see a decent Hex spell being something that negatively affects all foes* within a certain fairly large area, but the effect on those creatures is minor - -1 to hit, maybe, or -1 to any and all damage dealt regardless of how it was caused.

Come to think of it, ideally this damage-reduction idea would also affect spells cast by affected creatures - which makes it something new; I can't think of any other effect that causes a blanket reduction on all damage whether from spell or weapon. Bane only affects melee, I think.

* - though my preference would be it gets everyone in the area, friend or foe, forcing the caster to be careful with targeting the area and discouraging it from just being dropped onto an existing melee.

 

[Guest 6801328]

OK, so how do you gate that restrictiveness in mechanical terms to force the Witch/Occultist to be less common? Minimum stat requirements?

Why does it mean to be gated? Even if every player in your campaign chose that class, the numbers would still be statistically insignificant, right?

 

[Guest 6801328]

double post

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

OK, so how do you gate that restrictiveness in mechanical terms to force the Witch/Occultist to be less common? Minimum stat requirements?

That's easy. They'd have access to less blasting and utility spells than Wizards, and be more restricted to specific types of spells. Like I mentioned above, I had the "Unearthly Paths" that were their color of magic, Black Magic, Grey Magic, and White Magic. Their color of magic would restrict them to a certain playstyle and roleplay (to an extent).

I personally would make them Wisdom based arcane casters, giving the druidy/clericy "old-magic" feel to the class. This would keep with the theme of them having to search the deeper parts of the multiverse to channel their magic, instead of just having to study it like Wizards do. You could even make them have to learn their spells instead of prepare them, making them much more restricted than Wizards are.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Machism/Male chauvinism or mysogyny is when you despise all the women, not when you use a nasty word only against one woman with a bad behavior but you show respect for the rest of ladies and misses.

No, it isn’t.

At all. You’ve got it completely wrong. Misogyny is any discrimination that is oriented on a non-masculine gender, whether it’s against “all the women” or against a single women, but the specific action, word, or attitude, is about her gender rather than directly about whatever else is going on.

That is, calling a woman who doesn’t act how you would prefer women to act by a term that is specific an insult for women, like “witch” or its close rhyming cousin, is misogynist. Calling her a douche bag, jerk, a-hole, or other such general insult, is not.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Whoah....nine players? That's a huge group.

But I've (also) contemplated a 5e compatible campaign world in which all the player characters are witches, of different flavors. Set in a traditional fairy-tale forest. I think it could be a blast. As a one-time thing, anyway.

Actually, they were pregens. Players could choose any of the witches to play. I never ran the one-shot, but I have it in my back pocket should the occasion arise.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OK, so how do you gate that restrictiveness in mechanical terms to force the Witch/Occultist to be less common? Minimum stat requirements?

My method would simply be for the DM to not include many NPC Occultists. Then, it doesn’t matter if the whole party are Occultists, the class is still quite rare.