D&D 5E 5e witches, your preferred implementation?

[Voadam]

Come on, man. The pop culture witch does not go around shooting magical laser beams out of their hands. Go into Netflix, type "witch" in the search window and pick any of the shows or movies at random.

And "most people?" Was there a Pew Research poll on this? Google "warlock vs. witch" and you will see a lot of debate, some of it quite heated. The second link returned for me has a bold faced declaration that a warlock is not a male witch.

Not Netflix but . . .

Also a pop culture witch might shoot magic out of a wand:

And if you go to Charmed the TV series Warlocks as a term and concept were evil counterparts to good witches.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not Netflix but . . .

Wandavision did a good start of actually starting to talk about magic, but I don't think the Scarlet Witch is an archetypal witch, and I don't believe anyone really thinks otherwise. (If you wanted an iconic comic book witch, Zatanna, although she's a magician, would probably get mentioned first by most comics fans.)

Also a pop culture witch might shoot magic out of a wand:

They might. But most of them don't.

And if you go to Charmed the TV series Warlocks as a term and concept were evil counterparts to good witches.

Yes. Leaving aside the merits of Charmed, there's debate around the issue, not anything approaching unanimity.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Come on, man. The pop culture witch does not go around shooting magical laser beams out of their hands. Go into Netflix, type "witch" in the search window and pick any of the shows or movies at random.

D&D magic is super flashy, and these days video gamey. Merlin didn't go around shooting magic lasers at people either.

And "most people?" Was there a Pew Research poll on this? Google "warlock vs. witch" and you will see a lot of debate, some of it quite heated. The second link returned for me has a bold faced declaration that a warlock is not a male witch.

That some people very hard want to argue against the commonly understood definition, doesn't mean that it isn't the commonly understood definition. Otherwise they wouldn't need to argue against it!

Warlock - Wikipedia

"A warlock is a male practitioner of witchcraft."

 

[MGibster]

Come on, man. The pop culture witch does not go around shooting magical laser beams out of their hands. Go into Netflix, type "witch" in the search window and pick any of the shows or movies at random.

The pop culture wizard doesn't forget his spells once cast either. Although influenced by a variety of sources, D&D is very much its own thing. It's not like the Barbarian is something Greeks or Romans would have recognized as a barbarian.

 

[MGibster]

That some people very hard want to argue against the commonly understood definition, doesn't mean that it isn't the commonly understood definition. Otherwise they wouldn't need to argue against it!

Warlock - Wikipedia

And if you can't trust Scotsmen with a definition then who the hell can you trust?

 

[Weiley31]

IMO, the best way to implement witches would be as a druid subclass. Druids hit most of the key themes for witches; shapeshifting and transformation (both of themselves and of others), animal allies, control over the natural environment, connections to the fey.

All the subclass needs to do is provide access to illusion and mind control spells, and some kind of potion-brewing power, and you've got yourself a grade-A witch.

The Witherbloom Subclass option from the Strixhaven UA does have the ability to hand out Potions/Drinks to everybody.

 

[Weiley31]

A branch or staff of Witchtree.

 

[Dausuul]

The Witherbloom Subclass option from the Strixhaven UA does have the ability to hand out Potions/Drinks to everybody.

Yes, I like the general drift of the Witherbloom subclass. It's witch-adjacent for sure, and giving it to multiple classes neatly sidesteps the debate over which base class to use. It's laser-focused on life/death manipulation, which misses the other themes I'd want to see in a witch, but it's moving in a good direction.

 

[Garthanos]

D&D magic is super flashy, and these days video gamey. Merlin didn't go around shooting magic lasers at people either.

We do have Doctor Stephen Strange is a mystic/sorcerer/mage in cannon mysticism is the foundation of personally empowered magical abilities, sorcery is about drawing on extradimensional sources and mage manipulates environal ones, he definitely shoots bolts of energy no wand needed.

More people know Harry Potter Witches these days than any other... I think one may need to get used to the pop culture witch casting bolts of energy and expelliarmus and avadra cadavra. (or however you spell that)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That some people very hard want to argue against the commonly understood definition, doesn't mean that it isn't the commonly understood definition. Otherwise they wouldn't need to argue against it!

Warlock - Wikipedia

"A warlock is a male practitioner of witchcraft."

I can go edit Wikipedia to say that a warlock is a female kangaroo. Not the best citation.

But this is an intensely silly point on an increasingly silly thread.

I'm not sure what the motivation is for everyone pretending they don't know what a "witch" means to the general public and saying "look, this totally different thing that we can argue is the same thing under a different name, even though it doesn't otherwise match what people are asking for," but it's not convincing. But hey, full internet points for whatever it is that was accomplished here.