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

[Steampunkette]

Mine, if I'm not going past level 10 has been Celestial Pact Warlock (normally Pact of the Tome and grabbing shileleagh or however you spell it). Radiant Soul + Greenflame Blade gives you double scaling so your melee damage is a respectable Weapon + Stat +2d8 with a stat+1d8 to a secondary target if you have one. Sacred Flame at 3d8 damage as your ranged attack is very much a backup but doesn't suck. It's not a full striker build, but surprisingly effective and doesn't even have Eldritch Blast.

That is a -swank- gishy build, yeah!

 

[Voadam]

And?

Maybe that an iconic media witch is not incompatible with throwing magical attacks out of her hands.

Media portrayals of witches cover a variety of aspects and concepts.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You're the one hung up on what the general population thinks of a witch. I thought maybe you could let me know what that means.

Nah. I've gone through it multiple times for multiple people already. If people genuinely don't understand what a "Witch" is, they can just ask any child of trick or treating age.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Nah. I've gone through it multiple times for multiple people already. If people genuinely don't understand what a "Witch" is, they can just ask any child of trick or treating age.

Right. So any caster class as long as they get find familiar, pointy hat and the broom of flying.

 

[Garthanos]

Mechanically the 4e witch was well a wizard (like Harry Potterverse) with a few swap out basics.
Flavorwise:
The very first significantly verbose sentence of the description of the 4e Witch starts with part religion and avoids general negative presumptions. And when they start talking about the Witches first source of power the start talk about the moon goddess Sehanine. By picking which coven ie moon phase you rather pick a flavor... one being the Full Moon / Dark of Moon and features training in Healing Skill and the other Intimidation which is nice. So far most of this is gives the good witch and the spookie intimidating witch the kids say like Glenda and the Wicked Witch right... nods sure or like 2 out of 3 aspects of the Triple Goddess. In other words it was written with a Duality no not THAT duality but rather a duality between childhood stereotypes and perhaps more grown up flavor elements. The spells available to the witch include some very heavy childhood wicked witch flavor the transforming of enemies into harmless beasts (reminds me of circe) / toading of enemies. Though no teleportation shoes so far. 4e has wands as front and center like Glenda/Hermione flick and swish. Familiars will require a feat for the Witch.

Second question Is 4e the first edition where a Witch was created as a core class (all things being core in 4)?

 

[Cadence]

@Whizbang Dustyboots Not 5e, but I'm doing some work on another campaign/game. What's your opinion of the PF 1e Witch (in terms of fluff and basic powers ideas, even if you don't know the 3.5/PF system).

Witch – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com

 

[Quickleaf]

Uff. Hoping to raise the conversation up a notch, there's a 2019 Time article I've been reading from Pam Grossman (a self-proclaimed witch and author) called Are Witches Real? I've found it to be a wonderfully insightful read. I don't know anything else about Ms. Grossman beyond this article, I haven't read her book, I'm not affiliated with her in anyway – I just thought she was giving voice to something I felt but struggled to articulate far better than I could.

I've drawn on a few quotes, hopefully not too out of context, which were touching when I read them.

In fact, I find that the more I work with the witch, the more complex she becomes. Hers is a slippery spirit: try to pin her down, and she’ll only recede further into the deep, dark wood.

I do know this for sure though: show me your witches, and I’ll show you your feelings about women.

Ms. Grossman wonderfully articulates what makes the design space around interpreting a witch for D&D so challenging and invigorating. It is a nebulous concept because the bounding box that ends up being placed around it (out of practical necessity – design "everything" and you design nothing) ends up reflecting the designer's beliefs on some level.

As much as I like the chassis of the witch from Dragon #114 by Bill Muhlhausen, maybe the lesson from Ms. Grossman is if there is a witch class introduced in D&D, the "high concept" class design needs to come from a woman who is versed in the multiplicity of feminist lenses around the witch. So, in part I'm saying we should let women speak for themselves, but further than that, I'm also saying that the right woman for that particular design challenge is probably out there.

In other words, the fact and the fiction of the witch are inextricably linked. Each informs the other and always has. I’m fascinated by how one archetype can encompass so many different facets. The witch is a notorious shape-shifter, and she comes in many guises:

While it's tempting to start with Hollywood tropes about the witch, and that's fine, it's important we don't end there & it's important we do have some awareness of the factual witch as well. For two reasons...

First, there are damaging tropes out there that magnify "feminine = evil" that we should be wary of perpetuating. Just as an architecture firm might turn down a bid to, say, construct a border wall because it doesn't reflect the firm's values, a designer is always going to bring some of themself to the design process. And that's not a good or bad thing. It's just the nature of design. My philosophy is that the strongest design comes from sensitively injecting ourselves into the design process in a way that minimizes our presence. Maybe we are selective and say, "you know, we don't want to double down on Wicked Witch of the West as the trope for our witch class, because we think that trope does more harm than good."

Second, Hollywood is rarely nuanced, while history is full of nuance. Nuance makes for richer design, not only by giving us more to work with, but also by helping game designers realize "ok, this particular thing we don't want to model in the rules because it's too controversial – there's too little consensus – whereas this other thing has more consensus and also happily overlaps with some of the more interesting commonly held beliefs."

She [the witch] is also a vessel that contains our conflicting feelings about female power: our fear of it, our desire for it and our hope that it can — and will — grow stronger, despite the flames that are thrown at it.

 

[Remathilis]

Mechanically the 4e witch was well a wizard (like Harry Potterverse) with a few swap out basics.
Flavorwise:
The very first significantly verbose sentence of the description of the 4e Witch starts with part religion and avoids general negative presumptions. And when they start talking about the Witches first source of power the start talk about the moon goddess Sehanine. By picking which coven ie moon phase you rather pick a flavor... one being the Full Moon / Dark of Moon and features training in Healing Skill and the other Intimidation which is nice. So far most of this is gives the good witch and the spookie intimidating witch the kids say like Glenda and the Wicked Witch right... nods sure or like 2 out of 3 aspects of the Triple Goddess. In other words it was written with a Duality no not THAT duality but rather a duality between childhood stereotypes and perhaps more grown up flavor elements. The spells available to the witch include some very heavy childhood wicked witch flavor the transforming of enemies into harmless beasts (reminds me of circe) / toading of enemies. Though no teleportation shoes so far. 4e has wands as front and center like Glenda/Hermione flick and swish. Familiars will require a feat for the Witch.

Second question Is 4e the first edition where a Witch was created as a core class (all things being core in 4)?

D&D's issue with witches was kinda two-fold. It was originally an NPC class partially because they didn't want to mess with balancing it like a PC class, but also an assumption that the audience of the time (mostly while males) wouldn't be terribly interested in it. 2e made it a wizard kit, 3e a couple of prestige classes, but it isn't until Pathfinder and later 4e that they tried to make it a regular class (or subclass) option. Personally, I think the 4e witch is flavorful but suffers some weird issues involving its power-structure (an issue that arises occasionally in 4e subclasses) and I've loved Pathfinder's witch (at least in 1e) but I can see the reason why WotC might not have wanted to go full 20-level class with it.

When I designed my subclass, I wanted to evoke a specific archetype; a "wizard" that isn't from a formal school or magic but instead evoked "hedge" or "low" magic with thier high magic. Mechanically, I wanted to mix a little warlock into a normal caster progression class. Is it the be-all-end-all of witches? Nah, and I think a second druidic version (along with the warlock) should provide a lot of coverage for the idea. I just wanted something more than "refluff an X" as an option.

For me, its a strong enough archetype as "assassin" "cavalier" "samurai" or "beastmaster"

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Wasn't there a witch class in 3e DMG as some sort of example of customising classes or something? Because I remember playing in a campaign in which one of the other players played such...

 

[Remathilis]

First, there are damaging tropes out there that magnify "feminine = evil" that we should be wary of perpetuating. Just as an architecture firm might turn down a bid to, say, construct a border wall because it doesn't reflect the firm's values, a designer is always going to bring some of themself to the design process. And that's not a good or bad thing. It's just the nature of design. My philosophy is that the strongest design comes from sensitively injecting ourselves into the design process in a way that minimizes our presence. Maybe we are selective and say, "you know, we don't want to double down on Wicked Witch of the West as the trope for our witch class, because we think that trope does more harm than good."

I'm 99% sure the people asking for a witch archetype aren't aiming for the "I saw Goody Proctor walking with the Devil" branch of witches. Generally, they are looking at a more holistic version of magic, somewhere between the spooky of the warlock, the natural magic of the druid, and the charms, potions and spells of an arcanist. Certainly, the word "witch" has appeared in several areas already (Witch Bolt, Witch Sight) and Tasha is explicitly described as a Witch (though mechanically, she is more a wizard I guess). Further, WotC has shown a keen interest in not labeling things "good" or "evil" explictly in recent works.

I think it's safe to say that much like how the monk is loosely based on the concept of the Shaolin fighting priest, a witch could be built around the concept of hedge-mage/clever-person caster with nods to classic 'witchy" powers and not set off a firestorm. 4e and Pathfinder both presented a witch concept that doesn't perpetuate stereotypes of feminine evil, it's just a matter of building on that foundation.