If you look at the term "witch" as just a bit of flavor, I think you could create a number of interesting and cool "witch" characters without having to generate a whole homebrewn class. Warlock, Sorcerer, Wizard and Druid could all make fantastic and unique witches when flavored right.
It depends a lot on how you interpret the term "witch". Looking to the classics, a witch is an elderly lady living alone (or with a few familiars) in a woodland shack, bent over her cauldron of mysterious brews and potions. She makes bargains with desperate townsfolk from villages nearby and far away, solving their personal problems in a myriad of ways that usually have surprising (and possibly harmful) side-effects. She could be Evil, Neutral or Good, but always Chaotic.
Creating a druid with a focus on transmutation spells and alchemy could form a good base for it. Depending on how powerful you'd like the character to be and their alignment, you could use multi-classing to cherry-pick some transmutation goodies from the Wizard, Sorcerer or Warlock classes.
As a personal exercise, I'm going to roll up a (cliché-ridden) witch character below.
[sblock=click for witchcraft!]
Agathea Honeydew, level 3 Human.
After her parents where killed under mysterious circumstances at an early age, Agathea was spirited away by a secretive coven of witches. She was raised alternately by different witches of the coven, each of them passing onto her the secrets of Alchemy and Witchcraft. When an elder of the coven died of old age, Agathea was appointed to take over her corner of the woods. She's lived alone in that shack ever since, her only company her familiars and occasional visits from other witches of the coven, and townsfolk looking to barter a trade for a curse, a potion or her wisdom. At an advanced age, after decades of muttering alone over steamy cauldrons, a voice muttered back...
Achieving the witch-like traits that fit the character's background.
As her mechanical background, we'll pick up
Hermit. It goes well with the theme, and gives us A nice amount of scrolls to play with. It also gives us the skill
Medicine to compliment the idea of the old lady giving boons to townsfolk, and
Religion because... Well we don't really need religion, but it's a nice bonus.
First, we'll pick up two levels of
Druid. This will give us the following
stuff to help achieve a witch-like character (I will skim over the stuff unimportant to the witch flavor):
- Tools: Herbalism kit allows the character to brew potions with her cauldron.
- Skills: We pick Insight to help her "read" the townsfolk's intentions when they come to her, and Animal Handling to help her with her various cats (familiars).
- Wild Shape: This allows our witch to turn into a Black Cat, a trait classic witches often have.
- Druid Circle: We choose Circle of the Land. We flavor the druid circle to be her Witch' Coven, giving her an additional cantrip and allow us to flavor her spells and rituals as ancient rites passed down from generations of witches. Later on, Circle spells also allow of to flavor this lady to favor woodlands or swamp, if we choose to increase the druid level (which is not necessary; Level 2 druid gives us all the witch flavor we need.)
- Druid Cantrips: First we pick up Druidcraft to give her the ability to show off her abilities and confound and impress unlearned townsfolk. Showmenship is half a Witch' work! In addition, we pick up Mending and Guidance, both fitting with the theme of the elderly wise woman.
- Druid Spells: As a druid can re-pick their spells after ever rest, we don't have to worry about these when rolling. I would recommend Charm Person to help her out in case townsfolk turn on her, Fog Cloud for that touch of mysticism and Detect Poison and Disease for that Wise Woman flavor.
Then, we pick up a level of
Warlock. We want her to be a little crazy, unpredictable and capable of bestowing curses, and the Warlock class is perfect to add those features.
- Skills: We pick up Deception to allow her to project the image of a friendly old lady, even when she's working with magic that could be considered evil. Secondly we'll pick up Arcana to reflect her knowledge of magic.
- Otherworldly Patron: We will pick The Great Old One, or rather, it will have picked her. Communing with it through the fumes of her cauldron brews, the Great Old One bestows an extra level of crazy and mysticism we need to make a true witch. Other players will never see the true nature of these powers, the Witch will shroud them in strange rituals to make them look more like natural magic.
The Great Old One's pact also allows us access to Awakened Mind. The Witch can use these telepathic powers to enforce her image of a mystic, reading minds and projecting voices in the minds of others.
- Warlock Cantrips: We'll pick up Prestidigitation to allow our Witch to create further illusionary effects to make her cauldron-centric rituals look more impressive and strange to townsfolk. We also take Poison Spray and flavor it to be the throwing of a potion or a toad.
- Warlock Spells: We'll pick up Dissonant Whispers and Tasha's Hideous Laughter for that touch of madness. Who doesn't love a good old fashioned witch' cackle?
For our Ability scores, we'll invest high in
Charisma and
Wisdom, and dump
Strength and
Dexterity. This character is not a fighter; she's a manipulator, someone who would much rather flee from conflict or use more creative sources to settle it.
Et voila, we have a Witch, without the need to create a new class for her.[/sblock]
