D&D General Homebrew Witch Class ideas +

[doctorbadwolf]

+ thread. Please don’t tell me to make it with an existing class or anything like that. If I’m making a thread, the basic premise of it isn’t something I’m willing to debate.

So, in making a witch class I want:

• Full casting, with advanced ritual casting. Even better than Wizard at rituals.
• Familiar as a cornerstone base class feature with real meat on its bones, and not just a combat or scouting pet. The Familiar should help the Witch do their magic, in and out of combat, help them craft, etc.
• Secondary focus on crafting (potions, wondrous items, charms and such)
• Spirits. The world this is primarily for has a lot more to do with spirits than normal D&D, but I still want the Witch to be well versed in treating with otherworldly beings of all kinds but especially spirits
• Weirdness is welcome, even if it pushes the class outside of the clean lines of the PHB classes
• Curses and healing. Maybe even a feature to heal an ally a little any time your curse target takes damage, or the ability to cast Bane but replace 1 target with the effect of the Bless spell. Weal and woe. Healer and wrathful power.

Those are the primary goals. The current version has a level 1 feature called Spirit Fetch which enhances a familiar and lets you cast it without components, or spend a spell slot to boost your Fetch in a few different ways, basically ripping off Summon Beast and Summon Fey with elements of the Iron Defender, but more geared toward utility and being a spellcraft aide.
You can cast any spell from your Familiar, imbue it with spells so it can cast them on its turn, use it as your Focus if it’s within 5ft of you, and make it smaller or bigger, but not all of those things at once.

For rituals, I think that a scaled list of “always prepared spells” that all have the ritual tag with a special clause that you can cast spells without spell slots equal to a number of spell levels similar to the Wizard’s arcane recovery, and/or some curated “this spell gains the ritual tag” options, would suffice. This would buff the spellcasting of the class in a different way from other full casters, and lighten the burden of making the Fetch buffs cost spell slots.

I see combat gameplay revolving around curses that debuff and or DoT, and the fetch that provides support and protection, with a spell list focused on control, support, and utility. No Fireballs.

Maybe “Malisons” that are like Invocations and enhance certain debuff or control spells, like “when you cast the hold person spell, the target takes damage equal to 1d4 plus your witch level every time it fails the saving throw” or even worse, make it creatures within 5ft of the target, turning targets of the spell into Size effects against their own allies. Nasty, but not via direct damage spells.

Thoughts so far?

 

[Laurefindel]

Sounds good so far.

Arcane of divine?
D6 hit die with no armour proficiencies, or D8 with some armour/weapon proficiencies?
What would its main attack mode be?

 

[JConstantine]

I love me a spooky archetype, so I was noodling a homebrew witch a few years ago. I never completed it, but I was looking at a cross between warlock and druid. I'll see if I can dig out my notes when I have a time.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sounds good so far.

Thanks!

Arcane of divine?

I was thinking Primal, actually. That’s where nature spirits live, and it isn’t a stretch to also include spirits of life and death, etc. And it sits well with them worshipping goddesses like Meiliki and Sehanine, which feels right to me.

D6 hit die with no armour proficiencies, or D8 with some armour/weapon proficiencies?
What would its main attack mode be?

Probably d6 and light armor only. Its primary attack mode would probably vary by subclass, like with Artficers, but would generally be magical, so cantrips or the Fetch. If I give it a gish subclass it would likely use its casting stat for attack and damage, or do something odd like casting attack cantrips as melee spell attacks even if they normally are long range, or something weird.

I love me a spooky archetype, so I was noodling a homebrew witch a few years ago. I never completed it, but I was looking at a cross between warlock and druid. I'll see if I can dig out my notes when I have a time.

That sounds great I’d love to read it.

 

[plisnithus8]

I had just started brainstorming a campaign around the concept of Hagception: a PC coven (hexbloods, warlocks, etc. plus homebrew) that enters dreams, maybe from their swamp treehouse with a vampire cabal in the nearby town as the big bads.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

You might look at the arch hag in the new MM, it had some interesting curses IIRC

 

[DavyGreenwind]

For inspiration, my two favorite homebrew witch classes are from Mage Hand Press and Worlds Beyond Number. The former leans into curses, hexes, and the empowered familiar. The latter is more inspired by Studio Ghibli, and leans into spirits and crafting (with a unique mechanic where you can trade a spell slot to create certain magic items). Both are fantastic.

 

[Blue]

I don't think your requirements can be balanced. Let's go through.

• Full casting, with advanced ritual casting. Even better than Wizard at rituals.

Okay, so let's start with the full caster with strong rituals you mentioned: the Wizard. No one complains the wizard is a weak lass, so we'll be using it as our balance point. And having full access to rituals without preparing them is actually a fairly big point for the wizard. This does come with the assumption of a good spell list for the witch that has a lot of rituals on it.

So full caster vs. full caster balances out. Even stronger ritual casting means that it'll eat a bit of the wizard class features to balance.

(Side note: the Wizard also has the least useful-for-other-stuff casting ability. Moving to CHR or WIS is a bit of a power boost we'd have to offset elsewhere.)

• Familiar as a cornerstone base class feature with real meat on its bones, and not just a combat or scouting pet. The Familiar should help the Witch do their magic, in and out of combat, help them craft, etc.

Okay, we can fit this in, displacing some other wizard class features. With "real meat on it's bones", I'm assuming this also grows with the character. We're not looking at a lot of Wizard class features left to replace.

• Secondary focus on crafting (potions, wondrous items, charms and such)

Is this a ribbon ability or closer to artificer alchemist? Since we're almost out of wizard class features to replace, I'm going to assume the former, and it plays into downtime crafting rules in a thematic and flavorful way that doesn't change the power of the class much.

• Spirits. The world this is primarily for has a lot more to do with spirits than normal D&D, but I still want the Witch to be well versed in treating with otherworldly beings of all kinds but especially spirits

Not knowing how spirits work, could this just be advantage on skill rolls about/interacting with them? If so we can displace the last bit of Wizard class features.

Congratulations, by making minimal assumptions of power, we have a balanced class that maganges to fit such a plethora of abilities on top of full casting.

• Weirdness is welcome, even if it pushes the class outside of the clean lines of the PHB classes

Always cool. We'll have to make sure the weirdness is power neutral, unlike something like the Wild Magic table which is 2:1 good results vs. bad (plus a lot of effectively neutrals).

• Curses and healing. Maybe even a feature to heal an ally a little any time your curse target takes damage, or the ability to cast Bane but replace 1 target with the effect of the Bless spell. Weal and woe. Healer and wrathful power.

And here we have the problem fitting things in. Adding in two additional features, with synergy. There's just no room for it. And auto off-healing without a separate action/bonus action, which can stand people up, is quite the nice power and needs to be taken into serious consideration during balance phase.

Basically, I don't see how we fit in this all as written and still have it balanced. Especially if some of my assumptions, like alchemy as just a ribbon power, turn out to be low.

This is a plus thread, so I didn't say that to rain on the parade but to make suggestions on how to make it viable.

1. I'm pretty sure this is a non-starter, but make it a half-caster. I'm mentioning it just for completeness. We can now ignore that.

2. Limit the spell list and make it spells known. There's a lot else going on with the Witch, so a narrower spell list removes some "Wizard" power, giving a bit of wiggle room for more features. Same with moving from prep to spells known. That said, I'd then include a separate ability to pick up rituals, either from an extended witch-specific list or just from a select class's spell list.

Off the top of my head I'd have: divinations, curses and debuffs, healing (because you already have healing with your last bullet point so it's on target), enchantment and select transmutation. Maybe a touch of illusions.

3. Make the familiar required for some casting. Perhaps spells on others can only be delivered through the familiar, so without you can only cast self and non-target (like divinations). Though I'm not sure that's thematic. Maybe the need to make Concentration checks if the familiar takes damage. Though with the way that familiars often are handwaved in combat by some DMs that may not work. Hmm, just a thought, don't know where to do with it.

4. Connect the healing and cursing. So you gain dice for a healing pool by using your curses on people. Maybe with a limitation that if you curse someone your healing won't work on them so some players (we know who they are) can't try to cheese on cursing allies for unlimited out-of-combat healing. Want to walk though a crowded city and curse people for power? Thematic, go for it.

5. Get inspired by the warlock. Change them to something like pact magic instead of spellcasting, with short rest regaining. Instead of every witch has every power, give them invocation-like growth so they can focus as they want. For example they may have a basic cantrip curse and a standard familiar, and invocations could add ally healing, let the familiar grant advantage on Concentration saves, etc. And could add in some other options spanning the spectrum from hedge-witch to serious Russian folklore witch (scary!).

6. Combine some of these. Make curses just part of the casting, with a feature that adds an ally-healing rider. Put spirit-focused spells on the list. Same for some other options. This has the benefits of both reducing the class feature load while allowing a witch player to focus where they want.

7. Break these into subclasses. One subclass might be a curse-wielder, another a spirit master, yet another a pet subclass focusing on the familiar.

The idea seems very thematic, looking forward to where you take it.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

"As good a caster as a Wizard, but better at Rituals" would be a tricky needle to thread. I'm not sure how to make a class better than a wizard at rituals in a manner distinct from wizard mechanics whilst maintaining balance. The concept of the order of wizards performing their hermetic rituals from arcane tomes is baked into the class in a way that it is tricky to supersede.

Regarding the familiar, here are a few ideas:
All Witches know the Find Familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual without the presence of their familiar. In addition to its normal abilities, familiars are trained in Arcana, and can perform the Help action for any arcana checks.
While the familiar is in physical contact with the witch, it can fulfil material component requirements as if the witch was wielding an arcane focus.

When the witch casts a Summon spell, they may spend a separate, additional spell slot. If so, they may target the area occupied by the familiar despite normal vision or line of effect requirements and the familiar disappears for the duration of the spell. The summoned creature becomes an amalgam of the features of the familiar and those of the creature the spell would normally summon. The summoned creature gains a bonus on all D20 tests equal to the level of the additional spell slot the witch spent, and deals an extra D6 on its attacks.

(Note that I'm assuming that were talking normal familiars here. If you want to have the witch eat the warlocks lunch as well as the wizard's, and give them the pact of the chain additional options and abilities, that changes the scales quite a bit.)