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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7013463" data-attributes="member: 4937">It would appear we need a better defined definition of 'challenge'.  For example, there is one way in which the evil eye attack is vastly more challenging than the firebolt attack - it's stealthy.  If your are playing a more simulationist sort of game, then the details and fluff matter.   The witch can use her evil eye attack without making noise or light, and without a line of fire connecting her to the target and making her the clear source of the attack.  Other questions are raised.   Does the witch need to make eye contact?  If she does, then blindfolding yourself makes you immune to the attack (it becomes a 'gaze' attack, with appropriate conditions thereof).  If she does not, then a party might find themselves suddenly subject to psychic damage from an unknown source as they investigate a room of paintings (the witch having cleverly hid herself in secret panel behind one of the paintings, and is viewing them throw only a tiny aperture - horror movie style.   This later case might be a vastly more interesting encounter than a witch shooting firebolts at the party in an 30x40 room with no terrain, and it allows the witch to punch above her weight because in the situation the real challenge is not overcoming the witch's AC and eroding her hit points.  The real challenge is figuring out what the heck is going on.  The witch might only go done in a moment to the party she is harassing, but she remains a challenge - all because we added some 'meaningless' fluff about an evil eye attack.Moreover, the witch who also gained the evil eye attack may now silently murder victims without any evidence of her crime.  This suggests the witch in the role of villain in a story of intrigue, where the real challenge again is not stick a sword in the villain, but determining exactly who the real villain is.  Again, this makes the witch more 'interesting', even though the detail added seems 'fiddly'.  This is why the details matter.  Suddenly it's interesting if 'witches' are proficient in Bluff, Insight, and so forth.   It matters if the witch has spell powers that aid perception or obfuscation.  It matters because initially you might be interacting with the witch in a non-combat role and the witches non-combat abilities will be the biggest determinate in how that activity goes.As I've tried to show, although flight is an example of complexity in that it is a mode of movement that the party may lack and so opens up tactics for the witch, that's not necessarily the case.  The witch with the evil eye attack using peepholes in the walls of the haunted house might actually stay 'in the fight' longer and do more total damage, simply because the evil eye doesn't illuminate the darkness and point an arrow to her saying, "Witch this way."</blockquote>

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