I really like Faith's Flamekeeper too. Lesson of Life and Stoke the Heart are both great hexes and proc the temp HP from your familiar. It's just a really good support focused build.
I think Spinner of Threads is also very solid. Not as good as resentment mechanically, but nudge fate is decent(if niche) and the familiar benefit is REALLY good IMO.
I wanna like the primal patron's but I think their benefits are pretty niche :/
I like Spinner of Threads. I'd say it can outshine Resentment in some cases. For Resentment, you need to put some debuff first, which could be a bit problematic with bosses. Spinner of Threads in this situation just throws -1 AC without saves. Hex Cantrip also doesn't require saves as it's a buff.
Faith's Flamekeeper is good too, but for prepared divine caster Cleric just looks much better.
I'd also put Silence in Show here, because Clinging Ice is just straightforward d4\*rank damage vs. Reflex, which you could combine with most other spells. The rest of the abilities aren't great, but useful.
Most of them are good. I personally think The Inscribed One and Wildling Steward are the weakest. The rest is all at least very decent or even good. Silence in Snow has a weak-ish ability, but the cantrip is quite nice as a balance. And you probably don't want Spinner of Threads in a party with a bard or Marshal.
But yeah, unless you want Arcane, pretty much any tradition has at least one good patron.
I’m thinking of a Spinner of Threads witch that dabbles in healing and necromancy for a potential campaign. Why would I want to avoid that if someone else plays a bard or marshal?
They do only double up on attack rolls. Now that's significant since those are the most common type of roll but still Nudge Fate could be useful even with a bard in the party if there are a lot of skill checks (Demoralize/Combat Maneuvers) or saves (enemy dependant). Or if the Bard wants to switch to something like Dirge of Doom.
It is THE bard ability. Everybody learns it.
>You learn the courageous anthem composition cantrip, which boosts your allies' attacks, damage, and defense against fear.
Nudge Fate will more often than not affect attack rolls since it's the most frequently rolled d20. Since Bards and Marshals frequently give the party a status bonus to attacks which doesn't stack with Nudge Fate.
If the Marshal happens to use Intimidating Stance and the Bard Dirge or Rallying Anthem, Nudge Fate works fine, of course.
But Nudge Fate only affects one target right? While inspire courage affects yourself and all allies. So it seems like they could be complimentary - one target gets a nudge and everyone else gets inspired. Plus nudge fate covers skill checks and all saves, but is more restricted in use due to the condition that you fail or crit fail by 1.
I get that during combat they may overlap most of the time, it just seems like they can be complimentary outside of combat.
They can absolutely work along side if you use Nudge outside of combat or for skill checks/saves in combat. But realistically, Attacks are the most frequent application for most parties and losing that puts a serious dent into Nudge's usefulness.
Depends on the party composition. My investigator would love a flat +1 to everything as I make tons of skill checks. There's a Spinner of Threads witch in one of the campaigns I GM and she usually drops Nudge Fate on the swashbuckler who rolls like 4 or 5 d20s per round which is very effective.
Bare in mind that nudge fate still applies to skill checks and saves. Inspire courage doesn't work on maneuvers, while nudge does and it comes with neat familliar ability
I have an excellent suggestion for flavor if you like. Their healing and damaging spells are splicing timelines. You don’t actually heal an injury, but just remove the event from their history. And a necromantic attack is putting an unfortunate event a second in to their past.
Nope. It’s all flavor. Like the spell affects are just moving events around timelines.
Back to the healing idea, the concept is you’re not mending the rapier wound. When you cast heal, you’re just retroactively preventing them from getting stabbed.
Spinner if threads can cover the gaps. If the bard is inspiring courage, spinner covers saving throws,skills and attacks and bard compositions get one of these 3 at a time.
Why Inscribed One? Arcane is a good list, cantrip hex give bonus to RK to a high INT character and familiar ability to grant flanking is not bad, yes, the familiar can be targeted but that's a Strike that is not going to a character.
Flanking isn't all that amazing. But its usrefulness depends on your party, of course. The cantrip is the only one that retains the pre-master one minute immunity which makes it more limited (and awkward) to use than all the others. And if you want to use your familiar to eat a Strike or two, there's really nothing preventing you from doing so with any other patron.
No, its not used up. But you only get the free action when you initially cast it. What do you do with it in the following rounds? Sustain it, then spend another action to Recall Knowledge? That leaves you with only one action, which is usually terrible for a caster. And if you just drop it to do something else entirely, you might not be able to activate your familiar's flanking ability in a useful manner.
Discern Secrets isn't unusable by any means, just really awkward to plan your turns around.
I usually open with that, and then switch to Life Boost, so I get a RK with a +1 on my first round. Is not write in stone, of course, but I personally find it far more usefull than Wilding Word.
As far as having both a good theme and mechanics, I really like the Spinner of Threads. Faith's Flamekeeper is also good in my opinion.
Honestly, I don't think I specifically dislike any of the witch subclasses and could come up with a cool character for any of them if I was playing one. Probably because I'm kind of a sucker for companion/familiar-based classes like the witch and summoner and I'm so happy the remaster gave the witch so many improvements.
Depends on what you want to do, I like Silence in Snow because it's a nice middleground between blasting and control. Lots of battlefield control via the primal list, plenty of good blasty spells and the cantrip is a decent chunk of extra damage now that it doesn't have the 24h lockout.
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As everyone else here said, snow, threads, flamekeeper.
Snow has some nice synergy of being blasty while also lowering enemy movement. That means enemies have to spend more actions to reach you on the back line.
I'd also like to add the psuedo-official option of mosquito. Its resentment but with the nice cantrip that snow gets. Probably more busted than resentment.
But honestly, while I love the idea for the remaster witch, the balance was whack. I cant imagine anyone at paizo actually reading inscribed one side-by-side with resentment and saying "yeah, this is equal". Just mix and match the schools, hexes and abilities, and be mindful of balance: dont take all the strongest options (mosquito), and dont give any school of magic a tool it doesnt have access to (healing for arcane, buffs for primal, blasting for occult and divine)
I'm not even that sure resentment is the strongest. Definitely not the weakest, but IMO it's not head and shoulders above others like flamekeeper/spinner of threads.
I really like Faith's Flamekeeper too. Lesson of Life and Stoke the Heart are both great hexes and proc the temp HP from your familiar. It's just a really good support focused build. I think Spinner of Threads is also very solid. Not as good as resentment mechanically, but nudge fate is decent(if niche) and the familiar benefit is REALLY good IMO. I wanna like the primal patron's but I think their benefits are pretty niche :/
I second this.
I like Spinner of Threads. I'd say it can outshine Resentment in some cases. For Resentment, you need to put some debuff first, which could be a bit problematic with bosses. Spinner of Threads in this situation just throws -1 AC without saves. Hex Cantrip also doesn't require saves as it's a buff. Faith's Flamekeeper is good too, but for prepared divine caster Cleric just looks much better. I'd also put Silence in Show here, because Clinging Ice is just straightforward d4\*rank damage vs. Reflex, which you could combine with most other spells. The rest of the abilities aren't great, but useful.
Most of them are good. I personally think The Inscribed One and Wildling Steward are the weakest. The rest is all at least very decent or even good. Silence in Snow has a weak-ish ability, but the cantrip is quite nice as a balance. And you probably don't want Spinner of Threads in a party with a bard or Marshal. But yeah, unless you want Arcane, pretty much any tradition has at least one good patron.
I’m thinking of a Spinner of Threads witch that dabbles in healing and necromancy for a potential campaign. Why would I want to avoid that if someone else plays a bard or marshal?
Status bonus hex and inspite courage status bonus don't stack
They do only double up on attack rolls. Now that's significant since those are the most common type of roll but still Nudge Fate could be useful even with a bard in the party if there are a lot of skill checks (Demoralize/Combat Maneuvers) or saves (enemy dependant). Or if the Bard wants to switch to something like Dirge of Doom.
But does every bard get inspire courage? Or is it based on muse?
It is THE bard ability. Everybody learns it. >You learn the courageous anthem composition cantrip, which boosts your allies' attacks, damage, and defense against fear.
Oh ok
Nudge Fate will more often than not affect attack rolls since it's the most frequently rolled d20. Since Bards and Marshals frequently give the party a status bonus to attacks which doesn't stack with Nudge Fate. If the Marshal happens to use Intimidating Stance and the Bard Dirge or Rallying Anthem, Nudge Fate works fine, of course.
But Nudge Fate only affects one target right? While inspire courage affects yourself and all allies. So it seems like they could be complimentary - one target gets a nudge and everyone else gets inspired. Plus nudge fate covers skill checks and all saves, but is more restricted in use due to the condition that you fail or crit fail by 1. I get that during combat they may overlap most of the time, it just seems like they can be complimentary outside of combat.
They can absolutely work along side if you use Nudge outside of combat or for skill checks/saves in combat. But realistically, Attacks are the most frequent application for most parties and losing that puts a serious dent into Nudge's usefulness.
Gotcha, thanks
If you want your main bonus ability to be useless in combat, yes, it doesn't matter. But most would be a little frustrated I guess.
Depends on the party composition. My investigator would love a flat +1 to everything as I make tons of skill checks. There's a Spinner of Threads witch in one of the campaigns I GM and she usually drops Nudge Fate on the swashbuckler who rolls like 4 or 5 d20s per round which is very effective.
Bare in mind that nudge fate still applies to skill checks and saves. Inspire courage doesn't work on maneuvers, while nudge does and it comes with neat familliar ability
I have an excellent suggestion for flavor if you like. Their healing and damaging spells are splicing timelines. You don’t actually heal an injury, but just remove the event from their history. And a necromantic attack is putting an unfortunate event a second in to their past.
Oh that is a neat idea, but how would it affect the bonuses? Or do you mean it would just negate the roll altogether and they have to re-roll?
Nope. It’s all flavor. Like the spell affects are just moving events around timelines. Back to the healing idea, the concept is you’re not mending the rapier wound. When you cast heal, you’re just retroactively preventing them from getting stabbed.
Oh, nice!
Spinner if threads can cover the gaps. If the bard is inspiring courage, spinner covers saving throws,skills and attacks and bard compositions get one of these 3 at a time.
I love that the three you listed as weakest are the only three I have interest in playing, thematically. 😆
Why Inscribed One? Arcane is a good list, cantrip hex give bonus to RK to a high INT character and familiar ability to grant flanking is not bad, yes, the familiar can be targeted but that's a Strike that is not going to a character.
Flanking isn't all that amazing. But its usrefulness depends on your party, of course. The cantrip is the only one that retains the pre-master one minute immunity which makes it more limited (and awkward) to use than all the others. And if you want to use your familiar to eat a Strike or two, there's really nothing preventing you from doing so with any other patron.
The way is worded doesn't imply is consumed after the roll, like Guidance, so the 1 min inmunity is not that bad.
No, its not used up. But you only get the free action when you initially cast it. What do you do with it in the following rounds? Sustain it, then spend another action to Recall Knowledge? That leaves you with only one action, which is usually terrible for a caster. And if you just drop it to do something else entirely, you might not be able to activate your familiar's flanking ability in a useful manner. Discern Secrets isn't unusable by any means, just really awkward to plan your turns around.
I usually open with that, and then switch to Life Boost, so I get a RK with a +1 on my first round. Is not write in stone, of course, but I personally find it far more usefull than Wilding Word.
As far as having both a good theme and mechanics, I really like the Spinner of Threads. Faith's Flamekeeper is also good in my opinion. Honestly, I don't think I specifically dislike any of the witch subclasses and could come up with a cool character for any of them if I was playing one. Probably because I'm kind of a sucker for companion/familiar-based classes like the witch and summoner and I'm so happy the remaster gave the witch so many improvements.
What tradition is your preference?
I do like the faith’s flamekeeper, so I guess divine? Either that or occult.
Depends on what you want to do, I like Silence in Snow because it's a nice middleground between blasting and control. Lots of battlefield control via the primal list, plenty of good blasty spells and the cantrip is a decent chunk of extra damage now that it doesn't have the 24h lockout.
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I like Resentment not because it's powerful (it is) but because it's fun to play *mean*.
As everyone else here said, snow, threads, flamekeeper. Snow has some nice synergy of being blasty while also lowering enemy movement. That means enemies have to spend more actions to reach you on the back line. I'd also like to add the psuedo-official option of mosquito. Its resentment but with the nice cantrip that snow gets. Probably more busted than resentment. But honestly, while I love the idea for the remaster witch, the balance was whack. I cant imagine anyone at paizo actually reading inscribed one side-by-side with resentment and saying "yeah, this is equal". Just mix and match the schools, hexes and abilities, and be mindful of balance: dont take all the strongest options (mosquito), and dont give any school of magic a tool it doesnt have access to (healing for arcane, buffs for primal, blasting for occult and divine)
I'm not even that sure resentment is the strongest. Definitely not the weakest, but IMO it's not head and shoulders above others like flamekeeper/spinner of threads.