Advanced Feats: The Witch's Brew by Sigfried Trent offers an in depth look at the new Witch class as it’s available in the Advanced Player’s guide for Pathfinder. Trent and crew introduce 30 new feats designed with the Witch PCs in mind, as well as a discussion on what the Witch can do as a class, and several suggested builds.
Witches are somewhat new territory for me. I've got the APG and I've read through the class and been interested in them, but I've never played one or run a game with a Witch in the party. One thing that did immediately stand out for me with the Witch was that as helpful and interesting as their familiars are, they can also be a danger to the Witch. Losing your familiar hurts!
This PDF starts of with an examination of the Witch class and what bearing they’ll have on your party. It’s worth the read as Trent has put a lot of thought into this and gives an easy to follow overview of the Witch which goes a bit above and beyond what’s covered in the Advanced Players guide. I finished this section knowing how I’d implement a Witch in a game, rather than having a few interesting but vague ideas about the class. This is a good thing because the APG left me a little vague on how I would run one.
Now we come to the 30 additional feats for Witches which makes up the core of this document. On the whole, I think they're well crafted and will be immediately useful to players wanting to dabble in a little familiar based spell casting and hexing. In fact, the biggest strength in these new feats are those that address the Witch's familiar. There are a ton of interesting feats which make the Witch's familiar into more of an asset in combat and less of a heavily guarded, mobile spellbook. Familiar Concentration, where your familiar can concentrate on a spell for you, Familiar Range Extension, up to 100 miles of contact, and Hexing Familiar which does what it says all stand out for me.
There are other stand out feats. Infer Spell which allows you to figure out a spell based on how it's triggered by a magic item is a fun. Usurp Spell allows you to steal control of a spell cast by another.
As with my previous review of the Secrets of the Alchemist, there are a few feats which could, depending on how you and your group handle them, be game breaking. Extra Familiar, which allows for an additional familiar which you control could be one of these. Familiar Training, which allows you to share your applicable feats with your familiar is another. I'm not really prepared to take huge points off for this though because they could also work very well in your campaign. It's more of how they are implemented and used. Some may not find them flawed at all.
After the new feats we are presented with three character builds for the Witch, following the character from 1st through 20th level.The Arch Witch is someone who specializes in dominating other spellcasters. The White Witch build (which I cannot help but nickname The Glinda) is a Witch who specializes in healing and helping, while punishing those who are evil. The last build is the Wicked Witch (or the Alfaba?) who is just you think.
All of the builds are good, and in themselves offer even more insight into this class. Keep in mind that they do rely on the feats presented in this document.
If you want to expand on the new classes presented by Piazo, specifically the Witch in this case, certainly pick this up. It will be well worth the read and the new feats are for the most part well done and balanced.
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