XaiJu
Mage Hand Press
Mage Hand Press

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Complete Witch

Not all rituals are performed in the daylight, and not all magic was meant to be known…

The Complete Witch is the definitive version of our witch class, which has been comprehensively improved and expanded upon. We included a staggering 14 subclasses, running the gamut from White Magic and Black Magic to Blood Magic and Sand Magic (so you can be a sandwich), with so much in between. 

Of course, being a witch is no fun if you have to be lonely. So we included a whole chapter of familiar options (both new ones and classic options) for a variety of familiars all in one place. It's never been easier to summon up a flying book, death snail, or a grep!

And let's not forget that the Witch is a spellcaster: we've expanded the witch spell list with tons of new spells that share a distinctly curse-riddled theme, all to give your character new ways to vex your enemies.

And last, but not least, we present Dark Rituals, a Dungeon Master's best friend. These incredibly powerful spells are perfect for evil nemeses, serving as a focal point for campaigns, a boon to be fought over, and a ticking clock to work against. Even a single one of these rituals can decimate a campaign world, which makes it the perfect tool for any good Big Bad Evil Guy.

Changelog:

Comments

I was wondering if you have any plans in the future to add hexes or an archetype to witch that revolves around mirrors and reflective surfaces? Like the magic mirrors used in fairy tales, films and television (need to rewatch 10th kingdom now!). I just thought i would ask since you did the gingerbread theme witch in the past :)

Moogles Plethora of Pom Poms

They do not

Mage Hand Press

Alright so these bonus spells: do they count against spells known?

Izaac Ward

Hex usage is supposed to be a passive, constant thing you can do to push the tide of battle. None of them do damage, so the cost is largely tied up in the action economy on maintaining a hex.

Mage Hand Press

Good question. Once a creature fails a save against a hex, the duration can be increased indefinitely as long as you maintain concentration and keep cackling. If you lose the hex, you'll have to cast it again and the target will have to make a second save.

Mage Hand Press

When you cackle to extend a hex with a save do you repeat the save every turn? If the enemy beats the save do you have to use an action to restart it?

Jen

How come there's no limit to Hex usage? Or have I missed something?

Justin Jönsson

Correct. You can use the Blue Witch to learn things that aren't normally on the sorcerer spell list, but you also can't learn spells that can't target you. It's a pro/con kind of thing.

Mage Hand Press

For the blue witch, having a spell cast on you to absorb it. How does that work with learning cantrips like mage hand or spells that are normally on the list that arent able to cast on others. Spells such as knock. Can they not learn those spells?

HeatherAshley Pherigo

It should be 4th -- I'll fix that ASAP

Mage Hand Press

is Curse of Aging a fourth or sixth level spell? the list has it as fourth but the spell description has it as a sixth.

LeBallisticPoet

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. In the last bit of editing, the line must have been pushed onto the left column. I'll have it fixed ASAP.

Mage Hand Press

LeBallisticPoet

That's not nitpicky at all -- I'm surprised nobody else caught it! Should be fixed in a few minutes.

Mage Hand Press

Don't mean to nitpick but some of the 4th level spells have repeats of 2nd level spells :) not sure if you care or not, just something I noticed c: It has Detect Magic to Suggestion

Kura Tenshi

This is a typo -- in fact, I thought it was one I squashed a while ago, along with the references to the hex spell (one of which I missed.) I should have this fixed very shortly.

Mage Hand Press

I've noticed this before in the incomplete witch class and this one too, but in the quick build segment it says on to choose dissonant whispers as one of the starting spells but it isn't in the spell list. Is this a typo or can it be chosen?

Tghost

I /knew/ I forgot someone. You registered after I put together the credits page, but I couldn't work out afterwards who it was. I'll add you in.

Mage Hand Press

So, I became a $10 donor a little while before the Witch came out, and I don't see myself anywhere on the Producers page...

BardlyWritten

That's true -- good catch! I'll fix it very soon.

Mage Hand Press

Curse of tomes says "At the end of the hour they can repeat this spell" where I think it is supposed to be "repeat this save"

Kurtis Weiselberg

A witch's starting gold is the same as the warlock's.

Mage Hand Press

Thanks for pointing that out! I'll fix it right away

Mage Hand Press

If someone wanted to go with gold instead of equipment, how much would a witch start with?

James Belin

Tiny typo on page 14, under green magic's sacrifice familiar ability: "At 10th level, you can drain your familiar's vitality as a bnus action." That's the only one I've seen so far, great job with this guys. It's going to fit right in to the dark fantasy setting I've been working on.

Pit Wizard

I /thought/ I was forgetting one! Should be fixed now.

Mage Hand Press

Our Witch player mentioned that Elemental Curse is missing from the spell section(?)

Michael Doyle

Burned and feral both seem very powerful. Hideous and Visions both seem rather weak. for Burned, Firebolt is a solid boost to your average damage output as well as resistance to a common damage type. Feral is awesome for Witches that want to focus on their natural attacks and close combat, giving a larger diversity of power instead of making them better at stuff they already do. The free Heavy Armor Mastery is what puts it a bit powerful I feel. Hideous and Visions both give you a meh benefit that doesn't matter the majority of the time. Hideous only working on Humanoids is even more restricting.

John Hoffman

This is definitely a roleplay question, since the Witch's Curse isn't just a single ability -- it's the source of all the witch's power. The darkness of a witch's cure fuels their magic, their hexes, and the connection to their familiar; without it, some witches would die, and others would simply become ordinary again, but they would all be deprived of their powers. There's an entire multi-session story in there: what happens when a witch becomes cured? Does she retire quietly, content to live without her powers, as long as she remains liberated from her curse? Or does she seek new sources of power (perhaps by making a warlock's pact), or attempt to rekindle her magic (perhaps with Wild Magic)? Perhaps, a cured witch would even curse herself again for the powers she once commanded...

Mage Hand Press

Can a witchs' curse ever be broken and if so would some other ability need to be given in it's place to maitain the balance of the class or does no longer needing to deal with the roleplaying consequences make up for the loss of the ability it previously granted?

Matt Lowry

Big update! We added a bunch of new Witch Curses! Some of them were fairly tough to balance, so I'd appreciate if everyone could weigh in and tell me what you think.

Mage Hand Press

Compel is supposed to be an action, and that is indeed a typo at the end. I've got these fixed, but I'll be uploading those fixes with some other changes tomorrow, so you won't see changes right away.

Mage Hand Press

Is the Compel feature of Purple Witches meant to take an action or something? It doesn't actually say what kind of action it requires. Which also makes me wonder if it can therefore be used outside of your turn. Also, speaking of Compel, there's a typo at the end. "On each you use this ability, you must complete a long rest before using it again."

Vidameister

Ultimately, this ends up being only 5 spells, one of each spell level 1-5, which is good but not overpowering. We're working on a /few/ more Curses, since people seem to be a little disappointed by the lack of new ones, so we'll try to keep them to that level of power.

Mage Hand Press

I, for one, would love to see your Needle Craft Witch, Nails! ^_^

The Knuckle of Vecna

How does Possessed compare to the other Curses? It seems awfully strong; extra spells seem like a no brainer compared to a limited life steal and a once per fight, short duration fear effect.

Astrid Rigby

Never mind, I see someone already told you XD

Kurtis Weiselberg

There is a lot of spells repeated. All 3rd and 4th and a few second.

Kurtis Weiselberg

Gonna be perfectly honest, I had to look up the word "Tatterdemalion" when you mentioned it, which goes some way to explain why we didn't write a witch around that theme.

Mage Hand Press

These are the types of mistakes I make when a book is like 10 pages longer than I expect it to be. I'll fix that ASAP

Mage Hand Press

This is really good. I love the Blue Magic subclass, and I could totally use a Tea Witch and refluff it as a Pastry Witch. Although, I'm slightly disappointed because there's a Yarn Golem familiar but no Tatterdemalion witch to go with it.

Jackson Walsh

I don't have any issues... what pdf reader are you using, and what device?

The Nails of Vecna

You can imagine Sand or Tea magic are those colours, if you like. I did at one stage propose colour names for all of these crafts (Blood = Claret or Scarlet, Cloud = Grey, Fragrant = Lavender, Rose or Violet, Heart = Pink or Shiny (it being a reference justifies the poetic license, for me), Lunar = Silver, Salt = Azure, Sand = Gold, Tea = Tan) but in the end we decided that was too cute and/or restrictive. It would also have ruined the 'sandwich' and 'twitch' puns if we'd done that. Don't let that stop you using colour themes though!

The Nails of Vecna

Is anyone else having a strange formatting issue? The pictures appear in front of the text.

Richard Belmont Potts III

No orange or yellow magic? That's a shame. :)

Matthew Gesus

Killer! been waiting for this one for a while now! I appreciate the Hair Hex, always cool when a suggestion makes it in. A good callback of the Pathfinder one. the various curse spells are also a nice touch.

E Koebel

What?! How did that get in there? For inanimate objects, those pet rocks sure show up in some pretty weird places.

The Nails of Vecna

I think there's been a mistake- one of the familiars is just a rock with a face drawn on it

Dathan

Yes, because the Witch is a debuff-focussed support class, not a damage dealer like the Warlock. Their round-to-round actions should mostly be hexes, not cantrips.

The Nails of Vecna

You have 3rd and 4th level spells listed twice in Chapter 3, just fyi.

Michael Doyle

Is the cantrip selection intentionally narrow when it comes to combat? Acid Splash is okay, but mostly meh. Chill Touch is good, but not great for a lot of flavor. It just feels like every witch is gonna run similar.

John Hoffman

This is amazing! I'm not even a big fan of tea but somehow you've managed to make a tea themed subclass that I'd love to try. The only small critizism I have is that while the curses offer great abilities and roleplay options for the more classically 'wicked witch' style character I'd love to see a more 'good witch' styled curse that would be a nice fit for softer more benevolent subclasses like Heart, Tea, or White magic.

Matt Lowry

I'm glad you like it, and welcome to the patreon! I tried out a few other witch's curses (and I might still try to put a few together, if I can slip them in), but they're a little trickier than subclasses, for a few different balance reasons. They can't be too powerful at level one, and they have to incentivize a style of play without becoming obsolete later. Also, we've been thinking about doing something like an Iconic Heroes book, where we explore the main cover characters from our classes, and include prebuilds and NPC stats. Do I sense some interest in that?

Mage Hand Press

Also, the Demon of Vengeance rite has a typo. "This demon disappears only when your or it are reduced to 0 hit points,"

Vidameister

The Witch was always my favorite bit of homebrew you guys made, so to see this released just a few days after I signed up as to patron you is amazing. I love just how much you expanded the class and all the different archetypes, since I felt just White and Black options to choose from was a bit too... Well, Black and White. I'm glad to see you guys incorporating more curses to bestow on people and even adding in some tools for DMs to use (the Dark Rituals). Only thing that made me even the slightest bit disappointed was that you didn't include new Witch's Curse options at Level 1, since that's the choice that probably matters the most when it comes to figuring out what kind of character your witch is going to be. But it's a minor gripe. And given what all you DID include, that's completely fine in my book. I hope you release stats for Witch NPCs in a future book to help integrate witches into campaigns beyond just the PCs. But until then, I can always use hags as stand-ins. Amazing work and art! I look forward to seeing your next project!

Vidameister

The Miasma Rite has the paragraph detailing the life drain effects on the caster twice.

Altanius

I should probably italicize the word "staggering" in my description of their number, since it feels pretty apt.

Mage Hand Press

Holy crap that's a lot of subclasses. :)

Altanius

That's what I said.

Mage Hand Press

Holy shit. That cover tho

John Hoffman


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