Sunday, November 20, 2011

4E: Witch Paragon Paths

Last week I discussed what I thought about the new witch class for 4E.  One of the slights I felt was the lack of some good witch Paragon Paths.  Obviously the Essentials format now includes a "default" Paragon Path and the book could not include multiple Paragon Paths for all the classes.    So I am going to take something I thought was a weakness of the class and turn it into a strength.  Today I want to look at what sort of previously published Paragon Paths work well for the witch.

First up, the Legendary Witch from Heroes of the Feywild is a perfect fit.  It really just extends the Heroic Tier witch and gives some power based on the coven the witch is in.  Nothing fancy really.

Starting with the core rule books (PHB and Essentials) and working out here are some of my choices.
The Blood Mage and Spellstorm Mage from PHB1 are good choices.  With a bit of fluff, these can become a Blood Witch and Tempenstarii with no changes to crunch.

Arcane Power gives us a number of options as well, but really only one Paragon Path stands out as sufficently "witchy".  The Weaver of Chance has background that is compatible with the witch's and the powers work well too.  In fact with this Path you can finally make the Scarlet Witch character you always wanted.

Moving out to the Campaign Worlds we get more choices since they are designed to be something more akin to what Prestige Classes were in 3e.  The Forgotten Realms is full of wizards, and even the Hatharans and Simbul are more or less witches. The Simbul is even called Witch Queen of Aglarond and the Paragon Path based around her, Simbarch of Aglarond, is a great one for a witch to take. Another nearly perfect one for the witch of a Full Moon coven is the Silverstar.  Neitehr of these need to be changed in terms of fluff or crunch.

From the sister book Heroes of Shadow, the witch can take on powers of Necromancy or Nethermancy as she chooses.  There is also the Ravenkin path as sort of a dark parallel to the Silverstar.  The Shadowthief and Shadow Shaper are also decent choices.

Moving on to the issues of Dragon, we have the Vistani Execrator (#380), which is thematically a good choice if your witch has some Vistani blood.  For witches that focus on their familiars there is the Familiar Keeper (#374).

There are others, based on races and skill or feat choices, but these look like they are the best to me.
Now the Legendary Witch doesn't look so lonely.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Really nice overview. The Witch sounds fab.