Editing Witch (section)

===First Edition===
[[File:Winter witch.jpg|left|200px]]
Witches are offshoots of the Wizard class, based on one of the old wizard [[kits]] from the earliest editions of the game; as the Druid is to the Cleric, so is the Witch to the Wizard. They are essentially arcane spellcasters (so no armor) who have to prepare their spells in advance (so no spontaneous casting), but unlike the wizard, who can only use arcane magic, they have access to a broad spectrum of different kinds of spell, depending on the kind of witch they are, most of which are nature-ish in origin.  The wizard is still more versatile, but the witch can do things wizards can't, like throw out heals and curses that are usually divine magic rather than arcane. This lack of versatility in their spell list means they struggle to be a [[Tier System|tier 1]] class and can easily fall into tier 2, even though they can get access to their entire list with prep time.  If one of your party members is playing an other-wise-OP-as-fuck [[merfolk]], witches are the only way to supply them with potions of Fins to Feet so they don't slow everyone down.

Witches also get access to various unique fairy-tale-style ''hexes'', which range from making poison apples and debuffing your enemies, to making crops wither and grow, to letting your now-prehensile hair count as a new limb and flying.  The coolest one is probably the one that makes all your hexes last longer so long as you burn a move action to [[just as planned|cackle ominously]].  While few of them work on an unlimited scale (usually, they can't affect the same target twice on the same day, or they can be used for a minute per witch level, spent in one-minute increments), and while all of them take a standard action to use, this ''does'' mean a witch who's clicked dry on spell slots isn't nearly as useless as, say, a [[wizard]] in the same situation, and they give the class a lot of debuff potential. 

Witches get familiars like wizards, but theirs store their spells like spellbooks.  Most familiar are gifts from their "patrons," since most witches get their powers from making deals with mysterious natural forces.  Like a [[warlock]] but without the Cthulhu.  For this reason, they replenish their spells by "communing with their familiars," a phrase that is [[/d/M|exactly as perverted as you want it to be]].  [[That guy|Everyone will hate you for the mental image, mind.]]

In the Advanced Class Guide released in 2014, a new class was released, the Shaman. Functions mostly like the witch, with its own unique hexes (and can take lower-level witch hexes), but with more emphasis on the familiar's attributes (in this case, called a spirit animal) and the spirits that affect it (similar to Oracle mysteries), as well as casting divine magic.

{{Pathfinder-Classes}}