The Witch’s Handbook is the third in Green Ronin Publishing’s Master Class line of d20 supplementary products meant for use with
Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition. This 64 page soft-cover book that presents a complete, new basic character class—the witch—along with all of the necessary rules, a few prestige classes that are commonly associated with the witch and a primer on the witch’s paradigm for players and GMs that aren’t familiar with it. This book’s content includes easy-to-employ rules for ritual magic and circle magic based upon those published in Sword & Sorcery Studios’
Relics & Rituals and a great deal of playable content regarding herbalist remedies (magical and mundane alike). This slim book has something for many gamers, especially fans of druids.
The book’s content splits into four chapters: The Way of the Witch describes the witch character class and its abilities; Skills & Feats cover new ways to use existing skills & feats as witches would as well as new feats that focus upon exploiting the witch’s high Wisdom score and magical style; Tools of the Craft goes into the toys, potions, items and other sundry things that commonly come with the practice of witchcraft; The Craft of the Wise is all about the magic of the witch class, from its spell list to the use of ritual and circle magic to enhance the power of the witch’s magic. At the back is an appendix for use with Green Ronin’s d20 Character Record Folio and an index. The witch class, all prestige classes and NPC stat blocks in Chapter One are Open Game Content, and so is the entirety of the text in Chapters Two through Four.
The book has a wonderful color cover piece by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law that encapsulates the entire point of the book: a pair of witches using their power to aide a friendly man at arms out in some rural area, with a circle of standing stones in the distance. The interior art, although black-and-white, is well placed and nicely accentuates the surrounding text. The layout makes the text flow smoothly, so reading it is as easy as referencing it, and the sidebars put adjunct content in proper position without being difficult to read. (It may be lost on some people, but I appreciate this attention to detail in putting a book together.) This is one nicely put-together product; I’ve come to expect stylish stuff from this line.
But this doesn’t tell you how the content works. Let’s move on to that subject now.
Chapter One introduces the witch class and a few associated prestige classes. The basic witch class is a combination of the sorcerer and the druid, with a feature or two from the monk and wizard classes for flavor. Witches have the same progression chart as sorcerers for Base Attack Bonus, saving throws, spells known and spells per day. They also have the same hit die, weapon proficiencies, armor proficiencies, spell-casting ability and familiar progression as sorcerers, but that is where the similarities end. Unlike sorcerers, witches accrue bonus feats (in the manner of wizards) and special powers (alter self at will, immune to aging effects upon physical attributes) over time. They have a class skill list similar to druids, with the same number of skill points per level, and witches also use Wisdom instead of either Intelligence or Charisma to govern and power their spell-casting abilities. Their spells aren’t flashy or direct—there are no spells like magic missile or flame strike here—and that’s just fine. The witch class is supposed to be a playable version of the master of common folklore and rural herbalist techniques, who’s power stems from the wedding of that lore to a practical craft of charms and the like. It’s a wonderful presentation of witchcraft as it actually was, is today and is believed to be by both adherents and detractors.
Unfortunately, it falls down in execution. The primary problem with the class comes from the spell list: it lacks punch. Many potent spells that fit the class’s theme are not on the list— acid fog, barkskin, binding, bull’s strength, cat’s grace, chill/heat metal, cloudkill, endurance, fog cloud, freedom, freedom of movement, fly, grease, (greater) magic fang/weapon, hold (x) spells, imprisonment, insect plague, keen edge, mage armor, (mass) haste, obscuring mist, phantasmal killer, poison, protection from (x) spells, rusting grasp, shillelagh, slow, solid fog, summon (x) spells, true seeing, true strike, zone of truth—should be there. Right now, all a low-level witch can do in combat is throw sleep and cause fear spells around; there’s nothing to boost the witch’s weak Armor Class score, force a Miss Chance check or otherwise defend the caster from attacks and there are also few spells that a witch can use to buff others. The best that a witch can do for his allies is throw cure (x) wounds spells around. Until he reaches 4th level, and gets access to blindness/deafness, a witch is about as useful a character as a bard; this is not at all a good thing, especially for a class that’s designed as a dedicated (like clerics, druids, sorcerers and wizards) spontaneous (like bards and sorcerers) arcane spell-caster. As it’s written, I wouldn’t dare allow this class into the game; it’s severely underpowered.
The prestige classes, for the most part, aren’t much better. There are five of them: infernal witch, shaper, witch hag, witch-priest/priestess and witch’s champion. The witch hag is little more than a variant of the dragon disciple prestige class from Wizards’ Tome & Blood; it’s open only to female humanoids, and it ends in the woman’s transformation into a hag of some sort (sea, annis or green). The witch’s champion is a warrior class where an individual witch or a coven thereof adopt the warrior as their bodyguard/agent, and in return the warrior receives bonus fighter feats, Uncanny Dodge, abilities that resemble being a spell-caster’s familiar and abilities that resemble beneficial bardic music powers. (This is one of the well-done classes, actually.) The infernal witch is a combination of the thaumaterge (from Armies of the Abyss) and the sorcerer; this class grants full caster progression and the familiar becomes an evil spy for the infernal witch’s patron, along with bonus spells and infernal powers. The shaper is one that specializes in transforming and dominating those he transforms; the abilities include bonus spells, full caster progression, increased resistance and potency with regard to Transformation spells, the power to inflict lycanthropy with a touch and conversion to the Shapechanger type. The witch-priest/priestess is a caster that acts as a spiritual leader to a coven/community; this cast gets domains, full caster progression, bonus feats (as wizards), the ability to count all spells as both arcane and divine (with full consequences, such as Arcane Spell Failure for all spells cast). All three of these caster classes grant familiar progression, and all of them are no-brainer choices for witch characters; like sorcerers, witches lose nothing important by taking a prestige class that grants full or nearly-full caster progression. Evil females with only one level of bard, sorcerer or witch are best off to take the witch hag class; they lose nothing by doing so, and they gain greatly in return. The witch’s champion is a great prestige class—the best in the book, really—and it’s easy to extrapolate it to other spell-casters in need of such figures, such as a wizard’s guild.
(Note: The sidebar that describes how to use existing classes to fill the role held by the witch class is good, useful advice. I appreciate it, and this sidebar makes the rest of the book’s content worthwhile. The social and cultural information about witches, along with how they integrate into Freeport, is likewise appreciated for its utility.)
The witch class disappoints me; as it exists, it’s not playable in a Dungeons & Dragons game unless the Dungeon Master (DM) serious steers the game away from its roots, and towards a game that spends much time dealing in encounters that aren’t immediately dangerous such as social encounters. The good base of skills is appreciated, but most of the skills that the witch has are either the focus of another class (rangers and Wilderness Lore, druids and Knowledge (nature), bards and Diplomacy, wizards and Spellcraft, etc.) or are not skills that see use during game-play (Alchemy, Craft, Profession, Heal) on a regular basis. It’s fine if the witch were to outright replace one or more similar classes, but this won’t be the case most of the time; as it is, there’s no reason to play a witch when existing classes do the same job as well (at worst) or better (usually). I just can’t sell this class or three of the five prestige classes—witch-priest and witch’s champion are the exceptions—to Joe Gamer. I’m sorry, but that’s how I see it.
Fortunately, Chapter Two isn’t so dire. This chapter goes over notes for uses of skills that already exist—Concentration for enduring long ritual magic castings, Heal to aid childbirth, etc.—and a slew of new feats that play off the strengths of a witch character. The best parts of this slim chapter are the notes for Heal, Knowledge (nature) and Profession (herbalist), Sympathetic Spell, Spell Trap and the Swarm Shape feat. The others are neat, but they fall into the realms of skill boosting (Canny, Empathic: 2 to Bluff & Sense Motive or Diplomacy & Sense Motive, respectively.), stat-swappers (Use Wisdom for another attribute to determine skill bonuses, saving throw bonuses, AC bonus, etc.) or better for NPCs (Soothsay: grants use of augery once a day, Lunar Magic: lunar cycle aides or screws your caster level as the cycle goes, Sacrifice Spell: Inflict attribute damage to pay for other metamagic feats).
The notes for the above-mentioned skills are just as applicable—and more useful—for druid characters, as it goes into just enough detail to provide a campaign with sufficient depth to make using these greater systems worthwhile. Characters that focus upon folk medicine are far more viable with this additional information than they’d be otherwise; they have the ability to poison others, treat those so poisoned, find useful stuff in the wild (clean water, the right herbs, etc.) and otherwise fill the void when magical healing isn’t available or applicable.
As for the feats, they’re truly worthwhile. Spell Trap allows a spell-caster to make magic traps, either on the cheap for one-shot traps or with some expense for permanent ones, at no boost in the spell level slot needed to use this feat. Sympathetic Spell allows a caster to waive all ranges—the spell acts as if the caster touched the target—so long as both the caster and the target are on the same plane and the caster has a piece of the target (a bit of hair, nail clippings, etc. for a living target; a sliver or other shard otherwise), but the cost is that the spell uses a slot three spell levels higher than normal. Swarm Shape allows a character that possesses either polymorph self or wild shape the option of transforming into a group of smaller creatures equal to or less than the character’s hit dice. All of these feats are welcome additions to the corpus of d20 feats, as all of them fill a missing niche and are immediately useful to players and DMs alike.
I confess a certain concern for Sympathetic Spell, though, once a caster gains 6th level spell slots. At that time, a sorcerer or wizard could use this feat to toss fireball spells to any target from which he could obtain a link. This would exacerbate a problem that is already hard to deal with, and that’s the scry-buff- teleport-ambush problem that arises in the game at 9th or 10th level (which is when teleport enters your average campaign). If this feat isn’t regulated somehow the hit-and-fade routines become the end of a barrage of Sympathetic fireball spells, hold person spells, poison spells, vampiric touch spells, etc. before the actual hit squad teleports in to finish the job. (It only gets worse from there; imagine using that feat with 6th level spells like disintegrate, flesh to stone and harm.) D&D isn’t a game of high-fantasy Mafia-style hits upon like-powered targets; it’s a game of fantasy adventure. Things like this are bad because they destroy the fun of the game, but I hesitate to advise a ban of this feat because it grants magic a much-desired flexibility that is otherwise severely lacking in the game. (It doesn’t help that Sympathetic Spell is the one feat that makes witches dangerous on the whole, so I am doubly reluctant to advise a ban.) Tread carefully with Sympathetic Spell.
Chapter Three goes into the iconic tools and capabilities of witchcraft, as is commonly believed in the source materials. The optional spell component rule, whereby witches may switch herbal items for certain spells, is a good idea and (if the witch class is used) ought to be adopted. The chart with common herbal remedies for common ailments is useful and worth having, as are the herbal poisons below it. The brief descriptions of well-known herbs, followed by advice on making up fictional ones, are appreciated for its utility. While not so useful, the descriptions of the witch’s ritual items is also appreciated for its directness; a canny DM will find ways to make use of the symbolism for his own adventures. The alchemical items are useful, both in applicability to PCs and as a means for PCs who (somehow) lack an income to generate and sustain one. But, as usual, it’s the magic items that get the most attention and these are a nice group of useful items.
From the magic candles—spells imbued in candles and used akin to potions—to the slew of new potions, there is something here for everyone. The scroll-like rune wands are neat and novel, the staves are practical and iconic, the new rod is a god-send when employing the ritual magic rules in the next chapter and the wondrous items (cursed and otherwise) are both in keeping with the witch’s magical theme and applicable without having to use the witch class in Chapter One. The pentacle of power and the spell stone are of special note to players and DMs of all sorts, as they enhance a spell-caster’s capability a lot. The cursed items, while few in number, are as devious as they are iconic; I expect a lot of use out of the cursed candle and the apple of eternal sleep. This is all good stuff, from the start of the chapter to the end.
Chapter Four has the ritual magic rules, the spell list for the witch class and the new spells that go with it. I went over the spell list above, so I won’t rehash that here. The ritual magic rules expand upon the power of all spell-casters in a way similiar to Sympathetic Spell. The gist of the rules is this: by spending a great deal more time and money than usual, a spell-caster may get around the limits of his spell-casting capabilities.
The spell-caster does this by using something called “bonus levels”, which he may use to pay the costs of metamagic feats, raise the Difficulty Class (DC) to resist the effect by one per level, increase the caster level by one per bonus level for purposes of caster checks or for other spell effects (range, duration, damage, etc.). The combined total of the spell level cast and the bonus levels used can’t be greater than the highest spell level open to the caster, and he can’t exceed the spell’s normal limits. In this manner, a 10th level witch using Sympathetic Spell may use blindness/deafness upon a target miles away. Time spent doing such rituals usually doesn’t last more 15-20 minutes; it’s often only 1-2 minutes, which is a long time only during a combat encounter. The gold spent is often 100 or less.
On top of the basic ritual magic rules are the circle magic rules, wherein a caster may work in concert with others to perform ritual magic. The spells take longer to cast, and the costs for doing so are greater, but the benefits are greater. The caster gains bonus levels to enhance the spell from the circle he works with; there are formulae that help a DM determine this number. He can also gain bonus levels from power components, casting at a place of power and casting at the right time. All bonus levels stack, and the caster can use them for the same things that solo ritual magic allows. It’s unclear if the same limits apply—the examples imply that they don’t—and if they don’t, then that is the biggest reason to work in concert whenever possible.
There is a sidebar that addresses ritual spell failure and its consequences. Blowing such a thing is a nasty thing, so interested players should take note that Concentration is the skill to develop if you want to play a hardcore ritualist. (Oh, and by the way, dump Wizards’ lame Cooperative Spell feat for these rules; this is definitely the way to play out ritual magic in damn near any d20 RPG that allows magic, including such products as Wizards’ d20 Modern and Cryptosnark Games’ Deeds Not Words.) Failing a Concentration check by five or more is the way to certain doom, which always makes a great adventure hook.
This is the best part of the book by far, and I again heartily recommend adopting these ritual magic rules across the d20 community right away. I shall do so for my games. Thank you Mr. Kenson and Green Ronin!
As for the new spells, I dig ‘em all. Most are witch-only, but some of the rest fall into one of the primary spell-caster lists. Agony is a great anti-fighter spell as it stuns the target and stops him from moving for the duration, bestow curse gets a much-needed expansion of effects, and crafter’s blessing/crafter’s curse are effective as well as appropriate. (Either a 10 or –10 competence modifier to all Craft checks for a week.) The up-gunned versions of agony, charm person, sleep, and polymorph other are damned nice and very fitting. (Either they effect groups of targets, or they put one target permanently under the caster’s control.) Quicken healing is a nice spell to use upon those who can afford to take the time to heal naturally, especially in conjunction with using the Heal skill for long-term care, due to its doubling of the target’s natural healing rate.
One spell, however, strikes me as underpowered and that’s call the wyld hunt. The stat block for the entities called by this 9th level spell aren’t any better than the monsters that a wizard can get via summon monster VII and they certainly pale compared to what he can call via the 8th level Conjuration (Calling) spell greater planar binding. As call the wyld hunt is also a Conjuration (Calling) spell, but one spell level higher, I expect the Wyld Hunt to be better than the 24 hit dice that greater planar binding calls forth. 30-40 hit dice ought to be about right for the entire group, with about half of that for the Huntsman.
In conclusion, The Witch’s Handbook is a decidedly mixed bag. The witch class doesn’t deliver on its promise, the prestige classes are also a mixed bag, and Sympathetic Spell is one big piece of trouble unless handled very carefully. On the other hand the ritual magic rules rock the house, the new mundane and magical items are well-designed and make for a great addition to the game, the expanded skills are a boon to everyone—especially for druids—and the new feats add capabilities that were long desired by the player network in an easy-to-use and playable fashion. If you don’t have a problem with expanding the witch’s spell list, if you’re not concerned about Sympathetic Spell or you don’t care if you ignore a fourth of the book’s content then snatch up a copy right away. Otherwise, you can make do without it; none of is must-have stuff, and that’s a good thing. Your mileage will vary, as usual.
I await the next book in Green Ronin’s Master Class series.
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