Honestly, my new favorite class. The witch is extremely well-designed and manages to bring fresh flavor to a game already saturated with every kind of magic-user imaginable. It emphasizes curses and hexes, making it an excellent status caster / battlefield controller - my favorite thing to play. But more importantly, it absolutely oozes charm: with subclasses like the Tea Witch and Gingerbread Witch, familiars like the yarn golem and the pet rock, and a class feature simply titled "Cackle," the witch hits basically everything I could want in a single class. It will be difficult to convince me to play any other spellcasting class from now on.

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2020/10/5e-witch-project-complete-witch.html

Complete Witch from Mage Hand Press

This book is 41 pages (cover, table of contents, credits, OGL, for 37 pages of content).

This PDF sells for $5.99, but currently is $4.99 for the Halloween sales. Given that the art is more expensive for an OGL book than a DMsGuild book I am not sure if my 10 cents per page rule of thumb is appropriate anymore. In any case, this one is very close to that.

If my expectations were for better art, design and production then Mage Hand has met those expectations and surpassed them. The layout is extremely clean and readable. The art is fantastic and liberally used. The cover in particular is very dynamic. This is a product that grabs your attention.

The witch class itself is a full 20 level caster with spells to the 9th level. The witch has a number of cantrips known and a maximum number of spells known. This witch also gets something called “Hexes” at the first level and these progress. The witch has 1d8 HD. She is a charisma based spell caster and can cast ritual spells. Ok so far every box has been checked.

Each witch also has a curse. Now this is a nice touch and I really like it. I am not going to detail the curses here, you should really buy it to see, but I am very, very fond of the Burned, Hideous and Hallow. But the coolest is Visions. As a DM I’d use that one to my advantage.

As the witch progresses she gains other powers. Most notably the Hexes. These are roughly equal to the Hexes of the Pathfinder Witch or even of the Occult Powers of my witches. There are a good number of them, including Grand Hexes.

The Archetypes of this Witch are the Witch’s Crafts. I would call these Traditions and others call them Covens. But regardless of the names, they work really well. Each craft gains a list of additional spells and choices of Hexes unique to that craft. There are 14 different Crafts. I would have gone for 13 myself, but hey I am not going to complain here. Special shout out for the Tea Magic Witches.

IF that was all that this publication gave us, then frankly I would call myself happy and been good. But that is only half the book.

Up next we get a Chapter (yes a proper chapter) on Familiars. There are many new ones introduced here too. There are 17 here including the very inspired Pet Rock (I am nor joking! I love it!)

Chapter 3 covers spells. This is the witches' spell list AND new spells. There are 18 new spells here. For a D&D 5 book that is a lot. But again, that is not everything we also get some new Dark Rituals. There are 11 of these and they remind me a lot, in form and function, of the Ritual Spells I also give my witches. They are very well done.

We get a new god/monster/elder thing.

We end with an Appendix on Epic Boons! (This is a first!)

At 41 pages, this one packs a huge punch.

I can’t find a single issue with this product save for a couple of nit-picky layout issues. It is really, really good.

I had very high expectations and this product met and surpassed them all.

This class has loads of flavor baked in, and creates a lot of interesting roleplay opportunities. It definitely focuses on debuffing enemies in and out of combat, which is a fun difference from most official options. I'm currently playing a little old granny witch with the tea magic archetype, and having so much fun with it.