Introduction
This article covers the remastered version of the Witch. For help with the legacy Witch, see our Legacy Witch Handbook.
Hexes are the Witch’s Focus Spells. Most are cast as a single Action, making them easy to fit into your action economy. However, you’re limited to one per turn, so you can’t rely solely on hexes in combat. Hexes typically impose status effects, and while a few can deal direct damage, they won’t compete with direct damage spells and you shouldn’t try to use them like Ignite or Fireball. Hexes shine when you’re using them to support yourself your party’s other capabilities.
Hexes are available via certain class feats, especially the various Lessons feats. See our Witch Feats Breakdown for more.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
Focus Spells – Hexes
Focus Cantrips – Hex Cantrips
- (PC1): A great option for squeezing a little bit of damage out of a single Action. If the target fails the saving throw, you can Sustain the Spell for up to a minute to maintain the speed penalty. However, the target is immune for one minute once this spell ends, so you can’t repeatedly hit the same target. This is the only damaging Hex Cantrip, but you can’t use it like other damagin cantrips due to that immunity.
- (PC1): Every +1 is impactful in PF2, and since checks to Recall Knowledge, Seek, and Sense Motive are all very common you can get a lot of mileage out of this. In combat, this lets you gift an Action to another creature, potentially allowing someone with a better modifier to do the work for you. When you hit level 9 and this is Heightened to 5th-level spells, you can have two creatures act, one of which could be you but still doesn’t need to be.
- (PC1): Impose Sickened 1 or 2, and you can Sustain it for a minute. The target
doesn’t get temporary immunity, so if you’re not happy with your result of if
they spend Actions to remove the effect, you can use it again.
Remaster Changes: Prior to the remaster, this imposed the Frightened condition. The status penalty from the two conditions is equivalent, but Sickened is harder to remove than Frightened.
- (PC1): Basically a better version of Guidance, which is already good. The target only becomes temporarily immune if they use the effect, and they only use the effect if the +1 actually makes a difference. Even then, the immunity is only for one minute rather than an hour. The only disappointing part is that you can’t turn a Success into a Critical Success. Cast this one someone in your party before you walk into combat.
- (PC1): Darkvision is common, but Superior Darkvision is not, so this is broadly useful against powerful single enemies. Concealed imposes a 20% miss chance, offering broad protection for your whole party.
- (PC1): A nice, reliable buff. At low levels where players might be doing 1d8+4 damage with attacks, +2 damage is a nice boost. At high levels you’ll want to use this for brief periods when you need a big spike of damage, such as when you’re about to Fireball a room, but you likely won’t have it running all the time.
- (PC1): A great defensive option against single enemies. Even if the target
succeeds on its save, it still takes a penalty to hit you. This will be more
effective if you spend more time on the front lines drawing attacks, which
isn’t great for the Witch, but it’s fantastic for front-line characters
looking at the Witch Archetype.
Remaster Changes: Prior the remaster, this could only target animals, fungi, and plants. Now those creatures take a -1 penalty to the save.
1st-Level Focus Spells
- (PC1): +1 or +2 to saving throws and AC. It’s against a single creature type, but typically you can pick the most problematic creature type in the encounter and slap this on your party’s Defender. The Action cost of this spell may seem steep, but compare it to the Raise a Shield action, which doesn’t boost your saving throws, can’t be applied to an ally, and provides a more common Circumstance bonus.
- (PC1): Sustain a Spell as a Free Action. This is a powerful capability that most
casters can’t get until very high levels, but you get to do it at the cost
of a Focus Point.
Many Hexes (including Hex Cantrips) have a 1-minute duration and must be Sustained, making the Cackle Hex a powerful option (though expensive since it is itself a Hex and therefore consumes a Focus Point) until you can get Effortless Concentration at 16th level. Even then, the ability to Sustain two spells without spending an Action is a massive tactical advantage.
Remaster Changes: Prior to the Remaster, the difficulty of recovering multiple Focus Points made Cackle expensive and frustrating, but the updated rules for Refocus make this much easier to use. If you never use another Hex in your whole career, Cackle can still have a huge impact.
- (PC1): A small but notable amount of additional damage, especially if multiple
people in your party can deal additional damage of the right type. Look for
sources of ongoing damage and pile on as many small sources of damage as you
can find.
You are also likely to be the person in your party most capable of dealing elemental damage of various types, so your allies may have difficulty contributing enough to make Elemental Betrayal worthwhile. If you’re the only one dealing the damage, skip this.
Remaster Changes: The Remaster changed stuff around the elements, introducing elemental metal and wood. Strangely, neither damage type is addressed in the Playing the Game section of the Player Core. It appears that simply using a metal or wood weapon is insufficient; you need something with the matching trait to trigger the Weakness, such as Needle Darts out of Rage of Elements.
- (PC1): Not a lot of healing, but it’s a single Action and any amount of healing will save an ally who is Dying. Since this is a Focus Spell you can use it outside of combat for effectively infinite healing, but remember that it won’t remove the Wounded condition so someone still needs to use Treat Wounds.
- (PC1): This triggers any time the target takes a “hostile action” against the
target, so it’s hard to sneak around this by doing things likes grappling
instead of attacking. The damage scales well with spell level, allowing you
to continue relying on this for your whole career.
The save is notably a Basic Save, so the target might take double damage, regular damage, half damage, or none at all, and it appears to be based on a single save made when you cast the spell. Targets don’t get temporary immunity after the spell ends like they would with many Hex Cantrips, so if the target succeeds on the save, you can try again the next round and Sustain the spell once you’re happy with the result.
- (PC1): Free Actions are very powerful. If you’re relying on your familiar in combat on a regular basis, this is absolutely essential.
- (PC1): Great if you tend to put your familiar in harm’s way, such as by having it deliver touch spells.
- (PC1): There are many Actions with the Concentrate trait, but unfortunately most of them are used by humanoids with class levels. Sure, you’ll face humanoid enemies but they’re the minority compared to various dragons and trolls of the world. The penalty against Sleep effects is neat, especially since it still applies even if the target rolls a Success on the save, but Sleep effects are rare. The most accessible is the spell Sleep, and since you get both from the Lesson of Dreams you get a ready-made combo from one feat. Unfortunately, beyond that combo you’ll get very little use out of Veil of Dreams.
3rd-Level Focus Spells
- (PC1): Illusory Disguise is on both the Arcane and Occult spell lists, so if you took either there is little reason to learn this. If you did take a different spell list, this is still a situational option at best.
- (PC1): A great offensive option, and the damage scales well. If you’re not already making attacks on your turn (rely on saving throw spells instead), the Multiple Attack Penalty isn’t a big problem for you. Sustain this once or twice per turn and use your remaining Actions to cast other spells which don’t require attacks.
- (PC1): Not much damage, and while it’s good that other creatures are Concealed
to the target, the target is also Concealed to other creatures so the storm
offers them a small amount of protection against attacks. The spell level
scaling is terrible, too. Since this makes it hard for your allies to target
the creature, expect your party to focus on attacking other creatures
instead, and try to rely on AOE effects when target creatures affected by
Personal Blizzard because AOE effects don’t care about the Concealed
condition.
This combines well with Elemental Betrayal, but remember that you need to Sustain both spells, which will make it hard to deal more cold damage in order to trigger the Weakness repeatedly.
5th-Level Focus Spells
- (PC1): A bit slow perhaps since it takes 3 rounds to kill the target in your best case scenario, but the damage is good and scales reasonably well with spell level. If you just need to kill someone and not worry about it too much, you could do a lot worse.
- (PC1): Too situational. This can help with some nasty effects, but they’re uncommon in most campaigns and can be handled by Restoration. Spending feats to lock yourself into this doesn’t make sense.
Legacy Witch Focus Spells
These Focus Spells have not been reprinted in the Remastered rules. A such, they are available for you to use as they are currently written. However, you may need to adapt things to match the updated rules.
Legacy Focus Cantrips
- Buzzing Bites (MoM) (rare): Excellent damage for 1 Action. If the target fails or critically fails the save, Sustain it to maintain the damage. Otherwise, expect to abandon the spell and spend that Action on something else..
- Pact Broker (DA) (rare): This will either diffuse a hostile situation or debuff your target. Because the result of the target’s save is reduced by one step, they’re very likely to take the debuff. Against powerful single enemies which rely on attacks, the attack and damage penalty can be massively impactful, but I probably wouldn’t use this against spellcasters.
- Spirit Object (DA) (rare): Decent damage, and the utility of picking a heavy object and making it walk around for you can solve some interesting problems.
1st-Level Legacy Focus Spells
- PA:169: A good way to make it difficult for enemies to move around in combat. If your party likes to stand still and trade blows, this won’t do much. If your party likes to move around a lot, this will put you at a major advantage..
3rd-Level Legacy Focus Spells
- Return the Favor (DA): An excellent amount of temporary hp with good scaling, and the 1-minute duration is easily enough to get through a fight.
5th-Level Legacy Focus Spells
- Glacial Heart (DA): Two Actions to deal decent single-target damage and Slow 1 your target even if they succeed on the save. The ongoing save has the Incapacitation trait, but the initial effect doesn’t, so even against tough enemies this is still good. Against enemies that aren’t above your level you can use this one on a target and leave them to gradually freeze while you deal with the rest of the encounter.
- Over the Coals (DA): The effect when the save triggers is good. The Persistent Damage is large even on a Success, so if you can force the save you can rack up quite a bit of damage over the course of an extended fight. The difficulty is in the subjective portions of the spell. You’re required to make a demand that’s not “obviously self-destructive”, and the target can either comply or take Persistent Damage. That makes this very difficult to use in combat because things that you care about in combat which would give you an advantage are obviously self-destructive (disarm yourself, give me your magic items, lie on the floor, etc.), and just asking your target to give you their wallet won’t help you win a fight. Your best bet may be to tell the target to flee, and then either they leave the encounter or they suffer damage.
