Currently playing a Winter Witch lich and it's pretty great. Witches can combine their spellbooks with the lich spellbook, meaning you end up multiple levels ahead in terms of spell progression for lich. In addition, the lich has access to a toggleable ability to make all spells do cold damage and render enemies vulnerable to cold damage for a certain number of turns. Use an AOE necromancy spell, then use an AOE frost spell, and watch huge swaths of enemies freeze to death (especially fun if you have the sorcerous reflex ability to let you do this turn 1 of an engagement by casting both spells on the same turn). This is likely to be the class I go for when I play lich on release.
I was thinking of doing the same except going shaman with the frost spirit to get Mass Icy Prison but the lich uses arcane spells which makes me have to give up medium armor or deal with the arcane spell failure chance, and that toggle ability is INT based so not really optimal but witches don't get Mass Icy Prison.
With lich somewhat mitigating the loss of spell progression, one might even consider a Lich with Sorcerer (Elemental Bloodline Water) 1/Witch 9/Winter Witch 10, going for an always available option to change your energy types to cold damage. Can't remember of the top of my head however if that ability changes the spell descriptor to cold in the game like it should.
They actually seem to have opened this class up a lot, the only way to become a Winter Witch in the pen & paper game is to be the Winter Witch Archetype for Witches to get the ice magic feature.
Creating it now in the launch game, getting the frozen rays at will also feels pretty close to the elementalist I’m excited to evolve it with later levels!
i loled so hard when i didn't finish the video and saw the has frost requirement i was like so you are telling me a witch can't become the winter witch lol
Unearthly cold is unfortunately really underwhelming considering Ascendant Element (Cold) is just superior to this capstone feature of the prestige class.
It is yes, but you get unearthly cold for just being a winter witch where as you have to spend one of five mythic feats you can get on Ascendant Element.
@@MortismalGaming sure, but in my opinion, saving one mythic ability (which you'll probably regain by sacrifing a mythic feat as casters generally don't need those >as much
Ascendant Element would be a great addition in tandem with this class, there isn’t much sacrifice to get heightened caster levels and heightened DCs for cold spells. A fire specialized wizard would have a hard time getting numbers that high.
@@dominikbehrendt1934 At least in the PnP you can mitigate the spells per day-problem with a feat, we'll see if they will also implement that into this game.
There is a mythic perk that removes all resistances to element damage, that kills this prestige-class entirely. Also Elemental Specialist subclass can turn any spell damage to his favorite element and after reaching lvl 15 deals half of his damage as non-elemental (ignores elemental resistances). Besides all that fire damage seems more profitable, because this game doesn't provide as much items for cold damagers as for fire ones. Thre is an item that buffs all fire damage with additional 2d6 / 3d6 or about. No such items for cold. For cold you have 1 hat (+1 damage per dice), 1 shield (+1 damage per dice) and 1 ring that does the same effect as 1 lvl of winter witch perk. To sum up, this class seems to be profitable only if you don't know how to improve your witch more. Witch hex autocast + spells looks more promising for lazy players then any Wizard/Sorcerer stuff, because these guys have shitty cantrips, that don't scale (though their spells are stronger).
Interesting, as the pen and paper had the archetype of winter witch which gave the ice magic class feature (any spell with cold descriptor is DC+1), thus enabling you to take winter witch prestige class later. Seeing as that has been baked into the prestige class, I wonder if they took the archetype out as it would be too confusing? Strange thing to omit, though, as it came with other things and didn't have the restriction of patron quite as heavily as this version - ancestors, deception, enchantment, endurance, moon, occult, portents, stars, transformation, trickery, water, winter, or wisdom.
Is there anyway for a Stigamatized Witch to pick this? Is there an Oracle Curse that satisfies the requirement? Additionally, do you maintain progress toward Major and Grand hexes being unlocked? Like if you were 5 W and 5WW you'd get to pick from Major Hexes at that point?
There is no way to turn A Stigmatized Witch like Ember into a Winter witch, unless you multi class her into a shaman and pick frost. Likewise, Camellia can only become a winter Witch if you multi class her into a Winter Patron'd Leyline/Elemental Witch. And yes, hex progression is kept.
Wait, do I see this correctly? the class increases witch/shaman spellcasting AND SPELLCASTING OF ANY ONE DIVINE CLASS YOU HAD PREVIOUSLY? If that is the case you could go Witch 5/Cleric 1/WinterWitch 10 and for the low price of 1 cleric level you'd get 11 levels of cleric casting! That is amazing!
It's pretty awesome (or should I say co- OK no I won't) that they let you go Winter Witch as a Shaman. I question it's value though. Shaman don't seem to have many cold spells by default, sure Frost Spirit helps you out, but you can only cast those spells once per day per spell level. So 9 max, many 10 if you gain merge with Angel as some people suspect will be the case by launch. They're still missing one Shaman archetype, right? Since there's 6 but that includes the Half-Orce racial one, which they don't count. I wonder if they'll add an Ecclesitheurge-esque archetype? Still if you can merge Shaman with Angel by launch, I will definitely be playing Shaman-Winter Witch. Unless I change my mind by launch which I totally could, I'm definitely also interested in what they've said about Loremaster.
@@SamBrockmann I don't need to, I just want to, in order to get the higher level spells earlier. I want to play a class all about killing all the demons with divine spells, and merging spell books get me that faster.
@@SamBrockmann Uh, you are entirely to supposed to be able stack them, that's how the merging works. The game says "Do you want to merge you Angel powers with you Cleric/Oracle/Whatever powers" and you say yes, or no. You can keep them separate to get more spells over all, or merge them to get the regular number of spells faster/
@@SamBrockmann Dude the mythic system in this game isn't in any other format. They developed it specifically for this game, it doesn't use the PnP mythic system. I don't see how it's unreasonable for me to want to merge my Shaman and Angel spell casting.
@@SamBrockmann Bruh, why are you so aggressive if you don't even know the mechanics he's talking about? Lich & Angel are the caster mythic paths. They give you levels of Arcane and divine spellcasting, respectively. So if you're a Fighter 20 and Angel 10, you have 10 levels of divine spellcasting even though your class has none natively. But. If you have the matching type of spellcasting, say a Shaman's divine spellcasting and then select Angel or a wizard's arcane spellcasting and become a Lich, the game offers you to merge your class spellbook with your mythic spellbook. meaning you can have a max spellcaster level of 30. Or 32 for cold spells as winter witch! ...though since most spells still cap out at effective spellcaster level 20, that mostly affects your spell/day and spells known. Mythic paths are all about being brokenly good. You're fighting demon lords while being empowered by equally mythical powers! Just as an example, with extend metamagic and certain mythic feats, you can make spells that normally last rounds/level to last hours/level! So you trying to roast this man over wanting to combine things that are MEANT TO COMBINE is really bizarre, my dude.
quick question... does the Elemental Bloodline Arcana (water) apply to Winter Witch passives that increase all Cold spells? like if i have the water elemental bloodline from sorc, and use the passive to change all energy damage to match my water element, such as using burning hands to do cold damage. would the passives from winter witch effect this - such as Unearthly Cold and Freezing Cold.
Still getting my head around prestige classes. I like the idea of the Hagbound witch. Will Winter Witch prevent me from getting the Hagbound lvl 20 transformation, or will it carry on the class progression of Hagbound?
So by putting levels into winter witch, do i lock myself out of getting level 7+ spells? Like a witch 10/ winter witch 10 can't get access to power word kill?
Honestly? I'm not particularly a fan of effects that increase caster levels unless I'm multiclassing into a non-caster class, because most of the spells have a max amount at which point caster levels stop having any effect, if there's another use for them please let me know? Because as it is I feel like I'm missing something
It depends on which spells you're focusing on using. Polar Ray is an 8th level spell which does 1d6 per caster level with a max of 25d6. Discounting the Lich mythic path, and possible items (I don't know of any in the game that could help, but they may exist) the only way to hit that would be having the +2 from Spell Specialization feat, the +2 from Winter Witch class, and the +1 from the School Mastery mythic feat at level 20. Likewise, even with the Lich mythic path, Icy Prison and the mass version have no damage cap... granted they only do 1 damage per caster level per round. Even with the cap, that's more for min/maxing end-game. While leveling, the cap won't apply a large amount of the time, so you're just doing more damage earlier in the game, even if that damage from that particular spell will fall off eventually. Caster level is especially great for Necromancy school though, since Finger of Death, Destruction, and Wail of the Banshee all do 10 damage per caster level with no cap. There are a couple of other, weaker necromancy spells with no damage cap too.
I played full cold damage sorc in kingmaker. Too few cold spells available. Winter Witch has the same issue, but the payoff is way better and some mythics have exclusive cold spells (Aeon and lich I think).
@@MortismalGaming Thank you for all your work with this in Beta Im not feeling so lost now in the game ^^ not quite sure what is the best build companion wise so leaving them on Auto atm. What Mythic class would u suggest with Winter witch?
Meh, I don't know... I mean with the mythic feat that eliminates resistances to an energy type I think a sorcerer/wizard would make a better frost mage. Cool concept, but with the mythic abilities having effectively eliminated all wizard's and sorcerer's disadvantages it is hard to justify playing any other blaster caster, at least from a mechanics point of view. Still a very nice PrC for rp.
Currently playing a Winter Witch lich and it's pretty great. Witches can combine their spellbooks with the lich spellbook, meaning you end up multiple levels ahead in terms of spell progression for lich. In addition, the lich has access to a toggleable ability to make all spells do cold damage and render enemies vulnerable to cold damage for a certain number of turns. Use an AOE necromancy spell, then use an AOE frost spell, and watch huge swaths of enemies freeze to death (especially fun if you have the sorcerous reflex ability to let you do this turn 1 of an engagement by casting both spells on the same turn).
This is likely to be the class I go for when I play lich on release.
I was thinking of doing the same except going shaman with the frost spirit to get Mass Icy Prison but the lich uses arcane spells which makes me have to give up medium armor or deal with the arcane spell failure chance, and that toggle ability is INT based so not really optimal but witches don't get Mass Icy Prison.
With lich somewhat mitigating the loss of spell progression, one might even consider a Lich with Sorcerer (Elemental Bloodline Water) 1/Witch 9/Winter Witch 10, going for an always available option to change your energy types to cold damage. Can't remember of the top of my head however if that ability changes the spell descriptor to cold in the game like it should.
@@dominikbehrendt1934 Hmm. That does sound like a pretty good idea to me.
Makes me think of World of warcraft's Lich King sort of. Sounds really cool.
Wow can't believe you just did exactly what I have been grinding to do. haven't been a lich yet. Still trying. Now I don't feel special tho
I can finally fulfill my lifelong dream of role playing as Disney's Frozen character
Let it go….
They actually seem to have opened this class up a lot, the only way to become a Winter Witch in the pen & paper game is to be the Winter Witch Archetype for Witches to get the ice magic feature.
Thank you for this and all your videos! Seriously no videos on Winter Witch yet other than this.
First just wanna say dude you are literally my favorite content creator.!
Character creation porn at it's finest 😂
🤣🤣🤣
really a great prestige class, just great for shaman or witch that don't usually pack so much damage from their spells... now they do.
Creating it now in the launch game, getting the frozen rays at will also feels pretty close to the elementalist I’m excited to evolve it with later levels!
i loled so hard when i didn't finish the video and saw the has frost requirement i was like so you are telling me a witch can't become the winter witch lol
This one looks fun
Winter is added as a Patron for witches that can give you access to Winter Witch
Ohh sounds frosty haha
glad to see a rather intersting class, feels like many of these new archetypes are boring and not unique enough
Unearthly cold is unfortunately really underwhelming considering Ascendant Element (Cold) is just superior to this capstone feature of the prestige class.
It is yes, but you get unearthly cold for just being a winter witch where as you have to spend one of five mythic feats you can get on Ascendant Element.
@@MortismalGaming sure, but in my opinion, saving one mythic ability (which you'll probably regain by sacrifing a mythic feat as casters generally don't need those >as much
This is however extremely valuable if you pick the Legend Path, allowing you to make up for losing the Ascendant Element Mythic Ability.
Ascendant Element would be a great addition in tandem with this class, there isn’t much sacrifice to get heightened caster levels and heightened DCs for cold spells. A fire specialized wizard would have a hard time getting numbers that high.
@@dominikbehrendt1934 At least in the PnP you can mitigate the spells per day-problem with a feat, we'll see if they will also implement that into this game.
There is a mythic perk that removes all resistances to element damage, that kills this prestige-class entirely. Also Elemental Specialist subclass can turn any spell damage to his favorite element and after reaching lvl 15 deals half of his damage as non-elemental (ignores elemental resistances). Besides all that fire damage seems more profitable, because this game doesn't provide as much items for cold damagers as for fire ones. Thre is an item that buffs all fire damage with additional 2d6 / 3d6 or about. No such items for cold. For cold you have 1 hat (+1 damage per dice), 1 shield (+1 damage per dice) and 1 ring that does the same effect as 1 lvl of winter witch perk. To sum up, this class seems to be profitable only if you don't know how to improve your witch more. Witch hex autocast + spells looks more promising for lazy players then any Wizard/Sorcerer stuff, because these guys have shitty cantrips, that don't scale (though their spells are stronger).
Elemental specialist has more flavor too. It is hard to find something more magical than an ice cold flame 🔥
Cool.
...
Aight I'll see myself out.
Always liked the winter witch
Interesting, as the pen and paper had the archetype of winter witch which gave the ice magic class feature (any spell with cold descriptor is DC+1), thus enabling you to take winter witch prestige class later. Seeing as that has been baked into the prestige class, I wonder if they took the archetype out as it would be too confusing? Strange thing to omit, though, as it came with other things and didn't have the restriction of patron quite as heavily as this version - ancestors, deception, enchantment, endurance, moon, occult, portents, stars, transformation, trickery, water, winter, or wisdom.
I'm guessing they didn't want the names to overlap, and decided to make it simpler
@@MortismalGaming But there are already two different Divine Hunter classes (Paladin and Hunter) so that seems like an odd call.
There is a winter witch archetype in the paper game
Is there anyway for a Stigamatized Witch to pick this? Is there an Oracle Curse that satisfies the requirement?
Additionally, do you maintain progress toward Major and Grand hexes being unlocked? Like if you were 5 W and 5WW you'd get to pick from Major Hexes at that point?
There is no way to turn A Stigmatized Witch like Ember into a Winter witch, unless you multi class her into a shaman and pick frost. Likewise, Camellia can only become a winter Witch if you multi class her into a Winter Patron'd Leyline/Elemental Witch. And yes, hex progression is kept.
Let it go. Let it go!
Wait, do I see this correctly? the class increases witch/shaman spellcasting AND SPELLCASTING OF ANY ONE DIVINE CLASS YOU HAD PREVIOUSLY? If that is the case you could go Witch 5/Cleric 1/WinterWitch 10 and for the low price of 1 cleric level you'd get 11 levels of cleric casting! That is amazing!
no, this is not mystic theurge, only one class increases
That is definitely how it reads but I can confirm that does not work.
That's a shame
Seems pretty cool if you ask me
It's pretty awesome (or should I say co- OK no I won't) that they let you go Winter Witch as a Shaman. I question it's value though.
Shaman don't seem to have many cold spells by default, sure Frost Spirit helps you out, but you can only cast those spells once per day per spell level. So 9 max, many 10 if you gain merge with Angel as some people suspect will be the case by launch. They're still missing one Shaman archetype, right? Since there's 6 but that includes the Half-Orce racial one, which they don't count. I wonder if they'll add an Ecclesitheurge-esque archetype?
Still if you can merge Shaman with Angel by launch, I will definitely be playing Shaman-Winter Witch. Unless I change my mind by launch which I totally could, I'm definitely also interested in what they've said about Loremaster.
@@SamBrockmann I don't need to, I just want to, in order to get the higher level spells earlier. I want to play a class all about killing all the demons with divine spells, and merging spell books get me that faster.
@@SamBrockmann Don't see how wanting to kill demons with divine spells is cheesing the system.
@@SamBrockmann Uh, you are entirely to supposed to be able stack them, that's how the merging works. The game says "Do you want to merge you Angel powers with you Cleric/Oracle/Whatever powers" and you say yes, or no. You can keep them separate to get more spells over all, or merge them to get the regular number of spells faster/
@@SamBrockmann Dude the mythic system in this game isn't in any other format. They developed it specifically for this game, it doesn't use the PnP mythic system. I don't see how it's unreasonable for me to want to merge my Shaman and Angel spell casting.
@@SamBrockmann Bruh, why are you so aggressive if you don't even know the mechanics he's talking about?
Lich & Angel are the caster mythic paths. They give you levels of Arcane and divine spellcasting, respectively. So if you're a Fighter 20 and Angel 10, you have 10 levels of divine spellcasting even though your class has none natively. But. If you have the matching type of spellcasting, say a Shaman's divine spellcasting and then select Angel or a wizard's arcane spellcasting and become a Lich, the game offers you to merge your class spellbook with your mythic spellbook. meaning you can have a max spellcaster level of 30. Or 32 for cold spells as winter witch! ...though since most spells still cap out at effective spellcaster level 20, that mostly affects your spell/day and spells known.
Mythic paths are all about being brokenly good. You're fighting demon lords while being empowered by equally mythical powers! Just as an example, with extend metamagic and certain mythic feats, you can make spells that normally last rounds/level to last hours/level!
So you trying to roast this man over wanting to combine things that are MEANT TO COMBINE is really bizarre, my dude.
can you do loremaster next if it's available? really interested in that!
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quick question... does the Elemental Bloodline Arcana (water) apply to Winter Witch passives that increase all Cold spells?
like if i have the water elemental bloodline from sorc, and use the passive to change all energy damage to match my water element, such as using burning hands to do cold damage. would the passives from winter witch effect this - such as Unearthly Cold and Freezing Cold.
It would be cold damage, so it should. However, you wouldn't gain any spells per day progression for your sorc, so you'd need to be Legend.
Very helpful
So, is Winter Witch basically a shoo-in for Ember then?
She gets a lot of fire spells etc from her patron etc so I wouldn't recommend it but you could probably still make it work
@@MortismalGaming Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that. I should have remembered, given that she's burned at the stake and everything.
@@MortismalGaming Except Ember can't qualify since her Patron isn't Winter, she needs to basically multiclass into Frost Shaman to get in.
Still getting my head around prestige classes. I like the idea of the Hagbound witch. Will Winter Witch prevent me from getting the Hagbound lvl 20 transformation, or will it carry on the class progression of Hagbound?
Yeah you won't get the level 20 ability for hagbound unless you have 20 levels in hagbound
If you still want to do it the Legend mythic path raise your max level to 40
Will winter witch perks stack with rage of ice greatsword?
So by putting levels into winter witch, do i lock myself out of getting level 7+ spells? Like a witch 10/ winter witch 10 can't get access to power word kill?
I don't think so, you choose a spellbook for winter witch levels to scale with so it shouldn't even interrupt spell progression unlike eldritch knight
Honestly? I'm not particularly a fan of effects that increase caster levels unless I'm multiclassing into a non-caster class, because most of the spells have a max amount at which point caster levels stop having any effect, if there's another use for them please let me know? Because as it is I feel like I'm missing something
It depends on which spells you're focusing on using. Polar Ray is an 8th level spell which does 1d6 per caster level with a max of 25d6. Discounting the Lich mythic path, and possible items (I don't know of any in the game that could help, but they may exist) the only way to hit that would be having the +2 from Spell Specialization feat, the +2 from Winter Witch class, and the +1 from the School Mastery mythic feat at level 20. Likewise, even with the Lich mythic path, Icy Prison and the mass version have no damage cap... granted they only do 1 damage per caster level per round.
Even with the cap, that's more for min/maxing end-game. While leveling, the cap won't apply a large amount of the time, so you're just doing more damage earlier in the game, even if that damage from that particular spell will fall off eventually.
Caster level is especially great for Necromancy school though, since Finger of Death, Destruction, and Wail of the Banshee all do 10 damage per caster level with no cap. There are a couple of other, weaker necromancy spells with no damage cap too.
I went for a full cold magic Dragon Disciple when messing around with a cold mage in Kingmaker. Is it worth going this as an MC instead?
I played full cold damage sorc in kingmaker. Too few cold spells available. Winter Witch has the same issue, but the payoff is way better and some mythics have exclusive cold spells (Aeon and lich I think).
Trying to use Winter Witch to build Iceman hehe
Kinda annoyed the Shaman and Witch companions are both not setup to get this class
soooo......is an arthas build viable?
Doesn't Ascendant Element-Cold kind of nullify Unearthly Cold?
Yes
do u have to go Elemental Witch for witch to get access to this Prestige class?
Yeah they renamed it
@@MortismalGaming Thank you for all your work with this in Beta Im not feeling so lost now in the game ^^ not quite sure what is the best build companion wise so leaving them on Auto atm. What Mythic class would u suggest with Winter witch?
would winter witch work with unlettered arcanist?
No, you wouldn't continue spell progression for that class at all
Meh, I don't know... I mean with the mythic feat that eliminates resistances to an energy type I think a sorcerer/wizard would make a better frost mage. Cool concept, but with the mythic abilities having effectively eliminated all wizard's and sorcerer's disadvantages it is hard to justify playing any other blaster caster, at least from a mechanics point of view.
Still a very nice PrC for rp.