Pact Witch (Witch Archetype)
(art by HollyBell on DeviantArt)
The nature of witch magic is that the witch is granted their power through a pact with a patron of some kind, offering magical knowledge that taps into the oldest arcane secrets that were made known to mortals. Sometimes these patrons are fey, sometimes they are powerful magical entities, and sometimes they are even the servants of the various outer planes.
While they may still have a specific entity that acts as their patron, there are some witches that bind themselves not just to the patron but to an entire plane of existence, tapping into the energies of which to empower themselves and to gain the aid of its denizens.
In this way, the witch essentially swears an oath to the ideals that reflect that plane, from the righteousness of heaven to the selfish whims of the Abyss. Moreover, since they also get to pick their improved familiar later on, their specific oath may vary slightly. An abyssal pact witch with a quasit familiar has very different goals to one with a cynthigot.
Some may seek this pact merely for the power that aligns with their purposes, but others may see it as a higher calling to devote oneself to a cause. Either way, we’ll see what that looks like momentarily!
Getting right into it, the witch must choose one of the outer planes to bond with, and must maintain a similar moral compass to keep on the good side of their patron and keep their patron spells and their upgraded familiar (which, depending on how you interpret that, might either revert their familiar to their original form or outright deprive the witch of their familiar and therefore ability to prepare spells until atonement is offered).
Speaking of which, the patron does not offer the typical spells of a patron, instead offering a specific set tied to this archetype. These include protection against an opposing alignment, distortions in time, imbuing oneself with planar energies, conjuring aligned outsider allies for long-term services, as well as planar travel, banishing foes, and even opening up entire gates for a short while.
Additionally, the witch gains cosmetic features that reflect the plane they have bonded with, marking them as otherworldly even though the specifics vary even between witches of the same plane.
Finally, their bond also infuses their familiar, causing them to transform into an appropriate minor outsider familiar native to the plane, retaining all memory and intelligence, but in a different form. The options are not just vanilla celestials/monitors/fiends either. You can get a cassisian angel, a tripurasura asura, cynthigot qlippoth, or doru div if those suit your philosophy better.
This archetype gives up the customization of your patron spells, but gets you a free improved familiar, so that’s nice. As it stands, your exact hex and spell list will vary based on what plane you are bonding with, but the nature of the planar patron spells means you can benefit a lot from calling upon extra planar firepower ahead of time, as long as you’re willing to put up with the cost of doing so. If that appeals to you, give it a shot!
Being a pact witch feels a bit different than an ordinary witch since your patron’s goals are very expressly known. In this way it almost feels like an arcane flavor of cleric, the witch being a devotee of the appropriate philosophy. Now that I think about it, this archetype might have subtly helped confirm the development of the witch as a variable tradition caster in Second Edition.
The Silken Sanctuary is a rarity in the Darkness Below, a place of respite and comfort, though with it’s majority drider population surfacers may not immediately realize it. It was founded when it’s leader, a drider witch named Cynvali accepted a pact with The Kind Hand, goddess of benevolence and redemption.
To the worry of many, the a feud has erupted between the birelu (a spirit of both nature and humanity) and a local witch guardian named Grisela. The spirit is upset that Grisela has made a pact with the realm of the Free Wilds rather than a patron of “pure” nature, but Grisela argues that her pact will do just as well serving to protect the area she has sworn to protect.
Infernal runes and circles at each murder scene point investigators to some sort of occult activity in the latest spree of murders, but they are barking up the wrong tree by assuming that the killer worships a power of diabolic nature. In truth, they are just making use of it for their own ends, and it’s not even devils they are bargaining with, but rather, a rare pact with the plane of shadow and the pain-obsessed velstracs.