The Winter Witch

Eyy doge, I heard you like Winter Witches, so I made a Witch with the Winter Witch Archetype and the Winter Witch Prestige Class so you can have some Winter Witching with your Winter Witch.

Leveling is as follow:

Class

Witch 5/Winter Witch 10/Witch +5

Race

We will take Changeling, as they are thematically appropriate for Witches to begin with considering they are half hags. We will be taking the Alternative Racial Feature Witchborn to switch our bonus in Wisdom to a bonus in Intelligence. As for our Ancestry trait, we will take the Ice Climber as we will be descending from a Winter Hag for thematic reasons.

Ability Scores

15Point-Buy

Str 8/Dex 10/Con 12/Int 20/Wis 10/Cha 10 Put everything in Intelligence

20Point-Buy

Str 8/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 20/Wis 10/Cha 12 Put everything in Intelligence

25Point-Buy

Str 8/Dex 14/Con 14/Int 20/Wis 10/Cha 12 Once again, everything in Intelligence

Traits

Reactionary for a +2 to Initiative and Cosmopolitan for making Linguistics into a class skill

Favored Class Bonus

Put those in skills.

Skills

Spellcraft, Linguistics, Use Magic Devices and various knowledge skills. Perception is also always nice to have.

Familiar

Take the Arctic Fox for a small bonus on Reflex saves. Also, highly thematic.

Feats by Level

1-Toughness

3-Skill Focus(Linguistics) 5-Orator

7-Agonizing Hex

9-Improved Initiative 11-Split Hex

13-Empower Spell 15-Maximize Spell 17-Quicken Spell 19-Split Major Hex

Orator lets us use Linguistics for social rolls, Agonizing Hex lets us reuse hexes on targets who had previously escaped them, Split Hex lets us double the efficiency of our single target hexes. As the Winter Witch is one of the few methods to bypass damage type immunity, Empower Spell and Maximize Spell on our cold typed spells are extremely worth it, and Quicken Spell doubles our spellcasting output in a given round.

Hexes by Level

Slumber

Frozen Caress

4-Replaced by Winter Witch’s Cold Flesh

6-Frostfoot 8-Iceplant 10-Ice Tomb 12-Hoarfrost

14-Numbing Chill 16-Animal Skin 18-Witch’s Hut

20-Natural Disaster

If you didn’t catch on, we are doing a winter theme here. Frozen Caress turn spells into [Cold] spells, Slumber is a no-brainer, Frostfoot allows us not to faceplant when walking on ice, Iceplant add to our poor, poor AC, Ice Tomb is an encounter ender, Hoarfrost is a significant debuff and Numbing Chill make our [Cold] spells extra deadly by applying downright savage debuffs in addition to the spell’s regular effect(which combines with Frozen Caress). Finally, Animal Skin let us turn into a Polar Bear and let’s be honest, that’s just friggin cool. Witch’s Hut allows us to tap into our inner Baba Yaga, and Natural Disaster is just a nice fit to make our winters even deadlier.

Winter Witch Prestige Class

So, this prestige class let us continue leveling our hexes, while buffing our cold spells to the point where they bypass resistances and eventually immunity? Brutally effective, turning the Witch into a very effective blaster, without hampering our debuffing at all.

Spells

We will be taking the Winter Patron because duh.

1-Frostbite, Mage Armor, Icicle Dagger, Ill Omen, Snowball, Charm Person, Cure Light Wounds, Command
2-Unshakable Chill, Chill Touch, Wizened Appearance
3-Frost Fall, Ice Slick
4-Resist Energy(Cold Only), See Invisibility, Winter Grasp
5-Fly, Ice Spears
6-N/A
7-Sleet Storm, Bestow Curse
8-Wall of Ice, Scrying, Dimension Door
9-Black Tentacles, Solid Fog
10-Icy Prison, Dominate Person, Teleport
11-Prying Eyes, Reincarnate
12-Freezing Sphere, Cone of Cold, Flesh to Stone
13-True Seeing, Unwilling Shield
14-Ice Body, Waves of Exhaustion
15-Greater Teleport, Greater Scrying
16-Ice Storm, Control Weather, Destruction
17-Mind Blank, Antipathy
18-Polar Midnight, Massacre
19-Mass Suffocation, Elemental Swarm
20-Astral Projection, Curse of Fell Season

Equipment

Component Pouch, some regal clothes. Winter Witches are canonically in Pathfinder the queens of witches so act like one!

Final Thoughts on the Build

Even though we focus entirely on cold damage, one of the most resisted damage types in the game, we quite literally bypass that resistance, and even immunity, making our Cold spells capable of rapidly wrecking complete havoc on the battlefield. All the while we still have all our debuffs like Slumber and Ill Omens from being a Witch. We also are a capable social character and with our few metamagic, can turn encounters to completely one-sided massacres in our favor in a single round if we so wish.