Wylderwitch

The wylderwitch is someone who instinctively understands the ebb and flow of magic within the plant world. Superficially, she is the witch of legend, the wicked, haggard crone living alone, hidden away from proper civilization by the gnarled forest surrounding her dilapidated hut. However, as with all legends and stereotypes, this is hardly the case for most, if not all, wylderwitches.

Occult Lore
Author Keith Baker, Adam Bank, Chris Jones, Scott Reeves, and Elton Robb
Series Lore
Publisher Atlas
Publish date 2002

Granted, the wylderwitch does live in the wild, but that is where the plant life she works with thrives. One could hardly expect her to make the same living inside the nearly sterile cities. Not so strangely, then, she is often a misfit of sorts, taking refuge in plantkind rather than mankind, unaccustomed as she is to the subtleties of normal socialization.

Outsiders who happen upon her often view her with a mixture of suspicion and contempt. Despite her eccentricity, those locals who know her frequent her abode so that they might purchase herbal remedies, potions, and charms. A wylderwitch’s knowledge of the herbal arts should never be underestimated. It’s not unusual for some communities to relegate clerical duties to her, should they lack a temple or local priesthood. Women come to her for midwifery; men come to her for hunting poisons and healing balms; in times of blight, she is the one the village elders approach to find out what can be done; during the harvest, she provides farmers with preservative concoctions to prevent crop rot.

Of course, there is the occasional story of the slighted wylderwitch taking out her wrath by dropping curses upon people, animals, and crops, but this the exception and not the rule. Most wylderwitches live by the threefold law: What you do to unto others returns to you three times over. As herbalists, they also follow a second, related law: An’ it harm none, do as ye will. Common sense dictates that feeding a community’s superstitious beliefs accomplishes nothing more than making one’s life extremely difficult, and short.

The two classes best suited to becoming wylderwitches are druid and sorcerers— both possess the instinct that lends itself to the lifestyle. Unlike the master herbalist, who is logical and precise in his studies, the wylderwitch depends more upon intuition. druid already have a head start due to their pre-existing affinity for nature, as do sorcerers with their unschooled mastery of magic and gut-feeling insights. bards and rangers also make good wylderwitches, rangers more so for their own connection to the natural world. bards, as always, pursue the career more for the sake of learning something new rather than any real desire to manipulate plants. clerics, if interested in non-magical healing, more often than not pursue the master herbalist career, but it’s not entirely unheard of for them to take this path instead, especially if they come from cultures that are very nature-oriented.

Hit Die: d4

REQUIREMENTS

To qualify to become a wylderwitch, a character must fulfill all of the following requirements.
Spellcasting: The ability to cast 3rd-level spells
Skills: 4 ranks in Herbalism, 4 ranks in Wilderness Lore
Feats: Brew Potion

CLASS SKILLS

The wylderwitch’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Constitution), Gather Information (Charisma), Heal (Wisdom), Herbalism (Intelligence or Wisdom), Listen (Wisdom), Knowledge (nature) (Intelligence), Sense Motive (Wisdom), Spellcraft (Intelligence), Search (Intelligence), Spot (Wisdom), and Wilderness Lore (Wisdom).
Skill Points at Each Level: 2 + Intelligence Modifier.

The Wylderwitch
Level	BAB	FS	RS	WS	Special	Spells Per Day
1	+0	+2	+0	+0	Improved Herbalism +1, Inexpensive Concoction	+1 level of existing class
2	+1	+3	+0	+0	Improved Herbalism +2, Poison Immunity	+1 level of existing class
3	+1	+3	+0	+0	Improved Herbalism +3, Improvised Concoction	+1 level of existing class
4	+2	+4	+1	+1	Improved Herbalism +4, Plant Dowsing	+1 level of existing class
5	+2	+4	+1	+1	Improved Herbalism +5, Living Verdex	+1 level of existing class

CLASS FEATURES

All of the following are the features of the wylderwitch prestige class.

Weapon Proficiencies: You gain no new armor or weapon proficiencies.

Spells per Day: You gain new spells per day as if you had gained a level in a previous spellcasting class. But, you gain no other benefits of that class (metamagic, feats, etc.) If you have more than one spellcasting class, then you must decide to which class you add each level of wylderwitch for purposes of determining spells per day when you acquire the new level.

In addition to the spells allowed by your original spellcasting class(es), you may also learn the following:

• 0 Level – Create Water, Purify Food and Drink
• 1st Level – detect animals or plants (plants only), Goodberry, pass without trace
• 2nd Level – barkskin, Tree Shape, wood shape
• 3rd Level – diminish plants, plant growth, speak with plants
• 4th Level – antiplant shell, control plants
• 5th Level – Awaken (plants only), commune with nature, tree stride

Improved Herbalism: This number is added to your Herbalism skill modifier as a bonus when making Herbalism skill checks, representing your mastery of the herbal arts. It is not cumulative.

Inexpensive Concoction: The cost for making concoctions is slightly cheaper for you than it would be for others. Calculate the concoction’s cost in gold (or silver) pieces as per normal — you pay half of that value.

Poison Immunity (Ex): Due to your trial and error method of experimentation (usually the result of not often being able to find adequate test subjects other than yourself), you gain absolute immunity to all natural poisons and receive a saving throw bonus against magical poisons equal to the number of levels you have in the wylderwitch class.

Improvised Concoction: You may create a concoction on the fly using any un-awakened herbs you carry on your person. This improvised concoction has the same effect as if it had been brewed normally, but it’s only good for a number of hours equal to your wylderwitch level. It looks, smells, and tastes nothing like the true concoction it mimics. The delivery method is normally by ingestion. The number of rounds required to make a improvised concoction is equal to half the herb’s trait rating, rounded down, with a minimum of one round. You may do this a number of times per day equal to your wylderwitch level.

Plant Dowsing (Su): Allows you to call upon your instincts to discover a unique instance of a plant with the traits and trait ratings you require — regardless of environmental conditions — just so long as the area contains flora of some sort. More often than not, you discover a mutated strain of an already known plant that just happens to possess the trait(s) you seek. Or, perhaps, you find a completely different, yet similarly mutated, plant that also has said traits.

Whatever the reason, your dowsing occurs within a one-mile radius of your starting position and takes a number of hours equal to the number of traits you seek. The maximum number of traits you may discover in a single plant is equal to your wylderwitch level. You may use this ability once per day. Note: If you’re in a plant’s native habitat, but you don’t know a specimen’s location, you may also use this ability to find a non-mutated form of it. As such, the plant’s trait ratings are unchanged from their normal values. You may use the Plant Dowsing ability in this manner at will.

Living Verdex: If you have the Plantbind feat, then this ability lets you bind a spell to a plant while it’s still alive and rooted in the ground (or pot, for that matter). After a plant has been so enchanted, any verdex removed from it without killing the plant will grow back normally but enchanted by the same spell. The number of times a plant may regenerate a verdex is equal to one plus your Wisdom modifier, with a minimum of one if you have a zero or negative rating. The material expense for this procedure is one-third the cost for creating a normal verdex of similar capacity; the XP cost for doing it, however, is double the normal cost but paid only one time, when the living verdex is enchanted.