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D&D Adventurers League Witch Doctor Delivers Instant Funk

Feats of Deep Magic: Alkemancy from Kobold Press
Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D — The Bones Await You

Of all the Adventurers League Character Build Guides we’ve done, this one might be my favorite. I should preface by letting you know I think this almost every time. What captures my attention more than anything in these guides are the character backgrounds and narratives we come up with for each one. Whether it’s a pure class 1-20 levels or a mashup of several classes, each choice from race to deciding between ability score improvements or feats and go-to spell loadouts make every character unique. The thing I love about the witch doctor is before Nerdarchists Dave and Ted get around to choosing their first class level, the character already has a rich story, fertile grounds for roleplaying and an impressive set of skills and knowledge.

D&D 5E witch doctor got that flavor

Creating character build guides for Adventurers League is a lot of fun. The challenge of working with the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook plus one other book means we can’t choose any race and subclass combination. More often than not this makes us look at our options differently and put the focus on creating a character first, then building it up mechanically to fit the themes and flavor. Then we make a video about it, write up the character guide and Dungeon Master NPC/creature stat block version, and put it over at the Dungeon Master’s Guild as a pay-what-you-want product.

lizardfolk witch doctor

Why do lizardfolk always look so mean? Ready to see lizardfolk just chilling in the swamp.

You can see in the video, pretty much everything was on the table. Spellcasting is a must, but any number of spellcaster classes would be a good fit. And besides, there’s so few classes in D&D without any spellcasting options. Backgrounds were the same, including an idea (that went directly into Ted’s content idea file!) for a variant noble background. Everything sort of coalesced around the race choice, lizardfolk.

My favorite kind of character creation incorporates a bit of worldbuilding. We imagined what the character’s culture and society are like, and their place in it. With just the race and background chosen, the character already has an impressive array of skills and knowledge and could absolutely already be their culture’s witch doctor. That’s what makes this CBG so interesting to me. It’s not uncommon for a character concept to come online in higher levels, but here the character could never take a single character class and still serve an important function in society with curatives and important knowledge.

We definitely take a character perspective for class progression. From a narrative point of view a multiclass character isn’t making a vocational change. So our lizardfolk who begins as an Archfey warlock doesn’t abandon their connection to the patron when their sorcerous bloodline manifests or when they tap into the deep natural magic of druidism. Their lifepath simply leads them in a different direction than a single class character. In other words, D&D fighters don’t all refer to themselves that way. The numbers on the character sheet are a codified way to represent the character’s life experience.

The mixture of warlock, sorcerer and druid kept this character interesting at every level. For all of the choices we thought about their relationship to the basic concept. The witch doctor held a special place in society, with mysterious powers and secret knowledge, viewed with fear and awe from their society.

When we created the creature version for Dungeon Masters like we do in all our CBGs, three themes stood out from the discussion: the fear and awe a witch doctor inspires, a penchant for spending lots of time in animal form connecting to the spirit of nature and a power to influence outcomes for or against another. As a friendly NPC a witch doctor can invite all sorts of adventure. Traveling to their domain, finding and communicating with them and quid pro quo quests come to mind. As an enemy, a witch doctor protecting their own people is a formidable foe. A bless and bane like reaction, shapechanging, powerful presence and spellcasting. Is it OP? Maybe, but it would be a lot of fun for a DM to incorporate into the lizardfolk culture in their world. Whether as an NPC ally or antagonist, the witch doctor will keep adventurers on their toes.

What comes to mind when you think about a witch doctor? Would you play this character, or incorporate the NPC/creature version into your campaign as a DM? Sound off in the comments!

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Doug Vehovec

Nerditor-in-Chief Doug Vehovec is a proud native of Cleveland, Ohio, with D&D in his blood since the early 80s. Fast forward to today and he’s still rolling those polyhedral dice. When he’s not DMing, worldbuilding or working on endeavors for Nerdarchy he enjoys cryptozoology trips and eating awesome food.

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