Witch

A witch is a magic user (usually female) which is a common archetype in most fantasy settings and old myths. They can fit into one of two broad groups; either being sizzling seductive beauties that will kill you as much as kiss you (the sexy option) or hunched, crackling old cronies who are like your grandma except the insane kind who might use you in a soup (the scary option). There is rarely a middle ground between the two, the old myths and even modern perceptions tending to either group sexy and power together or keep them separate, though it is frequent for one kind to pretend to be the other.

Witches are usually aligned with the dark forces, summoning demons, making curses and hexes, etc. They can be mysterious and wise and have familiars from cats and snakes to lesser demons. They also tend to fly around on broomsticks (God knows why) and harbour their magic instead of using it to live the cushy life (again, only God knows why).

Traditional gaming has allowed witches to flourish anew in a variety of new forms and identities, examples of which are given below:

Warhammer Fantasy

There is a whole host of witches within Warhammer fantasy, scattered over all the different races of the Warhammer world. Mostly the term seems to apply to any sorcerer or mage who hasn’t had formal training, being a rustic magic user or in the terms given above for old crackling hags or dark seductresses. The most famous ‘witch’ in this setting is the Witch-King Malekith of the Dark Elves, although his mother is the more the perfect example of the archetype….

Warhammer 40,000

Witch in the 40,000 universe is mostly heard when an Imperial preacher or Inquisitor shouts ‘it’s a witch!’ to explain any unexplainable events caused by a person, even if they are completely blameless. The Imperium almost uses it like a swearword to label any psyker regardless of race as such. Chaos magicians and psykers are almost always called witches when the Imperium sees them and these fun loonies seem to have no trouble accepting the term.

The Dark Eldar have ‘wyches’, although these are not female magic users. These wyches are barely clothed (except for leather straps), gorgeous gladiators that fight for the amusement of the audience and to get a kick out of dominating men by removing their body parts a piece at a time (so basically the sexy witch version minus the magic). To counter the sexism accusations in the most recent Dark Eldar codex it is mentioned there are male wyches but they are kept as breeding stock. So yeah, way to shoot yourself in the foot GW. This is mostly because female Dark Eldar for some reason can take more combat drugs than males without ODing, which gives them a considerable edge in the gladiatorial fights. (That, and they're naturally more graceful and acrobatic, among other things, such as attractiveness and the fact that most of the males sign up as Beastmasters instead.)

Dungeons & Dragons

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons included a witch as a kit (borderline variant class) for the Wizard in the Complete Wizard's Handbook.

The Witch is a wizard whose powerful magical abilities are extraplanar in origin. Though wizards typically learn the basics of spellcasting at magic academies or from learned mentors, Witches learn magical skills from entities and their minions from other planes of existence, or from other Witches. Occasionally, these extraplanar entities contact youthful humans or demihumans for magical instruction; other times, humans and demihumans seek out the entities through arcane rituals and petition them for instruction. The entities agree to such instruction for a variety of reasons-- some hope to train their students to eventually become emissaries; some hope to use them as conduits for various forces; some hope to seduce them as consorts; and some simply share their magical secrets for their own amusement.

Whatever the motives of the extraplanar entities, they exude a powerful directing influence over their students. However, a few Witches with particularly strong wills are able to maintain their own drives while using their magical skills to further their own goals. Such Witches face a life-long struggle with the forces who relentlessly strive to direct their spirits. They need a 13 in Int, Wis, and Con to keep their bodies and minds resistant to the influence of the beings they work with, and dropping the kit requires a lesser wish or something similarly powerful and the sacrifice of two levels' worth of experience, which must be earned back before the witch can get their spellcasting back. Ouch.

Regardless of her actual alignment, all but her closest friends are likely to presume that a Witch is in collaboration with extraplanar spirits, and will shun her accordingly. There are few places where a Witch is welcome, and for the most part, a witch will need to conceal her identity when traveling to assure her safety. Fortunately, the book outright states the witch's party is free to consider them a "close friend." Unfortunately, it still recommends suspicious or superstitious characters distrust them a little, with the caveat that the DM should remind them the witch isn't actually evil when it starts disrupting the campaign. (A reminder sadly all-too lacking in many RPG sources even today!)

However, staying in one place too long creates a literal mob of torches and pitchforks citizens trying to kill a witch, and their patron starts shit with a frequency the DM determines. Either the witch suffers a -2 to attacks and saving throws the full moon night, or seven nights a month on worlds where there are too many moons, the witch has a 25% chance of suffering the same penalty every twelve hours, or the witch suffers a -1 penalty to those rolls every night.

Although a Witch learns her magical techniques from extraplanar entities, once on her own, she learns her spells in much the same way as any other wizard. Still, her techniques for casting spells may differ significantly from the standard methods. The casting times, ranges, and effects of her spells are no different from the same spells used by other wizards, but she may use different verbal, somatic, or material components, as well as meditation. These differences should make her seem even more threatening to outsiders, as well as making her seem more remote to the other player characters.

Witches don't get or acquire weapon proficiencies, but do get a broad array of useful skills, including herbalism, fortune-telling, and other nature stuff.

In addition to a few free spells, witches get a number of special powers. They can summon familiars for free without using spells, brew sleep potions and poisons that can coat weapons, and flying ointments to apply to people (or, spitballing an example here, brooms), save-free charm person and/or monster (under 8HD anyway), and the ability to throw out a witch's curse, for free, do not save, do not collect $200.

The curse will randomly reduce one randomly-rolled stat by 3, impose a -4 penalty on hit and damage rolls, blind them for 24 hours or until it gets dispelled, deal a point of unhealing hitpoint damage every hour for a day or until it gets dispelled, or, and this is a 1/8 chance here, impose temporal stasis, which lasts for a day and instantly kills them when it ends if it's not dispelled first.

The Witch is among the most complex of all the kits, and many of the details are left up to the player's discretion. For instance, he may wish to design specific daily rituals for his Witch, or he may wish to expand on the Witch's relationship with the entities who originally trained her. What exactly are they? Where are they? Can the Witch contact them for favors? What exactly happens if the forces succeed in controlling the Witch? Does her alignment change? Her abilities? Her relationship to the party? There are many possible variations on the Witch kit, and the DM is encouraged to experiment, as long as he avoids the temptation to make her excessively powerful, and keeps in mind the potential disruptions in his campaign.

Fun to roleplay if the DM isn't a pain in the neck about it.

Pathfinder

Witches are offshoots of the Wizard class, based on one of the old wizard kits from the earliest editions of the game; as the Druid is to the Cleric, so is the Witch to the Wizard. They are essentially arcane spellcasters (so no armor) who have to prepare their spells in advance (so no spontaneous casting), but unlike the wizard, who can only use arcane magic, they have access to a broad spectrum of different kinds of spell, depending on the kind of witch they are, most of which are nature-ish in origin. The wizard is still more versatile, but the witch can do things wizards can't, like throw out heals and curses that are usually divine magic rather than arcane.

Witches also get access to various unique fairy-tale-style hexes, which range from making poison apples and debuffing your enemies, to making crops wither and grow, to letting your now-prehensile hair count as a new limb and flying. The coolest one is probably the one that makes all your hexes last longer so long as you burn a move action to cackle ominously. If one of your party members is playing an other-wise-OP-as-fuck merfolk, witches are the only way to supply them with potions of Fins to Feet so they don't slow everyone down.

Witches get familiars like wizards, but theirs store their spells like spellbooks. Most familiar are gifts from their "patrons," since most witches get their powers from making deals with mysterious natural forces. Like a warlock but without the Cthulhu. For this reason, they replenish their spells by "communing with their familiars," a phrase that is exactly as perverted as you want it to be. Everyone will hate you for the mental image, mind.

In the Advanced Class Guide released in 2014, a new class was released, the Shaman. Functions mostly like the witch, with its own unique hexes (and can take lower-level witch hexes), but with more emphasis on the familiar's attributes (in this case, called a spirit animal) and the spirits that affect it (similar to Oracle mysteries), as well as casting divine magic.

The Classes of Pathfinder 1st Edition
Core Classes:	Barbarian - Bard - Cleric - Druid - Fighter - Monk Paladin - Ranger - Rogue - Sorcerer - Wizard
Advanced Player's Guide:	Alchemist - Antipaladin - Cavalier Inquisitor - Oracle - Summoner - Witch
Advanced Class Guide:	Arcanist - Bloodrager - Brawler - Hunter - Investigator Shaman - Skald - Slayer - Swashbuckler - Warpriest
Occult Adventures:	Kineticist - Medium - Mesmerist Occultist - Psychic - Spiritualist
Ultimate X:	Gunslinger - Magus - Ninja - Samurai - Shifter - Vigilante