Is there any way to increase the damage die on my Hagbound Witch's claw attacks?

Question

The hagbound witch gains a d4 claw attack at level 1 but they never get stronger. I was wondering if there are any feats to help improve this. Or maybe give additional effects to claw attacks in general.

Answer 1

Improved Natural Attack

Improved Natural Attack is a Feat that will increase the damage to 1d6. It's not a great return on investment, but it does exactly what you want. You won't qualify for it until level 8+ because it requires +4 BAB or higher.

Note that this is a "Monster Feat"; usually, this isn't a problem because they're not officially restricted to player characters, but some GM's might do so anyway.

Other Feats

• Rending Claws gives an extra 1d6 damage to your second successful claw attack in a round.
• Possessed Hand provides +1 insight to hit and damage at the cost of -2 to Concentration checks.
• Mother's Gift, if you are a changeling (which fits the class archetype), provides an untyped +1 to hit and damage with claws.
• Eldritch Claws causes your claws to overcome DR/magic and DR/silver.

Typical damage increases

Besides the obvious necklace of mighty blows and general party buffs (eg bardic courage, etc), a common way to boost your own damage is increasing the size and effective size of your attack. You can only benefit from one of each type of effect at a time. Here are the most common options for those:

• Enlarge Person (witch 1 etc.), Steal Size (witch 2, etc.) Legendary Proportions (witch 7, etc.), and others increase you and your claws' actual size by 1 or more steps.
• Strong Jaw (druid/hunter/ranger), despite its name, increases the effective size of any natural attack by 2 die steps (1d4 becomes 1d8; 1d6 becomes 1d10).

Combining both effects will grant you 2d6 damage (2d8 with Improved Natural Attack) on your claws (and may give you a greater size bonus to Strength than your Hunched Muscle feature, at some levels).