My problem with the alchemist is all their mutagens and buffs and such are item bonuses. Meaning they do not stack with your magic items, and in a number of cases they do not scale as fast as said magic items. I feel like mutagens should give status bonuses.
They used to - "alchemical bonus" was a whole category back in 1e, mostly from mutagens and whatnot, so they'd stack with circumstance bonuses and enhancement bonuses
@@octavianpedigree5866 Sure, but what it means is instead of providing a unique benefit to the party, your primary class feature boils down to a way to save gold. That doesn't feel great or powerful.
The major thing is, almost every item the Alchemist can create can be used better by someone else. Alchemists get a special proficiency with bombs, but any class that gets proficiency with Martial weapons can use them much better. The Alchemist is great if you can prepare for the day, and 9 times out of 10 you'll just be giving those items to a party member that can actually use the item. The items can't benefit from some features unless you use them, but others still benefit more. You're more of an item dispenser most of the time.
that was my gripe. You just give everything to the party and you aren't even actively giving buffs out like a bard you just sit in the back while everyone uses your items.
Wich is cool to a lot of us. And the challenge of utilizing resources and gathering such. Then making something useful, many times to anyone or all in party. Or Artillery. Ha!
I agree with a lot of points in this video, especially the Alchemist being very much a not noob-friendly class, but there's one point I disagree. I don't think the class actually rewards you enough for all the preparation and work it takes to use it. In my experience so far, a well prepared Wizard, or heck, any spellcaster, can have a much bigger impact both in and out of combat :/
Alchemist: The best multiclass archetype :) All jokes aside. They are okay, just suffer from being inferior to everyone else in every way except for very specific conditions
One of my players in my first campaign picked an alchemist and stopped playing afterwards because it was so resource heavy. I managed to lure them back in by offering a druid, they ended up having a good time with goodberry etc. I feel the issue with alchemist is that the class flavour does not prepare you for the extra rules, characters sheets don't spec for them and really any attempt to simplify or make the class easier to read past having a physical alchemist notebook is not done. They give you this class and make how to play it very counter intuitive from a table perspective.
I agree. You basically need to have a rulebook in front of you to look at all of your alchemical items each day since they don't have a spell list page. The class really should've been in the APG.
@@Nonat1s I would support that for sure. Like playing a oracle was easier for the same player in a second campaign! I was so surprised! Even a spell card deck that doesn't cost an arm and a leg but for alchemists. But they're not cheap over here in Ireland
@@AldurSFC FWIW, there’s a Potions & Alchemy card deck dropping in late April or May. Edit: That’s all I know about it. I have no idea if it’ll help the Alchemists out there.
I think Alchemist is fine as long as you allow the player the opportunity to research what they're going to do and prepare accordingly. That way, they're usually an effective support class, but also have moments where they shine for engaging in Batman prep.
The problem I think that plagues them the most is that they don't need to actively buff allies. You can hand out all of your stuff to the party in the first couple rounds of or even before combat and then have nothing left to do yourself for the rest of combat. This also applies for noncombat situations. You may have made the stuff, but everyone else is better at using it.
As someone who isn't daunted at all by the amount of items (in fact I almost have memorised all of them), my real concern is the power disparity. If you're party needs more healing, become a medic or a cleric etc, if you need damage there's loads of ways to do that, if you need debuffs take a bard etc etc. Within a party of 4 people, we can typically cover all the bases without prior planning, so taking an alchemist just means you have to research a fight more, to be less effective in it than someone anyway. In your classic wizard/sorcerer, rogue, fighter, cleric party, what can an alchemist 'choose' for a fight, that will make a difference more so than just have 1-2 specialists at everything? Maybe people in my groups just make better designed parties than other groups, but without errata/dm changing things everyone has agreed never to play an alchemist, as there's is literally no benefit to doing so
Okay. But then it also sucks that you can't BE a damage dealer, when that's what most people wanted from first edition. If people are misusing thr class, then that's not on them. That's on Paizo for not making their role clear. They say you can focus on bombs, but when you do, you suck at it. They say you can be a mutating brawler, but when you try, you get stabbed to death. It's that they only had one support focus to start with. And that their bonuses don't stack with magic items.
Smoke bombs are one of the most useful 2e alchemist features for support as long as you have the knowledge checks to know it isn't going to aid the enemy more then debilitate them. One smoke bomb can instantly render several archers behind arrow slits unable to do anything other then wait or come out in the open.
I feel a lot of things should be base for the alchemist such as class DC for poison, bomber's passive, and quick grab + use. There's so many little things that pull the class down and it's not just the weapon proficiency being low.
The problem with things like Debilitating bomb is that the bomb still needs to hit to do anything and then there is still a saving throw to avoid effects. If you can't hit in the first place then you aren't getting any effects from feats like this in the first place. Other support classes don't have this problem.
While I agree that they aren't supposed to be the primary damage dealer, damage vs actually being able to hit the enemy is a big difference. With numbers very crunchy in P2e, the difference between +4 & +6 is MASSIVE. Being a bomber, mutagen, or poisoner feels awful when you miss so many attacks. Splash damage only gives s much. Why drink a potion, throw a bomb, or poison your blade when your teammate will use it 20% better than you all the time
Every alchemist build has a niche it does better than other classes. Bomber has better splash damage, mutagenists can combine mutagens and so on. But I think you've identifed one of the main issues - players want to be the best at the thing they do by picking the main class for it. Sure, a mutagenist is way more flexible than a fighter with alchemist deification - but the fighter is much better at just using bestial mutagen and let's face it, you probably picked mutagenist just to go ham on bestial mutagen. I mean, if I pick a rogue I want to be the best backstab class, and if I pick a barbarian I want to do the biggest hits. No other class can do better at that specialty role by taking rogue or barbarian dedication.
Action economy, feat taxes, broken feats and lack of satisfactory support of various concepts the class already tries to go for. Every damn Alchemist defender always say that it's because people "don't know how to use it" and then proceed to say that Alchemist players should be playing as item dispensers. Everyone always say "you can exploit any weaknesses", but very much like the Theoretical Wizard (A wizard that always had the available spell slot, the perfect spell on their grimoire and prepared it that day and also had foreknowledge of their encounter), the Alchemist still has to deal with encounter variance, lack of knowledge, resource scarcity (you can't always count on having a town available to get extra Formulae once you level up). The Bomber Alchemist isn't useless, but you can't simply do your job as a debuffer when you can't land your hits. I had a player at my table that retired their alchemist because it wasn't being fun and satisfying at all mechanically (We all love the characters we create, this doesn't mean we can't dislike their mechanics, just to be clear). There was exactly a single encounter where the Alchemist was vital, but more because everyone else were missing their attacks while the Alchemist was exploiting Cold Weakness (Vision of Dahak, Age of Ashes book 2). On the other hand, there was a battle where the player got frustrated and decided to simply run away mid fight and we, the remaining three players at
you're definitely not wrong. But i think the core difference of an alchemist versus a wizard is that it's easier for an in-play alchemist to be closer to the "theoritical alchemist" than it is for an in-play wizard to be close to the "theoretical wizard". That said, it still doesn't change the fact that the player wasn'y vibing with the alchemist on the table... which seems to be a relatively common experience. I've definitely found the need to step in and work with players to create more interesting (especially lower level) magical items to sure up issues they were having with their class choices/options. I was really hoping Gods and Magic would add more alchemical items for alchemists.
I started looking at Alchemist recently because I though that bombs would work with the Resonant ability from the new geniekin weapons. Turns out it does not but all that time spent checking out Alchemist really got me interested in the class! There is so, so much going on with it but that makes it like a fun puzzle to solve.
My biggest gripe is that a lot of Alchemist feats feel like they should be class features. That’s why it was nice to see Powerful Alchemy integrated as a class feature with the errata, but I wish more feats followed. I still love Alchemists despite their flaws, but maybe that’s because I’m never play the main damage dealer.
@@LordCyler Yeah, and some even surpass "tax" status. One that I see pointed out the most is Alchemical Alacrity, a class feature, is still borderline nonfunctional without Enduring Alchemy, a feat. The errata addressed the hand issue on this, but it remains inefficient and impractical next to Double Brew. You get to stow the third item you make now, but don't forget it expires before your next turn without Enduring Alchemy.
@@eyeh0 I feel like one of the biggest feat taxes that should be part of the class progression is the one that extends the range you can throw bombs from 20 ft. to 30 ft. Bombs are useful enough that all types of alchemist research fields can benefit from them.
alchemist, aka. the real "jack of all trades, master of none" of this edition. i encouraged my "noob" player to try out alchemist, and i very much regret it (but she's having fun, so all is well i guess)
I think thetop issues with alchemist is that it is so vastly different compared to it's 1e counterpart. 1e grenadier was what bombers hoped for and vivisectionist or maybe beastmorph was what people wanted mutagenist to be. 1e bombers dealt massive elemental damage and while they had bombs, they could blow through creatures, even on a miss. Compare that to 2e bomber. You have to be precise, and know that you have the monsters weakness to even hope for a chance of damage. I would talk about mutagens but I dont want to be too long winded here. TLDR: problem with 2e alchemist is that they are so different from their 1e counterparts.
support class always seems weak since most players just want to deal damage. Especially since its not really made clear with the alchemist not being a DD
I wouldn't call Alchemist a support class, nor a damage dealer. I'd call it a "Hybrid Class", it's similar to Battle Oracles and Warpriests, even to Investigators at some extent.
I wish you could upgrade your Alchemical Familiar to a companion and since it is made from your own blood it could get the same bonuses from your mutagens as you do.
Playing the alchemist is like being a witcher. If you know what's coming and plan for it you'll do amazing. You have enough choices to at the very least hang with you party. And if you have no idea have a bit of everything in stock and quick alchemy what you need to survive if an encounter comes up.
@@lincr.1988 I literally say quick alchemy in the post so I'm obviously aware of it. And as perpetual infusions are a function of quick alchemy I'm confused on what point you were trying to make.
An important skill for bombers is Recall Knowledge. If you know what weaknesses your foe has, you can use the appropriate bombs to use activate weaknesses with the splash damage. That helps maximize your combat effectiveness
Some really good points made in this video and in the comments section. Admittedly I don’t have I much experience with Alchemists in this system. I’ve only had one player choose an Alchemist since PF2e came out. She seemed to enjoy it at the time, though she was very quick to express her excitement to pick a different class once we started a different campaign. I would actually consider the Alchemist’s need for knowledge a detriment. You’re absolutely right that a well prepared Alchemist can pull its weight. But the problem is most DM’s don’t handle Knowledge very well. Whether they are coming from other systems or full of years of house rules for knowledge gathering, I’ve noticed many DM’s are uneven at best while handling the topic. This is most evident in how Recall Knowledge, one of the greatest tools both in and out of combat, is often ignored by a DM. I’ve even seen DMs scrooge their players out of knowledge-even after the player selected a feat (I.e. precious resource) specifically to help the player & party with such circumstances. But where I think Paizo really screwed the pooch was failing to make the Alchemist unique. Sure, it can make and distribute items with item bonuses. But whether you’re playing with alternative rules or not, the system expects you to be getting Item bonuses from somewhere to stay relevant. There’s nothing wrong with a support class, and playing a selfless character. But you really can’t provide much support other classes can’t do better. (And those classes can usually do more things than just that support). I understand Paizo wanted to keep the math tight, but they should have created an Alchemical Bonus, specific only to the Alchemist. They could have nerfed the bonus progression as necessary, so as not to create an overpowered class. But it would have allowed the Alchemist to feel like his support was different from that of a buffing spellcaster, a performing bard, and the magical weapons & armor of the party. However, outside of the fun factor, most consumables are a waste of monetary resources, so in that regard an Alchemist can shine. Others have already talked about the issues with poison, so I’ll just touch on that to say they’re right. And it’s another example of where an “Alchemical” bonus would have made a big difference.
I reckon in addition to your given points (choice paralyzation, knowledge of effect & preparedness), another thing that makes Alchemist difficult is Encumbrance. Many Alchemists can't even Carry the things they make without getting Encumbered Very Quickly. Sure, there are ways to boost the amount you can carry, but still, this is something that really does impact. The other thing I would say, in addition to other comments given here which are very good, is the lack of transparency when it comes to alchemical item destructability while on a person. This issue has come up a heck of a lot, and caused lots of negative feedback in my games.
Very true. my alchemist had the problem of whenever he fell, something in his alchemy kit would break, and I would have to wait until we got to town to fix it, the only it couldn't happen was getting a bag of holding.
I read about this class a few hours ago while I tried to understand how this system works. And there is so many modifiers, bonuses and etc so even Starfinder I think has less. I'm a litte bit scared, but at the same time charmed by how it works and how much offers.
@@Nonat1s I think opposite: including this thing in core rulebook was a great idea, because it brings a really nice option to character that makes it harder and more rewarding for using intelligence out of box. I really like when there is plenty of options already, without buying add. materials.
One of the downsides I heard from my GM was that it is harder to balance the stats, espacially when you're inexperienced. You want an high INT-score, of course You're likely to have a decent DEX-score to increase survivability Also, some CON is always good to have, for more HP You're likely want some WIS to have a besser Initiative And then there's STR that you need to carry all those Items you create(d) , on top of all you're other gear. The problem that gets even worse after reaching Lvl 7, when you start creating three items instead of two from your Infused Reagents, is: These items add up, even if they're just Light Bulk. Lets say you're a Lvl 7 Human Alchemist (with a INT-Background), with STR +1, DEX +2, CON +2, INT +4, WIS +0, CHA +0 and let's assume you have a 1 Bulk weapon (for when you're ever out of bombs) and a 1 Bulk armor plus 3 Bulk of other items: That's already 5 of your 6 Bulk to your Encumbered threshold used! Then you create your items during daily preperations and may, out of inexperience, use all of your 11 Infused reagents then and there for items from your Research Field, that's 3 Bulk and 3 Light from those items, meaning you're easily encumbered. Of course that's part of the learning curve and by that point, you're most likely to have figured out how much to prepare and how many Infused Reagents you should hold back. But all in all, i guess for inexperienced/new players it might be hard to balance the stats.
First, some background: I've been playing a bomber alchemist for almost 15 months, first in a playthrough of Fall of Plaguestone with my home group, then as my second Organized Play character (He's now 6th level). He did OK with the former, but the latter is where he truly shined, because you're always in a new group, so the alchemist is ideally positioned to shore up any weaknesses you might have. No healer? Prepare 4-6 elixirs of life every day and hand them out. Heading out in the wilderness without a ranger or druid? Prepare some serene mutagens to boost your Nature and Survival checks, and some eagle-eye elixirs to spot trouble before it's too late. Need to negotiate a trade deal with an iruxi ambassador? Whip up some silvertongue mutagens and comprehension elixirs before the conference. The one big issue I have with the class is the Additive feats: they all only work with Quick Alchemy, which means you can't prepare them ahead of time, and you have to spend actions to brew them in combat. This problem is even worse with bombs, since you also need to hit your target AND they get a saving throw. Removing the Quick Alchemy requirement, reducing the chance of success to a single roll, and allowing them to have an effect even on a failure would make these abilities a viable option. Speaking of which, one thing I would like to see in the future is something they used to have in first edition: area-of-effect attacks. Where are the poisonous vapours and burning clouds they were known for? Crystal Shards from the APG seems to be a step in that direction, but I hope there's a lot more where that's coming (fingers crossed for The Grand Bazaar and Guns & Gear!).
I'm playing a goblin alchemist named Tisteenk, and he has become crucial to the party. We don't have a healer, so the party relies on me for the healing in combat and outside of it. I also get to hand out buffs everyday to each player.
@@lincr.1988 That's an aspect I've grown to enjoy about the class is providing buffs for the party. While the damage of the alchemist isn't as strong as other classes, you can make up for this. If you dip into the dual weapon warrior dedication and pick up dual thrower, you get the benefits of double slice for ranged strikes. Using double brew with dual thrower is a good way to stack two different persistent damage. Tic damage shouldn't be overlooked.
The problem with the alchemist is that as a class it is subpar. Anything it can do, another class can do better - particularly the investigator. Interestingly, more often than not, the best way to play a particular type of alchemist is to actually pick another base class and then multiclass into alchemist. A fighter/barbarian who mutliclasses into alchemist is a better mutagenist brawler than a base alchemist is. A ranger who multiclasses into alchemist is a better bomber than a base alchemist is. Everything is a better healer than a base chirugen alchemist is (or has the potential to be). The only one that really suffers is the toxicologist I believe as that one has a penalty to the poison dc... hrmm... I am not seeing anything about that though so it probably isn't that bad. This isn't to say that the alchemist is useless. Just that other options are better for whatever build you are aiming for. That being said, I know of at least one character I would only play the alchemist with and no other class and it is one of my first characters from back in high school (in fact literally my first). I cherish the character who was actually originally an alchemist, but I would not like to actually play him or have him interact with anyone. Personality wise he is incredibly unlikable, even to me. However, an alchemist character that simply makes elixers and mutagens and hands them out and just sits at the entrance to a dungeon or back at camp? Perfect!
I love alchemist, but its got some problems. Lots of support casters get the benefit of support spells and Legendary spell DCs, doing both equally well on the same character. An alchemist has to choose one thing to be less bad at and then is just behind after a certain point. A PFS table I ran had a fighter with quick draw and an alchemist. The fighter was more effective as the bomber than the actual bomber. Two characters abandoned their class fantasy because it was more effective for the bomber to be a caddie and the fighter to throw bombs. Their class DC never gets past master, their attacks never get there. In their field eventually they get options that bring them up in power, but you can’t beat math. A 13th level fighter with a decent Dex is a better bomber than a bomber. A wizard will always be a better save or suck specialist than a toxicologist. A chirurgeon can compete with other healing focused characters. The mutagen specialist is largely unplayable, released with non-functioning abilities, references to mutagens that didn’t exist, and fixes that are fine but just make it less bad rather than good. Their formula book becomes a boring checklist of getting the next thing up the chain for the most part, rather than anything truly new. You go through a lot of effort to get good only to sort out to mediocre and casual play of the class seems to create feel bad experiences where a player goes through the effort to pick their crafted items only to watch them consistently hit for splash damage. The investigator, also a non-casting support character, can do a lot of what the alchemist does, but still be an effective combatant. It’s the beneficiary of a year of development time in APG and it shows. It’s sub-class options are more flushed out, its math is tighter, and it wasn’t released with non-functioning options. I think the lack of thought out options in the class carries onto its feat, with the wizard, witch, and rogue multi-class feats seeming to be the most common feat selections at the PFS tables I’ve run. An alchemist wizard will become a master of spells, making them better at offense with their multi class abilities than one from their own class. It’s a cool concept and there’s some cool mechanics at its core. I think it will get better as it gets more options added to the game. The math isn’t there and that will always hold it back with how tight the math is in PF2e. Some simple changes (like making their bonuses unique or status) or even letting them do attacks based on their Int once a turn like the Investigator, would make a huge difference in their consistency.
The proficiency thing is tough to defend. Even if you're mostly using debuff bombs and playing support, your hit chance and DCs may not be high enough for your effects to stick, reliably. Don't sleep on Quick Alchemy, though. It's really bad in terms of resource management, but leaving a single reagent in reserve each day can give you that extra bit of flexibility when/if you need it, which can be huge.
Playing an alchemist the hardest part is getting my party members to actually use my elixers. Story wise it's very akward to give a party members a silvertongue elixer in the middle of a conversation that might proove vital, especially if part of that conversation that might also need that person to recall knowledge. In combat it's the equivalent of a 3 action spell to draw a juggernaut elixer, stride over to a party members, then administer it (alternately if you gave it out in advance still 3 actions often-- drop your sword (free) draw elixer, drink it, then pick up your sword) I can't think of any elixer that is as good a buff for 3 actions as the equivalent mid level spell from a spellcaster. Healing bombs is a huge resource drain as it uses quick alchemy (it would definitely be worth it if there was a follow-up feat that allowed the use of any elixer). Your cooking research field is exactly what I'd want.
Agreed on the silvertongue thing during conversations. As soon as you gain access to the level 3 version though the effect lasts for 10 minutes, so you can give one to the charasmatic character just before you engage in a conversation. Better yet, if you know you are going to be in a settlement that day, just make 2 silvertongue elixirs during your preparations and give them to the charismatic members of the party. I've reflavored my Alchemical elixirs/mutagens as 'gushers' (like the candy) that one can pop in their mouth and consume whole, and that imagery helps like when in conversation just popping a gusher in your mouth to chew while you muse over your words. Having weirdly shaped and used alchemical items also means it's less likely narratively for others to recognise them at a glance :)
Coming from PF1 the PF2 Alchemist was a massive disappointment because my favorite Alchemist was the self-buffing Hyde build. Fortunately the Investigator does that really well so I can play that class instead and leave the Alchemist to do the support stuff it's actually good at.
I hope the video mentions that alchemists are most optimal vs energy resistance weakness monsters :D because even if they miss all three attacks, if they deal even one splash damage they can trigger the weakness three times in round
Exactly! And people just ignore it! It doesn't matter if you're gonna hit or not, throw 3 bombs in a turn (with Expanded Splash) and you're gonna guaranteed to deal 24damage in everybody within that area! That's nuts!!!
The flip side to being able to use all their reagents to make the Best Stuff is that the alchemist's Best Stuff... isn't very good. Basically, after level 5 or so alchemists don't get any new cool things, they just get slight improvements on the things they already have. So a 1st level alchemist can make a Minor Cheetah's Elixir, giving them +5 ft speed for 1 minute, a 5th level alchemist can make a Moderate Cheetah's Elixir for +10 ft for 10 minutes, and a 9th level alchemist can make a Greater Cheetah's Elixir for +10 ft for 1 hour. Meanwhile, a caster can cast Longstrider for +10 ft for 1 hour as a 1st level spell, Phantom Steed for speed 40 ft for 8 hours as a 2nd level spell, stuff like Air Walk or Fly as 4th level spells, and eventually get into things like teleportation. I mean, at what level do alchemists get elixirs that let them fly? Level NEVER, that's when.
My big concern is that most alchemical items follow the cost of scrolls (then again, scrolls are 1 spell level lower than the item level would suggest). Rather than making 3 bombs instead of 2, it should've been like healing font, gaining free bombs equal to intmod (or similar). One problem I have with the "support" role is that the alchemist can't apply stuff midcombat in a simple way while a caster can just touch or use reach on someone. Not totally sure, but ain't splash a different damage instance and so activate weakness twice on a hit? Alchemists have alot of persistance damage and should not be frowned upon. What I dislike with alchemical items are how they are placed an cathegorized in the book/archives of nethys and are hard to take a glance at. On the plus side, an alchemists money does not have to go to major standard items. They might need something like a wand or a staff or a way to gain item bonus to dc or increase item bonuses in the hands of the alchemist
From the Splash Trait: "Add splash damage together with the initial damage against the target before applying the target’s weaknesses or resistances." And yeah, they have persistent damage, but they need to make specific feat selections to make that persistent damage any more effective than any old martial class could do by throwing the same bomb- and even with those feats, persistent damage only applies if they actually HIT with the bomb's attack roll, which they're less likely to manage compared to those martials, unless they stack up buffs that, due to the lack of any quickdraw feature or the like, are really clunky to apply in combat
I've been playing an alchemist lately and its been a bit painful to be honest. Elixirs of life are nearly neglible for healing until level 5, bomb splash on missing doesn't do enough damage to really matter, enemy weaknesses are rare, reagents are super limited at low levels and mutagen drawbacks are crippling in a lot of cases. The number of math fixer feats the class has is an anomaly among all the classes too. Even as a support alchemist feels unreliable, the low accuracy of the alchemist, combined with limited reagents and no "cantrips" until 7 make them unreliable even as a support debuffer. It would be nice to see earlier perpetuals, and bombs flexing the degrees of success system pathfinder uses to apply to their debuffs. An aoe mutagen option and a few more elixirs of life (at level 3 especially) would also go a long way. Chirurgeon also needs a rewrite, the level 13 greater discovery is super powerful, but comes at the cost of making everything else it gives underwhelming.
One of the big issues is that intelligence stat does not add to their attack (Wizard adds to Spellcasting, martials gets physical stat, investigators get Devise). I think that the variant ability stats on 2,3,4,5 helps this a bit.
It's the same thing for Warpriests and Battle Oracles (sure, they have proficiency with their spellcasting, but the Divine tradition isn't very known for dealing damage so...)
@@lincr.1988 both have status bonus spells for buffing. Whereas Alchemist is standard item +1. All resources being auto-heightened is strong though. Probably all coming out in the wash. Big issue I have with Intelligence, is that is not a defensive stat (Wis, Con, Dex) and getting more trained proficiencies is a bit naff. A lot of stat commitment with not much pay off.
@@jstabler881 That's very true, but for Alchemists Intelligence is not just like that you know, it's more Reagents, therefore he's capable of doing more different things and that's as important as those saves, and also they can craft consumables (like bombs) in their downtime, I know that goes for all of the other characters but Alchemists can use bombs in a way that other classes can't so it's kinda unique for them. So, Int is very good for Alchemists, it just works in a different way.
@@lincr.1988 perhaps it is just the math is a little sideways. Int to dmg rather than hit. Splash damage to mitigate misses. Auto heightened. I think that the numbers are probably fine, just different. Different makes it hard to easily compare. Hence Nonats’ complexity argument.
Sorry for the long comment but I've been number crunching alchemists the past few days, and as long as you use either the bestial or quicksilver mutagens and keep either STR or DEX respectively as high as you can, an alchemist stays on-par with martials in terms of non-status or circumstance boosted attack bonuses for most levels, even surpassing them levels 7-9. It's not until level 13 that a significant gap of -2 happens from martials getting their master proficiency, and that can be mitigated through forcing conditions like flat-footed or through archetype feats. A chirurgeon who primarily uses their reagents for elixirs can take the archer dedication to get martial bows as well as the archer's aim feat to get a +2 circumstance on a 2 action strike, filling that gap nicely, for example.
Bad idea, Want a tank? Go Orc Half-Sylph/Undine (Smokesoul/Mistsoul is amazing with Smokestick/Mistform Elixir), Sentinel Dedication (for Heavy Armor), use a Shield and you can use Juggernaut Mutagen from levels 1-4 (at level 5+ I recommend Elixirs of Life) and then Bestial/Feral Mutagen to deal some damage (since at that point Juggernaut Mutagen will be too weak), and yeah, I'm aware of the side effects of Bestial/Feral Mutagen, but it's worth it, you're gonna be very defensive already, and you'll be able to use some maneuvers since it's unarmed attack. You're gonna be able to use Juggernaut Mutagen again at lvl11 (and then to keep switching it between Juggernaut, Bestial and Energy Mutagen, depending on what you want), and at level 13 you'll be able to have both Mutagens active at the same time, which is fantastic! The penalties will basically be -2 Reflex saves, -2 in perception and iniciative (wich won't be exactly necessary after the combat begins) and -2 Will saves (that you can nulify with Bravo's Brew) and -2 AC, but as I said, you're gonna be very defensive already, so that won't such a big problem tbh. Orcs are incredibly tough and their feats are amazing for people who don't want to die xD Lemme know what you think ;)
@@lincr.1988 love the idea of sentinel, so I can use other mutagens than drakeheart. I think I would use spiked gauntlets instead of beast mutagen, but that is simply because I never planned to do decent damage :) and after looking at sylph I would deffinately want that to boost my mistform. Ty for the advise :D
@@vatolander The Bestial is not only for the damage, the damage is amazing indeed, but the best thing of it is the bonus to hit, that's bigger than any rune in the game, it's a +4 at level 17 ;) But sure, if you prefer using Gauntlets, go for it :) Just don't forget that you need to taunt the enemy somehow, and if your accuracy is crappy, that might be difficult to do. -2 AC from Feral Mutagen is pretty inviting haha
Alchemist is very fun, but at first can be very complicated to learn how his daily reagents work and also how quick alchemy works. I made a toxicologist alchemist for a one shot -Little Big Problem in Absalom. Because I was very confused with the class, I played suboptimaly - basically used 0 daily infused reagents and only used them for quick alchemy. I know better now and the class is extremely fun, because you bring versatility to a party and PF2 rewards that.
The Alchemist may be ok in a campaign that is not combat heavy. In the dungeon crawl I was playing mine, I quickly ran out of bombs, even if I ONLY made bombs. I never felt like I had the luxury to do any quick alchemy and that is a pre-requisite for most interesting feats that alter and improve bombs. When you have to be precious about your weak bombs, it's heart wrenching to see them miss all the time. The high AC I got from drakenheart was fun. Alchemist needs every class feat they can get, that left absolutely no possibility for an Archetype, in my opinion. An archetype might have helped. All in all I feel like this class needs to be completely overhauled. As a house rule, I would triple their reagents, but only allow items to be made on a 1 to 1 basis. That way they would at least be flexible.
I've been playing a Alchemist Chirurgeon since the game came out. I do feel my character is a support type class more than anything in the game. I choose to be that since we didn't have any dedicated healers in our group. The amount of healing potions is amazing, I can also use my crafting skill check for treat wound checks. I still try to make bombs, poisons, or some mutagens to support the party as I see fit. I plan everything at the beginning of the session, but at higher levels I can setup quick alchemy reserves of reagents to make stuff in a pinch. I didn't feel like the feats helped out my character much, so I ended up doing a Wizard dedication at level 2. With this I am able to support the group with healing potions, bombs, and attack with magic at range. I went Wizard because of Intelligence score. I get INT Mod as Damage on some spells, and The higher my INT mod, the more Reagents I can make a day. That's two bombs, or three healing potions.
That's actually super smart. Similar to the champion, so much of the alchemist's power comes from class features that archetype can provide an excellent power boost.
@@Nonat1s I try to plan ahead, that way I can change things for my character to help the party. I also took magical crafting to improve our gear. With Wizard dedication I can have plenty of spells up to around 1 level 6 and 7th spell slot. I can get extra slots for 1-5. I am also considering at 20 I could take the Scoll Savant Feat, allowing for scroll usage. A wizard staff would also be a simple weapon for an Alchemist so that is another options for more AOE abilities.
My way of playing the alchemist (bomber subclass) is to give something to each party member at the beginning of the day. At earlier levels (we started at level 3), it was just one item like one drakeheart mutagen, juggernaut mutagen, or Quicksilver mutagen to each player character depending on their strengths. At higher levels, I'm now throwing an elixir of life in to each player as well. Needless to say, our longbow weilding ranger has been loving the Quicksilver mutagens, and the drakeheart mutagens are great at keeping people alive and improving initiative rolls.
Not that useful for party members using both their hands. Its 4 actions to use an item. 1) sheath sword, 2) take out mutagen 3) use mutagen 4) draw sword.
@@ZombieBraintrust Indeed, not that useful for those using both hands, but consider the following: • Using a 10 minute duration drakeheart mutagen, or, at higher levels (11+), the one hour duration version before combats to improve initiative checks. This is useful even on characters with heavy armor that wouldn't benefit much from the drakeheart mutagen item bonus to ac. • using a juggernaut mutagen mid-combat for extra hp, (or just an elixir of life). Worth the actions in some cases even needing to drop an item. • using elixirs of life out of combat during time sensitive situations. • A lot of party compositions won't have a lot of characters that have both their hands filled in combat, so they can enter combat holding an alchemical item in one hand. Yes, it may seem a little unrealistic at initial glance, but if you consider how characters would view such miraculous items that can heal or buff with a quick drink, carrying one if your hand in a tense situation can sound pretty reasonable. Yeah, I agree they won't work for all characters, but from my experience playing an alchemist, most characters can at least find some use for alchemical items.
I've found Toxicologist is the 'optimal' alchemist build if your party is full of martials AND your in a campaign where poison does something. (Otherwise you go bomber.) as being able to give your martials poison on their weapons every combat greatly enhances your damage by enhancing their damage to some obscene numbers. You also don't lose anything for not going bomber, since bomber is tied to its feats, not its subclass, which toxicologist gets. Meanwhile toxicologist doesn't need any of its feats to work since it gets the best thing, double poison and better poison DCs, in its subclass. And of course the 20 toxicologist ability is just better than anything bomber could ever hope to do.
Be sure to check out the Nonat1s Patreon Page! Any pledge of $10 or more gains access to the brand new "Chef Research Field" as well as four other unique subclasses that I've released in the past! www.patreon.com/Nonat1s Thank you so much for watching!
Safest way to play alchemist is to play as support. Another tip, prepare lists for different suspected situations. Like a cookie cutter. Expecting some beefy bois? Make a list for that. Expecting some danger poison bois? Make a list for that. Expecting to not see combat for a full day but instead go shopping and sloothing? Make. A. List. For THAT.
In my pathfinder group I play an. Ch. alchemist/familiar master. He does not even prepare his reagents because he always wants to be prepared. So as soon as I could i spent gold to buy every single formula availible to me. Then I just make what i need when o need it. I make actual items spending money to have a stock of alchemical items in often need but I hold up my
Hey I play a tinkering alchemist goblin with some friends and I can assure you, designing a cannon out of a large cauldron and also using it as a zombie containment apparatus is well worth it. The bombs are great for when you need to make glue traps and set stuff on fire or even making a health elixer for the for the vampire in the party because he wanted to be edgy, and now he can
I argue they're support, but I also say they're super powerful if you know a creatures weaknesses. The splash alone guarantees that form of damage and will also deal the weaknesses value to that creature. They are more versatile than a spell caster in that regard
I can agree with these points. What I noticed while playing an alchemist (pathfinder 3.5 I think) was it can be very situational, once in close quarters or close combat it became very hard to throw bombs and use certain items without harming your party members in the process (my DM was also using the allignment system so double whammy there), didn't help that the entire campaign was littered with dungeons and halls. My advice is don't let a noob play this class and if you do, talk to your DM about the general campaign terrain to see whether or not it's worth it.
I am playing a goblin alchemist right now, so far, it's been fun. I like the ability of a prepared caster and the mix of the spontaneous caster. So far, I am a bomber and I look not just for damage but, status effects like bottled lightning and giving a no save flat-footed. I prepare a silvertongue mutagen for our sorcerer because he is also a face or cheetahs elixirs for that sweet 10 foot bonus in combat. It helps the melee get to where they need to go or gets me out of dodge. We just fought a young black dragon in the air and i ended up damaging them even on a miss with splash, I crit my next turn, dragon is flat-footed so, then use alchemists fire for damage and persistent damage and the rest of the party had an easier time taking it down. Also, recall knowledge on creatures helps a long way for the alchemist.
My biggest complaint with the Alchemist (aside from them being less proficient with bombs than any class that gets proficiency with *all* martial weapons, including bombs) is that it feels like too much value is placed on the Quick Alchemy ability. Yes, Quick Alchemy is very convenient for when you need something, and most if the feats that enhance it are amazing... But I honestly think that the versatility and extra power isn't always worth how inefficient Quick Alchemy is.
The Alchemist quick alchemy should also always be used imo if you use all your reagents in the beginning of the day for your daily preparation that you aren't using the Alchemist to its fullest potential because unlike prepare casters you have the option to have what you need in an instant granted only for that turn (unless you grab Enduring Alchmey at level 4 then it will last until the end of your next turn) giving them an even bigger list of tricks to do for the day making sure you are never caught with you pants down and you have what you need for just about any thing
Agreed. I thought about touching on Quick Alchemy, but I wanted to keep this video fairly easy to digest. But yeah, that's an amazing (albeit inefficient) tool in their kit.
I actually play a Leashy Alchemist in my current campaign and it is an awesome class once you get into it. note I also took magical crafting and because of this in ours im allowed to brew potions as needed in down time. I also used this to learn weapon enhancement which helps reduce cost on group. I love the Alchemist and other then some small homebrews we play it as written.
Idk why people don't often think about this, but the bomber can pass their bombs to a fighter. An alchemist bomb is a martial weapon. Also, I loved my gnome chirugeon. She would use mutagens in combat and heal the party in downtime. This allowed our cleric to save spell slots for combat.
Probably because the Fighter is already one of the better damage dealers without Alchemist items, and then the Alchemist doesn't have anything to do themselves. That's not a good use of action economy or the items.
Any class can take the medicine feats. Other classes has a lot more feats to spend on medicine feats. A rouge makes for a far far superior doctor type build.
@@christianflor1394 Yep. As I noted in another comment, our level 4 party Ranger can bring back the Dwarf Barbarian (one of the highest ancestry/class HP combos in game) and Halfling Wizard from unconscious to full HP in an hour. And they are still one of the better combatants we have in most fights. Whereas the Chirurgeon is one of the worse builds for combat and not really that much better at healing.
We do think about it. And we take issue with the fact that we devote our entire build to maximizing a specific kind of item... Just so we can hand it off to someone who can use it better than we can.
For power gamers and optimizers it is tough to choose Alchemist. But, for role-players, Alchemists can be a blast. They are constantly looking for reagents, they can therefore get into trouble the party has to deal with. They can be good scouts because they can also gather items as they check out the lay of the land. That is, they can fit a fun niche for a player who wants to do more than encounter, smash, steal, repeat.
A class that deserves to b rewritten. - Learning curve is a weak point of Alchemist; - the fact that a potion will do more damage in the hands of others; - the damage compared with other attacks - from level 1 to 4 he is basically useless, later I am not sure because I was demotivated and changed character.
There is one thing you didn't bring up with the Alchemist. The Quick Alchemy action. For 1 action and 1 Infused Reagent, you can whip up an alchemical item from your formula book that is good until the next round. This is why I don't prep all of my reagents during daily prep. I will make perhaps a batch or two of items for the day, and leave the rest for those unknown situations that may arise.
I prep like half my reagents since my party actually built their characters atound the support I offer. I usually make a batch of quicksilvers for myself, a batch of silvertongues for myself and the swashbuckler, and a couple batches of dread ampoules for the dread striker rogue and helping the witch's save or sucks. Everything else I just leave open; I get way more mileage out of my reagents just whipping up quick alchemy items. I've found this method turns feeling like a subpar wizard into feeling like a absurdly flexible problem solver
I think one of the issues with Alchemists and alchemical items is that you actually learn them kinda slow. For a wizard, they get 2 new spells per level, of any spell lvl they can cast. Alchemists get 2 new items of their level or lower each level up. But, if you look at the available options and count them, an Alchemist has about 20% more things to pick from each level, because each level because they unlock a new tier EACH level instead of every other level. Going from level 3 to level 4, a wizard can pick from spell lvl 1st and spell lvl 2nd of the arcane list, which is approx. 50 spells (might be more, might be less, that's what I eyeballed). An Alchemist going from level 3 to level 4 gets to pick from lvl 1, 2, 3, and 4 items, which is approx. 70 items (across bombs, elixirs [which includes mutagens], poisons, and tools). Yes, at level 1 ( and maybe 3) you get 3 free recipes, but in terms of % of total options vs. options you took, you're behind the curve by a slightly noticeable margin. With future books they'll probably make more spells vs. alchemical items which will balance that out, but for the time being Alchemists are actually bottlenecked going from level to level unless they shell out money on recipes (which wizards can also do, but that's less often used from my experience). Also, there's no equivalent of a staff for alchemists, there's no item that gives you more reagents per day that can only be spent on X item types. There's no wands, that gives you an extra item per day, nor an item that enhances items you use. The only item you get is goggles that give you an item bonus to chucking bombs (and crafting, and ignoring lesser cover)... which bombs of a higher tier already have baked in... so the only thing they give you over a crafter's eyepiece (and the later Inexplicable Abenefit
I think a lot of the issue with not being a damage dealer is the vast shift that is from PF1 where alchemists were some of the heaviest hitters in the game, and now they are completely different, and to be honest overly complicated for what they provide.
This is a pretty weak take sorry. The issue with the alchemist isn't damage that's correct, However the fact is that weapon proficiency is tied to accuracy in a VERY significant way, Not only that but alchemist DCs suffer significantly. They don't even get legendary in their class DC. In fact Alchemist has literally 0 combat or utility legendary proficincies aside from Perception. That's not good. Not only this but Poisons target Fortitude Saves, the highest save among enemies at every level. On average Fort saves are 1-2 points higher than other saves. The average success chance of a poison is 30%, 40% with a feat tax against a flat footed enemy. Not only this but every poison is single use and is extremely action inefficient. I don't even care about the damage of the poisons, we're just talking about getting conditions on enemies. Now bombs are attack rolls which sure, Bombers can get up to +4 to hit with via mutagen, they also can't pick Dex as their main stat so that puts them 2 points behind master proficiency compared to say a ranger. Mutagenists are the same thing with their mutagenic attacks. Sure they can eventually get rid of the downside but for most of the game they're present and pretty crippling for not much benefit. The big Benefit of Alchemist? The versatility, sure they can react to most situations, but the fact is, quick alchemy is really bad resource economy, the vast majority of your alchemical reagents are best used by using normal alchemy in the morning for 2x items, this way you can create a spread of items and hand them out, Since actually using items yourself is TERRIBLE action economy. Basically the way the alchemist is maximally efficient is to use all of their alchemical items in camp every morning, then hand them out to other players to use. Then the alchemist sits in camp all day brewing more alchemical items to hand out. Then everyone else returns at the end of the day to rest and refill from the vending machine. To illustrate exactly how bad poisons are let's look at an example from before Errata 2 that clarified how poisons with ranged weapons work. We were using a home brewed solution where 1 dose of poison was enough to coat 10 ammo (based on the description of silversheen) because the game at the time only said "you can poison ranged weapons" and didn't say anything about how it worked at all. So I as an alchemist, would use a shortbow with 10 poison arrows, and attempt to spam out poisons, Their DC was tied to my class DC, and they inflicted flat footed once they hit. I also took the Archer dedication for double and triple shot. This was vital for applying multiple doses of poison per round to help counteract the Abysmal success chance of poisoning. At level 7 alchemists hit the height of their accuracy, where they hit expert proficiency with their weapons, from this point on enemies will get more AC progression where you're stuck from then on. only getting item progression from your mutagen/item runes and stat progression. So at level 7 avg AC is 25. if you are using your +2 mutagen, expert prof, and have 19 in dex, you have approximately +19 to hit. But then you're probably going to use double shot to be able to spread more poisons or stack applications. This gives you a +17 to hit with both shots, as opposed to a +19 and +14. giving you an overall 5% more chance to hit both shots. At +17 to hit against a 25 AC (assuming not flat footed Though if they fail their first save with hunting spider venom the 2nd attack is back up to a +19) That gives you a base 60% chance to hit at your most accurate, with a 30% chance to successfully poison (you can't have pinpoint poisoner at this level yet). that gives you on any shot a 18% chance per shot to poison an enemy. This is just against even level enemies, slightly higher for enemies you don't care about poisoning and significantly lower for enemies you desperately need to poison. This gives you 2 18% chances to poison in a round if using double shot. (18% of the time you'll poison on your 2nd shot so, 18% of the time you'll have a 70% chance to hit with a 30% chance to poison on the 2nd shot, which would be a 21% chance to hit, 18% of the time. It gets just way more complicated from here so it's easier to just say 18% twice though it is slightly more than that.) At level 18 you can get another feat which allows you to use triple shot at a -2 and double shot at a -1. This gives you 3 chances to poison in a round using these rules, but the ACs relative to your attack and saves relative to your DC have increased as well. So level 7 is actually the peak of alchemists accuracy and power However Errata 2 came out and clarified that you need to poison every single arrow individually so, you need to take 1 action per poison to poison 1 shot. You can no longer use double or triple shot to try and make multiple attacks at a decent MAP to spam out arrows and hope to land the low % chance of actually poisoning things. This killed the above alchemist build, which honestly wasn't even over powered it was still pretty weak even when VASTLY more powerful than the Rules as clarified. Bombs are in much the same situation, their accuracy is just as bad, their DCs are also similarly bad, you're also feat taxed to improve the DCs. Mutagens are also in the same situation, but without any of the debuffs, they don't really add any combat effectiveness and give some pretty hefty debuffs to the user. FUCK even being a healbitch is awful due to the single target nature of your healing, the lower capacity, and action economy of healing. Anyways what really criples Alchemist is not their Damage you're correct, It's their targeting of the statistically highest Save with one of the lowest DCs of any class that is supposed to interact with saves in that way. Then you've hidden that Save behind an AC check, which they have a pitiful chance to hit. It's basically the Magus but with worse action economy and less pay off. Fuck man, Quarter the Damage on poisons (I don't care about it) bump the condition stages up by 1, and raise the DCs by like 3 across the board and poisons suddenly become good. The biggest problem with this game is that paizo Really loves to let you use all of your tools on enemies that don't require any of your resources to handle but refuses to let you use them effectively on enemies which are actually a challenge and need to be handled via resource expenditure. It's the final fantasy school of balance and it's fuckawful. Status effects don't work on the boss! but normal enemies aren't challenging enough that I require inflicting status effects on them to end the fight!
You also forget the downtime. An Alchemist has the highly useful benefit of any downtime spent he returns to the party with a sack full of alchemical items he doesn't have to spent any of his daily ressources on. Spent most usefully on more situational items or healing elixirs.
It is so hard some times, as an alchemist, to remember to represent only half to a third of your reagents, but I highly recommend a merchant background. You can start the game with enough money to make a good selection of bombs, potions, and poisons beforehand, just in case. I also agree that people shouldn't focus on their speciality. I'm a surgeon(not gonna try spelling it the other way) and most of my moves are shooting poison at people.
The learning curve for the alchemist is insane, but it pays off. Imo, quick alchemy is super overlooked. I've trivialized challenges by just whipping out the appropriate item, and a couple times, saved my party from being killed
Brand-freaking-new player here: Do alchemists usually do significantly MORE damage or contribute MORE staying power than other less specialized classes? Because if they need to predict the future on a regular basis to be AS effective as other classes, then they are still too weak, since often you won't be able to predict what comes up, and honestly even in a game where you could... Having no surprises would get boring quickly.
Hi! J-F Here. I DM 2 alchemists in 2 separate games. 1st of all: Chef's class, love it, super flavorful, definitely interested in reading more. 2nd of all: I generally agree with most of your points, alchemists are about flexibility and the power within. However, since they cap out at expert in weapons and master in DC, they're weaker than any comparable class in straight up numbers, not to mention the additional lack of accuracy due to not using their K stats for their attacks. A quick and dirty fix to the alchemist that I've found makes them enjoyable is to give them master proficiency in weapons and bombs at level 15. It's 2 after martials (like their expert) and really helps, cause otherwise even with debilitating bomb or poisons, they will still feel bad and outclassed. Enemies fail on a 6 vs the sorcerer's finger of death but succeed vs the alchemist's purple worm venom, that debilitating bomb is useless because it misses more than it hits and so on and so fort. This also keeps them more in line with other ''hybrid'' classes like paladin, who also gets master in both attacks and DC's.
QUICK ALCHEMY. don't forget that they can get the benefits of situational/spontaneous caster by using quick alchemy, which can be enhanced by buying many cheap formulas for situational uses. I typically save 1 regent (you can easily reserve more once you get to higher levels) for quick alchemy in case the party needs to target a certain weakness, or someone is afflicted with a disease, or any other unexpected scenario.
The main problem of this class is that when I read BOMBER, what I expect when playing this character is to throw bomb at everything just like a mad scientist that love explosion. This is what every one expect when picking bomber subclass, you just want to throw bombs, you can make some elixir to help your teamate but your main thing is still making and using bombs ! After lvl 13 (where most combat classes gain master proeficiency in weapon), bomber just become stormtrooper that have no more use in combat other than to throw bomb on the ground to use splash damage because you easaly get lower result that the monster AC -10 with multiple attack penalty... What's the point when it's more efficient to throw a bomb on the ground rather than try hitting the target... Same thing for the mutagenist subclass, you create mutagene to improve your body except that it's more efficient to use them on the others than your self. You are a mutagenist that have little use in drinking your own mutagenes because you don't gain any extra. When people are thinking about a mutagenist it should be some mad scientist that wants to modify their body to make it perfect. A good idea would be to give the mutagenist more proeficiency to unarmed attacks when he is under the effect of a mutagen and maybe the use of all or half of their intelligence instead of using other caracteristics (for example, when drinking your own silvertongue mutagene, you can use your intelligence instead of your charisma if it's greater, for bestial mutagene you use your intel instead of strengh for attack rolls or damages etc...). This make more sense because the body of the mutagenist can react differently to the mutagen you create with your reagant (which come from your body). The medic is a little better with the updates and since the class is clearly made to be only a support class it's the best subclass to pick since you can create more usefull elixir for your teamate and when you choose to be a medic you decide that you want to become a support in the team.
When I started playing AD&D ages, and ages ago... a 1st wizard had ONE spell... which they had to prepare in advance... a bit crap. The answer to this has always been to allow the characters intelligence to affect this, NOT necessarily by granting extra spells, but allowing the character to have a limited choice of spells from which to cast as a "spontaneous choice" (much like the Sorceror/Bard, or a little like the choice available to cantrip users), but limited ONLY to a number of FIRST level spells equal to their Intelligence bonus. They cast a spell, a use, rather than a specific spell has gone. Simple. As a house-rule, the same thing can apply the the Alchemist, rather than detail the EXACT preparations their "possible" preparations include a range of choices expanded by number equal to their INT bonus... It's not game breaking. You could also introduce a limiting factor saying that use of this flexibility comes at a small cost, say making a crafting roll, or such-like.... but as mentioned in the video... it is the character's intelligence (not the player's) that is being represented in their character's daily preparations.
New to PF & starting with 2e. Yay me! Lol If you have a cleric or other strong healer in the party, is it safe to forgo health brews? Or maybe make just 1 in case the cleric catches a tree-sized javelin in the chest. I liked the alchemist at first glance and figured I'd use it as my 1st character. This info is helpful.
One of my favorite characters I'm playing for his sheer hilarity is my Goblin Alchemist 'Fizzbang Vialsmasher'. Whom I'm playing in a PF2e conversion of Skull & Shackles. Ended up stuck in the Bilge with 2 hostiles alone at level 2. Despite having a bunch of Elixirs of Healing the action economy made them almost useless and I only had 6 bombs amd KEPT MISSING. Luckily they were Ampoules of Dread and got at least 1 crit before having to start throwing my fists. He has a +3 to INT and only a +1 to STR. Only then did I really start to hit and managing to knock out one assailant with a natural 20. The other one got me but the DM was a sport and made what happened a mystery. (The other guy killed the one I knocked out and claimed I did it to the captain, for a mock trial and quick execution. I got to play up that "I don't know ny own strength". I got out of the execution by proving myself during a boarding action.)
Honestly, my biggest issue is that the Mutagens are fine as is, but the alchemist (even with their mutagen feats) is always the worst person to take them because the negatives on the mutagens are especially harsh on a class that is trying to function. Bestial is the best example. If you include the feat for it, an alchemist will be better at hitting people than a sorcerer (as in the sorcerer is attacking with a stick and not magic), but will be lowering their armor to the level of said sorcerer. The fact that they have to wait until a lvl 20 feat to make it less dangerous to use items their entire subclass is based around just seems like bad sport.
I can definitely see the frustration, but at least some of that has been mitigated thanks to alchemist's gaining medium armor proficiency. It's not a perfect fix, but you aren't forced into having a good dex score anymore. A strength-based mutagenist is fairly valid now, especially with Drakeheart Mutagens!
@@Nonat1s Drake heart is valid, but it's more of a Band-Aid than a fix, since you would have to wait until level 11 to even be able to use another mutagen with it. At which point trying to be a tank alchemist just seems silly.
I don't know if it's blasphemy, but the other consideration for playing an alchemist is the fun of playing one. It doesn't always have to be about how much it can dish out or how effective those dishes are. Sometimes it's just _fun_ to play a prepared/spontaneous walking-crafting station that throws liquid spells.
Yeah as much as I love Alchemist the items can be a bit daunting my man suggestion is usually make two different advanced elixir for role play boost, three different elixir for combat (i.e. elixir of life, quicksilver mutagen, or drakeheart mutagen personal favorites) and two from what you trained in so you have variety and don't feel to useless
@@Nonat1s I really like Alchemist it is my favorite class to play in pathfinder 2e and I know how to make it work I never paid much attention to the lack of expertise as an issue due to the fact you can always increase it to be on pair with the martial class minus fighter
I'm playing an investigator with the alchemy methodology. Is it worth the effort to craft some alchemical bombs in downtime and use alchemist goggles to use them? My dm wants suggestions of magic items for levels 1-5.
Isn't it also generally agreed that a lot of caster's have the same issues, especially prepared caster and (playtest) magus? That unless you know what spells that day you will actually use , casters generally seem a little lacking since caster's rely a lot more on going for weak saves and damage vulnerabilities?
I'm playing a Chirurgeon... It's though, I'm the worst character during combat... But, if I got an hour, I can heal a party member from 0 HP to full or almost full... One thing I should have done (we are level 4) is take Battle Medicine, since that feat is ridiculously good. Next level I get good healing potions, so we'll see. I think the biggest problem I'm having is that I built the character to do downtime, and we haven't have much downtime yet. Hopefully I can make some good equipment before the next dungeon.
That's unfortunately a strange problem that Pathfinder 2e suffers from. The system is designed mostly around Society-Style play, where you finish a quest, then take a week off, do a quest, take a week off, etc. If your campaign doesn't have downtime, TONS of feats and skills become far weaker.
I mean, our level 4 Ranger can heal our party Dwarf Barbarian (highest HP class/ancestry combo I think you'll see) AND our Wizard from zero to full in one hour - And she is one of the better damage dealers in our party at the same time. *shrug* I don't think the medical Alchemist is worth it - you aren't a particularly impressive healer and you have to sacrifice feats that are essentially a feat tax for the class to make them viable in combat. But if you are enjoying it that's what's important honestly.
@@LordCyler To be honest I agree, the character was going to be a mutagenist, but I saw the party composition and thought that we needed a healer. I don't mind, the character would be basically the same RP wise. I'll see if it gets better later, but it does seems like the weakest subclass of the system.
While I agree that alchemists are more support oriented and resource management is extremely important for them, bomber alchemists should at least hit master in bombs and I'd tack on that advancement with the greater field discovery at 13th just so an alchemist that can keep up with the thing they are dedicated to doing. Mutagenists should also get master with unarmed attacks granted by mutagens, as well. Also all the buffs from alchemical items being item bonuses is a huge hit to an alchemists effectiveness. Most of the things you can do with your items aren't even helpful when there's a good chance someone already has an item bonus of an equal or higher value to that thing.
Thank you for the video, the subject was complex as a whole and I liked how you treated it, comparison with other classes or segregation of your points depending on the levels. I just think one point is lacking : even if a dragon falls from the sky and you weren't prepared... you still have quick alchemy. You haven't mentioned it but it's the key to the ultimate versatility of the class (ofc it's more expensive on the go in terms of batches but having a couple batches spared is always useful for this). So yeah, preperation AND ultimate versatility. A wizard CANNOT say "well, let's not prepare two spells this day and yolo I'll see on the go what I want". Although it is actually quite complicated to play and to choose items I agree. Thanks for the video
I hear what your saying, and I still disagree. rarely does a party have a good enough idea what they are going to be fighting to prepare as well as your troll example. Also, there aren't enough monsters with weaknesses to make up for how weak bombs are compared to similar abilities from other classes. Even after all the errata I still think Alchemists might be the weakest class in any given average scenario. I just can't think of anything it does that another class doesn't do better. Why bring along someone who is great in rare situations, ok in a few scenarios, and bad in several. when you can bring someone who is GREAT in a few, ok in others, and only bad in rare circumstances.
I don't see how the alchemist is considered weak when paired with other classes. I just started an Barbarian/alchemist character and personally can't wait to use large size mutagens and elixirs to buff resistance
"You no likeada bomz you say?" Tssss "I light another one for you here." Ssss - Bart, Goblin Mad Bomber. Shortly before he was replaced by Bort, the Goblin Happy, Friendly Bomber. What? It saves on character sheets. Mock not the bomz! 😜🤪😋
The number of reagents are cripplingly low at the beginning levels. I've had to take a wizard dedication for cantrips, just to make sure that I would have abilities available after the bombs and potions run out.
I agree. Like I said in the video, level 1-4 can be really rough. Quick Alchemy is almost unusable due to how few reagents you have to work with, making smart preparation almost vital. In campaigns with long days and multiple encounters, low level alchemists REALLY struggle.
But you could craft items in downtime, to have some extra gear with you for a long journey, and those items last long enough for you to just use them if necessary
@@guille787 I would rule (if I was a GM), that anything crafted during downtime could last up to your intelligence modifier x 1 month. I believe that this could help somewhat with having items you might need.
Hey NoNat, quick thing your red outline on your thumbnail made me think I had watched it already on youtube because the watch history bar disappears into the red border. Great videos as always!
My problem with the alchemist is all their mutagens and buffs and such are item bonuses. Meaning they do not stack with your magic items, and in a number of cases they do not scale as fast as said magic items.
I feel like mutagens should give status bonuses.
That's actually a super valid point that I never even realized. I always thought they were status bonuses myself.
They used to - "alchemical bonus" was a whole category back in 1e, mostly from mutagens and whatnot, so they'd stack with circumstance bonuses and enhancement bonuses
Agree 100%.
@@octavianpedigree5866 Sure, but what it means is instead of providing a unique benefit to the party, your primary class feature boils down to a way to save gold. That doesn't feel great or powerful.
@@justmonica9253 AND becomes redundant/unnecessary so long as the party is earning loot/treasure.
The major thing is, almost every item the Alchemist can create can be used better by someone else. Alchemists get a special proficiency with bombs, but any class that gets proficiency with Martial weapons can use them much better.
The Alchemist is great if you can prepare for the day, and 9 times out of 10 you'll just be giving those items to a party member that can actually use the item. The items can't benefit from some features unless you use them, but others still benefit more. You're more of an item dispenser most of the time.
that was my gripe. You just give everything to the party and you aren't even actively giving buffs out like a bard you just sit in the back while everyone uses your items.
Wich is cool to a lot of us. And the challenge of utilizing resources and gathering such. Then making something useful, many times to anyone or all in party. Or Artillery. Ha!
I agree with a lot of points in this video, especially the Alchemist being very much a not noob-friendly class, but there's one point I disagree. I don't think the class actually rewards you enough for all the preparation and work it takes to use it. In my experience so far, a well prepared Wizard, or heck, any spellcaster, can have a much bigger impact both in and out of combat :/
Alchemist: The best multiclass archetype :)
All jokes aside. They are okay, just suffer from being inferior to everyone else in every way except for very specific conditions
One of my players in my first campaign picked an alchemist and stopped playing afterwards because it was so resource heavy. I managed to lure them back in by offering a druid, they ended up having a good time with goodberry etc.
I feel the issue with alchemist is that the class flavour does not prepare you for the extra rules, characters sheets don't spec for them and really any attempt to simplify or make the class easier to read past having a physical alchemist notebook is not done. They give you this class and make how to play it very counter intuitive from a table perspective.
I agree. You basically need to have a rulebook in front of you to look at all of your alchemical items each day since they don't have a spell list page. The class really should've been in the APG.
@@Nonat1s I would support that for sure. Like playing a oracle was easier for the same player in a second campaign! I was so surprised!
Even a spell card deck that doesn't cost an arm and a leg but for alchemists. But they're not cheap over here in Ireland
@@AldurSFC FWIW, there’s a Potions & Alchemy card deck dropping in late April or May.
Edit: That’s all I know about it. I have no idea if it’ll help the Alchemists out there.
I think Alchemist is fine as long as you allow the player the opportunity to research what they're going to do and prepare accordingly. That way, they're usually an effective support class, but also have moments where they shine for engaging in Batman prep.
The problem I think that plagues them the most is that they don't need to actively buff allies. You can hand out all of your stuff to the party in the first couple rounds of or even before combat and then have nothing left to do yourself for the rest of combat. This also applies for noncombat situations. You may have made the stuff, but everyone else is better at using it.
As someone who isn't daunted at all by the amount of items (in fact I almost have memorised all of them), my real concern is the power disparity. If you're party needs more healing, become a medic or a cleric etc, if you need damage there's loads of ways to do that, if you need debuffs take a bard etc etc. Within a party of 4 people, we can typically cover all the bases without prior planning, so taking an alchemist just means you have to research a fight more, to be less effective in it than someone anyway. In your classic wizard/sorcerer, rogue, fighter, cleric party, what can an alchemist 'choose' for a fight, that will make a difference more so than just have 1-2 specialists at everything? Maybe people in my groups just make better designed parties than other groups, but without errata/dm changing things everyone has agreed never to play an alchemist, as there's is literally no benefit to doing so
Okay. But then it also sucks that you can't BE a damage dealer, when that's what most people wanted from first edition. If people are misusing thr class, then that's not on them. That's on Paizo for not making their role clear. They say you can focus on bombs, but when you do, you suck at it. They say you can be a mutating brawler, but when you try, you get stabbed to death. It's that they only had one support focus to start with. And that their bonuses don't stack with magic items.
Smoke bombs are one of the most useful 2e alchemist features for support as long as you have the knowledge checks to know it isn't going to aid the enemy more then debilitate them. One smoke bomb can instantly render several archers behind arrow slits unable to do anything other then wait or come out in the open.
I feel a lot of things should be base for the alchemist such as class DC for poison, bomber's passive, and quick grab + use. There's so many little things that pull the class down and it's not just the weapon proficiency being low.
The problem with things like Debilitating bomb is that the bomb still needs to hit to do anything and then there is still a saving throw to avoid effects. If you can't hit in the first place then you aren't getting any effects from feats like this in the first place. Other support classes don't have this problem.
While I agree that they aren't supposed to be the primary damage dealer, damage vs actually being able to hit the enemy is a big difference. With numbers very crunchy in P2e, the difference between +4 & +6 is MASSIVE. Being a bomber, mutagen, or poisoner feels awful when you miss so many attacks. Splash damage only gives s much. Why drink a potion, throw a bomb, or poison your blade when your teammate will use it 20% better than you all the time
Every alchemist build has a niche it does better than other classes. Bomber has better splash damage, mutagenists can combine mutagens and so on. But I think you've identifed one of the main issues - players want to be the best at the thing they do by picking the main class for it. Sure, a mutagenist is way more flexible than a fighter with alchemist deification - but the fighter is much better at just using bestial mutagen and let's face it, you probably picked mutagenist just to go ham on bestial mutagen.
I mean, if I pick a rogue I want to be the best backstab class, and if I pick a barbarian I want to do the biggest hits. No other class can do better at that specialty role by taking rogue or barbarian dedication.
Action economy, feat taxes, broken feats and lack of satisfactory support of various concepts the class already tries to go for.
Every damn Alchemist defender always say that it's because people "don't know how to use it" and then proceed to say that Alchemist players should be playing as item dispensers.
Everyone always say "you can exploit any weaknesses", but very much like the Theoretical Wizard (A wizard that always had the available spell slot, the perfect spell on their grimoire and prepared it that day and also had foreknowledge of their encounter), the Alchemist still has to deal with encounter variance, lack of knowledge, resource scarcity (you can't always count on having a town available to get extra Formulae once you level up).
The Bomber Alchemist isn't useless, but you can't simply do your job as a debuffer when you can't land your hits.
I had a player at my table that retired their alchemist because it wasn't being fun and satisfying at all mechanically (We all love the characters we create, this doesn't mean we can't dislike their mechanics, just to be clear). There was exactly a single encounter where the Alchemist was vital, but more because everyone else were missing their attacks while the Alchemist was exploiting Cold Weakness (Vision of Dahak, Age of Ashes book 2). On the other hand, there was a battle where the player got frustrated and decided to simply run away mid fight and we, the remaining three players at
you're definitely not wrong. But i think the core difference of an alchemist versus a wizard is that it's easier for an in-play alchemist to be closer to the "theoritical alchemist" than it is for an in-play wizard to be close to the "theoretical wizard".
That said, it still doesn't change the fact that the player wasn'y vibing with the alchemist on the table... which seems to be a relatively common experience. I've definitely found the need to step in and work with players to create more interesting (especially lower level) magical items to sure up issues they were having with their class choices/options.
I was really hoping Gods and Magic would add more alchemical items for alchemists.
I started looking at Alchemist recently because I though that bombs would work with the Resonant ability from the new geniekin weapons. Turns out it does not but all that time spent checking out Alchemist really got me interested in the class! There is so, so much going on with it but that makes it like a fun puzzle to solve.
You think that's fun? Try Mistsoul/Smokesoul + Mistform Elixir >)
I have a player who is a born ressurce manager. He took the Alchemist and he's so enjoying it.
Always prepared.
A perfekt match.
My biggest gripe is that a lot of Alchemist feats feel like they should be class features. That’s why it was nice to see Powerful Alchemy integrated as a class feature with the errata, but I wish more feats followed.
I still love Alchemists despite their flaws, but maybe that’s because I’m never play the main damage dealer.
They definitely have "options" that feel like the old feat tax days.
@@LordCyler Yeah, and some even surpass "tax" status.
One that I see pointed out the most is Alchemical Alacrity, a class feature, is still borderline nonfunctional without Enduring Alchemy, a feat.
The errata addressed the hand issue on this, but it remains inefficient and impractical next to Double Brew. You get to stow the third item you make now, but don't forget it expires before your next turn without Enduring Alchemy.
@@eyeh0 I feel like one of the biggest feat taxes that should be part of the class progression is the one that extends the range you can throw bombs from 20 ft. to 30 ft. Bombs are useful enough that all types of alchemist research fields can benefit from them.
Having played DND 5E and just now looking at PF2 there's a lot of stuff that feels like a feat tax
alchemist, aka. the real "jack of all trades, master of none" of this edition.
i encouraged my "noob" player to try out alchemist, and i very much regret it (but she's having fun, so all is well i guess)
Hey, if they're having fun then it sounds like it's working out!
Is that you Ken?
I recently came to the conclusion that alchemist are a weird mixture between spontaneous and prepared spell casters.
Y'know, you're not totally wrong, lol. They can prepare at the start of they day and also spontaneously create them with quick alchemy.
@@Nonat1s exactly.
Yup, I've been saying that for a long time haha I love how free they are in this game
I think thetop issues with alchemist is that it is so vastly different compared to it's 1e counterpart. 1e grenadier was what bombers hoped for and vivisectionist or maybe beastmorph was what people wanted mutagenist to be.
1e bombers dealt massive elemental damage and while they had bombs, they could blow through creatures, even on a miss. Compare that to 2e bomber. You have to be precise, and know that you have the monsters weakness to even hope for a chance of damage.
I would talk about mutagens but I dont want to be too long winded here.
TLDR: problem with 2e alchemist is that they are so different from their 1e counterparts.
support class always seems weak since most players just want to deal damage. Especially since its not really made clear with the alchemist not being a DD
I wish I could like this +1000 times!
I wouldn't call Alchemist a support class, nor a damage dealer. I'd call it a "Hybrid Class", it's similar to Battle Oracles and Warpriests, even to Investigators at some extent.
I wish you could upgrade your Alchemical Familiar to a companion and since it is made from your own blood it could get the same bonuses from your mutagens as you do.
Alchemist are such a great support class that can do so much more then throw bomb go boom.
Playing the alchemist is like being a witcher. If you know what's coming and plan for it you'll do amazing. You have enough choices to at the very least hang with you party. And if you have no idea have a bit of everything in stock and quick alchemy what you need to survive if an encounter comes up.
I wouldn't say that. You know there's Quick Alchemy, right? Also Perpetual Infusions
@@lincr.1988 I literally say quick alchemy in the post so I'm obviously aware of it. And as perpetual infusions are a function of quick alchemy I'm confused on what point you were trying to make.
An important skill for bombers is Recall Knowledge. If you know what weaknesses your foe has, you can use the appropriate bombs to use activate weaknesses with the splash damage. That helps maximize your combat effectiveness
Some really good points made in this video and in the comments section. Admittedly I don’t have I much experience with Alchemists in this system. I’ve only had one player choose an Alchemist since PF2e came out. She seemed to enjoy it at the time, though she was very quick to express her excitement to pick a different class once we started a different campaign.
I would actually consider the Alchemist’s need for knowledge a detriment. You’re absolutely right that a well prepared Alchemist can pull its weight. But the problem is most DM’s don’t handle Knowledge very well. Whether they are coming from other systems or full of years of house rules for knowledge gathering, I’ve noticed many DM’s are uneven at best while handling the topic. This is most evident in how Recall Knowledge, one of the greatest tools both in and out of combat, is often ignored by a DM. I’ve even seen DMs scrooge their players out of knowledge-even after the player selected a feat (I.e. precious resource) specifically to help the player & party with such circumstances.
But where I think Paizo really screwed the pooch was failing to make the Alchemist unique. Sure, it can make and distribute items with item bonuses. But whether you’re playing with alternative rules or not, the system expects you to be getting Item bonuses from somewhere to stay relevant. There’s nothing wrong with a support class, and playing a selfless character. But you really can’t provide much support other classes can’t do better. (And those classes can usually do more things than just that support). I understand Paizo wanted to keep the math tight, but they should have created an Alchemical Bonus, specific only to the Alchemist. They could have nerfed the bonus progression as necessary, so as not to create an overpowered class. But it would have allowed the Alchemist to feel like his support was different from that of a buffing spellcaster, a performing bard, and the magical weapons & armor of the party.
However, outside of the fun factor, most consumables are a waste of monetary resources, so in that regard an Alchemist can shine.
Others have already talked about the issues with poison, so I’ll just touch on that to say they’re right. And it’s another example of where an “Alchemical” bonus would have made a big difference.
I reckon in addition to your given points (choice paralyzation, knowledge of effect & preparedness), another thing that makes Alchemist difficult is Encumbrance. Many Alchemists can't even Carry the things they make without getting Encumbered Very Quickly. Sure, there are ways to boost the amount you can carry, but still, this is something that really does impact. The other thing I would say, in addition to other comments given here which are very good, is the lack of transparency when it comes to alchemical item destructability while on a person. This issue has come up a heck of a lot, and caused lots of negative feedback in my games.
Very true. my alchemist had the problem of whenever he fell, something in his alchemy kit would break, and I would have to wait until we got to town to fix it, the only it couldn't happen was getting a bag of holding.
I read about this class a few hours ago while I tried to understand how this system works. And there is so many modifiers, bonuses and etc so even Starfinder I think has less. I'm a litte bit scared, but at the same time charmed by how it works and how much offers.
Haha, that's exactly how I felt when I first read the alchemist. Most people agree that the alchemist should have been in the Advanced Player's Guide.
@@Nonat1s I think opposite: including this thing in core rulebook was a great idea, because it brings a really nice option to character that makes it harder and more rewarding for using intelligence out of box. I really like when there is plenty of options already, without buying add. materials.
@@Dizrak I totally agree with it. Alchemist is such an unique class, with unique mechanics, it's so cool!
One of the downsides I heard from my GM was that it is harder to balance the stats, espacially when you're inexperienced.
You want an high INT-score, of course
You're likely to have a decent DEX-score to increase survivability
Also, some CON is always good to have, for more HP
You're likely want some WIS to have a besser Initiative
And then there's STR that you need to carry all those Items you create(d)
, on top of all you're other gear.
The problem that gets even worse after reaching Lvl 7, when you start creating three items instead of two from your Infused Reagents, is: These items add up, even if they're just Light Bulk.
Lets say you're a Lvl 7 Human Alchemist (with a INT-Background), with STR +1, DEX +2, CON +2, INT +4, WIS +0, CHA +0 and let's assume you have a 1 Bulk weapon (for when you're ever out of bombs) and a 1 Bulk armor plus 3 Bulk of other items: That's already 5 of your 6 Bulk to your Encumbered threshold used!
Then you create your items during daily preperations and may, out of inexperience, use all of your 11 Infused reagents then and there for items from your Research Field, that's 3 Bulk and 3 Light from those items, meaning you're easily encumbered.
Of course that's part of the learning curve and by that point, you're most likely to have figured out how much to prepare and how many Infused Reagents you should hold back. But all in all, i guess for inexperienced/new players it might be hard to balance the stats.
sorry for that wall of text! :P
First, some background: I've been playing a bomber alchemist for almost 15 months, first in a playthrough of Fall of Plaguestone with my home group, then as my second Organized Play character (He's now 6th level). He did OK with the former, but the latter is where he truly shined, because you're always in a new group, so the alchemist is ideally positioned to shore up any weaknesses you might have. No healer? Prepare 4-6 elixirs of life every day and hand them out. Heading out in the wilderness without a ranger or druid? Prepare some serene mutagens to boost your Nature and Survival checks, and some eagle-eye elixirs to spot trouble before it's too late. Need to negotiate a trade deal with an iruxi ambassador? Whip up some silvertongue mutagens and comprehension elixirs before the conference.
The one big issue I have with the class is the Additive feats: they all only work with Quick Alchemy, which means you can't prepare them ahead of time, and you have to spend actions to brew them in combat. This problem is even worse with bombs, since you also need to hit your target AND they get a saving throw. Removing the Quick Alchemy requirement, reducing the chance of success to a single roll, and allowing them to have an effect even on a failure would make these abilities a viable option.
Speaking of which, one thing I would like to see in the future is something they used to have in first edition: area-of-effect attacks. Where are the poisonous vapours and burning clouds they were known for? Crystal Shards from the APG seems to be a step in that direction, but I hope there's a lot more where that's coming (fingers crossed for The Grand Bazaar and Guns & Gear!).
Suprisingly your poisons are where your gonna find the aoe type things, such as brimstone fumes making everything in a area take damage
Nice to see some alchemist love.
I adore this class. Next time I'm a player in a longform campaign, I plan to play one.
I'm playing a goblin alchemist named Tisteenk, and he has become crucial to the party. We don't have a healer, so the party relies on me for the healing in combat and outside of it. I also get to hand out buffs everyday to each player.
@@devondriggers3580 That's precisely what people call Alchemists, an item dispenser :/
@@lincr.1988 That's an aspect I've grown to enjoy about the class is providing buffs for the party. While the damage of the alchemist isn't as strong as other classes, you can make up for this. If you dip into the dual weapon warrior dedication and pick up dual thrower, you get the benefits of double slice for ranged strikes. Using double brew with dual thrower is a good way to stack two different persistent damage. Tic damage shouldn't be overlooked.
@@devondriggers3580 So so so true. Specially when you can do it with a lot of different dots
My problem with alchemists is that they focus on flexibility, you have a party full of adventurers, you don't need to try to be ok at everything.
But yes part of that problem comes down to, predicting the exact resources you need each day is nigh impossible
The problem with the alchemist is that as a class it is subpar. Anything it can do, another class can do better - particularly the investigator. Interestingly, more often than not, the best way to play a particular type of alchemist is to actually pick another base class and then multiclass into alchemist.
A fighter/barbarian who mutliclasses into alchemist is a better mutagenist brawler than a base alchemist is. A ranger who multiclasses into alchemist is a better bomber than a base alchemist is. Everything is a better healer than a base chirugen alchemist is (or has the potential to be). The only one that really suffers is the toxicologist I believe as that one has a penalty to the poison dc... hrmm... I am not seeing anything about that though so it probably isn't that bad.
This isn't to say that the alchemist is useless. Just that other options are better for whatever build you are aiming for.
That being said, I know of at least one character I would only play the alchemist with and no other class and it is one of my first characters from back in high school (in fact literally my first). I cherish the character who was actually originally an alchemist, but I would not like to actually play him or have him interact with anyone. Personality wise he is incredibly unlikable, even to me. However, an alchemist character that simply makes elixers and mutagens and hands them out and just sits at the entrance to a dungeon or back at camp? Perfect!
I interpreted that as: The best Alchemist, is an NPC.
As an Int based class, alchemist needs to be studied to be strong. With alchemical items it's really versatile.
I love alchemist, but its got some problems. Lots of support casters get the benefit of support spells and Legendary spell DCs, doing both equally well on the same character. An alchemist has to choose one thing to be less bad at and then is just behind after a certain point. A PFS table I ran had a fighter with quick draw and an alchemist. The fighter was more effective as the bomber than the actual bomber. Two characters abandoned their class fantasy because it was more effective for the bomber to be a caddie and the fighter to throw bombs.
Their class DC never gets past master, their attacks never get there. In their field eventually they get options that bring them up in power, but you can’t beat math. A 13th level fighter with a decent Dex is a better bomber than a bomber. A wizard will always be a better save or suck specialist than a toxicologist. A chirurgeon can compete with other healing focused characters. The mutagen specialist is largely unplayable, released with non-functioning abilities, references to mutagens that didn’t exist, and fixes that are fine but just make it less bad rather than good. Their formula book becomes a boring checklist of getting the next thing up the chain for the most part, rather than anything truly new. You go through a lot of effort to get good only to sort out to mediocre and casual play of the class seems to create feel bad experiences where a player goes through the effort to pick their crafted items only to watch them consistently hit for splash damage.
The investigator, also a non-casting support character, can do a lot of what the alchemist does, but still be an effective combatant. It’s the beneficiary of a year of development time in APG and it shows. It’s sub-class options are more flushed out, its math is tighter, and it wasn’t released with non-functioning options. I think the lack of thought out options in the class carries onto its feat, with the wizard, witch, and rogue multi-class feats seeming to be the most common feat selections at the PFS tables I’ve run. An alchemist wizard will become a master of spells, making them better at offense with their multi class abilities than one from their own class.
It’s a cool concept and there’s some cool mechanics at its core. I think it will get better as it gets more options added to the game. The math isn’t there and that will always hold it back with how tight the math is in PF2e. Some simple changes (like making their bonuses unique or status) or even letting them do attacks based on their Int once a turn like the Investigator, would make a huge difference in their consistency.
The proficiency thing is tough to defend. Even if you're mostly using debuff bombs and playing support, your hit chance and DCs may not be high enough for your effects to stick, reliably.
Don't sleep on Quick Alchemy, though. It's really bad in terms of resource management, but leaving a single reagent in reserve each day can give you that extra bit of flexibility when/if you need it, which can be huge.
Playing an alchemist the hardest part is getting my party members to actually use my elixers. Story wise it's very akward to give a party members a silvertongue elixer in the middle of a conversation that might proove vital, especially if part of that conversation that might also need that person to recall knowledge. In combat it's the equivalent of a 3 action spell to draw a juggernaut elixer, stride over to a party members, then administer it (alternately if you gave it out in advance still 3 actions often-- drop your sword (free) draw elixer, drink it, then pick up your sword) I can't think of any elixer that is as good a buff for 3 actions as the equivalent mid level spell from a spellcaster. Healing bombs is a huge resource drain as it uses quick alchemy (it would definitely be worth it if there was a follow-up feat that allowed the use of any elixer). Your cooking research field is exactly what I'd want.
Agreed on the silvertongue thing during conversations. As soon as you gain access to the level 3 version though the effect lasts for 10 minutes, so you can give one to the charasmatic character just before you engage in a conversation.
Better yet, if you know you are going to be in a settlement that day, just make 2 silvertongue elixirs during your preparations and give them to the charismatic members of the party.
I've reflavored my Alchemical elixirs/mutagens as 'gushers' (like the candy) that one can pop in their mouth and consume whole, and that imagery helps like when in conversation just popping a gusher in your mouth to chew while you muse over your words. Having weirdly shaped and used alchemical items also means it's less likely narratively for others to recognise them at a glance :)
Coming from PF1 the PF2 Alchemist was a massive disappointment because my favorite Alchemist was the self-buffing Hyde build. Fortunately the Investigator does that really well so I can play that class instead and leave the Alchemist to do the support stuff it's actually good at.
I hope the video mentions that alchemists are most optimal vs energy resistance weakness monsters :D because even if they miss all three attacks, if they deal even one splash damage they can trigger the weakness three times in round
Exactly! And people just ignore it! It doesn't matter if you're gonna hit or not, throw 3 bombs in a turn (with Expanded Splash) and you're gonna guaranteed to deal 24damage in everybody within that area! That's nuts!!!
And great vs golems. Something like 15d10 damage per round vs some golems?
The flip side to being able to use all their reagents to make the Best Stuff is that the alchemist's Best Stuff... isn't very good. Basically, after level 5 or so alchemists don't get any new cool things, they just get slight improvements on the things they already have. So a 1st level alchemist can make a Minor Cheetah's Elixir, giving them +5 ft speed for 1 minute, a 5th level alchemist can make a Moderate Cheetah's Elixir for +10 ft for 10 minutes, and a 9th level alchemist can make a Greater Cheetah's Elixir for +10 ft for 1 hour. Meanwhile, a caster can cast Longstrider for +10 ft for 1 hour as a 1st level spell, Phantom Steed for speed 40 ft for 8 hours as a 2nd level spell, stuff like Air Walk or Fly as 4th level spells, and eventually get into things like teleportation. I mean, at what level do alchemists get elixirs that let them fly? Level NEVER, that's when.
My big concern is that most alchemical items follow the cost of scrolls (then again, scrolls are 1 spell level lower than the item level would suggest). Rather than making 3 bombs instead of 2, it should've been like healing font, gaining free bombs equal to intmod (or similar).
One problem I have with the "support" role is that the alchemist can't apply stuff midcombat in a simple way while a caster can just touch or use reach on someone.
Not totally sure, but ain't splash a different damage instance and so activate weakness twice on a hit?
Alchemists have alot of persistance damage and should not be frowned upon.
What I dislike with alchemical items are how they are placed an cathegorized in the book/archives of nethys and are hard to take a glance at.
On the plus side, an alchemists money does not have to go to major standard items.
They might need something like a wand or a staff or a way to gain item bonus to dc or increase item bonuses in the hands of the alchemist
From the Splash Trait: "Add splash damage together with the initial damage against the target before applying the target’s weaknesses or resistances."
And yeah, they have persistent damage, but they need to make specific feat selections to make that persistent damage any more effective than any old martial class could do by throwing the same bomb- and even with those feats, persistent damage only applies if they actually HIT with the bomb's attack roll, which they're less likely to manage compared to those martials, unless they stack up buffs that, due to the lack of any quickdraw feature or the like, are really clunky to apply in combat
I've been playing an alchemist lately and its been a bit painful to be honest.
Elixirs of life are nearly neglible for healing until level 5, bomb splash on missing doesn't do enough damage to really matter, enemy weaknesses are rare, reagents are super limited at low levels and mutagen drawbacks are crippling in a lot of cases. The number of math fixer feats the class has is an anomaly among all the classes too.
Even as a support alchemist feels unreliable, the low accuracy of the alchemist, combined with limited reagents and no "cantrips" until 7 make them unreliable even as a support debuffer.
It would be nice to see earlier perpetuals, and bombs flexing the degrees of success system pathfinder uses to apply to their debuffs. An aoe mutagen option and a few more elixirs of life (at level 3 especially) would also go a long way.
Chirurgeon also needs a rewrite, the level 13 greater discovery is super powerful, but comes at the cost of making everything else it gives underwhelming.
One of the big issues is that intelligence stat does not add to their attack (Wizard adds to Spellcasting, martials gets physical stat, investigators get Devise).
I think that the variant ability stats on 2,3,4,5 helps this a bit.
It's the same thing for Warpriests and Battle Oracles (sure, they have proficiency with their spellcasting, but the Divine tradition isn't very known for dealing damage so...)
@@lincr.1988 both have status bonus spells for buffing. Whereas Alchemist is standard item +1. All resources being auto-heightened is strong though.
Probably all coming out in the wash.
Big issue I have with Intelligence, is that is not a defensive stat (Wis, Con, Dex) and getting more trained proficiencies is a bit naff. A lot of stat commitment with not much pay off.
@@jstabler881 That's very true, but for Alchemists Intelligence is not just like that you know, it's more Reagents, therefore he's capable of doing more different things and that's as important as those saves, and also they can craft consumables (like bombs) in their downtime, I know that goes for all of the other characters but Alchemists can use bombs in a way that other classes can't so it's kinda unique for them. So, Int is very good for Alchemists, it just works in a different way.
@@lincr.1988 perhaps it is just the math is a little sideways. Int to dmg rather than hit. Splash damage to mitigate misses. Auto heightened.
I think that the numbers are probably fine, just different. Different makes it hard to easily compare. Hence Nonats’ complexity argument.
@@jstabler881 Yeah that's true
Sorry for the long comment but I've been number crunching alchemists the past few days, and as long as you use either the bestial or quicksilver mutagens and keep either STR or DEX respectively as high as you can, an alchemist stays on-par with martials in terms of non-status or circumstance boosted attack bonuses for most levels, even surpassing them levels 7-9. It's not until level 13 that a significant gap of -2 happens from martials getting their master proficiency, and that can be mitigated through forcing conditions like flat-footed or through archetype feats. A chirurgeon who primarily uses their reagents for elixirs can take the archer dedication to get martial bows as well as the archer's aim feat to get a +2 circumstance on a 2 action strike, filling that gap nicely, for example.
I rly want to try a mutagen alchemist who use drakeheart+shield+mist elixir to be a good tank :D
Read the updates, they nerfed drakeheart mutagens
Bad idea, Want a tank? Go Orc Half-Sylph/Undine (Smokesoul/Mistsoul is amazing with Smokestick/Mistform Elixir), Sentinel Dedication (for Heavy Armor), use a Shield and you can use Juggernaut Mutagen from levels 1-4 (at level 5+ I recommend Elixirs of Life) and then Bestial/Feral Mutagen to deal some damage (since at that point Juggernaut Mutagen will be too weak), and yeah, I'm aware of the side effects of Bestial/Feral Mutagen, but it's worth it, you're gonna be very defensive already, and you'll be able to use some maneuvers since it's unarmed attack. You're gonna be able to use Juggernaut Mutagen again at lvl11 (and then to keep switching it between Juggernaut, Bestial and Energy Mutagen, depending on what you want), and at level 13 you'll be able to have both Mutagens active at the same time, which is fantastic! The penalties will basically be -2 Reflex saves, -2 in perception and iniciative (wich won't be exactly necessary after the combat begins) and -2 Will saves (that you can nulify with Bravo's Brew) and -2 AC, but as I said, you're gonna be very defensive already, so that won't such a big problem tbh. Orcs are incredibly tough and their feats are amazing for people who don't want to die xD
Lemme know what you think ;)
@@lincr.1988 love the idea of sentinel, so I can use other mutagens than drakeheart. I think I would use spiked gauntlets instead of beast mutagen, but that is simply because I never planned to do decent damage :) and after looking at sylph I would deffinately want that to boost my mistform. Ty for the advise :D
@@vatolander The Bestial is not only for the damage, the damage is amazing indeed, but the best thing of it is the bonus to hit, that's bigger than any rune in the game, it's a +4 at level 17 ;)
But sure, if you prefer using Gauntlets, go for it :)
Just don't forget that you need to taunt the enemy somehow, and if your accuracy is crappy, that might be difficult to do. -2 AC from Feral Mutagen is pretty inviting haha
@@lincr.1988 was thinking I could raise athletics to grapple or trip them as i have the free hand :)
Alchemist is very fun, but at first can be very complicated to learn how his daily reagents work and also how quick alchemy works. I made a toxicologist alchemist for a one shot -Little Big Problem in Absalom. Because I was very confused with the class, I played suboptimaly - basically used 0 daily infused reagents and only used them for quick alchemy. I know better now and the class is extremely fun, because you bring versatility to a party and PF2 rewards that.
The Alchemist may be ok in a campaign that is not combat heavy. In the dungeon crawl I was playing mine, I quickly ran out of bombs, even if I ONLY made bombs. I never felt like I had the luxury to do any quick alchemy and that is a pre-requisite for most interesting feats that alter and improve bombs. When you have to be precious about your weak bombs, it's heart wrenching to see them miss all the time. The high AC I got from drakenheart was fun. Alchemist needs every class feat they can get, that left absolutely no possibility for an Archetype, in my opinion. An archetype might have helped. All in all I feel like this class needs to be completely overhauled. As a house rule, I would triple their reagents, but only allow items to be made on a 1 to 1 basis. That way they would at least be flexible.
I've been playing a Alchemist Chirurgeon since the game came out. I do feel my character is a support type class more than anything in the game. I choose to be that since we didn't have any dedicated healers in our group. The amount of healing potions is amazing, I can also use my crafting skill check for treat wound checks. I still try to make bombs, poisons, or some mutagens to support the party as I see fit. I plan everything at the beginning of the session, but at higher levels I can setup quick alchemy reserves of reagents to make stuff in a pinch. I didn't feel like the feats helped out my character much, so I ended up doing a Wizard dedication at level 2. With this I am able to support the group with healing potions, bombs, and attack with magic at range. I went Wizard because of Intelligence score. I get INT Mod as Damage on some spells, and The higher my INT mod, the more Reagents I can make a day. That's two bombs, or three healing potions.
That's actually super smart. Similar to the champion, so much of the alchemist's power comes from class features that archetype can provide an excellent power boost.
@@Nonat1s I try to plan ahead, that way I can change things for my character to help the party. I also took magical crafting to improve our gear. With Wizard dedication I can have plenty of spells up to around 1 level 6 and 7th spell slot. I can get extra slots for 1-5. I am also considering at 20 I could take the Scoll Savant Feat, allowing for scroll usage. A wizard staff would also be a simple weapon for an Alchemist so that is another options for more AOE abilities.
My way of playing the alchemist (bomber subclass) is to give something to each party member at the beginning of the day.
At earlier levels (we started at level 3), it was just one item like one drakeheart mutagen, juggernaut mutagen, or Quicksilver mutagen to each player character depending on their strengths. At higher levels, I'm now throwing an elixir of life in to each player as well.
Needless to say, our longbow weilding ranger has been loving the Quicksilver mutagens, and the drakeheart mutagens are great at keeping people alive and improving initiative rolls.
Not that useful for party members using both their hands. Its 4 actions to use an item. 1) sheath sword, 2) take out mutagen 3) use mutagen 4) draw sword.
@@ZombieBraintrust Indeed, not that useful for those using both hands, but consider the following:
• Using a 10 minute duration drakeheart mutagen, or, at higher levels (11+), the one hour duration version before combats to improve initiative checks. This is useful even on characters with heavy armor that wouldn't benefit much from the drakeheart mutagen item bonus to ac.
• using a juggernaut mutagen mid-combat for extra hp, (or just an elixir of life). Worth the actions in some cases even needing to drop an item.
• using elixirs of life out of combat during time sensitive situations.
• A lot of party compositions won't have a lot of characters that have both their hands filled in combat, so they can enter combat holding an alchemical item in one hand. Yes, it may seem a little unrealistic at initial glance, but if you consider how characters would view such miraculous items that can heal or buff with a quick drink, carrying one if your hand in a tense situation can sound pretty reasonable.
Yeah, I agree they won't work for all characters, but from my experience playing an alchemist, most characters can at least find some use for alchemical items.
Sounds like a very cool class!
I tend to overthink my strategies so I bet I'd go all in with one of these 😊
I've found Toxicologist is the 'optimal' alchemist build if your party is full of martials AND your in a campaign where poison does something. (Otherwise you go bomber.) as being able to give your martials poison on their weapons every combat greatly enhances your damage by enhancing their damage to some obscene numbers. You also don't lose anything for not going bomber, since bomber is tied to its feats, not its subclass, which toxicologist gets. Meanwhile toxicologist doesn't need any of its feats to work since it gets the best thing, double poison and better poison DCs, in its subclass. And of course the 20 toxicologist ability is just better than anything bomber could ever hope to do.
Be sure to check out the Nonat1s Patreon Page! Any pledge of $10 or more gains access to the brand new "Chef Research Field" as well as four other unique subclasses that I've released in the past!
www.patreon.com/Nonat1s
Thank you so much for watching!
My one player loves this take for their goblin alchemist
We had a Gnome Field Medic Alchemist with the Medic dedication. Oh god, was he the GOAT of support models.
Safest way to play alchemist is to play as support. Another tip, prepare lists for different suspected situations. Like a cookie cutter. Expecting some beefy bois? Make a list for that. Expecting some danger poison bois? Make a list for that. Expecting to not see combat for a full day but instead go shopping and sloothing? Make. A. List. For THAT.
Instead of Chef why don't you name it the Gastronomist. I think it fits the theme of The Alchemist better.
This
In my pathfinder group I play an. Ch. alchemist/familiar master. He does not even prepare his reagents because he always wants to be prepared. So as soon as I could i spent gold to buy every single formula availible to me. Then I just make what i need when o need it. I make actual items spending money to have a stock of alchemical items in often need but I hold up my
Hey I play a tinkering alchemist goblin with some friends and I can assure you, designing a cannon out of a large cauldron and also using it as a zombie containment apparatus is well worth it. The bombs are great for when you need to make glue traps and set stuff on fire or even making a health elixer for the for the vampire in the party because he wanted to be edgy, and now he can
I argue they're support, but I also say they're super powerful if you know a creatures weaknesses.
The splash alone guarantees that form of damage and will also deal the weaknesses value to that creature.
They are more versatile than a spell caster in that regard
I can agree with these points. What I noticed while playing an alchemist (pathfinder 3.5 I think) was it can be very situational, once in close quarters or close combat it became very hard to throw bombs and use certain items without harming your party members in the process (my DM was also using the allignment system so double whammy there), didn't help that the entire campaign was littered with dungeons and halls. My advice is don't let a noob play this class and if you do, talk to your DM about the general campaign terrain to see whether or not it's worth it.
I am playing a goblin alchemist right now, so far, it's been fun. I like the ability of a prepared caster and the mix of the spontaneous caster.
So far, I am a bomber and I look not just for damage but, status effects like bottled lightning and giving a no save flat-footed.
I prepare a silvertongue mutagen for our sorcerer because he is also a face or cheetahs elixirs for that sweet 10 foot bonus in combat. It helps the melee get to where they need to go or gets me out of dodge.
We just fought a young black dragon in the air and i ended up damaging them even on a miss with splash, I crit my next turn, dragon is flat-footed so, then use alchemists fire for damage and persistent damage and the rest of the party had an easier time taking it down.
Also, recall knowledge on creatures helps a long way for the alchemist.
This. Just all of this.
The Alchemist... because the Geneva Convention doesn't exist in the middle ages!
My biggest complaint with the Alchemist (aside from them being less proficient with bombs than any class that gets proficiency with *all* martial weapons, including bombs) is that it feels like too much value is placed on the Quick Alchemy ability. Yes, Quick Alchemy is very convenient for when you need something, and most if the feats that enhance it are amazing... But I honestly think that the versatility and extra power isn't always worth how inefficient Quick Alchemy is.
The Alchemist quick alchemy should also always be used imo if you use all your reagents in the beginning of the day for your daily preparation that you aren't using the Alchemist to its fullest potential because unlike prepare casters you have the option to have what you need in an instant granted only for that turn (unless you grab Enduring Alchmey at level 4 then it will last until the end of your next turn) giving them an even bigger list of tricks to do for the day making sure you are never caught with you pants down and you have what you need for just about any thing
Agreed. I thought about touching on Quick Alchemy, but I wanted to keep this video fairly easy to digest. But yeah, that's an amazing (albeit inefficient) tool in their kit.
I actually play a Leashy Alchemist in my current campaign and it is an awesome class once you get into it. note I also took magical crafting and because of this in ours im allowed to brew potions as needed in down time. I also used this to learn weapon enhancement which helps reduce cost on group. I love the Alchemist and other then some small homebrews we play it as written.
Idk why people don't often think about this, but the bomber can pass their bombs to a fighter. An alchemist bomb is a martial weapon.
Also, I loved my gnome chirugeon. She would use mutagens in combat and heal the party in downtime. This allowed our cleric to save spell slots for combat.
Probably because the Fighter is already one of the better damage dealers without Alchemist items, and then the Alchemist doesn't have anything to do themselves. That's not a good use of action economy or the items.
Any class can take the medicine feats. Other classes has a lot more feats to spend on medicine feats. A rouge makes for a far far superior doctor type build.
@@christianflor1394 Yep. As I noted in another comment, our level 4 party Ranger can bring back the Dwarf Barbarian (one of the highest ancestry/class HP combos in game) and Halfling Wizard from unconscious to full HP in an hour. And they are still one of the better combatants we have in most fights. Whereas the Chirurgeon is one of the worse builds for combat and not really that much better at healing.
We do think about it. And we take issue with the fact that we devote our entire build to maximizing a specific kind of item... Just so we can hand it off to someone who can use it better than we can.
@@Groundlord but isn't that kinda the role of the alchemists? Supply the group with alchemical items? Maybe I play them wrong.
For power gamers and optimizers it is tough to choose Alchemist. But, for role-players, Alchemists can be a blast. They are constantly looking for reagents, they can therefore get into trouble the party has to deal with. They can be good scouts because they can also gather items as they check out the lay of the land. That is, they can fit a fun niche for a player who wants to do more than encounter, smash, steal, repeat.
A class that deserves to b rewritten.
- Learning curve is a weak point of Alchemist;
- the fact that a potion will do more damage in the hands of others;
- the damage compared with other attacks
- from level 1 to 4 he is basically useless, later I am not sure because I was demotivated and changed character.
There is one thing you didn't bring up with the Alchemist. The Quick Alchemy action. For 1 action and 1 Infused Reagent, you can whip up an alchemical item from your formula book that is good until the next round. This is why I don't prep all of my reagents during daily prep. I will make perhaps a batch or two of items for the day, and leave the rest for those unknown situations that may arise.
I was looking for your comment, thank you so much
I prep like half my reagents since my party actually built their characters atound the support I offer. I usually make a batch of quicksilvers for myself, a batch of silvertongues for myself and the swashbuckler, and a couple batches of dread ampoules for the dread striker rogue and helping the witch's save or sucks.
Everything else I just leave open; I get way more mileage out of my reagents just whipping up quick alchemy items. I've found this method turns feeling like a subpar wizard into feeling like a absurdly flexible problem solver
I think one of the issues with Alchemists and alchemical items is that you actually learn them kinda slow. For a wizard, they get 2 new spells per level, of any spell lvl they can cast. Alchemists get 2 new items of their level or lower each level up. But, if you look at the available options and count them, an Alchemist has about 20% more things to pick from each level, because each level because they unlock a new tier EACH level instead of every other level. Going from level 3 to level 4, a wizard can pick from spell lvl 1st and spell lvl 2nd of the arcane list, which is approx. 50 spells (might be more, might be less, that's what I eyeballed). An Alchemist going from level 3 to level 4 gets to pick from lvl 1, 2, 3, and 4 items, which is approx. 70 items (across bombs, elixirs [which includes mutagens], poisons, and tools). Yes, at level 1 ( and maybe 3) you get 3 free recipes, but in terms of % of total options vs. options you took, you're behind the curve by a slightly noticeable margin. With future books they'll probably make more spells vs. alchemical items which will balance that out, but for the time being Alchemists are actually bottlenecked going from level to level unless they shell out money on recipes (which wizards can also do, but that's less often used from my experience). Also, there's no equivalent of a staff for alchemists, there's no item that gives you more reagents per day that can only be spent on X item types. There's no wands, that gives you an extra item per day, nor an item that enhances items you use. The only item you get is goggles that give you an item bonus to chucking bombs (and crafting, and ignoring lesser cover)... which bombs of a higher tier already have baked in... so the only thing they give you over a crafter's eyepiece (and the later Inexplicable Abenefit
So do alchemists now get access to craft alchemical ammunition with G&G
I think a lot of the issue with not being a damage dealer is the vast shift that is from PF1 where alchemists were some of the heaviest hitters in the game, and now they are completely different, and to be honest overly complicated for what they provide.
This is a pretty weak take sorry. The issue with the alchemist isn't damage that's correct, However the fact is that weapon proficiency is tied to accuracy in a VERY significant way, Not only that but alchemist DCs suffer significantly. They don't even get legendary in their class DC. In fact Alchemist has literally 0 combat or utility legendary proficincies aside from Perception. That's not good. Not only this but Poisons target Fortitude Saves, the highest save among enemies at every level. On average Fort saves are 1-2 points higher than other saves. The average success chance of a poison is 30%, 40% with a feat tax against a flat footed enemy. Not only this but every poison is single use and is extremely action inefficient. I don't even care about the damage of the poisons, we're just talking about getting conditions on enemies. Now bombs are attack rolls which sure, Bombers can get up to +4 to hit with via mutagen, they also can't pick Dex as their main stat so that puts them 2 points behind master proficiency compared to say a ranger. Mutagenists are the same thing with their mutagenic attacks. Sure they can eventually get rid of the downside but for most of the game they're present and pretty crippling for not much benefit.
The big Benefit of Alchemist? The versatility, sure they can react to most situations, but the fact is, quick alchemy is really bad resource economy, the vast majority of your alchemical reagents are best used by using normal alchemy in the morning for 2x items, this way you can create a spread of items and hand them out, Since actually using items yourself is TERRIBLE action economy. Basically the way the alchemist is maximally efficient is to use all of their alchemical items in camp every morning, then hand them out to other players to use. Then the alchemist sits in camp all day brewing more alchemical items to hand out. Then everyone else returns at the end of the day to rest and refill from the vending machine.
To illustrate exactly how bad poisons are let's look at an example from before Errata 2 that clarified how poisons with ranged weapons work. We were using a home brewed solution where 1 dose of poison was enough to coat 10 ammo (based on the description of silversheen) because the game at the time only said "you can poison ranged weapons" and didn't say anything about how it worked at all. So I as an alchemist, would use a shortbow with 10 poison arrows, and attempt to spam out poisons, Their DC was tied to my class DC, and they inflicted flat footed once they hit. I also took the Archer dedication for double and triple shot. This was vital for applying multiple doses of poison per round to help counteract the Abysmal success chance of poisoning. At level 7 alchemists hit the height of their accuracy, where they hit expert proficiency with their weapons, from this point on enemies will get more AC progression where you're stuck from then on. only getting item progression from your mutagen/item runes and stat progression. So at level 7 avg AC is 25. if you are using your +2 mutagen, expert prof, and have 19 in dex, you have approximately +19 to hit. But then you're probably going to use double shot to be able to spread more poisons or stack applications. This gives you a +17 to hit with both shots, as opposed to a +19 and +14. giving you an overall 5% more chance to hit both shots. At +17 to hit against a 25 AC (assuming not flat footed Though if they fail their first save with hunting spider venom the 2nd attack is back up to a +19) That gives you a base 60% chance to hit at your most accurate, with a 30% chance to successfully poison (you can't have pinpoint poisoner at this level yet). that gives you on any shot a 18% chance per shot to poison an enemy. This is just against even level enemies, slightly higher for enemies you don't care about poisoning and significantly lower for enemies you desperately need to poison. This gives you 2 18% chances to poison in a round if using double shot. (18% of the time you'll poison on your 2nd shot so, 18% of the time you'll have a 70% chance to hit with a 30% chance to poison on the 2nd shot, which would be a 21% chance to hit, 18% of the time. It gets just way more complicated from here so it's easier to just say 18% twice though it is slightly more than that.) At level 18 you can get another feat which allows you to use triple shot at a -2 and double shot at a -1. This gives you 3 chances to poison in a round using these rules, but the ACs relative to your attack and saves relative to your DC have increased as well. So level 7 is actually the peak of alchemists accuracy and power
However Errata 2 came out and clarified that you need to poison every single arrow individually so, you need to take 1 action per poison to poison 1 shot. You can no longer use double or triple shot to try and make multiple attacks at a decent MAP to spam out arrows and hope to land the low % chance of actually poisoning things. This killed the above alchemist build, which honestly wasn't even over powered it was still pretty weak even when VASTLY more powerful than the Rules as clarified.
Bombs are in much the same situation, their accuracy is just as bad, their DCs are also similarly bad, you're also feat taxed to improve the DCs. Mutagens are also in the same situation, but without any of the debuffs, they don't really add any combat effectiveness and give some pretty hefty debuffs to the user. FUCK even being a healbitch is awful due to the single target nature of your healing, the lower capacity, and action economy of healing.
Anyways what really criples Alchemist is not their Damage you're correct, It's their targeting of the statistically highest Save with one of the lowest DCs of any class that is supposed to interact with saves in that way. Then you've hidden that Save behind an AC check, which they have a pitiful chance to hit. It's basically the Magus but with worse action economy and less pay off.
Fuck man, Quarter the Damage on poisons (I don't care about it) bump the condition stages up by 1, and raise the DCs by like 3 across the board and poisons suddenly become good.
The biggest problem with this game is that paizo Really loves to let you use all of your tools on enemies that don't require any of your resources to handle but refuses to let you use them effectively on enemies which are actually a challenge and need to be handled via resource expenditure. It's the final fantasy school of balance and it's fuckawful. Status effects don't work on the boss! but normal enemies aren't challenging enough that I require inflicting status effects on them to end the fight!
No kit, no materials = just a dude trying not to die and being a burden on the party.
You also forget the downtime. An Alchemist has the highly useful benefit of any downtime spent he returns to the party with a sack full of alchemical items he doesn't have to spent any of his daily ressources on. Spent most usefully on more situational items or healing elixirs.
It is so hard some times, as an alchemist, to remember to represent only half to a third of your reagents, but I highly recommend a merchant background. You can start the game with enough money to make a good selection of bombs, potions, and poisons beforehand, just in case.
I also agree that people shouldn't focus on their speciality. I'm a surgeon(not gonna try spelling it the other way) and most of my moves are shooting poison at people.
The learning curve for the alchemist is insane, but it pays off.
Imo, quick alchemy is super overlooked. I've trivialized challenges by just whipping out the appropriate item, and a couple times, saved my party from being killed
Brand-freaking-new player here: Do alchemists usually do significantly MORE damage or contribute MORE staying power than other less specialized classes? Because if they need to predict the future on a regular basis to be AS effective as other classes, then they are still too weak, since often you won't be able to predict what comes up, and honestly even in a game where you could... Having no surprises would get boring quickly.
Hi! J-F Here. I DM 2 alchemists in 2 separate games.
1st of all: Chef's class, love it, super flavorful, definitely interested in reading more.
2nd of all: I generally agree with most of your points, alchemists are about flexibility and the power within. However, since they cap out at expert in weapons and master in DC, they're weaker than any comparable class in straight up numbers, not to mention the additional lack of accuracy due to not using their K stats for their attacks.
A quick and dirty fix to the alchemist that I've found makes them enjoyable is to give them master proficiency in weapons and bombs at level 15. It's 2 after martials (like their expert) and really helps, cause otherwise even with debilitating bomb or poisons, they will still feel bad and outclassed. Enemies fail on a 6 vs the sorcerer's finger of death but succeed vs the alchemist's purple worm venom, that debilitating bomb is useless because it misses more than it hits and so on and so fort.
This also keeps them more in line with other ''hybrid'' classes like paladin, who also gets master in both attacks and DC's.
QUICK ALCHEMY. don't forget that they can get the benefits of situational/spontaneous caster by using quick alchemy, which can be enhanced by buying many cheap formulas for situational uses. I typically save 1 regent (you can easily reserve more once you get to higher levels) for quick alchemy in case the party needs to target a certain weakness, or someone is afflicted with a disease, or any other unexpected scenario.
I really like this style of videos
The main problem of this class is that when I read BOMBER, what I expect when playing this character is to throw bomb at everything just like a mad scientist that love explosion. This is what every one expect when picking bomber subclass, you just want to throw bombs, you can make some elixir to help your teamate but your main thing is still making and using bombs ! After lvl 13 (where most combat classes gain master proeficiency in weapon), bomber just become stormtrooper that have no more use in combat other than to throw bomb on the ground to use splash damage because you easaly get lower result that the monster AC -10 with multiple attack penalty... What's the point when it's more efficient to throw a bomb on the ground rather than try hitting the target...
Same thing for the mutagenist subclass, you create mutagene to improve your body except that it's more efficient to use them on the others than your self. You are a mutagenist that have little use in drinking your own mutagenes because you don't gain any extra. When people are thinking about a mutagenist it should be some mad scientist that wants to modify their body to make it perfect.
A good idea would be to give the mutagenist more proeficiency to unarmed attacks when he is under the effect of a mutagen and maybe the use of all or half of their intelligence instead of using other caracteristics (for example, when drinking your own silvertongue mutagene, you can use your intelligence instead of your charisma if it's greater, for bestial mutagene you use your intel instead of strengh for attack rolls or damages etc...). This make more sense because the body of the mutagenist can react differently to the mutagen you create with your reagant (which come from your body).
The medic is a little better with the updates and since the class is clearly made to be only a support class it's the best subclass to pick since you can create more usefull elixir for your teamate and when you choose to be a medic you decide that you want to become a support in the team.
When I started playing AD&D ages, and ages ago... a 1st wizard had ONE spell... which they had to prepare in advance... a bit crap. The answer to this has always been to allow the characters intelligence to affect this, NOT necessarily by granting extra spells, but allowing the character to have a limited choice of spells from which to cast as a "spontaneous choice" (much like the Sorceror/Bard, or a little like the choice available to cantrip users), but limited ONLY to a number of FIRST level spells equal to their Intelligence bonus. They cast a spell, a use, rather than a specific spell has gone. Simple. As a house-rule, the same thing can apply the the Alchemist, rather than detail the EXACT preparations their "possible" preparations include a range of choices expanded by number equal to their INT bonus... It's not game breaking. You could also introduce a limiting factor saying that use of this flexibility comes at a small cost, say making a crafting roll, or such-like.... but as mentioned in the video... it is the character's intelligence (not the player's) that is being represented in their character's daily preparations.
New to PF & starting with 2e. Yay me! Lol
If you have a cleric or other strong healer in the party, is it safe to forgo health brews? Or maybe make just 1 in case the cleric catches a tree-sized javelin in the chest.
I liked the alchemist at first glance and figured I'd use it as my 1st character. This info is helpful.
One of my favorite characters I'm playing for his sheer hilarity is my Goblin Alchemist 'Fizzbang Vialsmasher'. Whom I'm playing in a PF2e conversion of Skull & Shackles.
Ended up stuck in the Bilge with 2 hostiles alone at level 2. Despite having a bunch of Elixirs of Healing the action economy made them almost useless and I only had 6 bombs amd KEPT MISSING. Luckily they were Ampoules of Dread and got at least 1 crit before having to start throwing my fists.
He has a +3 to INT and only a +1 to STR. Only then did I really start to hit and managing to knock out one assailant with a natural 20. The other one got me but the DM was a sport and made what happened a mystery.
(The other guy killed the one I knocked out and claimed I did it to the captain, for a mock trial and quick execution. I got to play up that "I don't know ny own strength". I got out of the execution by proving myself during a boarding action.)
Honestly, my biggest issue is that the Mutagens are fine as is, but the alchemist (even with their mutagen feats) is always the worst person to take them because the negatives on the mutagens are especially harsh on a class that is trying to function. Bestial is the best example. If you include the feat for it, an alchemist will be better at hitting people than a sorcerer (as in the sorcerer is attacking with a stick and not magic), but will be lowering their armor to the level of said sorcerer. The fact that they have to wait until a lvl 20 feat to make it less dangerous to use items their entire subclass is based around just seems like bad sport.
I can definitely see the frustration, but at least some of that has been mitigated thanks to alchemist's gaining medium armor proficiency. It's not a perfect fix, but you aren't forced into having a good dex score anymore. A strength-based mutagenist is fairly valid now, especially with Drakeheart Mutagens!
@@Nonat1s Drake heart is valid, but it's more of a Band-Aid than a fix, since you would have to wait until level 11 to even be able to use another mutagen with it. At which point trying to be a tank alchemist just seems silly.
I don't know if it's blasphemy, but the other consideration for playing an alchemist is the fun of playing one. It doesn't always have to be about how much it can dish out or how effective those dishes are. Sometimes it's just _fun_ to play a prepared/spontaneous walking-crafting station that throws liquid spells.
Yeah as much as I love Alchemist the items can be a bit daunting my man suggestion is usually make two different advanced elixir for role play boost, three different elixir for combat (i.e. elixir of life, quicksilver mutagen, or drakeheart mutagen personal favorites) and two from what you trained in so you have variety and don't feel to useless
That's a really safe way to play it if you don't know what's coming next. Can never go wrong with a variety.
@@Nonat1s I really like Alchemist it is my favorite class to play in pathfinder 2e and I know how to make it work I never paid much attention to the lack of expertise as an issue due to the fact you can always increase it to be on pair with the martial class minus fighter
I'm playing an investigator with the alchemy methodology. Is it worth the effort to craft some alchemical bombs in downtime and use alchemist goggles to use them? My dm wants suggestions of magic items for levels 1-5.
Isn't it also generally agreed that a lot of caster's have the same issues, especially prepared caster and (playtest) magus?
That unless you know what spells that day you will actually use , casters generally seem a little lacking since caster's rely a lot more on going for weak saves and damage vulnerabilities?
I'm playing a Chirurgeon... It's though, I'm the worst character during combat... But, if I got an hour, I can heal a party member from 0 HP to full or almost full... One thing I should have done (we are level 4) is take Battle Medicine, since that feat is ridiculously good. Next level I get good healing potions, so we'll see.
I think the biggest problem I'm having is that I built the character to do downtime, and we haven't have much downtime yet. Hopefully I can make some good equipment before the next dungeon.
That's unfortunately a strange problem that Pathfinder 2e suffers from. The system is designed mostly around Society-Style play, where you finish a quest, then take a week off, do a quest, take a week off, etc. If your campaign doesn't have downtime, TONS of feats and skills become far weaker.
I mean, our level 4 Ranger can heal our party Dwarf Barbarian (highest HP class/ancestry combo I think you'll see) AND our Wizard from zero to full in one hour - And she is one of the better damage dealers in our party at the same time. *shrug* I don't think the medical Alchemist is worth it - you aren't a particularly impressive healer and you have to sacrifice feats that are essentially a feat tax for the class to make them viable in combat. But if you are enjoying it that's what's important honestly.
@@LordCyler To be honest I agree, the character was going to be a mutagenist, but I saw the party composition and thought that we needed a healer. I don't mind, the character would be basically the same RP wise. I'll see if it gets better later, but it does seems like the weakest subclass of the system.
While I agree that alchemists are more support oriented and resource management is extremely important for them, bomber alchemists should at least hit master in bombs and I'd tack on that advancement with the greater field discovery at 13th just so an alchemist that can keep up with the thing they are dedicated to doing. Mutagenists should also get master with unarmed attacks granted by mutagens, as well.
Also all the buffs from alchemical items being item bonuses is a huge hit to an alchemists effectiveness. Most of the things you can do with your items aren't even helpful when there's a good chance someone already has an item bonus of an equal or higher value to that thing.
Thank you for the video, the subject was complex as a whole and I liked how you treated it, comparison with other classes or segregation of your points depending on the levels.
I just think one point is lacking : even if a dragon falls from the sky and you weren't prepared... you still have quick alchemy. You haven't mentioned it but it's the key to the ultimate versatility of the class (ofc it's more expensive on the go in terms of batches but having a couple batches spared is always useful for this). So yeah, preperation AND ultimate versatility. A wizard CANNOT say "well, let's not prepare two spells this day and yolo I'll see on the go what I want".
Although it is actually quite complicated to play and to choose items I agree.
Thanks for the video
I hear what your saying, and I still disagree. rarely does a party have a good enough idea what they are going to be fighting to prepare as well as your troll example. Also, there aren't enough monsters with weaknesses to make up for how weak bombs are compared to similar abilities from other classes. Even after all the errata I still think Alchemists might be the weakest class in any given average scenario. I just can't think of anything it does that another class doesn't do better. Why bring along someone who is great in rare situations, ok in a few scenarios, and bad in several. when you can bring someone who is GREAT in a few, ok in others, and only bad in rare circumstances.
I don't see how the alchemist is considered weak when paired with other classes. I just started an Barbarian/alchemist character and personally can't wait to use large size mutagens and elixirs to buff resistance
"You no likeada bomz you say?" Tssss "I light another one for you here." Ssss - Bart, Goblin Mad Bomber. Shortly before he was replaced by Bort, the Goblin Happy, Friendly Bomber. What? It saves on character sheets. Mock not the bomz! 😜🤪😋
I'm new in 2e (5e exodus) and hot damn the alchemist is exactly what I've been wanting to play for years
The number of reagents are cripplingly low at the beginning levels. I've had to take a wizard dedication for cantrips, just to make sure that I would have abilities available after the bombs and potions run out.
I agree. Like I said in the video, level 1-4 can be really rough. Quick Alchemy is almost unusable due to how few reagents you have to work with, making smart preparation almost vital. In campaigns with long days and multiple encounters, low level alchemists REALLY struggle.
But you could craft items in downtime, to have some extra gear with you for a long journey, and those items last long enough for you to just use them if necessary
@@guille787
However, crafting items in down time still requires you have the amount of gold to purchase each item individually.
Just checked...11 days and 6 gp to craft 4 minor elixirs of life at lvl 1...hope those monsters can wait! Hahaha
@@guille787 I would rule (if I was a GM), that anything crafted during downtime could last up to your intelligence modifier x 1 month. I believe that this could help somewhat with having items you might need.
Hey NoNat, quick thing your red outline on your thumbnail made me think I had watched it already on youtube because the watch history bar disappears into the red border.
Great videos as always!
Love your videos. I've been watching them to learn all about 2e. Advertise when you're going to stream more as I've yet to catch you live