Alchemist bomb and the feat Vital strike

[wnoer]

Can a Alchemist use the Vital Strike feat with their bomb?

[udalrich]

Yes.

Bombs description wrote:

The damage of an alchemist’s bomb increases by 1d6 points at every odd-numbered alchemist level (this bonus damage is not multiplied on a critical hit or by using feats such as Vital Strike).

So a 3rd level alchemist would do 2d6+int normally and 3d6+int with Vital Strike.

[Grick]

wnoer wrote:

Can a Alchemist use the Vital Strike feat with their bomb?

It depends. As quoted above, the Bomb description implies you can use Vital Strike (only for the first 1d6, not the bonus d6's from leveling). This is totally reasonable (though most would argue a waste of a feat).

However, that same text also implies you can land a critical hit with a bomb.

But!

Bombs are splash weapons.

Splash weapons cannot deal precision damage.

Critical Hits are precision damage.

Thus: Bombs cannot crit.

I dislike this, I think maybe James Jacobs was hasty in including crits in the informal list of precision damage. Especially considering the Critical Hits section of Combat:

"Exception: Precision damage (such as from a rogue's sneak attack class feature) and additional damage dice from special weapon qualities (such as flaming) are not multiplied when you score a critical hit."

Which implies, to me, that the crit itself is not precision damage, since it calls out precision damage as not being part of the crit damage.

I would love an official ruling on precision damage, to put these questions to rest. (Opinion: Precision damage is Sneak Attacks, duelist's precise strike ability, and anything else that is specifically labeled as precision damage.) On the off chance James reads this: No offense man, you guys do a great job. I know the forum postings are not official errata, and you're busy making more awesome products for us to buy.

[Alzrius]

I'd appreciate an official answer on this also (and the thing with bombs not being able to crit) as we have an alchemist in our group who is asking about Vital Strike for his bombs.

[0gre]

Just to reiterate it.

The bombs damage is 1d6+INT Bonus, this damage is doubled with vital strike or with a critical hit*. Unlike most weapons this damage does not scale with creature size.

Bombs get bonus damage at third level and every other level after that. The bonus damage is treated essentially like the rogues sneak attack damage.

*We use crits with bombs, doubling the 7 points of damage or so on the first bomb is not a big deal. As far as I'm concerned anything that requires an attack roll should crit.

[Spyderz]

On a strict reading of the rules, I don't believe it should work. However, I've opted to let the vital strike chain work in my games and here is my reasoning why:

At the point where an alchemist can take Vital strike (L9, first feat after BAB +6), they are doing 5d6+Int in damage with a bomb on a direct hit (plus splash damage.) At L8 when they first have BAB +6 they got a discovery. Most alchemists will probably use this discovery for fast bombs so that can throw 1 bomb per attack roll. Admittedly the attack roll is at -5, but it's only a touch attack so this is a minor issue, especially if they've built with a decent Dex and used their Dex mutagen besides. So at L9 if they don't take Vital Strike, they can do 2 attacks that do 5d6 + Int each, plus 5+int splash damage in a 5' (or 10') if they took the discovery. This means if both hit (and they usually do unless it's a high touch monster but that's uncommon) they will do 10d6 +2xInt damage on the monster and 10+2xInt on each creature in the splash that doesn't save. This progression will continue to 3 bombs at L15.

If instead you allow them to do vital strike and greater vital strike, the single bomb they can throw in a round will more likely hit (only 1 roll required) but do slightly less damage on their primary target (1xInt less) and half as much damage in the splash radius. I think this is a more than reasonable exchange for a feat (and not necessarily one I would opt for myself if I had the option as the math shows I do more overall damage by throwing 2 bombs)

As a side note, it specifically says that a bomb is a weapon and that feats that apply to weapons (such as point blank and weapon focus) apply. A reading of Improved Critical would imply that you could in fact take Improved Critical (Bomb) legitimately which suggests that a bomb does in fact critical on the target of the direct hit, which does in fact mean that a critical on a Vital Strike would be ugly, especially when the alchemist takes Improved Critical.

[0gre]

I think what's missing here is if vital strike does nearly as much damage as 2 bombs in a round with fast bombs then alchemists are getting a lot more mileage out of their bombs than with fast bombs. The big (only) limiter on the mayhem fast bombs causes is the very finite number of bombs per day the alchemist gets. Full damage vital strike eliminates the problem with bombs per day which IMO is not a good idea.

[Spyderz]

You're right that using Vital Strike won't use as many bombs. This will be relevant if encounters are a lot of single target encounters. If on the other hand, there are lots of multiple target encounters, as a GM I'd rather the alchemist save some bombs and do less overall damage.

However I do think that allowing full damage vital strike will certainly save the alchemist bombs to use later.

If the adventure has only a few encounters (or less) a day such as in most days in the Kingmaker AP, it won't matter. The alchemist won't be able to blow through all their bombs even if they try.

In adventures with lots of encounters, I find that the Alchemists tend to use more extracts and potions (especially in concert with the extract Alchemical Allocation) and don't end up throwing bombs every single round and tend to have their bombs outlast the wizards and clerics spells anyway.

The only alchemists thus far that I've seen even take the Extra Bombs feat are those in PFS games as it's forced on them in place of brew potion because they rarely feel limited by their number of bombs.

Perhaps I'll change my opinion once they start getting to the mid teen levels, but I doubt it.

[Sean K Reynolds]

Critical hits are not precision damage.