How do alchemists stack up on the DPS curve?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


I build a lot of alchemists because bombs with spells in heavy armor is fun. But where do they fall in terms of DPS compared to other classes? Bombs might not be the best but you can get fast bombs later on. Other than that they make great skill monkies. What are you guys thoughts on this class as an AOE DPS class

Here's a link to how I build my alchemists. Any advice on upping the DPS would be appreciated

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3oQlB72acoIQlh6d3JxS0RtRVE/view?usp=drive sdk

Dark Archive

Rapid shot, Splash Weapon Mastery and Explosive bombs and selective bombs for discovery's.

Splash weapon mastery does a bunch of things for you which can all be handy, but in the context adding an extra square of your choice to the splash radius is very handy, and when combined with explosive bombs you can hit most enemies in most dungeon encounters with the splash radius which does add up quite a bit


Optimized bomb-focused alchemists can do massive damage per round, for a pretty limited number of rounds per day (the more bombs you can throw in a round, the quicker you can run out). An alchemist focused on melee can be pretty good too. They won't usually out-damage a fighter in the long run, but their skills and extracts give them more flexibility than any traditional martial class.


Would rapid shot work with fast bombs ?


rapid shot and TWF work with fast bombs.


Triggered by this thread, I triet a few roughly build characters to see if they can kill an average CR16 monster in one round at level 16. The result was that bomber Alchemist can, while doing actually more damage than a pretty optimized pouncing Barbarian. And that's on a single target, completely ignoring secondary effects of bombs, including splash. Also, without any active spells.

So, a bomber will not be good against every enemy (same is true for any character, of course), he doesn't have infinite bombs per day, and single target isn't overwhelming below 8th level (aoe damage is fine, though). But bomber Alchemist is a very viable damage dealer, (unless you screw up, like by no selecting any discoveries that change your bomb's damage type).


Chess Pwn wrote:
rapid shot and TWF work with fast bombs.

I think I'll leave twf, but that's insane. .... A good way to deplete your store of bombs but insane. Rapid shot should be enough I don't need to be blowing 4 bombs per turn. No matter how over whelming op that might be for a short period. Also neat trick skill focus linguistics and orator.... You know all ACD are the party face.


Wait that means at lvl 8 you throw 16d6 + 4*int a round.... Wtf


Use haste if you want to throw another one!


Abby way to just tape them all together and throw them all at once?


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Dunno, but i threw the whole alchemist once and that worked pretty well


Not to mention with the right bombs you can add blind, staggered, and prone (among others) if they fail their saves.


They do better than they look like they will because they target Touch which means particularly at higher levels you are regularly targeting 1-5 AC and rarely much more than 15, of course there are exceptions but generally even your last interactive attack will be hitting on pretty low numbers.


Hitting on touch means Dex is relatively unimportant. Combined with no spell failure for armor and multi classing into heavy armor and you have a half decent tank


Eh, high dex with celestial armor makes for a pretty decent AC. You don't necessarily want your own Touch AC to be crap either.


True if you've got the gold for mithril plate armor


Seen Here, an alchemist with Wings and Fast Bombs.

https://youtu.be/6AR5hgmVAnQ


While it is a useful option (when you absolutely, positively need a dragon dead), I don't really like focusing on fast bombs too much. At least if you aren't in something like kingmaker, where you have 5 minute work days and you can rest after many fights.

I prefer using the bombs as a secondary set of spells- one that is spontaneously casted, and has no real spell levels. Your spells known are discoveries. And this view is supported by the fact that a ton of bombs (particularly the smoke ones) are just explicitly spells (like cloud kill). So having these great debuffs there as an option is very valuable.

Of course, I like melee builds. So I often just soften up with the bomb and then go to whacking. And alchemists are great for giving you this variety of options on your approach.

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