Alchemical Wonder's page

Common simply means without the Uncommon, Rare, or Unique traits. That would include both the Adventuring Gear table, but not the Uncommon Adventuring Gear table, and Alchemical Gear table. And all armor, shields, weapons that aren’t in the uncommon tables, the Magical Gear table and the Barding table.

My issue was never about the key attribute. The Weapon Traits section begins: “Weapon(s) and Unarmed attacks with the weapon trait can have the following traits:”

You’re using the weapon as a spell focus not a melee weapon nor are you using a weapon attack or an unarmed attack.

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment: Suppose we get a class that is a Strength-based caster (let's say Magus) and has a Focus spell that is cast through their weapon but is explicitly a spell attack roll (a likely situation, in the case of Magus).

Would they be able to use Dex for their spell attack roll if they used a finesse weapon?

Not only would you use Dex, you’d also likely use your weapon proficiency rather than spell casting. That’s how Spellstrike Ammunition works.

Edit: As Edge93 noted, using Dex would be predicated on replacing the spell casting check with a weapon attack check.

Edit2: Just realized you said that the check was specifically a spell casting check. Poor reading comprehension on my part. That’s a “no”, then.

I really like the economy abstraction this edition has going on. Tying an item’s economic value, your economic power and the item’ s relative utility and availability to the level system was brilliant. An elegant solution that I find satisfying.

Except Crafting.

The way the rules are written, the first four days you’re crafting don’t produce anything economically considering that you can only finish the item immediately at full price and any reduction doesn’t include the first four days. That means your material costs and opportunity costs combined are greater than the value of the item you produce. If you’re making an item on behalf of someone else, they pay you for those four days. Then, if you continue working on it, they pay you the same amount as you reduce the completion cost of the item. As written, anytime an item were to be produced, it costs more than the item is actually worth.

Is this an actual problem? Probably not. But it’s a blemish on what would otherwise be a beautiful abstraction.

Personally, I’m just going to ignore the word “additional” in the phrase “For each additional day you spend,...”. That way everyday you spend crafting produces the same relative economic value as any other method of earning income.

Action economy and less waste against resistances because the damage is combined before resistance is applied. Two strikes would be better if you were exploiting a weakness.

Is it legal to poison snares (contact poisons say “item” whereas injury poisons say “weapon”)?

In the context of action economy, is it legal to poison ammunition before combat?

How do Quick Alchemy potency and poisons interact? If I use Quick Alchemy to create an Ingested poison, activate it to poison some food, is the food still poisoned after potency wears off?

How does an items Hardness interact with multiple damage types in an attack?

What is the Disarm weapon trait referring to when it notes that you must have a free hand to take the item on a critical?

Shuriken don’t have the Consumable trait so there’s no reason to believe they can’t be recovered and reused. Same with mundane ammunition as well as Ghost Ammunition.

Except that poisons are unique in that it’s a two step process to apply their ongoing effect. With a bomb, you hit the target and the persistent damage effect is applied. With a poison, you activate the poison, your target eats the poison, the target gains the affliction. The question is what happens at step two. Does the food remain poisoned or does the poison lose potency? I’m pretty sure everyone can agree that a target that gains the affliction while the poison is potent keeps the affliction.

DM decides what traits an improvised weapon has. Considering that he intends to throw it, giving the bow the Thrown trait is reasonable. Maybe give it a range increment of five feet because it’s unwieldy to throw.

You could do the same with any object, including those that already have legitimate functions. Want to end someone rightly? Throw your sword’s pommel. Improvised weapon. Want to pretend you’re a professional wrestler? Grab a chair. Improvised weapon. Idolize Captain America? Throw that shield. Improvised weapon.

The absurd possibilities are only limited by your imagination and your DM’s patience.

Yes. I’d say it’s the cloth entry for table 11-4 on page 577.

Sure. That’s an improvised weapon.

Ah, I understand now. I got confused by what was meant by “extra use”. Your scenario makes more sense.

My reading is that Bond Conservation must be the first action immediately after Drain Bond Item which you can only use once a day. This allows you to cast a second spell you’ve prepared and cast once already the turn after casting the spell subsequent to using Bond Conservation.

Begin turn
Drain Bond Item
Bond Conservation
Cast Spell
End Turn

Begin turn
Cast Spell
Do something
End Turn

1) No
2) They don’t. It returns to your hand, no reload necessary. Or drops to the ground in your space if you can’t or choose not to grab it.
3) No. Its a Melee weapon not a Ranged weapon. I’d probably let you, myself.
4) Yes. It returns at the end of each strike. Besides which, it needs to be a Ranged weapon with Reload 0 not “-“ as with Thrown Darts. That means bows and shuriken only by the weapon tables.

Depends on the requirements of the feat. Haven’t put much effort into that just yet.

Edit: Made a mistake on question 4.

After thinking even more, I thought maybe this is an instance where the common usage of a word caused a misunderstanding of the words intended meaning. The word “take” can mean “remove from its place” rather than “gain possession of”. Interpreting the trait that way, it’s saying that you can make the disarm check with the weapon but can only apply the critical effect if you have a free hand.

No. MAP is an untyped penalty so it doesn’t conflict with the circumstance bonus from Backswing.

No. You choose your first ancestry feat in step 3 of character creation and your first general feat in step 7.

I’d write down the feat I’d gained from another feat in parentheses next to the feat that granted it in addition to being listed itself. That way you can track feat dependencies. Or use symbolic superscripts or something. Retraining a feat that grants another would cause you to remove both, cascading however long the chain is.

Raging Resistance, page 85.

Claxon wrote:

That's not quite how it works, and you quoted the rule that explains how it works.

Each time you take damage, you get another check to not be confused, that's true. But taking damage is much more than a smack. You have to take actual hp damage. And it's a flat check, so no bonuses. You have a 50% chance of success.

Yes, your friends could attack you hoping you make the save and that they deal you minimal damage in the process. But then the party has wasted their action economy to do so.

Seems like a win for no matter for the thing that caused the confusion.

Seems also worth pointing out that your allies have to actually land a hit on you, and if they are avoiding using their most damaging weapons there's a good chance they have lower to hit.

Splash damage from a low level bomb would do the trick.

I see what you mean. There is no mention of being able to take the weapon in a disarm action, so I’d say the mention of doing so in the description of the Disarm weapon trait is likely a holdover from a previous instance of the rules where you could do so that was removed in the final release. Just ignore that bit, I guess.

Edit: After thinking about it for a bit, this struck me as an instance where the trait may be referencing a feat that alters the disarm action. Turns out Disarming Twist for fighters fits the bill. It allows you to strike and make a disarm attempt with the same action but requires you to have a free hand to grab your opponents weapon. May be others, still looking.

I haven’t checked all spells, but Bless includes the caster’s square. I suspect the target description obviates any ambiguity.

I’d say shroudb is right in that those Cantrips were likely meant to be innate spells as page 302.

Yep. No new property runes for magic weapons that have unique magical properties. Keep in mind that their innate properties need a minimum level of fundamental potency runes to remain supported, so you can’t transfer that potency rune off the weapon. But you could transfer one you’ve added in the past to post creation improve it’s base potency.

I agree that flavor wise it doesn’t make sense to lose the circumstance bonuses simply because you’ve chosen new prey, but my interpretation indicates there’s a mechanic incentive to finish your hunts before starting a new one. Seems like a DM call.

“If you use Hunt Prey against a creature when you already have a creature designated, the prior creature loses the designation and the new prey gains the designation.”

Since the creature loses the designation, it is no longer prey and you lose any benefits of that designation including the circumstance bonus from Monster Hunter.

Doesn’t matter if you attack something else before you attack your prey, the first attack against that prey gets a circumstance bonus.

Mechanically, being sensed doesn’t seem to be necessary to share the benefits as far as I can tell, but I’d say your party would need to be told the flavor of your Recall Knowledge result to receive the benefits.

“The designation lasts until your next daily preparation.”

Only designating a new prey or your next daily preparation ends the designation.

“When wielding such a weapon in combat... you have the clumsy 1 condition because of the weapon's unwieldy size. You can't remove this clumsy condition or ignore its penalties by any means while wielding the weapon. Increase your additional damage from Rage from 2 to 6.”

If you rearrange the the rage bit, the sentence structure is fairly clear. The second sentence is there to specify that the condition can’t be removed by any means. The “but” is used to contrast the rage benefit from the condition detriment.

The second. The last sentence you quoted is your answer.

The Reload section on page 279 is what you’re looking for.

The way I understand it is that the Alchemical item must be activated while it remains potent. Any ongoing effects from activation would continue. This really isn’t a problem for any item other than poisons.

Poisons can only apply their afflictions while they are potent which means that ingested poisons are useless, contact poisons are only effective if used on weapons, injury potions remain useful, and inhalation poison clouds only apply their affliction until the potency vanishes.

Potency isn’t defined in the appendix so the most reasonable interpretation is the one you should go with; more specifically, your DM’s interpretation.

I think the only benefit for rolling Stealth for initiative in an encounter is that you could possibly remain Unnoticed against enemies whose Perceptions you beat. Whether or not that’s tactically significant depends on your party’s abilities. With the Quiet Allies feat there’s a good chance you enter the encounter with the entire party Unnoticed. Unless your Champion is particularly clumsy or something.

All cantrips are, are spells that don't expend slots when cast and auto scale.

They are not 0 level spells and they have separate slots then the rest of your repertoire because they don't burn out.

Specifically for prepared spell casters as described in the Cantrips section on page 300. The Cantrips you have available as a prepared spell caster depends on which ones you prepared since you can have more Cantrips in your spell book than you have cantrip spell slots.

Edit: To be clear, spontaneous spell casters do not need cantrip spell slots because they only ever have a small selection of Cantrips that they can cast at will unlimited times per day. Prepared spell casters do to limit their daily selection of Cantrips but these cantrip spell slots are not expended when casting their spell as other spell slots.

No. Either a weapon is made of a particular precious material or it isn’t. Or you’ve coated it in a sheen to temporarily change it’s material trait. Grade only determines what runes you can inscribe a weapon or armor with, as you noted.

You could make some house rules if you want.

The Thrown trait differentiates Melee Weapons with that trait from Ranged Weapons with that trait, so I suspect the answer is “no”.

Edit: I would say “yes”, myself. If a Thrown Dart can be a Ranged Weapon, I don’t see why a Thrown Dagger can’t.

Item bonuses to unarmed attacks are also applied to the Athletics check to Trip. Handwraps of Mighty Blows and other item bonus sources would therefore improve your success rate.

I would say blacksmithing lore would allow you to identify what alloys a particular metal item is made from, how it was made, and how you can expect it to behave under stress or corrosion.

Engineering lore would let you estimate the stress an object is subject to or exerting mechanically, the characteristics of alloys but not how to make or identify them, how machines work and how to repair them.

Engineering could help you decide what properties would be useful for a metallic object to have but not the steps to make it.

Blacksmithing would help you decide what alloy would be best for a given set of parameters but not what stress a gear might be subject to in a particular machine.

In short, they complement each other.

The entry for the Healer’s Tools say that the kit is necessary to make Administer First Aid, Treat Disease, Treat Poison, and Treat Wounds actions and gives an item bonus when making checks for those actions but doesn’t specify only Medicine skill checks.

Best I can understand, Chirurgeon’s use Healer’s Tools and gain the item bonus from them but it would be superseded by a Cognitive Mutagen’s item bonus rather than one from a Serene Mutagen because it’s a Craft check rather than a Medicine check.

Also, Alchemists have access to relatively cheap ways of giving individuals concealment. Clerics can do that with Blur but it doesn’t scale well. Making potions of Blur would entail dipping into crafting, taking the magical items feat, and devoting downtime whereas Alchemists kinda assume you’d do the same with alchemical items you don’t want to devote reagents to.

Twenty five percent less damage taken is twenty five percent less healing needed.

Alchemical Wonder wrote:

Aren’t there Alchemist exclusive Familiar powers? I seem to remember one allows you to remotely administer Quick Alchemy elixirs for one action. I suppose you could also hand the familiar two elixirs and it can hold onto them while hitching a ride on your front line fighter to administer them as needed. Not sure how that would affect action economy with regards to healing.

That sounds like a pretty good idea and makes the familiar very useful for a chirugeon

also imagine a tiny creature handing the alchemist tools, extracts and other things :D

Actually, I envision the familiar *being* the alchemist tools. Image organic beakers, tubes and such sprouting from an alchemical abomination imitating life. Then the creature attempts to feed you fluids from its faux flesh. Horrifying.

Aren’t there Alchemist exclusive Familiar powers? I seem to remember one allows you to remotely administer Quick Alchemy elixirs for one action. I suppose you could also hand the familiar two elixirs and it can hold onto them while hitching a ride on your front line fighter to administer them as needed. Not sure how that would affect action economy with regards to healing.

Except that’s exactly the intent behind inherent alignments for outsiders. One that I accept freely as part of the fantastical setting. Whether specific native material plane races may be environmentally predisposed to certain alignment is also a reasonably justified setting. The conflation of the creation of such a setting with assumptions about the personal beliefs of the setting creators is not one I have made or intended to imply. Perhaps you could judge my writing with the same grace you judge theirs.

That’s the kind of nuance that’s difficult to express with the word “usually”.

Seems more like a setting backed stereotype than an acknowledgement that people will be people with all the good and bad that entails.

I would much prefer races native to the material plane to be morally ambiguous with cultural tendencies toward specific alignments being attributable to whatever deities their local populous chooses to follow. I feel inherent alignment to be a strictly outsider phenomenon.

I could see a reaction feat for Alchemists when using Quick Alchemy to create Liquid Blade which consumes a bomb and causes the target struck by a critical attack with the blade to break the blade and subject the target to a fortitude save or suffer the effects of the bomb.

After thinking further on the utility of alchemy based effects, and firearms in particular, I had an epiphany that perhaps the tactical advantage firearms could bring to Alkenstar isn’t necessarily the kinetic damage itself, though I expect it isn’t insignificant, but the ability to deliver persistent damage effects by tainting the bullet when cast with alchemical reagents.
A rationale for why this strategy isn’t prevalent for more traditional ranged weapons could be that creating alchemical ammunition for them isn’t easily scaled up considering that arrows and bolts have performance requirements that are difficult to modify without adversely affecting accuracy. This isn’t to say alchemical ammunition for those weapons isn’t available, they just come with an item penalty for weapons other than firearms or slings.
This would explain why firearms are the preferred weapon in the Mana Wastes while also being able to scale base damage using inscriptions. Firearms are more effective mundane weapons than their traditional counterparts, but not so effective that adding inscriptions would imbalance them.

I have a slight concern with respect to the lore explaining the development of alchemical firearms in Alkenstar and the current mechanics for how weapon damage scales at higher levels. Presumably, the absence of spell effects in the Mana Wastes is mechanically similar to an Anti-Magic Field in that magic weapons become mundane weapons of sufficient quality for their inscriptions. Weapons becoming less lethal, as well as the lack of the ability to cast spells, is what predicates the development of firearms in lore. If firearms are to have satisfied this need, they would have to be more effective than weapons already available, if otherwise mundane. My concern is whether firearm effectiveness at higher levels will be tied to inscriptions like their more traditional counterparts. Doing so would seem to argue against their lethality as mundane weapons to be adequate for survival in the Mana Wastes as lore suggests.

I'm building a character with two psionic classes on either side of the gestalt, so I have a few questions on how to handle the Power Point pools (Vitalist/Psion). Should I combine both pools? Should I maintain separate pools? Should I only count the highest (in this particular case they're the same)? How about the bonus points? The Vitalist's core stat is Wisdom, whereas the Psion's is Intelligence. Do I get the bonus points from both scores or just the highest bonus? Anyway, I've been having a lot of fun researching the psionic classes. I should have something put together by tomorrow if you have the time to answer my questions.