Coboney's page

I wonder how crafting alchemical items will be dealt with, monetary speaking. I played a high level alchemist once, who could craft anything she wanted, but I quickly stopped crafting because it was way too costly.

There's the daily stuff and on the fly stuff which do not cost money so that's fine. That puts the crafting alchemy items more in comparison with scrolls to some extent.

While I don't have much details - I was told crafting is getting overhauled some and including a new trade-off system for time/money (so you can spend more time in downtime to get an item at less, or more money to do it faster compared to the base crafting cost).

Blog wrote:

a formula book for free, along with four bonus alchemical item formulas (for a total of eight, including the four from Alchemical Crafter). Each time he levels up, he gains two more formulas. This is on top of ones he either discovers or invents.

What exactly is an alchemical forumla here? 8+(19*2)= 46 formulas base. Plus more discovered or invented? Will alchemy be a full blown not-magic system? I don't know what to think about that possibility

Talking with Stephen - he did confirm there will be over 46 items. Note that this probably counts poisons as well. Alchemy is basically becoming its own little system there in the playtest

John Lynch 106 wrote:

The alchemist never excited me much with the bomb throwing. I always like the Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde format. I'm surprised no mention was made of the alchemist's companion: a golem. From the early interviews I believe that was confirmed. If that replaces the mutagen (for builds that go the golem route) I could see the alchemist doing a pretty good impersonation of the Eberron artificer. For now I'll just wait and see.

If they can get a golem companion, that's a pretty significant thing to leave out of this preview. That could be pretty awesome.

There is the Alchemical Familiar class feat Stephen told me about in the interview - I don't have any other details on it, but the fact it is an option would lead me to believe that for the base alchemist it's not getting a golem - until possibly high levels feated into.

Or via an archtype.

Techraptor Interview wrote:

One of the defining elixirs is the elixir of life, which gives the alchemist the ability to heal himself and others by having folks drink up. While its raw healing ability scales slower than healing spells, it has its own advantages in that it provides resistances if drank when at full HP, and that the Alchemist can further enhance it with class feats. Most notably at high levels, the Miracle Worker class feat can let you resurrect the dead with a true elixir of life.

Of course, if it was just healing that would be boring. Elixirs typically tend to be transmutative, meaning something changes to make them work. A few other examples given were a cheetah elixir that gives you increased speed, an elixir that improves jumping, an elixir that transforms you into the mist, and several others that transform the body.

I like what I see here. It does make me wonder though why mutagen is even a class feature. Just make the various mutagens and cognatogens into elixirs you can learn to make. Even if mutagen-as-elixir didn't come until until 3rd or 4th level when the alchemist gets "2nd tier elixirs," to...

I'm not quite sure where they are going - but I think they want to keep it separate there and the mutagen can function under different rules. Also by being a class feature and not a base alchemical item, it means that it is unique to the alchemist (barring archtypes and the like) and not just open to anyone who takes the Craft Alchemy skill feat. By opening it to cognigions and the like base it also reduces the odds it becomes a dead class feature.

I'm glad to see the various elemental bombs are being brought forward, which should give the alchemist much more flexibility right from the word go. I also see that the Tanglefoot Bag now counts as a bomb (!) and its DC will go up, which is also excellent to hear.

This is one of the things that interests me a lot because it means even if you don't want to be tossing damaging stuff around. It boosts bombs from being about one thing to being a much more flexible tool.

Well this is good news. Some classes can shift things like Resonance to alternate ability scores that better fit the class in question. Also the Alchemist apparently gets bonus Resonance on top of this. This also helps alleviate worries about burning Resonance needed for magic items. :)

They do get extra resonance as they level up. Also, for using their own items they don't have to pay to drink it if anyone was concerned about that.

If you guys have any other questions based on the interview feel free to fire away here or on the TR questions and I'll try to answer as I can.

Personally, I'm excited to see what the class ends up as and like the feel of the class flavorfully using the magic in the world around them and mixing it together. I liked 1e alchemist but it was always a bit restrained and abstract flavor because of having to be built on rules that had a certain foundation. Working him in here from the start lets alchemy find it's own niche.

this is a game based on your imagineation (i know i cant speel) make one up.

Thank you for your very helpful commentary.

This message is automated to tell you that it while the DM in question does and will continue to make homebrew items he prefers when possible to use the stuff that's already there as it would make life easier and less time is spent on a side thing. Additionally, the fact is not all GMs like having players submit homebrew due to the largely varying quality of it.

Shadow - my issue with Level 8 is that 4th level spells are where I find things start to break a bit. They are for a lot of combat purposes not as good as 3rd level in a lot of occasions but for plot breaking and such it starts to break down here.

A quick list of 4th level spells (all core) which illustrate this: (note some of them are 'cool' but to me often feel like they should be more of a plot device or something that's more situational)

Scrying
Divination
Tongues
Black Tentacles
Dimension Door
Lesser Geas

Scrying isn't too bad without 5th level spells but it does ruin a lot of different plot ideas and areas. If you went to 10th level though it gets pretty bad - Scry and Fry enters.

Divination just bypasses mysteries at times. You can work on riddles and such but if the Gods *want* to help their subject it doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have rules for cosmology.

Tongues is another mystery cracker and personally my feeling is if it obligatory to the situation that they *must* learn to speak with them there should be another way. But then - I change Comprehend Language to be like Jump for any game I think thats going to come up (+10 to linguistics checks +20 at 5th etc and lets you make the check untrained).

Black Tentacles is just a whole combat ender. An I win button a lot of the time.

Dimension Door's issue is the fact with decent range (720 at level 8 ) you can move without line of sight or effect. So it can bypass whole regions and such. Not as egregious as Teleport and less combat useful due to the fact it ends the turn but still a long range no-sight-required teleport. (On another note - Wizards at mid-levels who aren't ethically constrained don't really have to worry about money with spells like teleport and DD. I mean unless you get someone to make an anti-teleport magic item for your room/house, they can just hop in, steal what they need and be out in under 30 seconds).

Lesser Geas is up there as its a weaker dominate type effect. Whereas Charm Person influences Geas forces for a week or so if its at all possible.

My issue with a lot of these things is how it renders skills and thinking down to just pulling the right spell/scroll up. Though as I said 4th level is far from the worst for some stories.

Now I've played and enjoyed and GMed my fair share of high fantasy dnds but I brought this up as I was curious if anyone has and I've been thinking about something a little different in tone lately.

Greetings...

So recently I've been thinking of running a lower level game, with less of a focus on high magic and such that I normally have seen in my games and my friends as well as lower magic setting that base dnd/Pathfinder doesn't encourage.

A while back I read the E6 Rules for dnd (Findable here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=352719). Basically the idea is that characters stop leveling at level 6 and every 5000 xp they get a bonus feat and that's all. Part of what it is does is stop some of the dungeon breaking spells and spellcaster dominance / setting breaking that can happen.

So I was wondering - has anyone played Pathfinder with E6 rules? If so how did it work? What did you like/dislike of it?

Thanks for your time,
Cob