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The Witch is looking great and terrible. I love the cauldron and wand but the familiar stuff is painful. Couldn’t they have at least given them the Tough ability for free since they’re expected to be in combat? You’re going to be wasting slots on any protective spells for your familiar if you want it in the thick of things to use their cool abilities.
I still think we need to wait to see the entire remastered class to see where these feats land. Just on a basic level having something like Sacred Ground, and whatever resource-free healing feats follow, it's nice to free up your feats so every healing cleric doesn't also have to be Doctor House, MD. It helps to open up more skill focuses along with them freeing up charisma as your secondary stat. I do wish it was level 2 but I get it being bumped to 4 to follow around when you'd get Ward Medic as a dedicated healer.
Raise Symbol is fairly OP...not a fan of it tbh...Sacred Ground is cool though...was worried about power creep with the "Remaster" and it begins. Can't consider it OP when we don't know the new power baseline across the board. Sacred Ground excites me as someone who enjoys playing a healer. I'm hoping there's a feat line attached to it to grant some improvements.
With all this Alchemist chatter I’ve been thinking Mutagens need a full remaster across the board. Get rid of the weird drawbacks and just replace them with status effects that either affect you during their duration or after. It becomes more of a gamble to use them rather than getting slapped on the wrist immediately upon use.
I think if the class remains without the ability to interface with combat in the same capacity as other classes, it's gonna remain painful to fight with. A martial chassis makes the most sense along with some more nuanced changes. A "quick use" ability would be pretty handy. I agree with SuperBidi about the Alchemist not being a martial. It should be a modular class that can step into or blend any roll depending on their resources. If mutagen drawbacks weren't so harsh this bit would feel better. This is why I'm hoping they get an ability to suppress the drawback, even temporarily similar to Psychic's Unleash. My greatest hopes are action enhancers, powerful alchemy from level 1, legendary class dc, resource replenishment, and mutagen drawback suppression/reduction.
The path of least resistance fix to a alchemist is give them marital proficiency in weapons and armor. These are all great points. I really think the class at a baseline needs Quick Draw, whether that just be for infused items or all alchemical items. Alchemists should be able to mitigate the drawbacks of mutagens to make them more unique users of the items since the concept is so closely tied to the class identity.
I think you’re running into an issue here where the “strongest mid-level healer” can just be replicated with a Witch with Alchemical Crafting and some downtime or with the Alchemist Dedication and still have full casting on top of that. This is why I mentioned the Alchemist Archetype. But even still, a caster who wanted to focus on crafting items won't be hurting for gold since they don't have runes to worry about. Also a Chirurgeon shouldn’t need to go out of their class to be viable in combat flat-out.The class design unfortunately encourages that. Look at all the crazy combos involving a specific Alchemical Item. There are so many Alchemical Items and they are far less thought out than spells ending up with a lot of mini combos all around. The Alchemist is a class for the one who loves shenanigans. Ignoring that when balancing the class just means that the shenanigans-based builds will just overshadow other builds and potentially push the ceiling (in that case, the ceiling in healing). I'm not attacking you but it's starting to feel like you're getting trapped in Devil's Advocate spiral trying to defend the Chirurgeon instead of thinking up ways to make the class overall smoother. I'm advocating for the dissolution of subclasses and an overall overhaul because right now the only benefit of the Chirurgeon is being able to use crafting for Medicine checks. I don't know if that's enough to justify the imbalance of concepts within the class right now. There are ways to be an effective Chirurgeon within the class but they're all Bomber feats and don't necessitate you being a Chirurgeon at all. It's why I think we need to scrap the idea of subclasses since they're just boxes constraining the concept. Quick Bomber, Far Lobber, Healing Bomb, Perpetual Breadth, Sticky Bombs, and Uncanny Bombs lets you heal and damage at a safe distance. You'd just set aside a number of reagents as a healing font to use during battle. Take advantage of Quicksilver Mutagen with Numbing tonic to increase your hit bonus to contribute with bombs and a reload 0 weapon that you can also use Life Shot ammo for as a minor heal in combat. You're able to effectively damage and heal at a distance. I've built this exact build for Kingmaker and thrown in Talisman Dabbler to make free retrieval prisms to smooth out action economy at higher levels. I agree about item shenanigans. That should be the entire point of the class otherwise you are just a walking shop. I want them to lean into that more. If it truly becomes an issues down the line then errata will handle it but I can't imagine anything an Alchemist can do right now that would be earth shattering.
the real issue is that choker-arm only works if you forgo everything that's not healing, and that's bad. I think you’re running into an issue here where the “strongest mid-level healer” can just be replicated with a Witch with Alchemical Crafting and some downtime or with the Alchemist Dedication and still have full casting on top of that. That shouldn’t be the case for the class who’s whole niche operates around being the item guy. The items themselves are fine. The issue lies with what Alchemists are able to do with them uniquely. Also a Chirurgeon shouldn’t need to go out of their class to be viable in combat flat-out. Hell, the Alchemist needs more familiar feats to support the homonculi meta.
a close quarters melee chirurgeon with an offensive mutagen is much more threatening than throwing a cantrip or two.That's not the fantasy I put behind the Chirurgeon Research Field, I was explaining how to make a healer out of it. Obviously, if you don't care much about healing (outside self healing), you can ignore the Choker-Arm Mutagen. But as of now, it's hard to handle the extremely short range of the Chirurgeon without it. I think we need to focus on expanding their options for delivering elixirs that are unique to Alchemists. Right now anyone could replicate the Chirurgeon with enough gold. I’d rather they be able to do unique things with existing items. With action enhancers the Chokerarm Mutagen is a great option for Alchemists who want to focus on healing but it shouldn’t be the only option. A level 1 feat to enable distance elixir delivery would be great. Blood-seeking Syringe Additive 0 Feat Level 1
I came up with a whole slew of feats and features last night, trying to lean into the Alchemist straddling the line between martial and caster. I'm not 100% on what level the feats should land but I think the features make sense. Transmute Reagents lets you essentially refocus your reagent pool to really take advantage of Quick Alchemy. Polypurpose Panacea turns everyone into pseudo bombers and fixes some of the harsher action economy issues for healing focused Alchemists. (Quick Bomber would stay a feat for people who want to focus on bombs) Signature Items roughly follows Signature Spell progression and reduces Quick Alchemy costs. Alchemical Discoveries let you innovate your class daily produce unique effects.
This exactly what I meant. I want the Alchemist to use items and be able to draw out their full potential. Right now Bombs are the only items with full support. Give us a feat to temporarily suppress a mutagen’s drawback with a craft check. Give us a flourish action feat to draw and drink or feed someone an elixir. Bring back stuff like poison conversion, poison skin, and celestial poisons as feats so those items stay somewhat relevant. Changes like these would let them avoid having to publish new items to fill unforeseen weaknesses in the class.
While there are definitely some baseline improvements to the chassis I'd like to see, dismissing items out of hand seems off base given the nature of the class. It's like saying sorcerers suck if you never cast spells. I wasn't dismissing items completely, just saying Alchemists shouldn't need specific items to be functional. It just feels weird that a Chirurgeon needs noodle arms at all times to be a good healer.
Let's not downplay the massive downsides of getting said reach, reduced both accuracy on an alchemist and damage, making you way worse in anything but healing. Relying on a specific mutagen and an archetype to be baseline functional both feel bad. It’s already bad enough a bomber needs Quicksilver to reliably hit. The Chirurgeon shouldn’t be stuck being a Monty Python character to stay a competitive healer. Also no other healer has to sacrifice their damage capability to heal. We need to focus on more item agnostic improvements that increase playability within the class itself and makes each path unique. That or just eliminate the subclasses completely and just let the player pick what items they can make more of at every odd level. Edit: Now that I think more about it, it might just be easier to go the Fighter route and have no subclasses. Let players pick their 2 Field Discovery items at odd levels like casters getting new spells and then just base the feats around modifying existing items, improving their effects, or altering them in unique ways.
This is exactly why I'd rather tie their healing abilities to the Medicine /Crafting skill. Let them play with that like the Forensic Investigator. The more I think about it, the more I want them to be able to Battle Medicine and administer an Elixir in one action. Also a late class feature or feat like Contingency themed as a Time Release Capsule would be fun.
Honestly I'd rather just have a class feature that lets you combine the interact to draw with the interact to activate for any alchemical items.I don't expect such thing. I don't think that designers want that once this will allow the usage of 3 Elixirs of Life per turn. I don't think they want that an Alchemist could end a more efficient than a spellcaster specially for heal. I guess we've come to the conclusion on why all Alchemist's don't get Quick Draw for their items....It's demoralizing and the only workaround I can think of for something like this would be to add a tag to Elixirs of Life to say you can only consume 2 in single round. There has to be something that can be done to give them an action enhancer that won't swing them so wildly on the scale.
9) Rework Alchemical Alacrity completely.I'd also rework Double Brew. I'd just give a free action Quick Alchemy once per round at level 9 and as often as you want at level 15. The necessity to produce multiple items is puzzling, as if you always need Alchemical Items by 2. I feel like it would be simple to fold a Quick Draw like action into Quick Alchemy starting at level 1 that lets you draw and use an alchemical item with the same action, increasing the number of items when Double Brew and Alchemical Alacrity come online.
Would it break too much to give Alchemist's Quick Draw with their research field items? I've always found it sad that Chirurgeons take 3 actions to do the equivalent of a 2 action Heal. I've also been thinking Combine Elixirs should be a class feature rather than a feat tied to Quick Alchemy. It would set Alchemist's infused items apart from regular items you can find/buy. I have some further tweaks to it but it's a very rough idea.
I'll admit I'm not great at class design but ever since the Inventor came out I've been thinking adding a 10-minute exploration activity to the Alchemist similar to their Overdrive mechanic that supplies reagents on a success would go a long way to giving them more lasting power and making Quick Alchemy more attractive. This would be a great excuse to give them auto-scaling Crafting as well.
I know nothing about balance math so take my opinion with a grain of salt but what if we got focus spell equivalents of some of the classic ‘psychic’ spells? It would essentially make them the best casters of these spells since they’d auto-heighten and not have to deal with incapacitation. Or if not focus spells, give them a font keyed to wisdom to represent their dominating willpower.
Loving the look of the Psychic so far but much like others have noticed, they seem to be lacking the oomph that would account for them losing out on spellslots. I’ve been thinking would it not be more interesting to divorce the amps from their spells and have them as generic pools of amps for each Conscious Mind that you can apply to all of your spells? Not sure exactly how these would look but being able to craft ‘new spells’ on the fly similar to Words of Power seems like it would be a fun option to obscure the fact you’ll be casting the same spells for much of your career.
Oh thanks for that. Order of operations got screwed up in my head.
I've been playing an Alchemist for a few months now and just hit level 9 so I got Double Brew. I was looking ahead to Alchemical Alacrity and trying to figure out how to make the best use of it with Enduring Alchemy when I noticed it seems to only work on elixirs or tools.
Is it an oversight or just a case of things working as intended and some feats being situational? I'm debating retraining it now since it really only seems useful for Mutagenist or Chirurgeons. And thanks to the errata on Alchemical Alacrity you'll never be able to make 3 bombs and just leave one on the ground for an ally to pick up and use before your turn since it's automatically stowed.
You’d be surprised but more often than not I manage to poison multiple enemies in combat. We were actually just in a combat session before last where we were swarmed by 7 human enemies and I poisoned 3 of them. Of course with some enemies with high fort saves I’m reverse critfishing but for the most part I haven’t felt shut out. We’ll see how that changes in higher levels when we run into the inevitable demon enemies. We have a fighter with a hammer and shield with spikes and a monk who utilizes tiger stance. Normally I’ll poison their weapons with my perpetual Giant Centipede poison during daily preparations to take advantage of the Pinpoint Poisoner feat. The frequency of their effectiveness varies but when it works it’s great. Especially for those sweet moments where the monk flurries and the monster fails both, pushing the poison to stage 2. I typically use them to help me figure out which monsters are immune so I don’t waste my infused poisons and to help set up one of my bigger poisons.
You’d be surprised but more often than not I manage to poison multiple enemies in combat. We were actually just in a combat session before last where we were swarmed by 7 human enemies and I poisoned 3 of them. Of course with some enemies with high fort saves I’m reverse critfishing but for the most part I haven’t felt shut out. We’ll see how that changes in higher levels when we run into the inevitable demon enemies.
I’ve been playing a Toxicologist for months now and just hit level 9. Overall I love the class but it does take a level of complexity to master that isn’t found for other classes. I basically spend every combat as a switch-hitter, adjusting my role depending on the challenge and I keep every weapon in the party poisoned. I haven’t felt the pain from the lower hit bonus just yet but that’s mostly because I try to stay in Quicksilver Mutagen. I will say though where I’m starting to hurt the most is in the lack of items. There are so many weird level gaps in available items. I’m also missing some feats like Poison Conversation and Malignant Poison to really take advantage of the contact and inhaled poison in combat. We’re playing through Agents of Edgewatch and I’ve yet to have an occasion to use either type of poison.
I feel like A would be acceptable if both classes got strong class exclusive cantrips to balance the lack of resources. Both the Bard and Witch get some powerful options (and the Oracle to a lesser extent) for having one less slot than the Wizard and Sorcerer. I get that the Magus is supposed to be a hybrid caster but having to multiclass to pull off the caster part doesn't feel great. The Summoner has it even worse. Once you blow through your 4 slots, you're more or less a sitting target, spamming boost.
Agreed, because of the different types of things you can summon, it might not scale well being a full level higher. However an augmented summoning increasing to-hit, AC, and possibly damage a bit would be ok I think.1 level higher seems a bit much but maybe the ability to increase the level of the creature summoned or giving it the elite array. I could live with that. It's pretty much what the Conjuration Wizard gets. Maybe the Summoner could have it as a free action upon completion of a summoning spell or would this just be an innate class feature?
Would it be too strong if the Summoner's focus spell summon was 1 spell level higher? It would give them an on level creature that wouldn't just get popped like a balloon and make them unique in that their summons can do more than other casters. Edit: I'm picturing this as a 1st level class ability focus power that you can lower the level of or heighten to 1+ your caster level, allowing you more flexiblity with your summons. I'd also love a Master Summoner subclass without an eidolon and instead maybe with something like Alter Summon Monster as a conduit spell?
Judging by the sidebar for the Angel Eidolon getting Summon Animal, I'm guessing that could be the plan. Personally, I'd love that as I liked using Summon Monster more than my Eidolon in 1e. Something like a 2 action focus power and access to the Conjuration Wizard's Augment Summoning as a cantrip would be great.
I'm no master character builder but I've been thinking taking Dragon Disciple and focusing on Intimidate could help quite a bit. You get Scales of the Dragon to increase your low ac and let you start with a 16 in Strength and then can take Dragon Disciple's Dragon Claws to increase your damage to 1d6. And since you're a charisma caster, you can Demoralize like no other.
They do seem to be working on mitigating that with the Familiar Master archetype, which will also have specialized mechanics even distinct from the Witch so anyone looking to get one of these souped up familiars without multiclassing with the Witch will get their chance.
Haste is definitely a must for a Universalist Wizard who wants together the most out of Bond Conversion. Being able to burn those three actions to cast free spells and still have an action to move means you can wreak some havoc on the battlefield if you've used your spells intelligently throughout the day.
Obviously this comes down to personal taste, but the new system has been much preferred at my table. I agree with this sentiment. I just played a session of Ruins of Azlant where none of my spells landed against the boss and I got knocked out. It was extremely demoralizing. It would be nice to have some sort of focusing wand equivalent to a martial's rune to give a bonus to spell attack rolls but I guess that's what True Strike is basically supposed to be.
The way magic is balanced in this edition will probably be contentious for years to come. As it stands, everything is tied into the 4 degrees of success and monster weakness system. We could either get scaling dcs with lower damage die that can be doubled on a crit fail or locked in trivial dcs with increasing damage die that deal partial damage on a save. I never play blaster casters so I don't really feel the loss of high damage die. Was the prior tactic really to open fire on the boss and eradicate them without any debuffs?
I feel like a lot of the griping about Incapacitation spells comes down to misreading of the trait. It only kicks in when you're facing enemies more than double the level of the spell and it just slides a save up by one degree. It isn't an automatic critical success and majority of the 24 incapacitation spells have an effect on a success. Hell, in 1e you wouldn't even be casting some of these spells after a certain level without applying a bunch of debuffs because the dc would be too low. At least now you can Color Spray till your heart's content.
This seems like a scenario where you rely more on teamwork than your direct capabilities. Your casters throwing out a Command, Gust of Wind, or Hideous Laughter will help with knocking a flying enemy prone. And if they're sufficient level to cast Jump on another target then you can scramble into position before they cast it and then jump and ready an action to grapple the enemy to bring them down.
Not to turn this into another Martials vs Casters thread but after taking a step back, I think I can begin to understand why spellcasting takes as many actions as they do. Casters get the ability from level 1 up to target multiple enemies and/or apply heavy conditions. This isn't something Martials can do for one action without a crit apart from Rogues with Debilitating strike. If they tried to scale them back to make them single action, they'd have to be weaker than Focus Spells, maybe even weaker than existing cantrips to maintain balance. There are options to exploit at higher levels, though. Aside from Bards, each of the other casters can get a 1 action damaging focus spell and Magic Missile is on the Occult and Arcane lists.
With the way the action system interacts with magic, it feels like Haste has become one of the most important spells in a caster's arsenal. This is mostly theory crafting but a high level Universalist Wizard with Bond Conversion and Haste in one of their higher level slots can really exploit the feat. As for casters in general, I think the one action focus spells are supposed to be their way to leverage the action system but it doesn't feel as great since they're a limited resource. I'm kind of wishing for a revamp of Words of Power that'll let you apply variable actions to a spell to alter it. I could see it as an archetype or even its own distinct class with a word list rather than a spell list.
I'm thinking a temp hp item for Perpetual Infusions would go a long way to solving the Chrigugeon's issues. Maybe with a minute or 10 minute long duration and some feats similar to the bomber feats that allow you to add item bonuses to saves and the like? Of course their Treat Wounds issue needs to be fixed too.
So this idea came to me in one of the many threads on Alchemist and their issues and I'm not quite sure how to word it but I thought an interesting facsimile of focus spells for an Alchemist would be the ability to transmute natural resources or found alchemical items into other alchemical items. I definitely need some help with the actual mechanics and balance of it but I thought something like this would be nice to give the Alchemist something to do and give the party something to do with whatever items they've acquired that aren't level appropriate anymore. Transmute
It's pretty thematic though. Alchemists in fiction are all about preparing exotic potions from magical ingredients from strange beasts and abominations. Makes sense an adventuring alchemist might want to be able to procure their own.Oh here's a thought. What if the Alchemist could scavenge supplies from monsters or resources around them with a successful Alchemy check that determined how many reagents they regain?That's a level of creepy generally reserved for necromancers and taxidermists. I meant to say natural resources too but I do think it's pretty flavorful overall and would give Alchemists something to do during everyone else's 10 minute break.
I was just about to comment the same thing. I'd honestly rather the Witch's familiar not be a true familiar. Them not having any hp and instead being a conduit they use to enhance their spells would go a long way to setting them apart from other classes with familiars. Then you can do stuff like reflavor Reach Spell as their Deliver Touch Spell counterpart. Either something like that or making them like a 1e Eidolon that can be resummoned after death with a Focus point or something of the sort with some minor penalty would feel a bit better. I'd also honestly prefer if they weren't these little creatures to begin with. I went Cartomancer in 1e because I liked the flavor of using a deck of harrow cards rather than a creature to commune with my Patron. Break the paradigm and let Witches commune with their Patrons in their own unique way.
One thing I would bring up is the actual cost of Shield Block. When enemies get strong enough to destroy that shield, a Rogue using Nimble Dodge will be able to keep that reactive bonus. It also seems like Nimble Dodge is a great boon to Rogues using hit and run tactics where an enemy will only have one good action to attack you with. |
