Goblinoid Toad's page

So I'm planning on house ruling that alchemists can get Infusion discovery for free. It's more fun when characters don't die (easily), and having healing from an alchemist would help. Plus, it doesn't make a ton of sense having self only potions. Also, as far as I see it the Cleric class gets a lot of nice abilities to balance having to spend a lot of their time healing others. Why should an alchemist have to pay for the same privilege?

Anyone have a good reason why I shouldn't house rule that?

I've wanted there to be an alchemist class forever, but was a bit disappointed by this one.
Elsewhere it was said an alchemist is supposed to be a selfish caster. However, a selfishly casting cleric can out buff and out melee the alchemist easily. I think that too much focus has been put on the bombs and not enough on the spell casting, similar to the summoner's elodion.

It seems to me that the closed 3.5 parallel to the alchemist is the warlock. Ranged damage ability that scales with level that gets added effects, lower power spell like abilities, decent combat, minor supernatural buffs, etc. However, the warlock casts those low power spells at will, and the alchemist gets a really horrible spell progression. If limited to 6 levels of spells, I would think that the alchemist should get a boost to spells / day. Also, the discovery ability is cool, but it crops up so rarely that it doesn't seem to allow much customization. A level 1 minor discovery would make it a bit more interesting.

In terms of buffing others, its a big loss in terms of spells / day anyway for the alchemist, so why make them lose a vital discovery (that I at least would consider a default discovery)... it should be automatic. Think about cleric, they can choose to buff others or turn themselves into an unstoppable tank... they have same BAB, hp, better armor, much more frequent and powerful spells, and actual offensive spells at the cost of no bombs.

I would have to play test it, but based on a lot of 3.5 experience and some side by side comparisons; I'd seriously up the spells / day, maybe expand the spell list, and make infusion automatic in my campaign. Also, I'd consider certain offensive spells to be added to the spell list, that could be thrown instead of imbibed.