NemisCassander's page

This post was inspired from one of Liam's replies in the new feedback thread regarding Alchemists not being able to use their bombs because of splash damage, and it really crystallized my concerns about Alchemists.

I should say that my twin brother plays a Goblin Alchemist in the Playtest group (the Shortshank Redemption) I am running, and he is certainly the player who 'plays the best', from a numbers/tactics perspective. So I say this as someone who has seen, perhaps, a fairly good Alchemist in the game.

Liam's post about splash damage is quite well taken, because the Alchemist doesn't have a single damaging level-1 bomb that doesn't do splash damage. They do have the tanglefoot bag, and I can see possible applications for it, but you certainly do no damage. So, combine this with the archetypal boss fight as an illustrative example. There is one enemy, and very few parties don't have a melee character whose job is to 'tank'.

So what does an Alchemist do once the enemy is in contact with the party? His bombs have to hit TAC, and if he misses, the bombs will do equal damage to the enemy and the party members in contact with it... very few circumstances really make that a good idea.

This leads to the second issue. The Alchemist has no default attack, really. Even their bombs don't use their class stat (Intelligence), but at least it's TAC and almost certainly--because of this very issue--the Alchemist's second-highest stat, Dexterity. This puts Alchemist ranged attacks squarely into suboptimal range, and other posts have shown how suboptimal attack modifiers are very poor in combat.

So when your party is in contact with the enemy and you're an Alchemist, what are you expected to do? Fire a Crossbow at +4 to hit? The action economy is terrible if you then want to use a Bomb (maybe because additional enemies appeared), because a Crossbow, unlike a Bow, uses 2 hands, not 1+. Even if the answer is, 'Crossbow,'... does no one else see the '3E wizard' problem here? Damage cantrips exist, from a design perspective, to solve the problem of low-level casters having nothing they're 'good at' to do too much of the time.

So why hasn't the same solution been applied to the Alchemist?

Even a change as basic as, 'when you create a Bomb with Quick Alchemy or Advanced Alchemy, you can choose to have the Bomb not deal splash damage' _as a level 1 Class feature_ (i.e., not a Feat) could address a lot of this. I would estimate, though, that 80% of Bombs created would not do Splash damage in this case.

An obvious alternative would be to just provide bombs that don't do Splash damage.

However, the above only would 'fix' (and, not optimally so IMO) the 'throwing Bombs into combat' issue of Alchemists. They really need a Cantrip-level effect for QoL improvements.

I would suggest a level-0 version of alchemical bombs, and then just give the Alchemist the ability to _not spend Resonance_ on versions of Bombs that are lower than the highest they can make.

Now, that might help the two most glaring issues that have come up during the game, but there is at least one other issue that just makes me scratch my head. And it's very simple.

The Alchemist will never make alchemical items (with one exception) for his own use during Downtime. The reason is simple. Alchemical items made during Downtime aren't Infused, which means it would cost the Alchemist a Resonance to use them... which means it competes with his own Quick Alchemy feat... and by 'compete' I mean 'completely overshadowed'. I am not sure why _anyone_ thought it was a good idea for the Alchemist to not want to use their signature skill and class feature during the Play Mode most likely to do so.

That exception is Poisons. Apparently, Poisons, unlike other alchemical items, don't need Resonance to use. The Goblin Alchemist is already working on reverse-engineering the Centipede Venom and then mass-producing it during Downtime for his own use and others.

But, um, is my group just missing something, and that the Alchemist should be making more alchemical items during downtime?

Hello everyone.

As my day job is as a computer simulation modeler, when I started reading the PF forums here, I noted a lot of concern about the treadmill, proficiency, the level bonuses, and other things. And I thought, 'Hm. I am going to model some things here.'

So right now, my first foray is to examine the damage per minute (DPM) numbers, by level, of the Fighter and the Barbarian. As always when building a model, it is useful to state your assumptions. These are mine, so far:

1) The only feat selected for the Fighter and Barbarian is Sudden Charge.
2) It is assumed that the Fighter and Barbarian will need to use Sudden Charge on the 1st combat round of the minute, and not otherwise.
3) The Fighter and Barbarian each use Strike as often as possible. This means that the Fighter gets more Strikes overall, due to the Barbarian needed to keep Rage up. The Barbarian does Strike while Fatigued.
4) Both characters are using a d12 weapon, neither of which are Agile.
5) No other weapon properties (such as Sweep or Forceful) are modeled.
6) Both character start with an 18 Strength, increasing to 20 at level 10, 22 at level 13, and 24 at level 20.
7) Ability (Str), Level, Proficiency, and expected Item modifiers are included.
8) Due to monster stats in the playtest so far, it is assumed that the Fighter will need an 11 to hit the opponent. The Barbarian will need a higher number, per the lower proficiency bonus.
9) The Barbarian's totem does not increase the damage beyond normal (e.g., Dragon, Giant).

The design:

The model runs for one minute, and simulates the dice rolling for that minute (i.e., 10 combat rounds) for both Fighter and Barbarian. I then ran that model 10,000 times

The results:

At levels 1 and 2, the Barbarian's average damage is slightly (~2%) higher the Fighter. At level 3, the Fighter does on average ~5% more damage than the Barbarian. After that, at levels where the Barbarian gets a bonus Damage increase (7th, 11th, etc.), the Fighter does on average ~10% more damage than the Barbarian. At other levels, the Fighter deals on average ~13% more damage than the Barbarian.

There is a lot of variability in these numbers, as to be expected from using d12s and a d20. I am currently running a regression, but I am confident that the damage difference is statistically significant. I will report on this when I can.

Another point I would like to make is that the coefficient of variation (CoV) of the attacks rolls over all levels does not change significantly from the CoV of a d20 roll. This would seem to quantitatively validate the comments on these forums regarding the feel of play being dependent on the results of the d20.