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Has anyone figured the "budget" for different weapons categories? After some basic glancing, it feels to me it could be really easy to create new weapon stat-blocks by simply moving a few points of the "budget" around, but I'm having a really bad headache this week and my brain refuses to combine all this together and grokk it.

One of our players wants a really really big sword that has the reach (and is still a sword, "polearms look lame"), so either removing a Versatile from Greatsword and adding reach or dropping its damage dice to d10 and adding reach seems really simple and intuitive.
The other wants to make the crossbowiest crossbow to ever crossbow, not only shifting the "budget points" around, but actually advancing it into martial and then advanced weapon group to get the deadliest, coolest, over-complicated training-demanding crossbow to ever crossbow. Again, "bows are lame".

Shifting the points within the same category seems easy, as it is generally "a trait for a trait, or a trait for a damage dice size", but for some reasons the crossbow transcending two groups and still keeping reload 1 makes my brain fry. I guess that is because there much more moving parts for ranged weapons, with range and reload beings a factor too?

I also have no idea how to evaluate Bulk or negative traits - the player in question wants a crossbow that makes them Clumsy if they moved this turn, to represent "nesting up" with it and sniping dragons out of the sky.
Ranger sniper turret fantasy with manportable dragonslaying ballista, basically.

Hello.
After being able to see how the game is actually played out, I realized that Call of the Grave is actually a pretty cool and fun Focus Power, and while it has no "scaling" elements unlike other Wizard School Powers, Sickened is good enough to be worth a reusable spell slot anyway.

And the Crit Hit of it looks like a really powerful effect worth *at least* a medium level spell slot on its own.

So my question is...what are possible means and tactics to increase your chance of landing that sweet sweet Crit of the Grave? Is it even a viable exercise in the current state of the math, due to lack of item bonuses to hit?
So far, I'm aware of:

- Flanking and Flat-Footed in genera. -2 AC is a big swing.
- Frightened. Frightened is good for everyone, so it's not like the other person is wasting their actions setting you up with this. Even Frightened 1 is one step closer to a decent crit chance.
- Sickened applies too, but is obviously redundant.
- Clumsy would work wonders, but I didn't found any reliable way to apply it within Arcane spell list, at least not at low-medium levels. I would kill for a Touch of Clumsiness spell. Having a Synesthesia or Tempest buddy is probably the best way to cover this.
- Aid. Aid looks like a potentially really good way to make the laser stick. Too bad I don't have a human Rogue with cooperative soul in the party to use high-proficiency skills and get big bonuses. (In fact, I kinda want to play one now too, Human Rogue Aid-Machine sounds very happy to play)
- True Strike. This is very interesting. I will happily burn a level 1 spell to ensure that the Call of the Grave hits and does at least Sickened 1 (as that usually is at least 1 action burned by opponents and a sticky debuff if they don't bother), and doubling my chance to Crit is very very tempting. Obviously, to make the doubling count, the starting crit chance has to be decent in the first place. I'm not sure what CritChance should I aim for before the True Strike becomes a worthwile investment.

Currently, I'm looking at adventuring with a Halfing Redeemer and Elf Alchemist. We are about to play the Plaguestone intro 1-4 thing. Are there any ways for me to put dread of the Critgrave into my foes, or will I have to just acknowledge that getting reliable crits with it is basically how it scales into mid-late game?

I'm preparing for my first game of Pathfinder ever, and first DND-like in...10 years or something? One thing that caught my eye was the Alchemist, as I'm a big enthusiast of bombs, poisons and other dangerous substances like that.

My initial attempts at cooking a sword-wielding weapon poisoner ended up in frustration, mostly because simple weapons available to Alchemists do not please me aesthetically. Am I correct in thinking that going for elven ancestry feat that makes me trained in a bunch of weapons and make me gain proficiency in "elven weapons" whenever I upgrade simple weapon proficiency won't help me with any other weapon than Elven Curved Blade, correct? And Elven Curved Blade due to being two handed won't be mid-combat poisonable even with a bandoiler?

Then, I switched my gears to going for Mutagens, but they didn't look that promising for melee poisoner, since it doesn't seem like you can poison your claw due to it not being a weapon.

So, so far, it seems that my best bet to do melee poisoner alchemist is to
a) pre-poison a bunch of knives and other disposable weapons and consider them like 2-action melee touch spells that have rider effect on top of it? 2 action due to draw-attack routine
b) just use poison as a nice alpha strike once per combat
c) wait until I can grab Poison Weapon feat from rogue multiclass. It's a shame Alchemist doesn't share it with them.
Though to be fair, seems like a "flow" of poisoner alchemist is to do A or B for the first 2 levels, start carrying Cytillesh Oil in a bandoiler from level 3 onwards (is that a bug? it's the only Injury poison with 1 interact application, but also everything else since that level starts doing conditions on top of damage, so I guess its balanced?), and once you get enough room for Poison Weapon, grab it. Am I missing something?
That is for melee alchemist part of the rules questions.

Second part is ranged poisoners. This is pretty simple question: can I pre-poison individual ammo? The RAW seems to say nope, because you are poisoning "a weapon", so you would have to poison the entire bow ( :P ). In this case, it seems that the way to go would be using thrown weapons, as each thrown weapon is individual weapon, and thus can be poisoned in advance? Though this seems awkward due to need to magically enhance each thrown "ammo" separately.
Is this correct? Bombs&PoisonArrows or Bombs&ThrownWeapons alchemist focused on Dex doesn't sound bad, probably more practical for the poison oriented character than a melee alchemist. I'm just not sure what the best way to approach the concept is, especially since the game will be the Adventure-Path that goes from level 1 to 4, so I won't be able to reach Poison Weapon in time.