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After finally playing a toxicologist in a high level setting (17+), I feel that there is a huge gap between the effects of the different research fields. Some help you a lot doing what you want to do, some not so much.

The most well rounded one is bomber. Nothing is useless here. When you increase your field, your bombs become more versatile and powerful. You get extra splash, you can trigger more weaknesses. The field vials are solid. All elements mean you can easily avoid resistances and target weaknesses. Also bombs have insane action economy compared to the rest. They work very well with double brew and a feat even allows you to throw one immediately.

Chirurgeon is good too. Healing for "free" in combat is good even if its a limited number of times. Allowing to throw heal bombs is great for the action economy (which is usually horrible for the alchemist). The greater field discovery increases heal substantially which is great.

Mutagenist is not great. Only the greater field discovery is good (it is great even). their shtick of drinking potions to remove the drawback would be nice if it wasn't 1 turn. Using two actions (creating vial + drinking vial) to suppress a single drawback for one turn is not great (even if you gain a bit of resistance). Gaining temporary health on a mutagen would be good if it wasn't one minute. Starting at level 3 your mutagen last for 10 minutes and go up to an hour later so there is no reason to use them during fight. You can't switch mutagen during fight as you would stack drawbacks except by using the field discovery to purge the old but the effect require a trigger.

Mutagenist would clearly gain from an option to purge a mutagen for a benefit at any point. That could be the use of field vials : You drink it and purge the current mutagen for a bonus that lasts more than the current turn. That could be a heal for example.

And toxicologist... I really have to thank my GM that allows fancy things like poisoning an ally weapon that they are still holding or I would seriously feel underpowered. I have done many fight just not using poisons and relying on mutagens, elixirs and bombs because they are more reliable.
The problems are :
-Poisons are not great. Most enemies will save on a 6 on the dice. They do nothing on a success (except with the pernitious poison feat)
-Injury poisons are clunky. Even with the "cheat" of using only one action to apply it you need 3 actions to use them : create, apply, strike. They work terribly with double brew as you need a weapon in hand to use them.
On top of that nothing in the toxicologist kit makes them better with poisons after their field benefit (which is great. 100% love it).
The field vial is clunky to use as any injury poison. "The substance becomes inert at the end of your current turn." is horrible. You can't even apply it one turn and strike the next. You have to commit 3 actions. My nice GM consider that the "inert" part only apply to the vial before it is applied (after it is the normal 10 minutes). But that doesn't seem like the intended ruling.
Non of the discoveries after help with poisonning. Poison resistance is ok but it's just a worse version of an alchemist feat (and doesn't even stacks with it). Persistant poison damage is ok but it is on the clunky vial which could have been thrown as a bomb and would have dealt those damage as splash which can be as good in some configurations.
And the last is super cool... but as you don't have anything to help the poison work, it will almost never have any use.

There are feats that help poisoning like "pinpoint poisoner" but I would expect the toxicologist to be a bit better with poisons. One of his field discoveries could be that a crit on a strike (which will not happen a lot as an alchemist as you are no fighter) decrease the initial save on the poison by one level. This would at least help the poison stay one turn.

I want to make a toxicologist but I am not sure about a few things about creating poisons in the new rules.

From what I understand :
-Poisons made with advanced alchemy work perfectly fine but can't have additives.
-Poisons made from create consumable (quick alchemy) stop being potent at the end of turn but the poison will work normally for the full 6 rounds if a creature is affected before then.
-Quick vial poison is the same (except it doesn't have a duration and directly deals damages).

The thing that I am not sure about is what happens with poisonned weapons :
Does a weapon being poisoned count as an effect of the poison and thus stay poisoned for 10 minutes with quick alchemy or does the weapon stops being poisoned at the end of turn.
The quick vial version specifically says that the substance becomes inert at the end of turn. It seems to target specifically the poisoned weapon so for this one does the poison last until the end of turn on the weapon ?

I ask those questions because the poisons seem extremely short lived for what you want to do with them. You have quick bomber to create and throw a bomb but if you want to use a poison it seem that you have to create it, put it on your weapon and strike all on the same turn meaning you have no actions left to close the gap (and on ranged weapons it seem just impossible to use, because you have to poison the ammo with both hand then draw the weapon).
If the poisonned ammo or weapon wtay poisoned for 10 minutes that seem a bit more usable but I am not sure if this is the correct read (quick vial seem to directly point the contrary as I understand it)

The treat condition feat (https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2029) allow to remove some conditions except for specific cases : "Treating a Condition that is continually applied under certain circumstances (for instance, the enfeebled condition a good character gains from carrying an unholy weapon) has no effect as long as the circumstances continue."

Is a disease a specific circumstance that continually apply the condition ?

If not, can a medic remove all the effects of a disease that only gives one of the three conditions and how long will that last ?

Thanks a lot.

I started recently the creation of a wizard concept using the Familiar bond thesis. I wanted to delve a bit deeper into what a familiar mean, how to create it and how to perfect it.

And I thought a bit about the implication of having a magically enhanced being as your familiar.

It seem that a familiar (at least for the wizard, for the witch it's a totally different thing) is an animal that the wizard experimented on and gave high level of intelligence using a special bond (in PF1 it's pretty clear that the animal gain human level of intelligence, in PF2 it's only implied but there is no reason it should have changed)

This supernatural intelligence may probably also mean the creature is perfectly sentient and this is entirely due to the bond with the wizard. Having your own intelligence only exist because of this bond mean you can in no way break it without basically dying. Reverting to an animal intelligence would indeed the the death of the creature that the familiar is right now.

So the familiar has no choice but to follow its master which looks like slavery even if the familiar is content with its situation.

Do I read too much into it ?
Do I make assumptions that are not correct ?

The familiar contrary to animal companion has a minimalistic stat bloc, mostly because the main features of the familiar seem to be the familiar/master abilities and not the creature that comes with them.

But I feel that this super minimalistic approach doesn't really work for skills. Familiars can use skills using their level. They add the caster ability score for perception and 2 skills (acrobatics and stealth).

There are two main problems for me:

-First the proficiency doesn't appear anywhere. I imagine that mean the familiar is untrained for everything. Which is odd because being untrained in acrobatics (one of the only two skills it has a bonus) prevent it from using maneuvers in flight if it's a flying creature if really feel odd.
Plus now that the witch has a feat to give the bonus to more skills it really feel that proficiency for those should be increased to trained. Many action require to be trained and it would be nice to have a way for the familiar to use those too.

-Second, while untrained in everything, the familiar is better than anyone untrained at medium/high level because it uses their level as an untrained value instead of ability + 0 (or just 0 in their case). They basically have the bard ecclectic skill feat (a 8th level feat) which also feel odd. Ok the familiar is a study buddy for the mage but that doesn't explain why it has a bit of knowledge on every single topic in existence.

I really think that the familiar skills should be changed. They should be trained in a very limited set of skills (acrobatics + stealth + other skills via feats or even maybe an option through familiar abilities) and perception for which they can use their full proficiency bonus (level+2) + caster ability* and they have a +0 bonus for the rest.

*An other option can be to have their ability score always be 0 but to allow their proficiency to increase by one mean or an other (probably never above expert) for roughly the same final score.

This would make them consistent with the rest of the creatures and the proficiency system, more useful for the few things they are meant to be good at but less a jack of all trades that can use any skill untrained with relative efficiency.