amalgamemnon's page

I haven't done the math or tested much beyond the level 1 feat yet, but in doing the math on the level 1 feat... it feels SO good.

Any thoughts from you on it?

Feat #1 - Afflict Poison

Afflict Poison - Feat 1 - 1 action activity - Attack - Requirements: you are holding a weapon which can deal piercing or slashing damage which has been coated with a poison with the Infused trait and was created by yourself.

You are particularly adept at delivering their poisons with your weapon, at the expense of the effectiveness of the weapon itself. One target creature within reach of your weapon (or the first range increment if your weapon is ranged or thrown) makes a save vs the poison on the coated weapon, with the following effect:

Critical Success - no effect

Success - Apply the poison at stage 1

Failure - Apply the poison at stage 2

Critical Failure - Apply the poison at stage 3

Your class DC takes a penalty equal to your multiple attack penalty for this activity.

Feat #2 -

Quick Affliction - Feat 6 - 2-action activity - Attack - Prerequisite: Afflict Poison - Requirements: you are holding two weapons, both of which have the Agile trait, can deal piercing or slashing damage, and have been coated with a poison with the Infused trait and was created by yourself.

Afflict Poison on two creatures within reach of your weapons (or the first range increment if your weapon is thrown). This counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty.

Feat #3 -

Fan of Toxins - Feat 14 - 3-action activity - Attack - Prerequisite: Quick Affliction - Requirements: you are holding two weapons, both of which have the Agile trait, can deal piercing or slashing damage, and have been coated with a poison with the Infused trait and was created by yourself.

Afflict poison on any number of creatures within reach of your weapons (or the first range increment if your weapon is thrown) which are not currently affected by a poison. This counts as three attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty.

I really hope Paizo just shows us what they're planning to do with Alchemist (or even a few options) and is open to feedback on it before sending this stuff off to be printed. June isn't that far off and Alchemist desperately needs some love to not feel like garbage.

In short, the alchemist needs to be clearly better at using all of his alchemical items than anyone else, including those with the alchemist archetype. This is the basics for the alchemist to stop being a portable grocery.

This this this this this.

It cannot be overstated how un-fun it is to have the only viable playstyle be "vending machine with legs".

In my view, more or less every alchemical item should have 3 flavors:

Flavor 1: Purchased. This is the worst version of the item that should be OK when the players are at at its item level, and get progressively worse as you progress past its item level.

Flavor 2: Created by an Alchemist (either with Quick Alchemy or Advanced Alchemy) and used by the Alchemist's teammate. This should be better than Flavor 1, but not as good as Flavor 3.

Flavor 3: Created by an Alchemist and used by that Alchemist. This should be the best version of the alchemical item.

Let's look at a few examples:

Alchemist's Fire

So, the main issue with Alchemical Bombs is that, after they hit Master proficiency, you're significantly better off just feeding these to your party's Fighter (or other martial, potentially) than you are actually using them yourself. It's questionable, then, whether your Fighter actually *wants* to be using your bombs, or if they'd rather use their own weapon, and whether they're OK sacrificing some action economy to use your bombs. After a certain point, a fully-runed martial weapon is going to just outperform your bombs, and they become worthless to use by anyone but yourself... and at that point, you're -2 or -4 to a martial on your to-hit roles. Ouch.

How I Would Fix It

Flavor 1: Non-Alchemists take a -2 penalty when using a weapon with the Alchemical and Bomb traits if that item was not created using Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy.

Flavor 2: Non-Alchemists do not take a -2 penalty when using a weapon with the Alchemical and Bomb traits if that item was created using Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy.

Flavor 3: Alchemists are Trained in Alchemical Bombs at level 1. Non-bomber Alchemists get Expert at level 7. When using Alchemical Bombs created using either Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy, Bombers instead get Expert at level 3, Master at level 7, and Legendary at level 13. This makes Bomber Alchemists very high accuracy with bombs (and nothing else) when using Alchemical Bombs that they created themselves. This plays into the (sub)class fantasy of quickly crafting and throwing bombs on the fly, and also doesn't give them any undue advantages by simply spending gold to have a near-inexhaustible supply of bombs.

Giant Centipede Venom

It's no secret that Toxicologists feel like crap in combat. They either spend a bunch of time pre-combat poisoning up their party's weapons and then spend combat as a worse version of a ranged martial... or they feebly attempt to apply poisons themselves (or throw Blight Bombs) only to run into successful Fort save after successful Fort save, poison resistance, or poison immunity.

How I Would Fix It

Flavor 1: Post-nerf injury poisons that anyone can apply and use. These are just OK when players are right at their item level, and get progressively worse the further away you get.

Flavor 2: Bring back the previous version of injury poisons when those poisons are created via Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy and are applied to a weapon not wielded by the Alchemist. These still use the Alchemist's class DC, but still suffer from the same issues that existed pre-nerf with poison immunity and poison resistance being all-too-common, with Fort saves being most often the strongest save (and least often the weakest save) on enemies, and the weapon damage far outclassing the damage from poisons, meaning they are (very often) a consumable that requires preparation that gives a 1 round debuff.

Flavor 3: Upgraded injury poisons when Toxicologists apply them with their own weapon attacks.

a) Toxicologist-created injury poisons use the Toxicologist class DC

b) On a successful hit with a weapon with an applied injury poison, force a fortitude save. Poisons are at stage 3 on a critical failure, stage 2 on a failure, stage 1 on a success, and are not applied on a critical success

c) Injury poisons neither increase nor decrease from their applied stage (saves the GM time managing poison stages)

d) Treat poison immunity as poison resistance, and ignore poison resistance.

e) Adds the Alchemist's Int modifier as persistent damage to the poison effect at all stages.

This means that Toxicologists still have to deal with the Alchemist's less-than-stellar weapon proficiency profession, but when they *do* hit, their poisons take over and start doing some real work. Applying a poison effect on all but a critical success on a Fort save means poisons are applied more frequently, cementing them as the core of the class, and ensures that fewer poisons end up wasted on hits that connect but the enemy get an even decent roll.

Let's do some math with an example. A level 5 alchemist vs a typical level 5 monster (randomly chose a Barbazu https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=110), using the poison above. Flavor 1 of the poison is only going to apply on a critical failure, and it will very likely only be on the monster for 1 round. Flavor 2 of the poison is going to use the Alchemist class DC of 21 (10 + 2 Trained + level 5 + int mod 4), so again, the monster is only getting poisoned on a hit plus a 1-5 on the die. (That's right! A toxicologist is only going to end up poisoning this monster 25% of the time on a hit with anyone's weapon but their own... that's how this works today. Assuming best case scenario and it's a fighter with a +23 to hit at level 5, every attack has only a 23.75% chance of poisoning the target. Sucks, huh? Maybe I'll make a thread on how bad Toxicologist math really is...). Flavor 3 of the poison is going to apply Stage 1 on a roll of 6-15, Stage 2 at 2-5, Stage 3 on a natural 1, and only fail to apply on a 16-20 on the die. So, it fails to apply 25% of the time, applies at Stage 1 (and stays at stage 1) 50% of the time, applies at stage 2 20% of the time, and applies at stage 3 5% of the time. That feels an AWFUL LOT better, despite the only meaningful difference being 1d6+(int mod) poison damage per round in 50% of cases. Is allowing an Alchemist to deal 5-10 damage per round with the ENTIRE THING THEIR CLASS REVOLVES AROUND in 50% of cases seriously so gamebreaking that the current implementation is the only way things could have been done? No, of course not.

/rant

Elixir of Life

Elixirs are super cool, but need to be seriously overhauled. Unlike Bombs and Poisons, they aren't offensive in nature, and we need to get creative with how they should work, but there may be some ideas here.

How I Would Fix It

Flavor 1: Typical elixirs that can be purchased. No change from how they work today.

Flavor 2: Whenever an elixir with the healing trait is created with either Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy is applied to or used by a non-Alchemist, the elixir applies it's normal effect, plus some additional minor effect (determined per-Elixir). Elixir of Life, for example, could add a bonus to any death saving throws for the next 10 minutes (+1 for minor, +2 for lesser, etc).

Flavor 3: Whenever an elixir with the healing trait is created with either Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy is applied to or used by the Alchemist that created it, its effect is substantially increased, in addition to the minor effect from Flavor 2. Elixirs of Life could restore a d4 of hit points for each d6 of hit points it typically restores. Antidotes could also provide poison resistance for the same duration as their Fortitude save bonus. Things like this. Yes, this is a lot of items to rework... but in my opinion, it's well-worth the investment to do this design because of how underwhelming Alchemists a really are.

On Mutagens

We don't know much about how mutagens are going to work, since there hasn't been a previewed version of them yet, so there's probably something in the works for them already. I hate to say too much, but in my vacuum of information, I'm going to take a wild whack at it anyway:

I don't think they should be item bonuses when applied to the Alchemist, period. They should just be a status bonus. Alchemists' mutagens shouldn't compete with their weapon runes. Alchemists already run significantly behind in bonuses, and mutagens already have a downside. They shouldn't have an in-built "I don't do anything for your to-hit bonuses anymore" clause, too.

Automatic Bonus Progression is frankly my absolute favorite variant rule in Pathfinder 2e. It has completely unshackled me from being forced to hand out potency, striking, and resiliency runes, and allowed my players far more freedom when it comes to spending their treasure on consumables and utility magic items.

However, it should be noted that it appears Paizo completely forgot that Alchemy exists when creating this variant rule. The problematic line is buried in the second paragraph under the "Adjusting Items and Treasure" section of the variant rule.

Items that normally grant an item bonus to statistics or damage dice no longer do, other than the base item bonus to AC from armor.

This completely neuters alchemical mutagens, making Alchemists bar-none the worst class in the game when using an incredibly simple variant rule.

Should everyone be able to get a copy of the Pathfinder Society Scenarios and Quests? Or just the scenarios? It seems like I automatically get the scenarios put into my digital content but not the quests.