| amalgamemnon |
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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:
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.
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
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.