I've been going through the final playtest versions of the advanced player's guide classes this week and may have stumbled across some extreme burst damage from the alchemist. Basically it goes something like this at 10th level, assuming my assumptions are true (rapid shot works for thrown weapons, fast bombs lets you full attack with bombs just like a ranged weapon, and two-weapon fighting lets you throw extra bombs with your off-hand)
int 18 (reasonable, many would probably have higher) and dex 17+ (I'll call it an 18 for this)
feats: point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot, two weapon fighting, improved two-weapon fighting
discoveries: fast bombs, precise bombs, and potent bombs x3
drink a haste extract or receive haste from a party member (not necessary but amusing) and/or drink an improved invisibility extract/have it cast on you by another (not necessary but again helpful as it turns all these attacks into flat-footed touch attacks)
So you've got primary attack/rapid shot/offhand primary/haste attack/secondary/secondary offhand attacks within 30 feet
So with haste/invis it's +7 BAB, +1 throw anything, +1 point blank, +1 haste, +2 striking from invis, +4 dex, -2 rapid shot, -2 TWF
+12/+12/+12/+12/+7/+7 all going for flat-footed touch AC. A good party will have other buffs riding as well.
damage: 8d6+5 each, and the likelihood of them all hitting is fairly good, for a total of 48d6+30 or 198 average. Even if they all miss that's 6 reflex saves for up to 78 damage, and this splash damage affects any enemies adjacent to your target but not your allies (up to 4.)
Things like fire resistance obviously help a lot, but the majority of monsters you encounter probably don't have that. The fact that you can only do this twice per day helps mitigate things somewhat, but as long as you develop some other combat skills for routine things then you should be fine. The ability to just dump onto some boss monster is very handy. I'd go hunting white dragons if I were this guy.
It's not as if I would actually use this build. It's just something to keep an eye on. Personally I'd houserule against letting you take anything but natural iterative attacks with your bombs just to keep them sane. 16d6+10 (66) is plenty for a level 10 character to deal in one round.
Yea, it does look like that is possible to me. Still, that's a lot of feats and abilities to use to be able to unload all of your bombs in two rounds. Then the three discoveries you choose are useless for the rest of the day, though I suppose you could use the feats for dagger throwing.
As a GM, I would get a kick out of having a boss use an illusion to make it appear as though the bombs were hurting him when he was really immune to fire, haha.
Not sure about the math for your attack sequence. I come up with +13 for the primary attacks (+7 BAB, +4 Dex, +1 PBS, +1 Haste), then -4 for Rapid Shot and TWF, and that leaves me with +8/+8/+8/+8/+3/+3.
Rules explicitly state that thrown weapons count as ranged, so as long as you're able to draw/throw multiples on a single round (Quick Draw, or Fast Bombs in this case), Rapid Shot should apply.
The touch attack, from range, splash damage, and sheer number of dice make this pretty nasty. The number of attacks possible isn't out of the realm of possibility though. A Monk at 10th level with Medusa's Wrath can pull off eight attacks (spending a ki point, plus Haste) on an unfortunate opponent, as long as they're flatfooted or otherwise slightly incapaciated (which isn't hard to do for a Monk at that level), for 8d10+STR+Amulet of Mighty Fists. That averages just under 100 damage each time, assuming an energy enhancement on the amulet and a decent (+2) strength. The Monk can do this every time he catches someone incapacitated though, until they run out of Ki points (minimum 10/day), and even once they do that just takes away one attack.
I'm sure other folks can come up with ways to deal massive damage with fighter or barbarian builds too, and they tend to not run out of resources period. So again, while I agree that the combo of ranged touch attack and splash damage makes this trick rather potent, I don't think it's any more "broken" than things that already exist in the game.
Put where the modifiers on the attack bonus were coming from. Also, a 10th level monk can't have medusa's wrath since it require 11 BAB, so a 10th level alchemist is doing more damage than a monk 5 levels higher than him who is going after a regular AC and therefore less likely to hit and then only in a special case and only when the monk starts his turn adjacent to the foe.
As far as damage goes, I think a greatsword fighter could be throwing around 3 attacks (haste, 22 strength, +4 weapon, weapon focus/greater/spec, power attack) at +22/22/17 for 2d6+26 each. Average total of 99 if all 3 hit.
The fighter can do it at will, but must begin in melee and is attacking regular AC. Gets a lot more benefit out of crits though.
Put where the modifiers on the attack bonus were coming from. Also, a 10th level monk can't have medusa's wrath since it require 11 BAB, so a 10th level alchemist is doing more damage than a monk 5 levels higher than him who is going after a regular AC and therefore less likely to hit and then only in a special case and only when the monk starts his turn adjacent to the foe.
As far as damage goes, I think a greatsword fighter could be throwing around 3 attacks (haste, 22 strength, +4 weapon, weapon focus/greater/spec, power attack) at +22/22/17 for 2d6+26 each. Average total of 99 if all 3 hit.
The fighter can do it at will, but must begin in melee and is attacking regular AC. Gets a lot more benefit out of crits though.
Monks can take Medusa's Wrath as their 10th level bonus feat, and don't need to make the prereq's. Using Medusa's Wrath likely won't be going after a normal AC either, since the target has to be hindered (likely flatfooted, stunned or staggered).
Those bombs are indeed powerful when used the right way. However, they aren't spells and can be be foiled in several ways. Snatch arrows for instance.
Also, I doubt that you can use two weapon fighting with the bombs, although rapid shot seems to be legit.
You only gain additional attacks that would be granted by your BAB, as per the wording in the Discovery. No extra bombs from Rapid Shot, Haste, TWF, or anything like that.
As you can see the Alchemist doesn't really need to have 6 bombs at once at level 10. Two is plenty.
This exact topic was brought up in the playtest,
because the wording isn't clear how many hands bombs require/ if 2WF works, if the # bombs is linked to base Iterative attacks or not, etc.
Why bring it up again? The playtest is over, Jason is already aware of the topic, so presumably will be incorporating that perspective into clarifying the wording to function how he thinks is balanced.
Well seeing as Skoze here only as 3 posts he probably missed all those fun discussions. I wouldn't be too harsh. Those boards are a little tricky to find and browse through now as well...
Well because the discovery says you only get attacks relative to those granted by your BAB. The way I read it though. The way Quandary reads it though is that as soon as you earn additional attacks with your BAB you can then use bombs for any additional attacks ie. haste, twf, rapid shot all that jazz.
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Well because the discovery says you only get attacks relative to those granted by your BAB. The way I read it though. The way Quandary reads it though is that as soon as you earn additional attacks with your BAB you can then use bombs for any additional attacks ie. haste, twf, rapid shot all that jazz.
Since when has TWF or Rapid Shot even relied on Base Attack Bonus? All it mentions is that you get extra attacks in exchange for a penalty. You can use both with a simple +1 BAB. As for Fast Bombs, all that says is you can throw even more bombs if you have the BAB to grant you normal additional attacks.
The argument *should* be that this wouldn't work because you prepare a bomb in the same action you throw it, and doing both is a standard action. Fast Bombs allows you to do more with a Full Attack Action, but it isn't clear whether or not TWF or Rapid Shot would allow you to do something similar.
It has nothing to do with base attack bonus, rather that whole 'prepare and throw as a standard action' schtick.
You only gain additional attacks that would be granted by your BAB, as per the wording in the Discovery. No extra bombs from Rapid Shot, Haste, TWF, or anything like that.
As you can see the Alchemist doesn't really need to have 6 bombs at once at level 10. Two is plenty.
Scipion, you highlighted the wrong part IMO.
An alchemist with this discovery can quickly create enough bombs to throw more than one in a single round. The alchemist can prepare and throw additional bombs as a full-round action if his base attack bonus is high enough to grant him additional attacks. [bold]This functions just like a full-attack with ranged weapon. [/bold] An alchemist must be at least 8th level before selecting this discovery.
It says you can make a normal full ranged attack, so feats that modify it should work. Since bombs do not say that they need 2 hands to make, I would assume they only need 1 until this is clarified. I see this working.
The argument *should* be that this wouldn't work because you prepare a bomb in the same action you throw it, and doing both is a standard action. Fast Bombs allows you to do more with a Full Attack Action, but it isn't clear whether or not TWF or Rapid Shot would allow you to do something similar.
Actually you can prepare bombs in the same action you throw them. That was changed in the Finale Playtest.
With the way it's written, you can certainly read it both ways. It's one of the things that was asked to be clarified and if I remember right...Vic? Stepped in one of the friends and said he'd make sure Jason and James saw it. He did that with a lot of stuff.
You should only be able to throw extra bombs based on the number of extra attacks granted by your BAB. Anymore then that such as bombs from TWF, haste, etc. and the Alchemist will no longer be scaling correctly. A similar reason for why Sticky Bomb was reduced to a redundant splash damage rather then the full damage twice.
This exact topic was brought up in the playtest,
because the wording isn't clear how many hands bombs require/ if 2WF works, if the # bombs is linked to base Iterative attacks or not, etc.
Why bring it up again? The playtest is over, Jason is already aware of the topic, so presumably will be incorporating that perspective into clarifying the wording to function how he thinks is balanced.
Good to know that it's already been brought up. I tried searching for mentions of this in the playtest archive but didn't find anything.
RAW, it sounds to me like you can TWF/rapid shot/haste attack with bombs because it says it works as a full attack with a ranged weapon. Simply scaling with BAB seems more appropriate though.
I've been going through the final playtest versions of the advanced player's guide classes this week and may have stumbled across some extreme burst damage from the alchemist. Basically it goes something like this at 10th level, assuming my assumptions are true (rapid shot works for thrown weapons, fast bombs lets you full attack with bombs just like a ranged weapon, and two-weapon fighting lets you throw extra bombs with your off-hand)
int 18 (reasonable, many would probably have higher) and dex 17+ (I'll call it an 18 for this)
feats: point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot, two weapon fighting, improved two-weapon fightingdiscoveries: fast bombs, precise bombs, and potent bombs x3
drink a haste extract or receive haste from a party member (not necessary but amusing) and/or drink an improved invisibility extract/have it cast on you by another (not necessary but again helpful as it turns all these attacks into flat-footed touch attacks)
So you've got primary attack/rapid shot/offhand primary/haste attack/secondary/secondary offhand attacks within 30 feet
So with haste/invis it's +7 BAB, +1 throw anything, +1 point blank, +1 haste, +2 striking from invis, +4 dex, -2 rapid shot, -2 TWF
+12/+12/+12/+12/+7/+7 all going for flat-footed touch AC. A good party will have other buffs riding as well.
damage: 8d6+5 each, and the likelihood of them all hitting is fairly good, for a total of 48d6+30 or 198 average. Even if they all miss that's 6 reflex saves for up to 78 damage, and this splash damage affects any enemies adjacent to your target but not your allies (up to 4.)
Things like fire resistance obviously help a lot, but the majority of monsters you encounter probably don't have that. The fact that you can only do this twice per day helps mitigate things somewhat, but as long as you develop some other combat skills for routine things then you should be fine. The ability to just dump onto some boss monster is very handy. I'd go hunting white dragons if I were this guy.It's not as if I would...
Master summoner does more damage.