Cole Lateral
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| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
So I was working on my Gnome Alchemist Build which was solely focused on the Bombs and no other part of the Alchemist and I got to thinking about some complications and gave the whole idea up but here's the list.
So here's the build that we had put together for him mostly focusing on feats
Alchemist 8/Fighter 1 Gnome w/ Pyro Racial Feature
Feats
1. Point Blank
3. Precise Shot
F1. Quick Draw (Gains proficiency w/ Martial and thus Gnome Weapons)
5. Ammo Drop
7. Juggle Load
9. Rapid Shot
Discovery
2 Precise Bomb
4 Exploding Bomb
6 Sticky Bomb or Force Bombs
8 Fast Bombs
+1 Holy Flask Thrower (Damage from enhancement and holy only apply on direct hit I get that)
Then I did some careful looking and threw the whole idea out. Here were issues based on RAW
1. Is Flask Thrower a Gnome Weapon?
(It's under a list of Gnome weapons in the Gnome Handbook so our call was of course.)
2. What sort of action to Load?
(Based on the statement like a Staff Sling we assumed a Move Action)
3. Can an Alchemist Bomb be loaded in the Flask Thrower?
(Creating and Throwing a Bomb is a Standard action that doesn't provoke an AOO So this is where things were starting to look grim.)
4. Can Ammo Drop and Juggle Load be used on Alchemist Items and the Flask thrower? (This is an easy answer, I'm certainly using the Ammo Drop and Juggle load creatively to accomplish my goal)
5. Is there any feat or collection of feats that allow and Alchemist to treat Alchemical Items as weapon or to use Quick Draw on Alchemical items?
(For all my searching I couldn't find a thing so this excluded the use of Rapid Shot or iterative attacks with Alchemical Items. This was where it came to >FAIL< and I threw out the idea entirely)
I'm out of taking a fighter level any more or even using alchemical items but it would be nice if something could come close to this. I guess I could focus on TWF and Rapid Fire instead and get a bunch of bombs if I need them.
So if anyone were working on alternate class features a Mad Bomber type maybe.
Here's a wish list for that.
1. The ability to draw alchemical items as a swift or free action.
2. The ability to enhance the damage of regular alchemical items . . . say after 7th level or so so that it scales. Int is nice bonus but I'm not sure that Alchemist fire would do much at 12th level.
3. The ability to load a Bomb into a thrower somehow so maybe we could apply a weapon enhancement to the direct damage.
. . . by the way all of this may be power gamey a bit . . . but then there's Zen Archer (w/ raised eyebrow) and that monk has a range increment of 110 feet.
-Joshua O'Connor-Rose
| Unithralith |
For reasons that are suspect at best, Paizo has greatly diminished the effectiveness of alchemical weapons. The argument I've heard was that it was too strong on rogues with rapid shot and sneak attack (because rogues really needed a hard nerf, right?). Maybe they just didn't like the flavour of a rogue who focuses on chucking flasks around, I don't know.
Regardless, to your questions:
1. I am inclined to say no. In every other case I'm aware of, a weapon must specifically have the race's name along with the weapon name to qualify as a racial weapon (eg. Dwarven Longhammer, Elven Curve Blade, Halfling Sling Staff, etc).
2. Technically, since the flask thrower doesn't indicate a reload speed and all it states in terms of function is that it increases the range on alchemical weapons, it uses the standard attack rate of a splash weapon (eg. a standard action to fire, no reload required). Of course, this is my interpretation based on their very flimsy description. RAI may be different.
3. On this note actually, I would say yes it should. An alchemist bomb is indeed "a thrown substance that deals splash damage". If you go by my earlier logic about the lack of a specified reload, that also means you could make a full attack using bombs from a flask thrower, making them pretty useful to a bomb-focused alchemist.
4. I think you already knew the answer to this one, but I would say no. It is neither a sling nor a double sling; it is a flask thrower.
5. Unfortunately, no. An alchemist focusing on throwing flasks of acid and the like is interesting flavour and would give bomb-based intelligence alchemists a much needed backup for when they run out of bombs, but RAW, there is no way to make more than one attack per round with them. If your GM is reasonable, they may allow you to full attack with alchemical weapons. It's not particularly overpowered; yes, they target touch AC, but with terrible crit range/damage and unimpressive standard damage, not to mention how many enemies have energy res in the 5 - 10 range. This is also ignoring the fact that if you throw acids (the cheapest damaging alchemcial weapon available) each throw costs you 3.33 gp, assuming you craft it yourself.
It's strange that you can pull out, mix and throw bomb flasks as a full attack action (even using two-weapon fighting, potentially) if you have fast bombs, but you can't throw pre-made acids tucked in your belt as a full attack action, but it is what it is. You'll have to rely on house rules to do some of the stuff you're talking about.
As to the magical flask thrower, that's unclear. If it were my game, I would allow a magical flask thrower to modify the damage of alchemical weapons at least. I'd have to give enchanted alchemist bombs a fair bit of thought before I allowed that though.
I hope that helps!
- Uni
| DJBlayde |
New to the forums, but wanted to chime in on this:
1. I am inclined to say no. In every other case I'm aware of, a weapon must specifically have the race's name along with the weapon name to qualify as a racial weapon (eg. Dwarven Longhammer, Elven Curve Blade, Halfling Sling Staff, etc).
2. Technically, since the flask thrower doesn't indicate a reload speed and all it states in terms of function is that it increases the range on alchemical weapons, it uses the standard attack rate of a splash weapon (eg. a standard action to fire, no reload required). Of course, this is my interpretation based on their very flimsy description. RAI may be different.
3. On this note actually, I would say yes it should. An alchemist bomb is indeed "a thrown substance that deals splash damage". If you go by my earlier logic about the lack of a specified reload, that also means you could make a full attack using bombs from a flask thrower, making them pretty useful to a bomb-focused alchemist.
4. I think you already knew the answer to this one, but I would say no. It is neither a sling nor a double sling; it is a flask thrower.
5. Unfortunately, no. An alchemist focusing on throwing flasks of acid and the like is interesting flavour and would give bomb-based intelligence alchemists a much needed backup for when they run out of bombs, but RAW, there is no way to make more than one attack per round with them. If your GM is reasonable, they may allow you to full attack with alchemical weapons. It's not particularly overpowered; yes, they target touch AC, but with terrible crit range/damage and unimpressive standard damage, not to mention how many enemies have energy res in the 5 -...
1) I'm inclined to disagree, since the table they are listed in is labelled as "New Gnome Weapons", and say yes, these count as Gnome Weapons.
2) I agree with you here, but it becomes moot once we look at #3.
3) Once again I agree with you, however here is where the idea starts to also fall apart. The range on a Flask Thrower is 20 feet. The range on a bomb is already 20 feet. Other than feel, or character fluff, there is no actual benefit of using the flask thrower for bombs. It benefits Tanglefoot Bags, Holy Water, Alchemists Fire, etc, because they only have a range of 10 feet.
4) That may not be as clear cut as your response makes it out to be. The description says "This weapon resembles a halfling sling staff, except that the cradle at the end is designed to hold and hurl flasks as well as stones or bullets." Since ammo drop and juggle load work with sling staffs, this likely comes down to GM Caveat. Personally I'd allow it.
5) I agree, RAW there's nothing that really supports it. Once again GM Caveat would have to come into play.