The APG made rogues less essential by creating archetypes that allowed other classes to disable magical devices.
Alchemists seem suited to disabling magical devices (always tinkering with magic and stuff, why shouldn't they be able to disable magical devices in addition to mundane ones?). They even get Disable Device as a class skill.
Unfortunately Ultimate Magic didn't introduce any alchemist archetypes that could do this. There's a chance Ultimate Combat will introduce this, but in the meantime I was looking to introduce a houseruled archetype.
Looking at the APG archetypes that get it, I see:
* Bards (Archivist, Detective) - Give up resistance against other bardic performances for trapfinding. Well Versed doesn't seem to be particularly powerful.
* Bard (Sandman) - Give up half his class level as a bonus to knowledge skills and the ability to make knowledge checks untrained for trapfinding. This seems to be a significant loss for the bard.
* Ranger (Urban Ranger) - Loss of flavourful bonuses in the wilderness (don't seem particularly powerful) as well as lose the ability to wear medium armor while sleeping (an alright bonus to have). This can be regained as a simple feat. So they effectively gain trapfinding as a bonus feat.
I realise there is more to those archetypes, but this is a simplistic look at things.
So with that in mind, here are my suggested houseruled archetypes. They only replace a single thing, but they will stop the player from taking any archetypes that replace the same thing. I don't have Ultimate Magic so I don't know how these suggestions will combine with those options.
Possible options are:
* Replace Throw Anything - This does nerf the Bomb class feature in that the player loses his Int Modifier to bomb damage. It seems a bit powerful to require this.
* Replace Poison Use - It's difficult to get Poison Use, with alchemist being one of the main methods since the APG. As such it's a signifcant loss on par with losing Badic Knowledge. Although it does reduce the benefit of Swift Alchemy, although it doesn't completely negate it.
* The ability to disable magical devices as a discovery - One could argue that trapfinding is on par with some of those discoveries. Also as a balancing effect, they won't gain half their rogue level on perception or disable device. So they aren't as good at it as a Rogue, but they only lose a single discovery.
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What do people think? Replacing Throw Anything or Poison Use seems a bit too much I think. I think the best option is to have it as a discovery with the nerf I've included above.
What do other people think? I know these forums have quite a few optimisers out there. I'd love to hear what they think.
There were never really essential anyway except for symbol traps, and even then there was a way around that. I don't like the idea of a class being mandatory anyway.