Breath Mastery for the Internal Alchemist

[Duskblade]

At 1st level, the internal alchemist can control his breath and the flow of vital energy within his body. Without preparation, he can hold his breath for a number of minutes equal to his Constitution score (after this, he must begin making Constitution checks or risk suffocation); by spending a full-round action preparing himself, he can increase this duration to 1 hour per point of Constitution. The alchemist can survive twice as long as normal without food or water before he starts to take penalties. He can put himself into a state of suspended animation as a move action, and is then unconscious and appears completely dead; he awakens at a preset time or in response to a condition set by him when he enters this state.

I was just curious to see what kind of creative uses people could get out of this ability. I mean, I think it's rather cool that the alchemist only needs to breath for like...once or twice a day (which obviously helps with swimming or going through a vacuum of course), but I was also wondering if there were any other unique tricks you could pull off with this talent (aside from playing dead or ignoring the risk of inhaling poison).

The suspended animation ability also seems like a neat way to get some rest, though I'm not exactly sure if it 'technically' qualifies as rest (though it would be nice to set the condition to immediately wake up if anything tries to attack you while sleeping or something).

Anyways, does anyone else have some creative ideas for breath mastery?

[Arassuil]

Only thing I can think of is to go up to NPCs and betting them on how long you can hold your breath.

It's a neat ability, just can't think of anything else other than what's been mentioned.

[Borthos Brewhammer]

(drink your mutagen before this) Throw a couple cloud bombs and then grapple a guy in the cloud. Doesn't matter what kind of cloud, just a cloud.

Or getup on them for melee and take your AoO against them when they try to move because of the cloud.

[far_wanderer]

I had an Alchemist character once who used it to stretch out the limited air supply of a portable hole as long as possible.

[Tristram]

Sneaking an alchemist army into a castle/town/tower/etc. via a bag of holding?

[Eric Clingenpeel]

I put it to good use in Serpent's Skull AP. If I played Skull and Shackles, I could see it coming in useful there too, especially if you had some way to get a swim speed.

[nothraziem]

use the burrow spell and become a land shark grapple some one and leave them behind in the earth. the loose earth will collapse and bury them alive.

get a sentient sword with telepathy and use it to guide you the earth, and have it play the JAWS attack song in the heads of the intended target.

with a little patience(1-3 months) and some engineering skill checks and the same spell you could conceivably level a city by hollowing out the bedrock beneath a city then rig some Demo charges

[VRMH]

Sleeping underwater.

[sunbeam]

I always though it would be a cool way to "get a blast from the past."

Reading it things don't seem to have a time limit.

So even your first and second level party can face a comprehensible threat that has been sleeping in the tombs of Osirion for thousands of years.

See that 1st level Osiriani alchemist that built tombs? He took security seriously. And the only way he could be sure is if he did it personally.

Forever.

[Harark]

I had a player use it in Skull & Shackles. The several hours of breath worked out really well for him in the underwater bits.