Hi everyone,
I will be starting a new campaign (placed in a city) and one of my players came to me with a very good background & character concept for his PC. However, I have a problem with his class archetype – which doesn’t exist (to my knowledge) in pathfinder, but should. So I need your help/constructive input/etc…
His background in short:
His character comes from a long line of apothecaries that serves many nobles of a city. Few know that they also provide those same nobles with certain illegal substance, such as drugs & poisons. Due to an indiscretion of his character, he now has to leave his family & home to escape retribution from certain nobles.
His class concept in short:
The player chooses to play an (gentlemen) alchemist who has vast knowledge in the art of “poison-crafting”.
I was surprise to see that there was no alchemist archetype for poisoners. With some brainstorming between ourselves, we came up with the basic idea of allowing him to take certain rogue abilities (such as: lasting poison & deadly cocktail) as discoveries.
What I need help with is another idea that we had; replacing his bomb ability with a poison-like ability. We came up with this;
“Virulent Poison”
This volatile concoction of your own creation his extremely potent, mere contact to this substance causes terrible pain.
This ability functions like the alchemist bomb ability. This new ability follows the same “damage track” & the same “use per day” as the bomb ability. It has only one notable difference from the bomb ability; it does not deal any splash damage of any kind. This ability replaces the alchemist bomb ability that the character would get at level 1.
Opinions about this change of ability?
From this homebrewed ability, we quickly adapted certain existing discoveries that could be taken to augment this new ability, often only replacing the word “bomb” with poison and restricting their use with the “virulent poison” ability.
Example:
Acid Poison (Bomb): your poison deals acid damage.
Blinding Poison (Bomb): your poison Blinds enemy.
Madness Poison (Bomb): Deal wisdom damage with your poison
etc…
Another idea that he had was that his character would carry a cane/walking stick that would double as a blowgun. No big deal there. He also came up with the notion of being able to use this blowgun to shoot his extracts, potions & alchemical substance (you all see where this is going right?).
If he plays a small character, the blowgun dart only does 1 point of damage with a range of 20 feet. I can easily see him standing back in a fight, shooting his allies with “healing potion/infusion/extract darts”.
I’m also looking at some special weapons for him that would fit well with an alchemist or to replace the use of his blowgun to “shoot” his potions/infusions/extracts.
What is your opinion about that? Is it unbalancing or is it why didn't I think of that before?
If I recall correctly there was something called a “blood spike” from an Eberron Book. In short it was a throw-able teardrop shaped vial that the pointy end would break and discharged the liquid inside it when it pierced the skin of an opponent. Do you believe this would be a good option for him?
I’m also looking at allowing him to be proficient with the "alchemical blade", also found in an Eberron Book. It was a knife or a short sword with a space in the pummel that could be filled with an alchemical substance such as alchemist fire. When a trigger was pulled the substance would run along the grooves in the blade enflaming the blade for 1 attack (or was it 1 round). Would this weapon render him to powerful at lower levels?
Does anything else come to mind that would complement his character concept?
Constructive inputs and opinions are always welcomed.