Hey guys,
My new mint condition Alchemist is leveling up to level 2. This is the first alchemist I've seen in any game (as a player or DM) so i'm not too sure what works and what doesn't.
I'm going the base bomber/infusion on the side/mutagen last resort way. My character is an elf with primary stat in INT and secondary in DEX. This is the first time i'm getting a new discovery and wondering what should I take.
I'm eyeing the tanglefoot bomb discovery. However, I did notice that the stinking bomb is stupid good. My question is should I start on the stinking path now to get stinking bomb early or is tanglefoot bomb at level 2 just as good of an option?
...or should I take something totally different?
If you want to be nice to your buddies, you probably want Precise Bombs first.
But Smoke/Stink Bombs are pretty neat too. Bomb damage + Visibility killer + Debilitating status effect? Yes please.
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Precise Bomb, so you are not setting your allies on fire.
Here is my thoughts on Bomber Progression:
1st: Point-Blank Shot
2nd: Precise Bomb
3rd: Extra Discovery: Smoke Bomb
4th: Stink Bomb
5th: Precise Shot
6th: Tanglefoot Bomb
At 8th level, you take Fast Bombs
At 9th level, you take Extra Discovery: Force Bomb
Everybody seems to advise on taking Precise Bomb at the earliest but is it really that much needed? It's such a boring discovery when you think about it.... and if you miss your attack roll you're bomb is still going to hit your buddies anyway..
As with other: feats, skills, ect., go with what you like, what fits your character concept, what helps you do your "job" better.
I think Elamdri is mixing feats and discoveries.
If your focusing on bombing, I would suggest looking at the Archetype: Grenadier. You lose the often unused and complicated "poison use", but gain the invaluable "precise bombs" discovery as a bonus to your 2nd lvl discovery.
For my gnome pyromaniac alchemist, the obvious choice was "explosive bombs". Larger splash radius = extra free damage to many more enemies. Or larger area covered, when you have to target a square instead of enemy (i.e corners, cover, ect.)
Smoke bombs is good for battlefied control and is a prereq for many other discoveies later.
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Everybody seems to advise on taking Precise Bomb at the earliest but is it really that much needed? It's such a boring discovery when you think about it.... and if you miss your attack roll you're bomb is still going to hit your buddies anyway..
When my alchemist was 2nd level, my average splash damage at 2nd level was 7 damage with a Reflex of 16. I mean, at 2nd level, that's probably half your ally's HP if he's got a D8 or less
Trust me, they will appreciate you not murdering them.
I think Elamdri is mixing feats and discoveries
Indeed.
so, with the few alchemists I have seen (admittedly not a lot) I don't see precise bombs as being THAT big of an issue. At least not on the battle maps we have been running. It's along the lines of wizard and fire ball, you just have to find somewhere to put it that your buddies are getting affected, or dont use it. It's not your only trick in the bag.
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so, with the few alchemists I have seen (admittedly not a lot) I don't see precise bombs as being THAT big of an issue. At least not on the battle maps we have been running. It's along the lines of wizard and fire ball, you just have to find somewhere to put it that your buddies are getting affected, or dont use it. It's not your only trick in the bag.
Fireball and Bombs are NOT really comperable.
Fireball does massive damage evenly in a wide area. Bombs do massive damage to a single target and minor splash damage to the squares around it.
You can't "Find somewhere to put it where your buddies wont' be affected" because you're missing out on most of your damage.
My human alchemist went...
C1, H - Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot
Disc2 - Tanglefoot Bomb
C3 - Extra Discovery (Infusion)
Disc4 - Smoke Bomb
C5 - Extra Discovery (Stink Bomb)
Seems to be going well. I'm thinking about acid bomb or dispel bomb next. Tanglefoot bomb was quite useful early on.
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Everybody seems to advise on taking Precise Bomb at the earliest but is it really that much needed? It's such a boring discovery when you think about it.... and if you miss your attack roll you're bomb is still going to hit your buddies anyway..
Well if your idea of interesting is "Everyone nearby took my Int mod in damage if they failed a Reflex save (something they're probably bad at) that's also based on my Int mod (my highest stat)" then yeah.
And really...how often do you miss touch attacks?
so, with the few alchemists I have seen (admittedly not a lot) I don't see precise bombs as being THAT big of an issue. At least not on the battle maps we have been running. It's along the lines of wizard and fire ball, you just have to find somewhere to put it that your buddies are getting affected, or dont use it. It's not your only trick in the bag.Fireball and Bombs are NOT really comperable.
Fireball does massive damage evenly in a wide area. Bombs do massive damage to a single target and minor splash damage to the squares around it.
You can't "Find somewhere to put it where your buddies wont' be affected" because you're missing out on most of your damage.
So every target in fights you have at your table is always engaged in melee?
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So every target in fights you have at your table is always engaged in melee?so, with the few alchemists I have seen (admittedly not a lot) I don't see precise bombs as being THAT big of an issue. At least not on the battle maps we have been running. It's along the lines of wizard and fire ball, you just have to find somewhere to put it that your buddies are getting affected, or dont use it. It's not your only trick in the bag.Fireball and Bombs are NOT really comperable.
Fireball does massive damage evenly in a wide area. Bombs do massive damage to a single target and minor splash damage to the squares around it.
You can't "Find somewhere to put it where your buddies wont' be affected" because you're missing out on most of your damage.
A lot of times yeah, actually. Hell, probably 70-75% of the time.
Actually, Infusion does look like a great early discovery to take. However, I do believe its urgency really depends on party composition. For myself, my group also consists of a wizard, oracle and paladin. There's already a good amount of buffing in the party so I think that branching out into offense is probably a good idea at this point. With a different party, I would definitely put Infusion at the top of the list.
I hadn't thought about Explosive Bombs. I does look pretty powerful at low levels. It also looks like a fun ability to have. I'll have to seriously consider it.
Going back to precise bomb now... I know a lot of folks point out you rarely miss a touch attack but I have to disagree here. We have to think that the situation we're looking at is face bombing when your party is in melee. We have to remember that if that's the case, my alchemist is getting a nice -4 to his attack bonus. The odds of a 2nd level alchemist missing on an effective touch AC of 10 + DEX + 4 is still considerable....which mean that half the time I would still hit my buddies even with precise bomb. At low level, I think it's generally safer to only bomb when your buddies are NOT in melee..making precise bomb not really an option...
Finally, on the stinking bomb front.. Have you found that it being a poison effect made it not as effective as originaly thought? There's a still some wide class of monster (i.e. undead) that are immune to poison so just wondering if it has been a problem...
So every target in fights you have at your table is always engaged in melee?
Not "every target" in "every fight", but quite common. Because even if the monster isn't melee, it's quite probable that the melee PC try to stay in melee.
Even if it were a 50/50 thing, that would mean one of your main class features is useless 50% of the time. Imagine a rogue that couldn't sneak attack in half of the encounters, wouldn't that be very frustrating? Oh, wait...
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Your party members will appreciate you taking Precise Bombs, but they'll LOVE you for taking Infusion. Especially since it means you can keep a few Cure infusions on hand just in case the oracle and paladin are otherwise engaged.
If you want to focus on bombing but are concerned about your melee buddies and don't much like Precise Bombs, then most definitely learn the Targeted Bomb Admixture formula. It's a 1st-level formula that removes all your splash damage in exchange for your bombs dealing even more damage on a direct hit. Suddenly bombing in melee works again, because even if you miss, there's no splash damage to deal anymore.
That still leaves the question of what discovery to take though. All the good discoveries have level requirements. Although Strafe Bomb might be a decent choice-- that way you can avoid catching allies in the splash another way but potentially catch a lot more enemies.
do alot of those discoveries work with alchemist fire, other than throw anything i mean? and mutagens can help out a good bit too. iirc the most useful (dex) takes out int, so... *shrug*
i've had dm's frown heavily on that kinda logic
Level 2: Smoke Bomb
Level 3: Stink Bomb via feat.
Every time.
At level 1, take Splash Weapon Mastery.
Going back to precise bomb now... I know a lot of folks point out you rarely miss a touch attack but I have to disagree here. We have to think that the situation we're looking at is face bombing when your party is in melee. We have to remember that if that's the case, my alchemist is getting a nice -4 to his attack bonus. The odds of a 2nd level alchemist missing on an effective touch AC of 10 + DEX + 4 is still considerable....which mean that half the time I would still hit my buddies even with precise bomb. At low level, I think it's generally safer to only bomb when your buddies are NOT in melee..making precise bomb not really an option...
1.) You didn't take Precise Shot? That should probably be your next Feat. Taking a -4 every time you attack as a ranged character is something you wanna get rid of.
2.) You plan on getting to a higher level, yes? By level 4 or so, you should be able to hit Touch AC 90% of the time. I'm just saying, at some point you're gonna want to get Precise Bombs if you want to use Bombs after the first round of combat (or if you fail Initiative).
Going back to precise bomb now... I know a lot of folks point out you rarely miss a touch attack but I have to disagree here. We have to think that the situation we're looking at is face bombing when your party is in melee. We have to remember that if that's the case, my alchemist is getting a nice -4 to his attack bonus. The odds of a 2nd level alchemist missing on an effective touch AC of 10 + DEX + 4 is still considerable....which mean that half the time I would still hit my buddies even with precise bomb. At low level, I think it's generally safer to only bomb when your buddies are NOT in melee..making precise bomb not really an option...1.) You didn't take Precise Shot? That should probably be your next Feat. Taking a -4 every time you attack as a ranged character is something you wanna get rid of.
2.) You plan on getting to a higher level, yes? By level 4 or so, you should be able to hit Touch AC 90% of the time. I'm just saying, at some point you're gonna want to get Precise Bombs if you want to use Bombs after the first round of combat (or if you fail Initiative).
Not arguing the usefulness of Precise Bomb. I think it`s actually one of those boring too good to not take options. My only argument here is that I`m debating the need to take the discovery ASAP When you go up a few level and range touch attack become an almost sure win, then precise bomb becomes a must for sure.
..and precise shot is a great feat yes but we only get one every two levels and frankly for most times they`ll be used on extra discovery. For a human with a bonus feat, you take it for sure at level 1 but for other races there are equally good options...
There are, yes, but I'm assuming you're a bowman in your spare time and it's a prerequisite for quite a few things (including Clustered Shots).
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Going back to precise bomb now... I know a lot of folks point out you rarely miss a touch attack but I have to disagree here. We have to think that the situation we're looking at is face bombing when your party is in melee. We have to remember that if that's the case, my alchemist is getting a nice -4 to his attack bonus. The odds of a 2nd level alchemist missing on an effective touch AC of 10 + DEX + 4 is still considerable....which mean that half the time I would still hit my buddies even with precise bomb. At low level, I think it's generally safer to only bomb when your buddies are NOT in melee..making precise bomb not really an option...1.) You didn't take Precise Shot? That should probably be your next Feat. Taking a -4 every time you attack as a ranged character is something you wanna get rid of.
2.) You plan on getting to a higher level, yes? By level 4 or so, you should be able to hit Touch AC 90% of the time. I'm just saying, at some point you're gonna want to get Precise Bombs if you want to use Bombs after the first round of combat (or if you fail Initiative).
Not arguing the usefulness of Precise Bomb. I think it`s actually one of those boring too good to not take options. My only argument here is that I`m debating the need to take the discovery ASAP When you go up a few level and range touch attack become an almost sure win, then precise bomb becomes a must for sure.
..and precise shot is a great feat yes but we only get one every two levels and frankly for most times they`ll be used on extra discovery. For a human with a bonus feat, you take it for sure at level 1 but for other races there are equally good options...
The reason I push Precise Bombs at early levels is because that is when your bomb's splash has the highest chance of killing your allies.
At 1st level, your splash can outright drop an ally
At 2nd Level, it can cut their HP in half
it's those levels from about 1-3 where it really matters. After that, it's not so bad, but preventing the damage is still important.