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My GM recently gave the go ahead to rebuild our characters after reaching level 4. So my buddy and I were talking about my rogue/wizard (who was going for the arcane trickster prestige class) and how if I went alchemist I could get up to 2 vestigial arms. I thought about what my character would look like with two more arms and reader, I fell in love with him all over again.
My character's background is he's an elf that was a mainstay in Restov's Calistrian temple, accomplished contortionist, and secret arcane dabbler. The temple wanted to establish a presence in the Stolen Lands so they told him to get off his ass and go survey it. We just started book 2 and spent the last session kingdom building.
So the flavor is there, I know I have to take 3 levels of alchemist (and the extra discovery feat) instead of rogue. My question to you is, from a mechanical standpoint, what utility can I derive from 2 extra arms?
moar wands
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You may use two, two handed weapons. the extra arms may allow a two handed grip on two different weapons, but do not grant extra weapon attacks. If you plan on melee, you could have a greatsword, light weapon, and shield combination.
Or, for ranged, a light crossbow counts as a light weapon in each hand and you would bypass the -2 penalty as you would be holding the crossbows in two hands when firing. so, standard two weapon fighting penalties for two light crossbows.
just some ideas I have had for this.
I have a ranger(2)/vivisectionist(9) beastmorph alchemist in a kingmaker game right now and he's a lot of fun. 4 arms with feral mutagen let's you have 3 Nat attacks after your iterative attacks (albeit at 1/2 strength damage). If your GM will let you take monster feats, you can take multiattack and reduce the penalty from -5 to -2 on the Nat attacks. All this on top of sneak attack. When you hit alchemist 10, you get pounce so you almost never have to go without a full attack. Hasted, that's 6 attacks per round. With power attack those can hurt. Get a helm of the mammoth lord and you get another gore attack. AoMF and the body wraps can help with the lower to hit bonuses on the natural attacks or, of course, you can always just forsake the iterative attacks and just use the natural attacks.
The other use for the 4 arms is to carry a shield and still use a two hander, which you'll be doing when you're not using your mutagen.
I like this guy because he fills all the roles of a ranger and a rogue for scouting, skills and damage. Basically, he started life as a ranger on the frontier. Eventually his study of the animals and magical beasts around him, led to his experiments to somehow distill the powers and abilities of these creatures into a liquid, consume able form. He runs around taking samples from every thing the party kills =). It drives them nuts.
You can hold more metamagic rods and still cast.
You can hold more metamagic rods and still cast.
Alchemists don't cast magic despite the fact that their method of employing their formulae is "comparable" to casting.
On the other hand, the alchemist could have a light weapon, a two-handed reach weapon, and an open hand for grabbing formulae. This would basically be good for a neat AoO build. First turn draw your two weapons with Quick Draw as you take your move action to get closer to your target(s) and then use your standard action to drink an Enlarge Person formulae since drinking a formulae is just like drinking a potion (meaning that the casting time for any spell doesn't matter since drinking a potion is always a standard action).
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To be clear, I have an Alchemist/Wizard right now. So far its Alchemist (Vivisectionist) 3/ Wizard 1, and I converted him from a Rogue 3/ Wizard 1 and I intend on being a roguish party face who is also pretty deadly with spells. So wands and rods are completely within the realm of possibilities for this build. He was a rogue 3/ wizard 1 with the feats weapon finesse and toughness. Though toughness will be replaced with extra discovery after the conversion (for the second set of arms).
This might fair a lot worse but what about Alch 2/ Sandman Bard x? Would the dip severely hurt the bard's Stealspell ability?