|
For party buffing and healing, your highest priority is the infusion discovery. After that is the healing bomb and then precise bomb discoveries. You should be able to use your discoveries for healing and buffing purposes, and your feats for crafting. Be aware that there is some confusion in the rulings as to whether an alchemist would qualify as a spellcaster for the purposes of crafting magic items. You will want to clarify with you DM before investing too much in magic item crafting.
Have you considered the chirugeon archetype? It gives cure spells as automatic infusions saving you a feat potentially.
For a buff alchemist crafting potions, alchemical weapons should help you give the party plenty of options before a fight. It is good that you plan on crafting as much and as often as possible. I might suggest taking the hedge magician trait (5% cheaper), or the alchemical adept (no loss on a 1, +2 bonus) for even better crafting.
It is a little harder to hand off items mid-fight, (I am not even sure what action those would be), all buffing should be done before the fight or from a distance.
This means during a fight you can rain debuffs and damage on enemies, or use alchemical weapons/items to shape the battlefield (smokesticks, thunderstones, grease, tanglefoot bags, sunrods for light, etc).
Crossbow would likely not be worth it without investing in feats (rapid reload, focus/specialization for to hit, etc). A light/hand crossbow averages as much as a cantrip plus alchemical focus (1d3+1) without feats. Light crossbows do not do much damage, and heavy crossbows are heavy =p
Maybe just get a tube arrow shooter with poison arrows for surprise round action. or spring-loaded wrist-sheath and flasks of alchemists fire.
A dip into gunslinger (DEX+WIS) or mysterious stranger (DEX+CHA) would give you access to ALL guns and the related skills as well as reducing the misfire chance (plus you can already craft the ammunition easily). Not a bad choice there, plus guns are touch at close range, and use the same feats for thrown (splash) weapons, like your bombs. It is a decent choice to dip into, especially since running out of bombs is a constant issue.
Just remembered something else.
Take the Trait Hedge Magician if you can. It gives 5% off the gp cost of crafting items. Being a successful buff/crafter is all about volume. It may not look like much but 5% of 1000gp is 50gp.
Think of it this way: 500 gp to craft +1 armor (without cost of armor itself), you would save 25gp. 25gp is the crafting price of 1st level potion. You essentially just got a free potion out of that trait.
I played a rogue alchemist one game. I crafted and sold potions during my downtime we had between quests (this was before the downtime system in ultimate campaign). At 8th level, due to the fact that my normal cut of the loot was gold (very few useful items dropped for me so my group gave me an average gold equivalent), and my continual investment of gold into potion sales I had acquired 28,000 gp in addition to the 20,00 gp worth of items I used. My GM cracked up when the mostly munchkin party was dumbfounded by the fact that as a crafter I had turned out to be the most overly powered character. I bank-rolled the purchase of a cathedral for our cleric.
Good times. Good times.
The look on Braven's face when Shuriel calmly announced that he could foot the bill for the party to finish building their town's cathedral was PRICELESS.
You were well on your way to owning that fledgling kingdom.
Grenadier gets Precise Bombs for free.
The Chirurgeon's Infuse Curative is limited in application, and wasted if you want to buff you party with other infusions and take the Infusion discovery.
Grenadier also gains a martial weapon proficiency and the ability to apply alchemical mixtures to their weapons.