Fully (Ex) Alchemist


Homebrew and House Rules


I was thinking about it, and while it's totally mad science in PF, alchemy is still just bizarre, fantasy chemistry. Shouldn't all the Alchemist's class abilities be (Ex)? Obviously making them immune to dispel magic and all that is kind of unbalancing when people seem to agree the Alchemist is a bit powerful already.

I just think it'd make more sense to me that all their stuff was purely chemical reactions and separate from magic. A personal gripe/nitpick that I thought I'd share. It'd make extracts and mutagens not working for anyone but the Alchemist even more weird, admittedly. I just don't think it's right that steroids and bombs cease to function in an Antimagic Field.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

maybe an archetype that also has diminished casting and maybe puts more of an emphasis on the craft(alchemy) skill. like maybe the number of potions you can keep track of is related to the number of skill ranks you have.

remember, spells per day will get weird if they're not spells.

edit: actually now i'm imagining more of a alchemist that behaves like a quigong(spelling?) monk.


I've given it some thought, but in the process realized that I just wanted a better skill system that had alchemy built in. Same for a non-magical healing class. I remember when I really loved the concept of an artificer and then saw how easily broke it made a certain campaign.

Classes based around a single skill end up in a really bizarre position. Especially ones built around craft skills, because the craft skill is so poorly implemented in the system. It gets skewed in one way or the other.

Aside from my negative experiences, I actually really agree with you. It's just the most bizarre thing when your bombs or extracts don't work for other people... It just bugs me and pulls me out of the immersion of the story and I have to tell myself that this is "for balance!"

The reason they don't just let the players throw as many bombs as they happen to have is because the crafting system is jacked up and players could be stock piling bombs for other characters to use, oh no...

I guess they use magic because it came out before they decided if they wanted to use black powder or not.

If bombs were a weapon that one could pick up and those without proficiency had a chance to blow it up on themselves, it could work.

And if extracts used gold instead of spells per day to make it would work as long as they didn't constantly stack or increase power by level (Rogue SA on bombs? Really?).

I can actually see it being reflavored to add alchemical properties to other items as the alchemist leveled up. Alchemical fire to a sword or spear. Thunder stone mixed with arrows. Mixing poison with bombs. etc.


Check out this link for free PDFs. PDF number 2 has the scientific innovator alchemist archetype; might be of interest to you!

Click here for the link and scroll down the page a bit.

The link is for a current Kickstarter project, the Veranthea Codex.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

Alchemy in Pathfinder RPG (and D&D entirely) has many awkward issues.

1) The concept of extraordinary and supernatural abilities is heavily flawed. Mechanically, they're the same with exception to antimagic fields, an extremely rare and poorly designed construct. The distinction reinforces the mindset that epic abilities must be magical. Ultimately, the flavor of the ability should determine whether something is supernatural or extraordinary. Sean K Reynolds goes into detail about this topic in this blog article.

2) Alchemy items can never be as powerful as spells. 3.5e created the mindset that nothing can be as powerful as magic. Since alchemy items are not magical, that means alchemical items cannot be as powerful as spell. The staggering costs of higher level magic doesn't help either.

3) Historical alchemy is supernatural. Though a broad subject and not magic, alchemy is commonly thought as a practice of bringing out the latent supernatural energies within substances. Some forms of alchemy greatly emphasized the spiritual nature of the subject, its practioners believing that by learning to transform and bring out the powers of chemical substances, they would bring out the latent powers within themselves and acheive enlightenment.

As a result, it's not only strange that the game does not consider alchemy supernatural, but also it shouldn't make that distinction in the first place. Players should be able to play the kind of alchemist character they want. If they want to be a mad scientist, let them. If they want to play a spiritual alchemist like in the novel The Alchemist, they should have that freedom.

While the Craft skill is needlessly complicated, one can easily fix that. The Alchemy Manual introduced spontaneous alchemy, which allows a character to create alchemy items at greatly reduced time by paying the market price for it. I houseruled that Craft works similarly to magic item creation where a character simply invests time and materials and then makes a skill check. I allow the alchemist in my campaign to invent his own alchemy items, using the magic item pricing guideines to determine cost.

To make an Ex Alchemist wouldn't be too hard. Keep the mechanics the same, but make up different reasons why the alchemist cannot stockpile his extracts and bombs. The alchemist has proprietory knowledge of how his extracts and bombs work. Only he knows the process to trigger a prepared bomb and the bomb goes inert after 1 round. His extracts are designed with his own anatomy and biology. Unless he has the Infusion discovery, an extract could cause very unsavory side effects or simply not work at all if drank by another person.

If I redesigned the alchemist to be more alchemical item focused, I'd either redo the alchemical item system to work more like a spell subsystem, make new alchemy-focused discoeries, or have the alchemist be able to make X amount of gold worth of alchemy items each day for free made with unstable ingredients that go inert after 24 hours.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / Fully (Ex) Alchemist All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules
Continents and Oceans.