Alchemist - correct me if I'm wrong, but...


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101 posts - corrected yet?

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Maps, Rulebook, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

No, 102 now.

Silver Crusade

Sundakan wrote:

Not really. Stink Bombs are great if they also hit, but the main danger is the Nausea. Especially now that Nausea has been buffed.

Same for any of the other battlefield control Bombs. The single target damage is a bonus, not the point.

Gotcha. I was thinking in terms of things that add a debuff on top of damage. I didn't realize there were battlefield control bombs like that. I've never looked at alchemists in detail before, so I haven't read up on all the options yet.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Tanglefoot Bombs automatically entangle on a direct hit, much like their namesake, which forces casters to concentrate. Smoke/Stink Bombs break line of sight, which is very helpful when the target is stuck the floor from a Tanglefoot effect and using ranged attacks. Holy Bombs are a good way to avoid friendly fire, since they don't harm Good aligned targets at all.


I haven't used them yet, but Grease bombs with a boosted DC would seem fairly effective if you could lay down an area. Especially for low-Reflex save beasties.


Bombs are basically a second set of spell slots for an alchemist, but they are spontaneous, and there are no spell levels (everything only takes up one 'spell slot'), but you have to buy spells known with discoveries. It isn't a wide spell list... but it is extremely effective, and the DC's scale with level.

Even melee alchemists are well advised to grab a couple nice bomb discoveries, especially since the touch AC makes it easy for anyone to use.


For a melee alchemist, I like Immolation Bomb + Targeted Admixture. Deal 1d6 + double your Intelligence modifier for multiple rounds without worrying about damaging your allies. For feats I like Power Attack/Furious Focus and eventually Vital Strike so you can move around the battlefield dealing pretty significant damage.

Dark Archive

The alchemist is a wonderfully put-together class. Lots of fun options and great flavour.

Drokk is my PFS alchemist, currently level 8. He has one level of unbreakable fighter. There are so many synergies to take advantage of and enjoy.

Drokk is a melee beast. Bombs are very much secondary, and I have no bomb discoveries at all. I have got good use out of them occaisonally, such as vs swarms. Mainly I use feral mutagen natural attacks. A +1 nodachi serves as my regular melee weapon. My standard long-running buffs are: alchemical allocation greater magic fang + heroism (now with added amplify elixir and Enhance potion), heighten awareness, barkskin.

These are just the most basic elements....


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HWalsh wrote:


WBL is only a suggestion. Not a rule. As such players should never take it for granted.

Yea, WBL is listed in the Core Guidelines Book.


Let me see if I can sum up the common circumstances described by the OP that their character must deal with:
Limited Magic items and/or gold
Consistent melee combat as a caster/alchemist/non-fighter type
Invisible and/or flying ambushers
Sneak attack during a surprise round being common
Little to no advanced warning of combat for nearly any encounter
-that no advanced warning point is assuming that your character can be subject to this without necessarily being in a dungeon or other situation where combat is expected. If you are in such a dungeoon or other "combat happens here" area, be prepared or shame on you.

Here are the classes that are at a severe disadvantage with little to no magic items/gold/ability to craftbetween adventures:
Wizard, Sorcerer, Alchemist, Gunslinger, Witch (not including hybrid or occult classes) and there are arguments that could be made for fighter and Ranger to go on this list. Lack of magic items means rarity of magic weapons, which then puts melee classes at a disadvantage as well. Paladin, Monk, Barbarian, and Rogue have built in survival/damage and can stand very well with little to no aid. Wizards get scribe scroll for a reason. Most take craft wand as well. Sorcerers often need to supplement their limited range of spells with magic items. Alchemist isn't the only class that could be deemed less than optimal in this situation.

Here are the classes that are at a disadvantage when they cannot prepare for a fight: Wizard, Sorcerer, Alchemist, Witch. (argument can be made for others, but I think these four are a fair assumption) Especially without magic items for protection (little or no armor means spells are amin defense) Mage armor is really the main line of defense for all but the alchemist, who can at least wear a chain shirt. Further, unless the caster is going to fire off evocations (difficult to do more than one encounter a day without wands) or focus on debilitation (which often prompts the wizard to deal with 'save or suck' situations where any good save can mean a wasted spell) then msot of what a caster does will be buffing. Unless it lasts, one then would always be casting defensively for two to three rounds into the battle just to be decent. Without these bonuses, suffering sneak-atack from an invisible or flying/out-of-sight enemy during a surprise round can take one halfway out of the fight in a single action if said wizard has less than stellar hp. An alchemist at least has the advantage of a better base attack and better armor, assuming no further strategies beyond 'standard' a.k.a. move away from enemies and try to change the situation/positioning/tactics to be less lethal and more advantageous. If these circumstances are specifically arranged to keep your character from repositioning and you HAVE to continue to fight at a disadvantage with no other option, then the DM is either powergaming agains thte party (bad form) or the NPCs had this ambush planned and knew who they would ambush (a plot point that should not come up in every encounter in the game). Either way, for the added difficulty, the CR should be calculated one or two higher than standard for each such encounter, and the rewards should reflect it.

All of this is of course assuming not every optimal advantage has been taken to deal with just such circumstances, which could certainly be done. One can always plan around these disadvantages.

You are not playing a standard campaign. If this is the norm, your DM is exceptionally brutal. Even outside of standard WBL, this is a difficult situation to deal with. When WBL is brought down in addition to this, either this is a hardcore powergamers campaign in which every advantage must be taken to survive, or the DM is just being unfair in the assumption that any character sould be able to handle this. Most campaigns I'm in , and in most campaigns I have run (we rotate DMs) ambushes like that are once every gtree or four sessions in a campaign that is somewhat heavy with ambushes. We have nearly equal number of opportunities to be the ambushers. And all that present neither us being ambushed or ambushing are straight fights. We see the enemy, the enemy sees us, there may be some posturing or threatening roleplay intro, there may not. We fight.

Your description in your first post:
"I mean, theoretically I might be able to pull off some of these tricks if I were behind the meat shields, but we all know game masters! By fourth level, half the encounters have invisible or flying (or invisible flying!) threats that are just going to pop up next to me and ruin my day. And that's if the situation isn't a straight up ambush that begins with me being sneak attacked out of the gate! "

Yes, we do all know game masters. I know that if any person in my group was game mastering and threw invisible, flying or ambush monsters at us every other encounter by 4th level, our characters would quickly spplement with equipment to counter such tactics. If unable to buy that equipment, I doub tthe campaign would see those characters amke it to 6th level before everyone got too frustrated to play, someone finally blows up mid session and flips the table(not necessarily literally), and we move on to the next campaign. I don't know any game master that would make that kind of difficult power-gaming encounter standard without all of his players calling bullshit. Now, all sorts of different monsters on different terrain, and perhaps being involved in fights with different factions where you have to choose a side or protect an NPC or crucial item/structure? That's more like my DMs. Every class can manage that, but no class can manage it without thinking. And at least 1/3 of those encounters we know are coming and take a trip to market to pick up tools/alchemical supplies/some magical trinket to give us the edge.

Just saying, you're playing a hardcore uphill battle. Not all classes fare the same in that situation.


Pretty sure every class in the game is eventually going to be hurting bad if they're severely under WBL. Non-casters need their Big Six items, unless they want to start having serious trouble with most of their numbers and extreme trouble with AC.


Chengar Qordath wrote:
Pretty sure every class in the game is eventually going to be hurting bad if they're severely under WBL. Non-casters need their Big Six items, unless they want to start having serious trouble with most of their numbers and extreme trouble with AC.

Not necessarily, IF the GM is managing the opposition in a similar fashion.

The wizard doesn't have his intelligence booster, but the target doesn't have his save booster.
The barbarian doesn't have his + to hit, but the victim doesn't have his + to AC.
It tends to kinda even out pretty well. It does tend to make the build quite a bit more critical since you can't use items to make up for a weak point in the build.
Can't just use a +4 weapon to bypass all DR so most should have alternate material weapons if they can't just overwhelm with massive damage.
It does however totally screw the CR system for creatures that have innate abilities instead of equipment. Mid level special creatures should be +1 to +2 CR. High level special creatures probably need to be +3 to +4 CR.

However, it doesn't sound like this GM is making encounters that are reasonable for the PC's based on the limitations he has imposed. Then it will get tough really quick.


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It doesn't even out against even non-special creatures since their 'save boosters' and 'armor boosters' are just things like high HD/saves, high stats, or high natural armor.


ElterAgo wrote:

Not necessarily, IF the GM is managing the opposition in a similar fashion.

The wizard doesn't have his intelligence booster, but the target doesn't have his save booster.
The barbarian doesn't have his + to hit, but the victim doesn't have his + to AC.
It tends to kinda even out pretty well. It does tend to make the build quite a bit more critical since you can't use items to make up for a weak point in the build.
Can't just use a +4 weapon to bypass all DR so most should have alternate material weapons if they can't just overwhelm with massive damage.
It does however totally screw the CR system for creatures that have innate abilities instead of equipment. Mid level special creatures should be +1 to +2 CR. High level special creatures probably need to be +3 to +4 CR.

However, it doesn't sound like this GM is making encounters that are reasonable for the PC's based on the limitations he has imposed. Then it will get tough really quick.

Well, a lot of the bestiary lack very much in terms of magical equipment. Or, at the very least, their equipment is lagging when compared to the party they are meant to fight.

I usually view magical equipment as the thing you actively add on to make a weak target stronger, and the base assumption is blander equipment. This is a simple boost in power that also gives the party a nice little reward afterwards.

So this means you have to more actively work to reconfigure the bestiary in order to get the monsters with appropriate numbers. Which means that it is far more likely to go wrong with an inexperienced GM


What Ozy and lemeres said.

Also, there's a reason I put the extra emphasis on AC, since it's the most heavily gear-dependent stat. Attack rolls scale up naturally by level, while your AC comes from gear (Half of the Big Six are AC boosters).

Sans magic, you'll start to run into trouble getting your AC past the low twenties without making serious tradeoffs like being a tower-shield user with combat expertise.


Chengar Qordath wrote:

What Ozy and lemeres said.

Also, there's a reason I put the extra emphasis on AC, since it's the most heavily gear-dependent stat. Attack rolls scale up naturally by level, while your AC comes from gear (Half of the Big Six are AC boosters).

Sans magic, you'll start to run into trouble getting your AC past the low twenties without making serious tradeoffs like being a tower-shield user with combat expertise.

The nice thing about alchemist is you can build to be pretty ridiculously non ac tough with the bodyguard tumor familiar, crit reduction and selfhealing discoveries.


lemeres wrote:

...

Well, a lot of the bestiary lack very much in terms of magical equipment. Or, at the very least, their equipment is lagging when compared to the party they are meant to fight.

...

So this means you have to more actively work to reconfigure the bestiary in order to get the monsters with appropriate numbers. Which means that it is far more likely to go wrong with an inexperienced GM

Agreed. However, most campaigns I have played in and the little bit described by the OP, the primary opposition is other humanoids with class levels, gear, spells, etc... not a t-rex or dragon turtle. Yes there is some of the wierdness thrown in to keep it interesting and exciting, but occasionally challenging the party like that is ok. Again if the GM is careful which I agree it sounds like this one is not.

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