One of our younger PFS players was really struggling to be effective with his alchemist through a combination of inexperience, rules glut, math/ADD-like symptoms and high expectations. To smooth out the learning curve for him, I created a dragonblood chymist, a simpler alchemist.
http://archivesofnethys.com/ArchetypeDisplay.aspx?FixedName=Alchemist Dragonblood Chymist
This archetype gives up Throw Anything, and all its bombs are forevermore a 15' cone of fire, Ref half. No more attack rolls, scatter diagrams, or calculating splash damage. This greatly simplified the character for the poor kid.
The problem arose when I went to flesh out the rest of the character and plan its progression.
There are no feats available to help out that bomb/breath weapon.
Ability Focus is not PFS legal. I ended up taking Blind-fight of all things at first level just to leverage the use of smokesticks he's going to craft & hold in front of his face when he breathes fire.
He cannot take any other discovery to alter his bomb/breath weapon, so he's stuck with a 15' cone of fire ...for life.
He cannot take any other discovery in the mutagen line.
He does not add INT to splash weapons other than his bombs, so he's not much of a chemist/chymist.
No PFS legal FCB added to mutagen duration.
While the result may be good for the initial purposes of helping a kid, I think I found something TOO vanilla. So ... what have I missed? What can be done to help this archetype grow just a little bit? An ability to change the element from fire to...? change the area of effect from 15' cone to .....? improve its special mutagen, if only the duration?
This archetype has been known for simply being an outright downgrade on the base Alchemist while giving nothing in return.
You may want to just let him play a classic Alchemist, or use another more indicative archetype.