| Karadzic |
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So I'm currently playing as a 7th level alchemist and was looking at the phrasing on alchemist discoveries, specifically those that mention alterations to the bomb's splash radius.
There are a couple that stand out to me because of the wording, specifically the explosive bomb and the smoke/stink/cloudkill/inferno bomb discoveries. For the latter grouping of bombs, the description always says "filling an area equal to twice the bomb's splash radius" when referring to the area being covered by the bomb. However, for the explosive bomb, it says at the beginning of the discovery, "The alchemist's bombs now have a splash radius of 10 feet rather than 5 feet." It is the ONLY bomb discovery I found that (at least in the APG book) specifies the change in radius as going from one specific radius length to another. It doesn't say something like "the splash radius doubles," it explicitly notes that the radius is increasing to a specific numerical value. But more importantly I think is that it says "The alchemist's 'BOMBS'..." with "bombs" being plural. This, to me, suggests that it is increasing the default radius of ALL alchemist bombs to 10ft as opposed to the standard 5. This, in turn, suggests to me that this change in radius STACKS with the smoke/stink/cloudkill/inferno bomb discovery specification that says said bombs fill "an area equal to twice the bomb's splash radius." Again: the smoke/stink/cloudkill/inferno bomb discoveries do not say that the radius changes to 10ft which would be a simple doubling of the default 5ft (which I feel that they would have done for consistency if that was their true intent, or alternatively changed the explosive bomb description to say that it doubles the splash radius), they explicitly state that it DOUBLES.
What this could mean, in turn, is that the smoke/stink/cloudkill/inferno bombs would all be capable of stacking with the explosive bomb discovery's expanded splash radius in order to create 20FT DIAMETER CLOUDS of whichever one of those potentially debilitating discoveries you wanted to apply.
The confusing part here, however, is that according to the APG, "Discoveries that modify bombs that are marked with an asterisk (*) do not stack. Only one such discovery can be applied to an individual bomb." Explosive bombs and the smoke/stink/cloudkill/inferno bombs are all individually marked with a *, which when taken as explicitly written, states they DON'T stack.
In the end, my question is if the inconsistencies I noted were some kind of typographical error, mistakes in phrasing, or what? Our DM has suggested that the phrasing on the explosive bomb radius being 10ft instead of simply "double" the default radius was left as such at the time APG was published in case Paizo ever decided to release feats or non-* discoveries or other abilities that would definitively increase the alchemist's bomb splash radius and in turn stack with it by intention, but I have yet to find any official Paizo materials that do just that. Was the * on the explosive bomb's description perhaps supposed to ONLY refer to the secondary part of the discovery, which states that creatures who take a direct hit from it to catch fire for potential damage in future rounds, or did they in fact mean that the ENTIRETY of the explosive bomb's alterations from an unmodified bomb cannot be combined with other *'ed bomb discoveries at all? I'd like to hear if anyone has experience with this issue or potential insight on the matter.
paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advancedPlayersGuide/baseClasses/alchemist.html
| Andy Brown |
Discoveries marked with an * don't stack, and after a quick skim through the list I'm not seeing anything that changes the radius that doesn't have a *, so you can't stack Explosive with any of the others. There's no reason to assume that isn't the intended affect.
I also don't see why the increased radius would apply to standard bombs, and I definitely prefer keeping the option of a smaller splash radius.
If there is something that doubles the radius that doesn't have the *, then the obvious answer is that Explosive makes the radius 10' and the other discovery doubles it.