| Shiroi |
So I'll be honest and upfront, I haven't had a chance to bring anything to a table yet. I'm going off the feel of the system compared to Pathfinder, having built a level 9 gnomish alchemist to see what it can do. I'm attempting to rebuild an old character from 1st edition, so my choices aren't mechanical but rather fluff in nature to try to bring over what used to be a very viable character.
My initial results is that I need twice as many racial feats to feel like a proper gnome, because all the things I was able to get by the level I could get them felt like stuff a human could probably do in 1st edition by the same point.
I need twice as many skill selections despite my 4 starting int mod, because he's a bookworm who uses a lot of knowledge skills from a bad part of town so he has some talent with thievery and lying.
I need twice as many skill feats because even if I got bluff and thievery added to my list of trained skills, I don't have any extra feats to make them do anything fun.
I need more general feats because I felt pressed into extra resonance (more bombs and elixers) and gnomes basically require fleet due to it being a full 25% more move speed (nearly a whole extra action when running). This leaves me nothing for iron will or lightning reflexes, which would have been early choices for my build before.
I can make smoke bombs (for a full resonance each since it doesn't seem to work with your early morning two-for-one special) and exclude my allies from my spash zones at my full class DC, but can't do much in the way of multiple bombs per round. Some of this should be part of class features, some of this makes no sense, and some of this should be quicker to come online. Even after all that, I feel I need more.
The problem may not properly exist at the table, and I may be well within balance of other characters, but before I'm even picking up a d20 I'm already disappointed in my build. I feel undeveloped and undiversified, when focusing on bombs and skills I lack the progression I'm used to seeing and feel very little choice in how I could have done this: my path was made clear, and all other bomb alchemists will probably look very similar. When trying to diversify even slightly I felt constrained, it felt punitive to ask to be marginally passable in more than a few things.
What am I missing in this system, besides more of literally everything?