I've been running this playtest with my group for several weekends now, and while I'll be posting my full thoughts and those of my group later as I compile them, the player trying the alchemist has a lot of concerns about the primary class abilities.
1. Advanced Alchemy states that you spend the normal crafting costs, and that the items are Infused. From what I see in the rules, RAW, this means the alchemy items stop working one day later.
He already has concerns about blowing too much money at low levels to try to stockpile enough items for use during the adventure, and it's come to the point he essentially refuses to use the ability unless I tell him before hand he will definitely be using them that day. This mainly came up with healing elixirs, since you never know how many you need, but bombs came up as well, see below.
We finally just house ruled that the items just lose the infused trait after one day but otherwise still work since he spent the money on them.
I suggest this becomes the standard rule for the class. No one likes throwing money down the drain on their class abilities that is supposed to be their entire concept.
Second, for both Quick Alchemy and Advanced Alchemy, they always require using a resonance point to use the ability, even for items that have no extra effect whatsoever for having infused them. (poisons and tools are a main example, but bombs when under level 2 also apply)
This was a big sticking point for him particularly at low levels. He had to decide: make a bunch of stuff up front at cost to myself, and potentially waste them? Make them on the fly, using extra actions but spend his limited 5-6 resonance in the process on an item that gets nothing for the expense?
This became somewhat less of an issue when we houseruled letting him keep his stuff after one day, but there is still the cost of either resonance for one item that potentially doesn't need it up front, or money for them AND still a resonance up front needing to anticipate their use but maybe getting two/four of them.
This also causes the issue of the alchemist essentially using all of his own resonance when he might want the rest of the party to take the hit to their own resonance pools. He is unable to use his primary class ability to help his team while utilizing their resonance for the things he makes for them.
We spent a session with the following house rule:
If the item doesn't use resonance, you don't have to spend it. For advanced alchemy, you still use the money, for quick, you still use the action and it's still a very short duration item before needing to use it.
If the item DOES use resonance, you can choose to infuse the item/s with a resonance point, and if you do, it's Infused. If it was made with Advanced alchemy, the first house rule still applies, and it becomes un-infused after one day without ruining it.
And finally: if you crafted the alchemy item yourself and it is not infused, you can spend a resonance point to make it infused for one day as an action. It spoils after that day if you don't use it like normal.
This ended up being a big relief for him, since he could make items to stockpile them, and if he knew he was about to use some, he could infuse them at the entrance and have them ready, without needing to worry about wasting resonance points.
I didn't find the changes to be breaking and I would suggest the changes or something similar be done to reduce the amount of potential wastage an alchemist can have, and to allow the alchemist to use the resonance of his party for the elixirs he makes for them.
This allows the alchemist to make as many bombs as he wants for free, at the cost of an action, and with the stipulation that they are regular level 1 bombs (since there aren't any higher level bombs).
The only potential issue we saw was making free higher level poisons on the fly, mainly for contact and inhaled poisons, since injury poisons doesn't have a maximum duration once applied (and can thus be applied before hand on a downtime day even with the current rules, which is what he did ALL THE TIME). I'm not sure if this will be a major issue though, since poisons tend to take a long time to set in for anything other than injury and inhaled (which can poison your own party), and thus aren't super useful in combat.
I suppose that's my fault for not double checking him. He kept saying they cost money to craft.
I'm sure he will be happy when I tell him he can stop spending all his money on bombs.
Anyways, that alleviates the issues with wasted money, but still doesn't address the issues with using the rest of the party's resonance pools to fuel the items he makes for them.
I do this that is still a valid concern of his. Making items that aren't imbued so the other members of the party can use their resonance pools is something I think should still be available.
I'll be talking to my group about this, though we will probably come up with something like "The items last 1 day, and you can choose to imbue them or not with a resonance point for up to INT mod batches per day." or something similar is my guess, at least I'm going to insist on a limit so he can't make infinite bombs at the start of the day. (quick alchemy isn't an issue though due to the very short duration)
Problems Solved! :-)
I'll still be glad if they decide to move the alchemy to a different pool than Resource, though, if resource is altered or removed. When I was playing an Alchemist for Chapter 3 of the playtest, I had to be super-careful to pick as few items as possible which used resonance. I spent all of my magic item budget on weapons and runes that were always-on, or items that cost no resonance such as bags of holding. I think the only think which used resonance on my entire person was my armor. :) On the plus side, I had 12 resonance a day after daily investitures for my alchemy; on the minus side, I was severely hampered by what magic items to pick.
Yes, we saw that part, the issue is that it takes the alchemist's RP to even make the items, and that prevents the alchemist from using his party's RP instead of his own for items that they will be using.
The stockpiling I was talking about was for poisoned arrows he makes with RP one day and immediately applies to the arrows for use later. We had a discussion about if the alchemy items potency matters until activation, or for the full duration of the effect, and we decided that mutagens and poisons just wouldn't work with quick alchemy at all if they stopped working at the beginning of the next round, so we went with activation since that makes the most sense.
The main issue is that the Alchemist at low levels has precious few RP, even with an 18 INT, you have 5 at level one, which is 10 potions/bombs/poisons per day. Considering poison does 3-5 dice of damage over several rounds (if they keep failing their saves), bombs are roughly the equivalent of cantrips in terms of damage potential, and healing elixirs are strictly worse than a heal spell, the alchemist needs some way of offloading the burden to his teammates and allowing him to continue to chuck bombs throughout the day.
At level 1 he made 4 bombs, 2 healing potions, and 2 centipede poisons with 1 RP left over for the whole day. He pulled out two bombs one turn, chucked 1, next turn he pulled out a third, chucked two, and chucked the last one on round three of the first combat of the day. He missed his first shot with his poisoned arrows, and the second just got saved immediately. The healing potions did their jobs, and he used the last RP to make another, so he healed 3d6 damage and lobbed 4d6 damage worth of bombs all day with his class abilities. He didn't actually do 4d6 though, he missed with one of his attacks.
The elf cleric played in the next session ended up being way more effective than he was with his alchemist (granted it was level 2 play, but still, it shouldn't have been that extreme a difference in effectiveness). Infinite produce flame cantrips, 5 heal spells for free each day (he used healing hands to heal 2d8 + 4 for each one), more spells, it was like night and day.
The house rules let him keep lobbing bombs, and helped tremendously with his ability to get the party healed. So I do think there still needs to be some attention paid to the RP costs of things. At later levels he is going to want to invest several magic items, so I don't anticipate him having more than 10 or so RP any day for most of the levels.
We test things out under the assumption most play occurs around level 7 or below, I forget the article that mentioned this, but it suggested the significant majority of play for most people never goes beyond this, and that has been my experience with other tables so I've kept that in mind over the years.