Wait... Did all non mutagenic Alchemists suddenly lost ALL access to mutagens?

[shroudb]

Edge93 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Tezmick wrote:

It still creates debates at the table the minute a GM allows 3 out of 4 players to get what they want and say no to the fourth they’ve created a situation where a player can feel like they were punished for trying to play the character they want, additionally there have been multiple posts on multiple threads with GM’s just saying how grand it is they have rules to ban things they dislike, I’m fine with a rarity table that states how things are acquired I’m not fine with character options in the CORE RULES being locked away because they don’t meet someone’s fancy.

In short rarity has been largely celebrated as a tool for GM’s to help railroad players and tell them how they can build their characters which is frankly not something I’m interested in.

Role playing is meant to be a collaborative experience if a GM needs the chain of events to follow a roadmap in their head with no surprises I think they’re better of writing a novel than being a GM since novels go exactly the way they’re written.

How did you deal with tables in PF1 which banned things like teleport or resurrection then? Or worse, tables which refused to play at higher levels because the GM couldn't spend triple the prep time just trying to figure out how to manage certain options without completely breaking the campaign?

Also, stipulating which options are and aren't available is NOT railroading! You still get to pick what options you want and do with them as you like, all this does is give the GM more tools to define what is in the selectable pool of options for the setting. Stop this hyperbole that any GM who bans or restricts options is a player-hating railroader.

I'm honestly starting to get annoyed with this trend of comments that talk about how the story is supposed to be a collaborative experience, but then immediately decry anything

...

You do understand that in order to target touch they sacrifice both damage and it costs double the actions right?

To put it simpler:

Monk can target touch with the same action economy

Fighter is already the 2 points ahead in accuracy

Barb deals heaps of damage more

Etc

Having -4 of what's expected from the tight math of the game is indeed "unplayable" status.

You can troll as much as you want, but in our last playtgrough before quitting the broken playtest we tried a strict RAW alchemist, something that obviously you haven't.

The "common" alchemist, RAW, is 100% unplayable.

If a class NEEDS an uncommon feature to even act its proper role, then 100% it should be common.

Now go on, troll again without any facts.

[Edge93]

shroudb wrote:

You do understand that in order to target touch they sacrifice both damage and it costs double the actions right?

To put it simpler:

Monk can target touch with the same action economy

Fighter is already the 2 points ahead in accuracy

Barb deals heaps of damage more

Etc

Having -4 of what's expected from the tight math of the game is indeed "unplayable" status.

You can troll as much as you want, but in our last playtgrough before quitting the broken playtest we tried a strict RAW alchemist, something that obviously you haven't.

The "common" alchemist, RAW, is 100% unplayable.

If a class NEEDS an uncommon feature to even act its proper role, then 100% it should be common.

Now go on, troll again without any facts.

Okay, so for one all of your concepts are comparing a melee character to a ranged one which is already a logical flaw. And continually ignores the value of rider effects of bombs, which make for a lot of the damage deficit which only exists between melee and ranged comparison in the first place..

Only possible exception is your Fighter example, in which I seemingly have to outline my point yet again:

Let's take a 17th level Fighter and Alchemist, a high level and the one where True Quicksilver Mutagen becomes available, though this is irrelevant to the Fighter vs. Alchemist debate.

Fighter, 17 level 3 legendary 6 Str/Dex 4 item, +30 accuracy.
Alchemist, 17 level 2 master 6 Dex 2 item, +27 accuracy.

+30 accuracy vs. AC X and +27 accuracy vs. TAC X-3 ARE THE SAME HIT CHANCE. And if TAC is X-2 instead of -3, they are 1 point behind THE MOST ACCURATE CLASS IN THE GAME. This isn't much of a problem.

I don't think the gap is going to be any larger at other levels except for 20th when Fighter gets a bump to item and Str/Dex simultaneously, and maybe really early levels due to Fighters weirdly getting Master at 3rd level. Not sure it ever breaks a 3 point difference though.

And again, re-outlining another of my points, it isn't even a strict 2-action rate of fire! Quick Bomber, Double Brew, starting combat with bombs in hand, every one of these abilities are ways to cut that action economy to 1 1/2 actions per throw at most. Clearly better than your Monk example, and considering what they lose in a full attacking round is just their -10 attack they clearly aren't hurt too badly by this from a straight attack standpoint.

And my group HAS played an RAW Bomber Alchemist for parts 1, 4, and 7, and it has contributed well in every chapter. So you can take your strawman attempts to decredit me on merit of experience elsewhere. I'm pretty sure the group that actually made it through the Playtest successfully isn't any less credible than yours. And it wasn't a matter of the Alchemist being optimized and the rest of the party subpar or anything. Everyone was well-built and rolled through pretty much every challenge in the playtest handily, even managing an Extreme-difficulty fight in Part 7.

So to summarize the addressing of each of your points:

Monk targets touch with same action economy: Not actually true, Alchemist can bomb twice in a round, you can't ghost strike twice in a round. And Monk damage is pretty comparable to Alchemist damage so it wouldn't exactly be unbalanced if they did.

Fighter has higher accuracy: asked and answered. Multiple times. Factoring in touch vs. not touch a non-mutagen Alchemist comes in maybe 1 point behind a Fighter. 1 point behind the most accurate class in the game. With damage comparable to a Longbow but adding splash damage AoE and on a miss and adding useful rider effects.

Barbarian has higher damage: Umm, yeah. Why should the bomber alchemist do more damage than the class whose trademark is practically damage? Even then, a ranged Barbarian wouldn't be much higher than an Alchemist in damage, and again, you'll probably ignore this but splash and rider effects!

Sooo, each of your assertions here was a false, misrepresented, or fairly irrelevant fact while CONTINUING to ignore most of what I post even as I regard most of what you post and you're saying I'M trolling with no facts?

And to reiterate, you say play experience shows RAW Bomber is 100% unplayable (Also you try to leverage your play experience a trustworthy data while saltily making it clear how negative your opinion of the playtest is, that's a little counterintitive and doesn't give anyone much reason to think you had an open mind at all when forging this play experience.)

I say play experience has shown RAW Bombers as quite playable. Even if our play experiences merely have equal credibility, a group finding an RAW Bomber Alchemist very playable is proof positive that it is NOT 100% unplayable. Just because one group thought it was 100% unplayable doesn't mean it irrefutably is, no matter how much you demand and insist that it is despite any and all assertions and arguments and experiences to the contrary.

Also at this point I'm probably going to throw some flags up on this because at this point you're just being entirely disrespectful and rude and clearly just trying to cause trouble rather than actually listen to or discuss with anyone. I was going to leave it be but if you're going to continue to blatantly ignore most of what I say then there's no point in this continuing.

[Rajnish Umbra, Shadow Caller]

Edge93 wrote:

[...]

I'm staying out of the argument due to not even having looked at the alchemist to closely, but thank you for finally pruning that eyesore of a quote-mountain. It had reached critical mass.

[Edge93]

Rajnish Umbra, Shadow Caller wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

[...]

I'm staying out of the argument due to not even having looked at the alchemist to closely, but thank you for finally pruning that eyesore of a quote-mountain. It had reached critical mass.

Lol yeah, if I'd been paying better attention I'd have done that sooner, it was both ugly and unproductive. XD

[Raylyeh]

I have to back Edge his math is correct and my group has had a bomber alchemist without mutagens and a mutagenist and both played absolutely fine. Though this thread has kind of forgotten what it was originally about I will say that while bombers have significant advantages over other alchemists with bombs, as they should, bombs are still completely viable for non bombers. The feat tax isn’t as steep as someone earlier made it out to be, the mutagenist only invested 2 feats into bombs, which in no way limited his mutagen progression, and they worked great. For clarification the mutagenist was a primarily a melee build based around feral mutagen. He only used bombs as a backup.

Edge pointed it out repeatedly but I will go more in depth for the power of the bomb rider effects. The first and most important one in my opinion: bottled lightning, makes the enemy flat footed for a round, no save, this completely closes the accuracy gap with any other class and helps your allies as well, if you have a rogue they will love you for it. Alchemist fire, best damage and splash, chance of persistent damage. Acid flask, is 100% persistent damage which at high levels is a ridiculous amount of persistent damage and probably going to force the enemy to waste actions trying to get rid of it.

I do think the alchemist needs a fair bit of work, more than many of the classes, but claiming it’s unplayable is tantrumy BS.

[Zaister]

If you want the developers to notice a problem you think exists with a class, let them know via the class survey or the open survey. They are now more focussed on the process of evaluating the feedback from the playtest and working on updating the rules and less on reading the forums.

[shroudb]

Edge93 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

You do understand that in order to target touch they sacrifice both damage and it costs double the actions right?

To put it simpler:

Monk can target touch with the same action economy

Fighter is already the 2 points ahead in accuracy

Barb deals heaps of damage more

Etc

Having -4 of what's expected from the tight math of the game is indeed "unplayable" status.

You can troll as much as you want, but in our last playtgrough before quitting the broken playtest we tried a strict RAW alchemist, something that obviously you haven't.

The "common" alchemist, RAW, is 100% unplayable.

If a class NEEDS an uncommon feature to even act its proper role, then 100% it should be common.

Now go on, troll again without any facts.

Okay, so for one all of your concepts are comparing a melee character to a ranged one which is already a logical flaw. And continually ignores the value of rider effects of bombs, which make for a lot of the damage deficit which only exists between melee and ranged comparison in the first place..

Only possible exception is your Fighter example, in which I seemingly have to outline my point yet again:

Let's take a 17th level Fighter and Alchemist, a high level and the one where True Quicksilver Mutagen becomes available, though this is irrelevant to the Fighter vs. Alchemist debate.

Fighter, 17 level 3 legendary 6 Str/Dex 4 item, +30 accuracy.
Alchemist, 17 level 2 master 6 Dex 2 item, +27 accuracy.

+30 accuracy vs. AC X and +27 accuracy vs. TAC X-3 ARE THE SAME HIT CHANCE. And if TAC is X-2 instead of -3, they are 1 point behind THE MOST ACCURATE CLASS IN THE GAME. This isn't much of a problem.

I don't think the gap is going to be any larger at other levels except for 20th when Fighter gets a bump to item and Str/Dex simultaneously, and maybe really early levels due to Fighters weirdly getting Master at 3rd level. Not sure it ever breaks a 3 point difference though.

And again, re-outlining another of my points, it isn't...

And all of this would have a tiny bit of value if you hadn't cherry picked the absolute best level for the alchemist to compare him with the fighter.

Level 20 fighter:
23+5item+7stat= 35
Level 20 alchemist :
22+5+6 = 33

And etc for most of the levels

The difference is much more often 2 WITH the Quicksilver mutagen.

Without the mutagen (aka "common only" settings) the difference is huge

Again, level 14:
Fighter is around:
17+3+5= 25
Alchemist is:
16+4= 20

-5 from the fighter and -4 from literally everyone else.

[Edge93]

shroudb wrote:

And all of this would have a tiny bit of value if you hadn't cherry picked the absolute best level for the alchemist to compare him with the fighter.

Level 20 fighter:
23+5item+7stat= 35
Level 20 alchemist :
22+5+6 = 33

And etc for most of the levels

The difference is much more often 2 WITH the Quicksilver mutagen.

Without the mutagen (aka "common only" settings) the difference is huge

Again, level 14:
Fighter is around:
17+3+5= 25
Alchemist is:
16+4= 20

-5 from the fighter and -4 from literally everyone else.

Quick note, you have only my word for this but I actually just picked 17th level fairly randomly. Also I was thinking Greater Alchemist's Goggles came online earlier than they actually do. This post reflects that assumption fixed.

But what's funny is, you accused me of cherry-picking the best level to compare and then turned around and cherry picked the worst levels to compare while saying that it represents most of the levels.

First you used 20th level, when the Fighter has just gotten a +2 over the Alchemist from his weapon hitting +5 and his Str hitting +7. And yeah, granted at that point he is above the Alchemist by 5 points and that's harsh (7 Str vs. 6 Dex, 3 legendary vs. 2 master, 5 item vs. 2). But for the four previous levels, Levels 16-19, he is only 3 points above the Alchemist, and other martials are only 2 above.

Then you used 14th level. Again, the difference at this level is admittedly harsh. And we have that same difference at 12th and 13th. But one level later the Alchemist gets a Dex boost, and a level after that the Greater Alchemical Goggles. Taking the gap between Fighters/Martials and Alchemist down to 4/3 and then 3/2.

Earlier levels, 10-11, the gap is 4/3. 5-9, the gap is 2/1. 4, it's 4/2. 3, it's 3/1. 1, it's 2/1.

So there are a total of 4 levels out of 20 where the gap is higher than 4 for Fighters and 3 for other martials. And that's not great. No one is saying it is. But 4 levels is not "most of the levels". (Also for 13 of 20 levels the gap is 3 or less from Fighters and 2 or less from other martials). And when touch AC is factored in for those four levels the non-mutagen Alchemist is usually 2-3 behind Fighters and 1-2 behind other martials for most foes. That's frankly workable, especially with splash and rider effects going for you.

Meanwhile for the other SIXTEEN LEVELS the gap with TAC factored in (Factored as usually being 2 or 3 lower than normal AC) ranges around from 2 to NEGATIVE 1 from Fighter and from 1 to NEGATIVE 2 from other Martials.

So please don't accuse me of cherry-picking and then turn around and cherry pick two of the four worst levels, claiming it represents most levels when in fact it represents ONE FIFTH of levels. In actuality, for 80% of levels the non-mutagen Alchemist ranges from barely behind martials to actually ahead against most foes.

Again, far from 100% unplayable. And again, those four levels are harsh and I do think Alchemist needs some smoothing out. But it's far from unplayable and logical fallacy like in the quoted post only hurts your credibility when advocating for Alchemist change.

[Sam Phelan]

Removed a post.

Be careful to never cross the line into personal attacks during a discussion. The moment you comment on the credibility or character of a poster to disassemble their points this is a personal attack and is not appropriate for the discussion. Thank you to those who flagged and directed the conversation away from that direction.

[Themetricsystem]

shroudb wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Tezmick wrote:

It still creates debates at the table the minute a GM allows 3 out of 4 players to get what they want and say no to the fourth they’ve created a situation where a player can feel like they were punished for trying to play the character they want, additionally there have been multiple posts on multiple threads with GM’s just saying how grand it is they have rules to ban things they dislike, I’m fine with a rarity table that states how things are acquired I’m not fine with character options in the CORE RULES being locked away because they don’t meet someone’s fancy.

In short rarity has been largely celebrated as a tool for GM’s to help railroad players and tell them how they can build their characters which is frankly not something I’m interested in.

Role playing is meant to be a collaborative experience if a GM needs the chain of events to follow a roadmap in their head with no surprises I think they’re better of writing a novel than being a GM since novels go exactly the way they’re written.

How did you deal with tables in PF1 which banned things like teleport or resurrection then? Or worse, tables which refused to play at higher levels because the GM couldn't spend triple the prep time just trying to figure out how to manage certain options without completely breaking the campaign?

Also, stipulating which options are and aren't available is NOT railroading! You still get to pick what options you want and do with them as you like, all this does is give the GM more tools to define what is in the selectable pool of options for the setting. Stop this hyperbole that any GM who bans or restricts options is a player-hating railroader.

I'm honestly starting to get annoyed with this trend of comments that talk about how the story is supposed to be a collaborative experience, but then

...

I wont lie, I only came here to build upon Post Mountain.

I do however think this is probably an unintended and likely embarrasing slip-up, as I'm not sure it makes sense for 2/3 of all Alchemists being locked out of one of their Core PF Abilities. It would be like gating Healing Spell off from Clerics unless they choose to spend their first Class Feat to "earn" them.