I never played an alchemist, and while I see full well how to make a firebomb happy alchemist, I had something else in mind.
In a Pathfinder novel, "City of the Fallen Sky", the MC alchemist throw a bomb on a bunch of pirates, drowning them in a cloud of purple smoke. A few seconds later, the enemies are running around screaming, scared to death, and throw themselves overboard, kill each other and generally puke their brains out.
Now that's something a little less common, but it doesn't lack style. You don't burn your targets, you make their claws at their eyeballs with mouth foaming while you take notes of the effects.
I see a few discoveries that are thematically appropriate, such as Madness Bomb, that expressedly "sear the mind", Confusion Bomb, and the like. I'm also interested in the Mind Chemist archetype, as it increase your INT and thus the damages and potentials DC of your bombs.
The problem is, while thematically, I can shape up something, the mechanical result is mediocre at best. The fact that I can't apply more than one effect to the bombs bugs me out, and only the direct hit target suffers the effect. I lack options to synergize my "awful-shoggoth-fart-bomb" to make damages and sow madness around.
I'm looking for:
- A build that throws splash weapons around.
- Said splash weapons have a mind affecting effect provoking madness and possibly horror.
- The enemies actually end up dying from it, not just screaming and trashing on the ground for 1d4 turns before being lucid and really pissed at me.
Bonus:
- Can affect several targets.
- Gruesome effects for the lucky ones to receive that nasty gift.
My DMs usually prefer core or featured races, but everything else Paizo official I can find source of is allowed.
Finally managed to find a few buried posts related to madness bomb, which doesn't seem to be popular, due to a lack of efficiency.
You can stack it with other discoveries tho (didn't realize), even though you would be sacrificing some damages. Would there be any mechanical effects with a sentient creature reduced to <6 Wis? Less than 6 int is animal level/feral state so maybe a GM would accept a similar effect on a half mad creature, making it ravenous.
The flesh eating bomb is a nice flavourful thing to put on top of that, at least on unarmoured enemies (since the rules precise bonus armor, I suppose natural armor doesn't count, so any wild monster is good). Having sticky bomb would allow to make up for the lost damage, given the target didn't succeed the reflex damage. Now I need to up the DC... Switch with confusing when the enemy does wear an armor.
I think combined with the other bombs of the round, such as some force and stink bombs, it should produce more debuf and damage than I first planned for. The non straight damage alchemist seems to profit from different types of bombs in the same round.
That would me a good area control character, or so I think. I need to see exactly how many differents bombs can be fit in a build and in what order.
Does the cognatogen increasing int also increase the number of bomb per day?
Also, it's my first thread, so if I did anything out of place (or forgot to do anything), please let me know. Any help appreciated.
Re - Madness Bomb: I don'5 think there's any special mechanical effect for low WIS (except Wis-based casters), but 0 WIS will make them unconcious.
Check out the "Smoke Bomb" line of discoveries. It takes a little while but they get very powerful and affect multiple creatures.
Also taking "Two Weapon Fighting" at level 7, then "Fast Bombs" at level 8 means you can throw 3 bombs in a round (4 with Haste). You could flavour it as one big bomb but throw 3 different bombs at 3 different enemies and have different effects on each bomb.
If you take all the cognatogen's discoveries, up int with character lvl, take ability focus(bomb) and buy an int +6 headband your DC is going to be really good.
Lvl 16, starting with 18 int.
Int: 18 + 4 lvl + 8 cognatogen + 6 headband = 36 --> +13 mod
DC = 10 + 8 (1/2 lvl) + 13 int + 2 ability focus = 33
And with different discovery you can target all saves, which makes it really strong