Can alchemists replace clerics as the primary healer?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion

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I was wondering if we have enough information about the classes to know whether or not the alchemist has enough healing to be able to be the primary healer in an ongoing campaign?

I know Mark Seifter had a barbarian (multiclassed cleric) as his healer in the playtest. But I was curious as to whether we'd learned anything more informative following the playtest and previews?


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

I'm pretty sure someone with the Medicine skill can be the primary healer.


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Well, from just the pure playtest, I'd say this was a hard NO. However, the developers for sure realized this, given some of the closed threads we had back then, so... I expect the gap to be a lot closer in the full release.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I should think so. At the extreme (doing nothing else) a level 1 alchemist can make 10 Lesser Elixirs of Life. We don't know how potent those are but I'd expect that to be at least 35 HP of healing.


ChibiNyan wrote:
Well, from just the pure playtest, I'd say this was a hard NO. However, the developers for sure realized this, given some of the closed threads we had back then, so... I expect the gap to be a lot closer in the full release.

I have to agree: in the playtest alchemists had a rough time as the healer, especially vs a channeling cleric.

I'll be curious to see how they turn out in the final rules.


I dare to say that Champions Lay on Hands is better than Cleric healing, at least concerning out of battle healing.

But yeah, treat wounds is solid and the specialist in healing Alchemist can make the check using craft instead of medicine.


Kyrone wrote:
But yeah, treat wounds is solid and the specialist in healing Alchemist can make the check using craft instead of medicine.

My question on that is do they have to be trained in medicine to Treat Disease/Poison?

Kyrone wrote:
I dare to say that Champions Lay on Hands is better than Cleric healing, at least concerning out of battle healing.

Clerics got more uses [especially with the healing domain] and can area heal. I think my 4th level cleric had 5 + cha mod + 1/2 wis mod uses and could add a 1d8 to the healing with an action.


Thanks for the quick responses!

ChibiNyan wrote:
Well, from just the pure playtest, I'd say this was a hard NO.

Can I ask what way they failed to be up to the task?

I understand from the other posts healing was lacking. However in PF1e this was often the least important ability clerics brought to the table when it came to healing thanks to wands of CLW with removing diseases, curses, blindness, lesser restoration, greater restoration, raise dead and breath of life being far more important.

Do any of these other duties actually matter anymore for the cleric role? Is healing now a million times more important due to the changes in magic items?


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John Lynch 106 wrote:
Can I ask what way they failed to be up to the task?

Other healers can heal at a distance and only use the healers actions: an alchemist has to use an action then hand off an item so they can use an action. Not so great for emergency healing in combat: somewhat better with passing out healing at the start of the day, moving the healing action to the person healing.

Out of combat was better but they didn't heal as much: 1d6 vs 1d8+wis+ extra if they take a feat for a cleric. As far as other things, you get bonuses to save instead of removing things like disease and poison unless it's the highest version and then it's a new save.

John Lynch 106 wrote:
Do any of these other duties actually matter anymore for the cleric role? Is healing now a million times more important due to the changes in magic items?

That's the $64,000 question. I have a feeling the actual game is going to play different from the playtest so I want to 'kick the tires' before I'd answer those questions.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Actually you can feed a potion to an ally as an action. Distance is a factor though. I ruled in my games an alchemist could toss an elixir as though it were a bomb and the ally could use their reaction to catch it.

We have a primary healer in my game who is a ranger with no magic though. He medicine skill gets you pretty dang far. And alchemists have good options with the healing focused research field.


Captain Morgan wrote:

Actually you can feed a potion to an ally as an action. Distance is a factor though. I ruled in my games an alchemist could toss an elixir as though it were a bomb and the ally could use their reaction to catch it.

We have a primary healer in my game who is a ranger with no magic though. He medicine skill gets you pretty dang far. And alchemists have good options with the healing focused research field.

Thats an good idea

so in melee you can spoon feed it to your allies
in range they can catch it
or not and pick it up next turn

Silver Crusade

Well are the potions invested, slash did they keep the whole investiture thing for alchemists? Because if not, and they can bang out several batches of healing potions, then they could hand those out to the party at the start of every adventuring day and be a healer that doesn't use any of their own actions to heal. Which, for my money, makes them a more versatile healer if not a strictly better healer, but I don't know if we have enough information yet.


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I think they can, in fact, just hand out alchemicals (except mutagens, they need to be individualized) and everyone can use them as they see fit


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They didn't heal as much, Treat Wounds was suicidal until after some updates, costed resonance, Cleric could heal your full health like 10x a day, Alchemist was garbage in general and had to receive updates, cleric Channel had to be nerfed from the insanity it was.

Current alchemist is looking way better and Cleric is probably not going to be as silly anymore, but the gulf between them was VAST in Playtest 1.0.

Liberty's Edge

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Based on the current rules and how much Elixirs healed in the playtest, I'd say yes.

They won't do as good a job as a Cleric, but assuming someone has Medicine I think they've got enough in-combat healing to manage fine. Out of combat, you'll generally want to use renewable resources, which is where Paladins and Medicine really shine, but depending on what the general rules on subbing one skill for another look like, a Chirugeon may well be really good at Medicine.


From what was transcribed in another thread, the ‘Healer’ Alchemist path can make 3 healing pots per daily batch at 5th level, and 13th level i think, all healing pots heal for max rather than rolling. They seem like they will have a good place for anyone looking to fill that roll.


Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
From what was transcribed in another thread, the ‘Healer’ Alchemist path can make 3 healing pots per daily batch at 5th level, and 13th level i think, all healing pots heal for max rather than rolling. They seem like they will have a good place for anyone looking to fill that roll.

this is pretty cool, chirugeon seems to be pretty good as healer


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
From what was transcribed in another thread, the ‘Healer’ Alchemist path can make 3 healing pots per daily batch at 5th level, and 13th level i think, all healing pots heal for max rather than rolling. They seem like they will have a good place for anyone looking to fill that roll.

The Max healing only comes from elixirs created through quick alchemy, making it more of a panic button.

But in comparison to a cleric, action distribution/efficiency generally still leans in favour of the cleric but the Alchemist is certainly no slouch.

Using a mix of playtest numbers for elixirs and final rules for the alchemist class, cleric channel and the Heal Spell, using only 3 of a 5th level chiurgeon's 9 resonance(assuming 18 or 19 int) grants 27d6 worth of quick healing outside of treat wounds without accounting for using crafting in place of medicine for treat wounds, so about 94-95 hit points, compared to an average fighters 60-70 max hit points at level 5, but a cleric focused on channeling can heal double the alchemist's number if they focus on charisma for channeling and healing single target, healing around 180 HP just off of channeling.

Keeping spending at about the same percentage of resources, this increases to 21d6 per reagent and 4 reagents spent at level 8, now healing for a whopping total average of 294 HP, and cleric healing fails to scale at the same rate, the same cleric channel healing an average of 250 off of single targeted channels, but once aoe healing is involved the healing skyrockets back to 350 or so.

Alchemist healing early on is not very effective, assuming numbers for healing haven't changed, but the amount of healing they can output increases incredibly fast as they level and hit each new elixir breakpoint.


Between Merciful Elixir, the greater version, and the Greater Field Discovery, I believe so. You heal full damage (playtest sample is 60 HP at level 14, but that might be going up), and can counteract one of: fear, paralyzed, blinded, deafened, sickened, or slowed.


When you're a chirugeon, you have to hand the potion to an ally so then he drinks it? Starting to see some dangerous action economy implications and time sensitivity issues in actually getting the healing to happen. Then the ones with Quick Alchemy are only active for like 1 round so can't even make them ahead of time...

This, of course, is only an issue mid-fight. Out of combat the healing seems pretty solid.


Yeah, I'm in the boat that 1.6 Alchemists and thus probably CRB Alchemists can download the job, especially Chirurgeons. You'll definitely want to hand out some Elixirs in the morning though.

They may not be as good as Cleric/Divine Sorc but frankly Clerics are probably MORE healing than you really need, and I honestly like passing the healing actions to the one needing healed at least some of the time. That doesn't help if they jave both hands full or enemy has AoO, but Battle Medic can probably come in clutch for those moments.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
ChibiNyan wrote:

When you're a chirugeon, you have to hand the potion to an ally so then he drinks it? Starting to see some dangerous action economy implications and time sensitivity issues in actually getting the healing to happen. Then the ones with Quick Alchemy are only active for like 1 round so can't even make them ahead of time...

This, of course, is only an issue mid-fight. Out of combat the healing seems pretty solid.

You're allowed to hand off elixir in advance and/or feed a willing ally an elixir or potion with your own actions. You're only creating elixirs of life with quick alchemy when you need that instant burst of hit points and condition removal, with the bulk of your healing reagents spent on throughput healing during daily preparations, and will probably spread them out as the party feels like they're best split.


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Clerics might be overkill, but I'm not gonna lie, a dedicated healer specialized in healing (i.e. an alchemist taking the chirurgeon path) being worse at healing than someone who just gets healing automatically and maybe spends one feat at the most doesn't sound like good balance. Especially when the cleric gets better action economy on top of that too.

Even a baseline alchemist should probably be able to keep up with a cleric's channeling, given the resource expenditures involved.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
swoosh wrote:

Clerics might be overkill, but I'm not gonna lie I don't really like the idea that Clerics are, just by virtue of being clerics, better at what a chirurgeon alchemist is spending energy to specialize in and have better action economy while doing it all while still getting to do regular cleric things on top of that.

A dedicated healer specialized in healing being worse at healing than someone who just gets healing automatically and maybe spends one feat at the most doesn't sound like good balance.

Outside of the very early, Chiurgeon vs cleric both have their own strength and weaknesses. Cleric's healing output doesnt scale as quickly as the raw output of a chiurgeon does once chiurgeon reaches level 5, and investing in charisma is a lot of investment for a cleric that might see more benefits out of the physical stats for their own personal health. We don't have the cleric feats yet, but in terms of condition removal, the cleric has to still pick between healing and condition removal round to round, where the chiurgeon gets both at the cost of efficiency with quick alchemy and merciful elixir, and eventually that quick alchemy elixir applies a sharper burst of HP than the average Heal. The largest benefit of the cleric over the alchemist is aoe healing efficiency, which isn't always necessary.


It's not totally busted, but from what we know so far it looks like a cleric who doesn't want to be a healer at all can heal as well and sometimes even better than an alchemist who focuses exclusively on healing and that looks bad.

Doubly bad because the cleric isn't even going to be resource taxed by this. Channel is its own pool of stuff just for healing. Even without investment it's pretty good healing. The alchemist on the other hand is pulling out of their general pool of daily resources for this, not to mention that they took a path specifically to focus on this.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
swoosh wrote:

It's not totally busted, but from what we know so far it looks like a cleric who doesn't want to be a healer at all can heal as well and sometimes even better than an alchemist who focuses exclusively on healing and that looks bad.

Doubly bad because the cleric isn't even going to be resource taxed by this. Channel is its own pool of stuff just for healing. Even without investment it's pretty good healing. The alchemist on the other hand is chewing up their daily crafts and quick alchemy just to heal, not to mention the obvious path choice they made to specialize.

A cleric that doesnt want to be a healer at all can have either a single Heal spell from their channel or a pool of Harms, both of which make for a rather pisspoor healer without burning through spell slots.


swoosh wrote:

It's not totally busted, but from what we know so far it looks like a cleric who doesn't want to be a healer at all can heal as well and sometimes even better than an alchemist who focuses exclusively on healing and that looks bad.

Doubly bad because the cleric isn't even going to be resource taxed by this. Channel is its own pool of stuff just for healing. Even without investment it's pretty good healing. The alchemist on the other hand is pulling out of their general pool of daily resources for this, not to mention that they took a path specifically to focus on this.

The other problem is that we don't know any of the alchemical item scaling.

We know Merciful Elixir can be pretty strong in removing conditions, but we don't actually know the physical healing capabilities. This especially matters when it's competing with 1d8+8 single target ranged for 2 actions.

You don't get too many heals out of Channel without that second stat investment, though, and that's a pretty big thing.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Also... even clerics wind up being better healers, that is their thing. It is like being bummed the alchemist can't be as good with a sword as a fighter. The alchemist has other things going for it. For example, mutagens can make for significantly stronger buffing to the party without burning top level spell slots.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I'd like it if clerics were the top of the line in burst "I NEED HEALING NOW" type of recovery, but if you had a bit of time for an alchemist or other specialized medic to work on you then you could get more HP back that way.


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Captain Morgan wrote:
Also... even clerics wind up being better healers, that is their thing.

I don't really think that's any different than a chirugeon: you make a specific choice to be good at healing so I'd say it's their thing too.


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Captain Morgan wrote:
Also... even clerics wind up being better healers, that is their thing.

The chirurgeon alchemist is literally a class path built specifically around healing and who's expected to spend a significant chunk of their standard daily resources on healing.

How is that not "their thing"? How is it less "their thing" than it is the thing of a class who just gets some extra healing no matter what as a secondary class feature?

Quote:
It is like being bummed the alchemist can't be as good with a sword as a fighter.

If, hypothetically, there was an alchemist path specifically about being good with a sword, which spent almost all of its resources and its daily crafts improving its skill with a sword and yet still just broke even with a fighter who put only minimal investment into swordsmanship and the fighter was a full spellcaster too, yeah I'd be a little bummed.


swoosh wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:
Also... even clerics wind up being better healers, that is their thing.

The chirurgeon alchemist is literally a class path built specifically around healing and who's expected to spend a significant chunk of their standard daily resources on healing.

How is that not "their thing"? How is it less "their thing" than it is the thing of a class who just gets some extra healing no matter what as a secondary class feature?

Quote:
It is like being bummed the alchemist can't be as good with a sword as a fighter.
If, hypothetically, there was an alchemist path specifically about being good with a sword, which spent almost all of its resources and its daily crafts improving its skill with a sword and yet still just broke even with a fighter who put only minimal investment into swordsmanship and the fighter was a full spellcaster too, yeah I'd be a little bummed.

The other thing is that through mutagens, the alchemist can possibly be the strongest buffer in the game because they always have top-level buffs. That's not something that can be ignored.

Though I do hope alchemical items got buffed such that the chirurgeon can sort of compete with the cleric's maximized 2-action without the Greater Field Discovery.


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Captain Morgan wrote:
Also... even clerics wind up being better healers, that is their thing. It is like being bummed the alchemist can't be as good with a sword as a fighter.

See, that's a problem for me. I don't want healing to be a primarily-cleric thing, because the cleric class brings a lot of baggage with it. It is the one class being strongly tied into a setting-based thing (religion/gods), and it it is a class being very distinctly exclusive to D&D-derived games (as an armored healer empowered by one or more gods).

I see healing as being a core function on par with "hitting things". Fighters, barbarians, paladins, rangers, and monks are all good at hitting things. They go about hitting things in somewhat different ways, but in a party any of them can fill the role of "guy who hits things and can take being hit back".

Similarly, I think clerics, druids, bards, and alchemists should all be able to fill the role of "guy who undoes the effects of being hit". For some of them, it might be a core identity of the class while for others it's a thing they can spec into (I'm fine with a bomber alchemist being worse at healing than a baseline cleric), and they should probably go about the job in different ways (e.g. clerics being better at direct healing, bards doing heal + buff, druid being more resource-efficient but slower), but either of those classes should be able to fill the healer role in a party.


Cyouni wrote:
The other thing is that through mutagens, the alchemist can possibly be the strongest buffer in the game because they always have top-level buffs. That's not something that can be ignored.

Well, it kind of IS something you can ignore when you're looking at how good a healer they are. Second, in the playtest, mutagens were uncommon rarity so I'm not sure what certainty we have that every non-Mutagenist will have access to them.


At level 4 an Alchemist with 18 INT can craft 16 Elixers and at level 5 they can craft 27 Elixers total. I don’t think Clerics are going to outshine Alchemists in healing. Channel Energy, I believe, isn’t going to be as high as it was in the PT so if a Cleric wants to be the best then they have to sacrifice their spell slots to do so; and this ends up being the same with an Alchemist crafting Elixers. Both i believe will have good Medicine Skills so Treat Wounds will be good with either Character, though Clerics will have the advantage of Wis as their Key Stat. I’m pretty sure no class is going to feel like a ‘Primary Healer’ unless you build them that way.


A question just for those saying that alchemists aren't as good as clerics: Can anyone who isnt a cleric fill the healer role?


John Lynch 106 wrote:
A question just for those saying that alchemists aren't as good as clerics: Can anyone who isnt a cleric fill the healer role?

There's probably a lot of viable healer combinations, including Bards and Druids with the right support. But this thread is kinda about comparing them to clerics, in which key they don't measure up. Not because the cleric is the only "viable" healer, but because they were over-the-top excessive heal machines in the playtest. Nobody needed that amount.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
John Lynch 106 wrote:
A question just for those saying that alchemists aren't as good as clerics: Can anyone who isnt a cleric fill the healer role?

Strong contender is Champion. If you aren't time restricted they can cast Lay on Hands a couple dozen times a day.


ChibiNyan wrote:
John Lynch 106 wrote:
A question just for those saying that alchemists aren't as good as clerics: Can anyone who isnt a cleric fill the healer role?
There's probably a lot of viable healer combinations, including Bards and Druids with the right support. But this thread is kinda about comparing them to clerics, in which key they don't measure up. Not because the cleric is the only "viable" healer, but because they were over-the-top excessive heal machines in the playtest. Nobody needed that amount.

They weren't nearly so excessive once the PT nerfed it to 1+Cha mod per day, which the CRB keeps. Also the CRB needing the 1-action Heal is a BIG deal. With those things in mind I really do think Alchemists can reasonably keep apace. There is some variance based on investment, a Cleric with high Cha has a lot of extra healing, but they are suffering elsewhere for it. Alchemist healing per-day is tied to their key score, so they have more room for other stuff too, even without blowing all their reagents on healing.


Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
At level 4 an Alchemist with 18 INT can craft 16 Elixers and at level 5 they can craft 27 Elixers total.

It's very hard to do a 1 to 1 comparison of uses when channel can heal everyone in the party: if you have a 5 man party and everyone is wounded that's more healing that 5 elixirs.

John Lynch 106 wrote:
A question just for those saying that alchemists aren't as good as clerics: Can anyone who isnt a cleric fill the healer role?

That's not really a yes or no, binary answer. Anyone with the medicine skill can technically fill the healing role: it's all a matter of how well they can do it. IMO, in the playtest, cleric with healing domain is the gold standard for healing and everyone seems worse by comparison.

For the question you pose, only you can really can answer that because only you know what you expect of a healer and what you think is the minimum level of healing ability you think is required to fill the healing role. For myself, I think they could: they'll just feel a bit inadequate if they ever meet a cleric that's channeling. Nothing like seeing someone healing 10 people at once with a single power to show you you're not in the same league as they are.


ChibiNyan wrote:
John Lynch 106 wrote:
A question just for those saying that alchemists aren't as good as clerics: Can anyone who isnt a cleric fill the healer role?
There's probably a lot of viable healer combinations, including Bards and Druids with the right support. But this thread is kinda about comparing them to clerics, in which key they don't measure up. Not because the cleric is the only "viable" healer, but because they were over-the-top excessive heal machines in the playtest. Nobody needed that amount.

Fair enough.


That comparison to Clerics is a matter of AoE healing vs single target, not Cleric vs Alchemist. Druids and Divine Sorcs can use 3-action as well. I know this all too well as one of my parties has a Divine Sorc who actually likes the healer role and they do some serious work with it, occasionally to my chagrin.


Edge93 wrote:
That comparison to Clerics is a matter of AoE healing vs single target, not Cleric vs Alchemist. Druids and Divine Sorcs can use 3-action as well. I know this all too well as one of my parties has a Divine Sorc who actually likes the healer role and they do some serious work with it, occasionally to my chagrin.

That's true to an extent, but clerics get to do that without touching their spellcasting: clerics are great healers by default even of they pick no healing spells and have native feats/abilities to buff that even more. It's hard to beat an auto-heightened AoE, innate healing ability.

PS: They even have an ability to use spellpoints to channel for even more uses...


graystone wrote:
Cyouni wrote:
The other thing is that through mutagens, the alchemist can possibly be the strongest buffer in the game because they always have top-level buffs. That's not something that can be ignored.
Well, it kind of IS something you can ignore when you're looking at how good a healer they are. Second, in the playtest, mutagens were uncommon rarity so I'm not sure what certainty we have that every non-Mutagenist will have access to them.

That's definitely fair, but I suspect they're at common given how there's no text on Mutagenist that shifts them that way. And I would be incredibly surprised if they're limited to their starting two mutagens for the entirety of their career without hunting for other types.

(It's more in response to the fact that the Cleric remains a full caster in addition to Divine Font.)

graystone wrote:
PS: They even have an ability to use spellpoints to channel for even more uses...

Reminder that spell points have been dodo'ed, and I would be incredibly, incredibly surprised if Focus were to be allowed to get more uses on Divine Font, given how easy it is to recover.


Cyouni wrote:
That's definitely fair, but I suspect they're at common given how there's no text on Mutagenist that shifts them that way. And I would be incredibly surprised if they're limited to their starting two mutagens for the entirety of their career without hunting for other types.

I HOPE they are common but they might have shifted the text from the class to the item section. Quite honestly, I hope a lot of rarities have shifted down.

Cyouni wrote:
Reminder that spell points have been dodo'ed, and I would be incredibly, incredibly surprised if Focus were to be allowed to get more uses on Divine Font, given how easy it is to recover.

*nods* yep. Healing Font used spellpoints so I'll be curious to see how it's changed or what replaces it.


I'm okay with a Healing Cleric being the best healer, but a Healing Anything Else should be a better healer than a Cleric that doesn't care about healing. If investing into something doesn't make you better than someone else who didn't do anything other than pick a class for features that are unrelated to that ability then... why invest?


graystone wrote:
Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
At level 4 an Alchemist with 18 INT can craft 16 Elixers and at level 5 they can craft 27 Elixers total.
It's very hard to do a 1 to 1 comparison of uses when channel can heal everyone in the party: if you have a 5 man party and everyone is wounded that's more healing that 5 elixirs.

I’d agree, and I would say that ‘s the first sign of engaging balance; when classes can overlap roles and not be 1 to 1 comparisons to each other. Morgan said Clerics are the ‘better’ healer, and i take that to mean they will probably heal the most per resource (heal) spent and possibly the most versatility with each heal cast (1, 2 or 3 action). This does come with the drawback of needing to heal in the moment and sacrificing focus from elsewhere. A level 6 Alchemist making 30 Elixers for a party of 5 is basically delegating the healing to individual agency allowing their focus to be completely free. Both i would say are completely viable so long as the numbers remain comparable.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
graystone wrote:
Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
At level 4 an Alchemist with 18 INT can craft 16 Elixers and at level 5 they can craft 27 Elixers total.
It's very hard to do a 1 to 1 comparison of uses when channel can heal everyone in the party: if you have a 5 man party and everyone is wounded that's more healing that 5 elixirs.
I’d agree, and I would say that ‘s the first sign of engaging balance; when classes can overlap roles and not be 1 to 1 comparisons to each other. Morgan said Clerics are the ‘better’ healer, and i take that to mean they will probably heal the most per resource (heal) spent and possibly the most versatility with each heal cast (1, 2 or 3 action). This does come with the drawback of needing to heal in the moment and sacrificing focus from elsewhere. A level 6 Alchemist making 30 Elixers for a party of 5 is basically delegating the healing to individual agency allowing their focus to be completely free. Both i would say are completely viable so long as the numbers remain comparable.

Although free to do what exactly? They are subpar martials, wont have many reagents for bombs/mutagens/etc. Meanwhile the Cleric is still a full caster with decent cantrips.


Pumpkinhead11 wrote:
I’d agree, and I would say that ‘s the first sign of engaging balance

Really? Graystone's comment seems to be suggesting that the cleric can be several times more efficient than the alchemist in terms of raw healing and action economy. That sounds pretty scary if the goal is engaging balance.

The alchemist who crafts dozens of elixirs isn't going to be able to craft anything else either, which is the big issue. It seems like the whole debate is currently about whether or not alchemist healing can keep up with cleric healing, but it neglects that the cleric is doing this healing without touching any of its core class features.


I guess if you want a fighting Alchemist a bit of multiclass would really spice up the whole thing...not that he should need to...

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