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With regards to rogues being the greatest at skills, they do get the most skill boosts and feats, but all of the other classes can be just as good as, *or better* than a rogue at a small number of skills. Although rogues will be trained/expert/master and ultimately be legendary at more skills than anyone else, they will not be better at non-dexterity based skills than a class that focuses on one or two of those skills and that has a class attribute that is used by those skills.
For example, a rogue will probably worse at society than a wizard who chooses to focus on that skill, because the wizard will probably have a higher intelligence.
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With regards to rogues being the greatest at skills, they do get the most skill boosts and feats, but all of the other classes can be just as good as, *or better* than a rogue at a small number of skills. Although rogues will be trained/expert/master and ultimately be legendary at more skills than anyone else, they will not be better at non-dexterity based skills than a class that focuses on one or two of those skills and that has a class attribute that is used by those skills.
For example, a rogue will probably worse at society than a wizard who chooses to focus on that skill, because the wizard will probably have a higher intelligence.
You're right, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing; the Rogue won't be better than a Wizard who puts everything into being the best at Arcana (and I don't think she should be) but what she can do is still be pretty great at Arcana and also excel at the other three knowledge skills and still be pretty good at other skills as well.
Rogues are benefiting a great deal from the optimization ceiling being lowered. It requires much less investment to be good enough at a skill - even the most thoroughly invested characters cannot min max a skill so that they will never fail, so the Rogue being less reliable but still consistent enough at far more than the one skill the other character is good at is a real advantage. Plus, Rogues can still be uncontested at dexterity skills.
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Rogues are equal to fighters and barbarians at the tops of the damage charts when everyone is attacking a flat footed target.Damage wise, that seems reasonable, yeah. That's somewhat conditional and their HP remain notably lower, however.I don't think this is correct, I do actually think rogues suffer relative to fighters/barbarians. First, the obvious numbers:
* Barbarians can scale up to +19 damage with a two-handed weapon (d12), or get +15 with a 1-handed weapon (animal instinct, also d12). Rogues are constrained to +14 (average of 4d6) with either a one- or two-handed weapon, and their best options there are d6 and d8 respectively. Barbarians win out.
* Fighters have less flat bonuses to damage, but are starting at +2 from legendary greater weapon specialization and +4 from being able to use a d8 one-handed relative to d6, or +8 considering a d12 relative to d8. They get a bit less flat damage (+6 or +10 relative to +14), but at +10% chance to both hit and crit... I think the numbers pan out better for fighters overall, though that's highly dependent on AC.This is *strictly* looking at damage. If you then consider that rogues are *much* squishier than these classes (they're probably the squishiest of the straight martials, at least monks have better AC...), then yeah, I do think rogues aren't the "glass cannons" they used to be, and are meant more as debuffers and skills support.
Note, I'm not factoring in the rogues ability to debuff, which is obviously a *huge* asset, but counting that doesn't seem fair when comparing straight-up damage.
One of the thief debuffs adds an extra 2d6 damage to each flat footed hit. One of the ruffian debuffs adds weakness 5 of their chosen type which is practically a raw damage increase which also adds to allies if they use the same damage type. These don’t apply to the first flat-footed attack but once it’s applied on your first flat footed hit you just need to hit once a round to refresh.
I don’t think they can (or should) out damage Fighters or Barbarians but I think they are certainly close enough to be extremely valuable party members.
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On the topic of “alchemists of a certain type are basically required to take certain feats,” I think that, in terms of future release material, one advantage of the alchemist is that in addition to feats, they can get new kinds of bombs, elixirs, mutagens, and potentially other alchemical items to get new toys that are different from “number goes up.”
The Alchemist certainly seems a lot like a caster in many ways, except they have only 30 spells to choose from, and have to take class feats to make the damage and DCs of their "spells" scale properly.
I think the dearth of options certainly contributes to the Alchemist's problems, but it's not the sole cause of them. It is the problem most easily remedied by new books, however.
The Alchemist's mechanical issues (bulk, holding 3 items with only 2 hands, vague rules interactions, etc.) are going to need to be addressed by FAQs, but some of the balance problems will hopefully warrant some actual reworking. Paizo was willing to overhaul the Shifter via FAQ (and the Alchemist is hardly in so bad a state), so I believe that there's still hope for the PF2 Alchemist, but as it stands, it's still incredibly disappointing to see my favorite PF1 class end up as the chained Monk/Rogue of PF2.
Disappointing further is that PF2 is overall an excellent system, and every other class is (in my opinion) incredibly well done, further highlighting the issues of the Alchemist in particular.
It will be interesting to see how the investigator measures up to the rogue for skills when that comes out
The alchemist’s free items not scaling is such a big problem it makes multi-classing into one useless. The archetype is recommended for Rogues for free poisons but the DC on those poisons make them useless.
The alchemist’s free items not scaling is such a big problem it makes multi-classing into one useless. The archetype is recommended for Rogues for free poisons but the DC on those poisons make them useless. They should already be balanced by having less damage being roughly 5 lvls behind the curve, they don’t need to almost autofail on top.
The alchemist’s free items not scaling is such a big problem it makes multi-classing into one useless. The archetype is recommended for Rogues for free poisons but the DC on those poisons make them useless. They should already be balanced by having less damage being roughly 5 lvls behind the curve, they don’t need to almost autofail on top.
At least Poisons come in a good range of levels. The 1->3->11->17 progression on Bombs means Tanglefoot Bags and Thunderstones have a couple of "dead" levels where their DCs are way behind, even with Alchemist as your primary class.
Thunderstones end up 9 points behind your class DC at level 10, so any Thunderstones you prepare ahead of time may as well not have a secondary effect.
With regards to rogues being the greatest at skills, they do get the most skill boosts and feats, but all of the other classes can be just as good as, *or better* than a rogue at a small number of skills. Although rogues will be trained/expert/master and ultimately be legendary at more skills than anyone else, they will not be better at non-dexterity based skills than a class that focuses on one or two of those skills and that has a class attribute that is used by those skills.
For example, a rogue will probably worse at society than a wizard who chooses to focus on that skill, because the wizard will probably have a higher intelligence.
You're right, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing; the Rogue won't be better than a Wizard who puts everything into being the best at Arcana (and I don't think she should be) but what she can do is still be pretty great at Arcana and also excel at the other three knowledge skills and still be pretty good at other skills as well.
Rogues are benefiting a great deal from the optimization ceiling being lowered. It requires much less investment to be good enough at a skill - even the most thoroughly invested characters cannot min max a skill so that they will never fail, so the Rogue being less reliable but still consistent enough at far more than the one skill the other character is good at is a real advantage. Plus, Rogues can still be uncontested at dexterity skills.
I totally agree with you, and my point was that rogues are not unbalanced in their skill monkey dominance, because each class will have one to three skills that they are the best at.
Also note that at really high levels, the apex item for a rogue will almost certainly be the one for dexterity, but bards will use the one for charisma, wizards the one for intelligence, etc. So, fighters will still be the best at athletics, wizards at arcana and/or society and/or crafting, bards at performance and/or deception/intimidate/deception, etc..
Double skill feats and skill increase is overkill. If it were one or the other the class would still remain a great skill monkey.
I’d say rogue, for all the reasons noted so far. Skill feats are frequently not minor abilities, and having 2-4 times the skills and improved skills of anyone else is something to be wary of. The do suffer some in combat but not quite enough(to my mind at least) to offset this level of power. But it’s honestly not too far out of line for the power curve.
Personally while it certainly needs some work right now to bring it more in line with the rest I don’t think the alchemist is as bad off as some seem to think. And while we have a while before it happens I expect the alchemist to be the post child for power creep for this edition. That fact is that each book is going to have some new alchemical items in it, each likely only partially helpful in specific situations. But to the alchemist that’s just going to be a perpetually expanding toolbox that they can pull from at will and at need with almost no planning. I am hoping they control this somehow, but I’m not expecting it.
Adding these two together means I half expect the promised investigator to be vastly overpowered. Despite the effort and success I think they’ve had at balance so far. The other half of me thinks they’ll find some way to adjust for this, but only time will tell.
Given how they use uncommon, I doubt alchemist would get access to a lot of the alchemical items, much less the powerful ones.
*nods* I expect the alchemist to have FAR less they can actually use from new book than other classes just because of this: uncommon seems 'common' for new alchemy elements so far.
Given how they use uncommon, I doubt alchemist would get access to a lot of the alchemical items, much less the powerful ones.*nods* I expect the alchemist to have FAR less they can actually use from new book than other classes just because of this: uncommon seems 'common' for new alchemy elements so far.
I’d be happy to be wrong in this case. But only time will tell. And the uncommon tag doesn’t mean that an item is always unavailable, despite how a few have been treating it. It just means you must meet qualification X to get item Y without specific GM approval. Paizo probably needs to do a better job at defining what those are, but mostly X seems to be being in or from the right geographical area for alchemy.
Paizo probably needs to do a better job at defining what those are, but mostly X seems to be being in or from the right geographical area for alchemy.
"Uncommon items are available only to those who have special training, grew up in a certain culture, or come from a particular part of the world." Unless they tag an item with the "culture" or "geographical area", there is nothing to to say it's not one needing "special training". Even with the tags, it's limiting you to the culture/area you're either currently in or grew up in so, assuming all alchemy items aren't going to have the same tag, would make it quite limited to what you can pick up from new material.
Can the DM be nice and allow you an item from far off lands to be found in the local market? Sure, but how often are you expecting to do that? If you can find them even though they are uncommon then they really aren't that uncommon. Either that or are you expecting the group to go along with a series of quests to find the newest hard to find alchemy items every time a new book comes out?
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Uncommon isn't rare. Finding, sometimes, an uncommon item in the local market is... well, quite common :D
Uncommon means that you need an access to the item. It doesn't mean that the access is hard to get.
In my opinion, every GM should give access to some uncommon items. Either randomly or through research if his player wants a specific one.
Rare items, on the other hand, are extremely limited and should only be accessible through quests or story.
New alchemical items won't help the alchemist any more than new spells will help the casters.
The problem is NOT the items alone.
The problem is that there's a ton of feats that are either straight up feat taxes, or plainly worthless for an adventurer and 100% npc feats (int to bomb damage, quick bomber, powerful alchemy, enduring alchemy, efficient alchemy, etc)
the problem is that they have base class abilities that flat out fail to work unless you pick up specific "optional" feats (double/alacrity)
the problem is that they have abilities that literally do nothing (mutagenist)
the problem is that they have abilities that stop being any sort of useful 2 levels after you get them (chirurgeon, both his level 1 feature AND his perpetual Alchemy)
the problem, is as they have set him to be, even future realeases look grim: what would be the "perpetual" alchemy of a poisoner? a level 1 poison at level 7? a level 3 poison at level 11?!
"those sound really useful!" said no one ever.
the problem, ultimately, is not that they have "1 severely large problem" but that they have literally dozens of problems that the one piles on top the other to create this mess of a class
Ohh, I agree that the class as it is needs some work. Clearly not as much as others appear to of course. For instance granting your entire party a permanent +2 & +3 bonus to both poison and disease saves is a major boon. You don’t get the general rune to surpass that until 7 & 9 levels after you get that as a chirurgeon. that isn’t worthless after 2 levels and may be the biggest continual party boost in the game right now.
But I think the class will get the corrections it needs. I’d rather they get the errata and FAQ things done sooner, as it seems more important to me than getting the GMG out. But I’m willing to give some faith on this. And the upside of the wait is that we through play will find more that needs fixing or that things that seemed wrong work fine in actual play.
The chirugeon needing both medicine and craft is a bit annoying but I am not sure it is really a huge issue. As an alchemist you are always going to be working up craft. If you really care about doing all the things medicine can do than investing in medicine seems pretty expected. Its not a huge boost but it allows you to do your medicine without having to pump wisdom.
It would be nice if they got something in addition to that but it still at least has some use unlike what mutagenicists get.
Honestly I think chirugeons biggest issue is going to wind up being action economy rather than healing ability. Their potions are plenty fine for healing use although it would help if there was a couple extra half steps to help even out some of the dead zone issues where the previous version starts going a bit stale. But their biggest problem healing is they basically have to be up in melee range and use a bunch of actions to give somebody an elixer or to force them to drink it. It is kinda weird that battlefield medicine is easier to do in combat than giving somebody a potion and them drinking it action wise.
In my opinion, every GM should give access to some uncommon items.
I'm all for this opinion, but I'm not sure the core rules will give every dm this opinion too. I'm already IN a game where uncommon aren't common at all: if it's not something we find in the actual adventure, don't expect to find it unless something else gives you access to it. I know because I was interested in a character using an alchemical crossbow and was told that it'd have to be found during the adventure and he didn't have any plans to place any at this time. So I just made a character that didn't want any uncommon items...
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P. 509 Treasure and rarity.
'It's best to introduce uncommon items as a reward fairly regularly but rare items only occasionally'
Chirurgeons have familiars. In fact, all alchemists should take one, as it's the only way to properly use your elixirs of healing.
First, your familiar can have an inventory. Nothing states he can't have a few Elixirs on him (well, not more than 9 as he doesn't have the necessary strength to hold a bulk).
About the familiar movement, it's 25 feet so the same as yours. And as the familiar is going into melee range, you can stay wherever it suits you best.
It also depends on what you have in hand, the alchemist doesn't need his both hands to attack (bombs or bestial mutagens are not two-handed weapons) so you can easily hold an elixir at the beginning of the fight if you were expecting it.
So, I think the familiar is great for healing.
And if your party is a little bit organized, some of your fellow comrades can end their turn next to you when they need healing. Movement is far more easy in PF2, it should not be such an issue.
Nothing says your familiar can have an inventory. I wouldn't assume that absence of saying they don't have it automatically makes them have it, especially when they have blank attributes so you can't even really properly calculate stuff like their Bulk.
It's logical for an animal to be able to carry a few potions. Anyway, considering the length of a fight and the fact that you can't use more than one per round, you won't need more than a few. So even without inventory, having access to 2 Elixirs of life is nice.
Again, it's ridiculously easy to increase your mobility vs increasing the familiar mobility.
My chirurgeon at playtest had 55 speed usually as an example.
As for the familiar having an inventory, that's entering house rule territory, AND doesn't help that much because the familiar would still need to "draw" things.
Plus, a familiar on its own is extremely fragile. A single Aoe and its down.
As for allies wasting their actions to come to you for healing:
A) I do not consider someone who destroys his own teams action economy just to be healed, good.
B) I'm dreading the moment my front line collapses to the back line to get healed.Again:
Familiars help, but not nearly enough.When you literally need double the actions for the same Heal AND melee range, that already shows how much weaker you are comparatively.
Again:
Give alchemists "can draw alchemical items as a free action" and a lot of their balancing problems will go away.
I've played PF1 for long time enough to know that most of the time you don't need more than a few squares to reach an ally.
I was speaking of the back row character when saying they could come to you. The frontline is healed by the familiar while you heal the back line.And yes, I agree that you need proper positioning for your healing to be action efficient. It's challenging but not impossible.
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I've homebrewed a throwable THP item for the Churgeon. So you can spend combat "healing". Numbers are still a work in progress, but so
Liquid Bandage: [Alchemy][Bomb][Consumable] A quick drying semi-clear fluid that can be splashed over a creature to put out fire, sooth acids, and staunch bleeding. It also harden into thin barrier, providing a little protective before flaking off. A creature can be willingly be hit by this. If you spend 2 actions to apply it within touch range maximize the temporary hit points gained, and they get 2 saves.
Lesser: 1d4+2 temporary hit points for 1 minute, and they can immediately make a save against persistent fire, acid, or bleeding damage.
Minor: 2d4+4, and the flat DC is 10.
Greater: 3d4+6, t, and the flat DC is 5.
Major: 4d4+8, and they automatically succeed.
But I do like the idea of a dart gun.
So, you have "just a bit" worse Action Economy for 1 Heal in a fight and TERRIBLE action economy for the rest of it.
Your familiar can also "refill" by coming back to you and take a few elixirs from your belt. So, instead of 1 action heal, he can get to roughly 1.5 actions heal if the fight starts to lag. Not awesome, but not bad.
Not that I disagree with what you say about quick inventory access.
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Nothing says your familiar can have an inventory. I wouldn't assume that absence of saying they don't have it automatically makes them have it, especially when they have blank attributes so you can't even really properly calculate stuff like their Bulk.It's logical for an animal to be able to carry a few potions. Anyway, considering the length of a fight and the fact that you can't use more than one per round, you won't need more than a few. So even without inventory, having access to 2 Elixirs of life is nice.No one saying it isn't nice.
What I'm saying is it's not enough.
Those 2 elixirs equal a SINGLE heal.
So, you have "just a bit" worse Action Economy for 1 Heal in a fight and TERRIBLE action economy for the rest of it.
Hence why they are out-of-combat healers (in a game with free out of combat healing).
There are so many ways to help with that, even with Errata.
As an example:
Fix the bandolier to actually apply to 8 potions as well.
It's already hilarious how you can pull a whole kit as a free action from it but require an action for a single potion after all.
As many things as I like about PF2, the entire system of handling manipulate actions and the use of items/shifting of grips feels pretty arbitrary and not fully baked. They got close on a lot of it, but I think that "manipulate" and hand usage is going to be the thorn in PF2's side for a very long time. There will probably be a fair amount of house rules, errata and even official alternate rules about how to handle (no pun intended) item usage at the table.
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What Chirurgeon needed was an Injection Gun/Spear that uses vials of potions and poisons as ammo and allows you to preload them with like 3 charges of such items and then deliver them to foes and friends with an action. Or, perhaps, instead of preloading, make them a viable ammo so you load them in as part of reload action, preserving your action economy.
Should have been either a Field Research ability, or a lvl1 feat, or just a generic equipment anyone can get but they start with.
Basically a fantasy version of the biohacker. It sounds odd but it would be one way to get a better action economy to actually heal people. Heck give them syringes where they can go up and inject their elixirs into people with a single action. It is just super weird that you can combat medicine somebody for 1 action but to heal with your actual class stuff is going to be 2 or 3 actions at least.
I was actually thinking about a class feature or feat where a Chirurgeon would be able to spend Elixir of healing to use Battle Medicine without being affected from the timeout.
while it isn't a class feat 'godless healing' from the lost omens book boosts your battle medicine, and drops the cooldown to only one hour for each party member.
While it isn't perfect it makes battle medicine a lot more usable and stretches your life elixirs much further
I was actually thinking about a class feature or feat where a Chirurgeon would be able to spend Elixir of healing to use Battle Medicine without being affected from the timeout.while it isn't a class feat 'godless healing' from the lost omens book boosts your battle medicine, and drops the cooldown to only one hour for each party member.
While it isn't perfect it makes battle medicine a lot more usable and stretches your life elixirs much further
I believe Godless Healing only affects healing used on yourself, not everyone. It's still a great feat, though.
Dont you also have to be an atheist for that (it really sounds like a requirement for such a feat)? At which point you can't be a Chirurgeon worshiper of Sarenrae.
That is correct; it's a Rahadoumi option and requires you to worship no gods. It's a fair restriction, since essentially what it does is give Medicine+Alchemy healers a powerful tool that clerics can't access. Though I can see why it'd be a bit bothersome for some.