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In my opinion, the whole Youtube video about Familiars that Mark Seifter made should be entirely ignored. The craziest things, like reloading a Heavy Crossbow, are allowed. On the other hand, a lot of basic things are forbidden, making the Familiar mostly useless for purposes that I've seen at various tables and that have never imbalanced the game nor shocked anyone.
In my opinion, the whole Youtube video about Familiars that Mark Seifter made can be entirely ignored. The craziest things, like reloading a Heavy Crossbow, are allowed. On the other hand, a lot of basic things are forbidden, making the Familiar mostly useless for purposes that I've seen at various tables and that have never imbalanced the game nor shocked anyone.Reloading a crossbow is allowed if the familiar is holding it.
Which means that if you, the one who has the crossbow, wants the familiar to reload it you have to give it to him.
Giving the crossbow to him would require 1 action.
The same action you'd be using to reload the crossbow.Mark on his video make the example of a character with a crossbow and explicitly said "you can just shot and them release or drop it on the ground, and have the familiar reload it ( reload requires the item to be hold, so 1 action to be picked up and 1 more to reload )".
I've seen the video, so I know what he said.
I'm just saying that a monkey being able to reload a Heavy Crossbow seems way more illogical than a monkey feeding an Elixir to someone. Especially someone unconscious, as the familiar giving a potion to an unconscious person is a common sight in fantasy.After the video, there's only one thing a Familiar can do: Valet.
Manual Dexterity serves no purpose, Independent serves no purpose, Master Form serves no purpose, Lab Assistant serves no purpose. Nice job killing the feature entirely.
I asked this very question on the video since, well, yeah. I like to play alchemists and a good part of where I was getting my cool stuff was my familiar boosting my elixir usage. I never used lab assistant to begin with since I usually send out my familiar to deliver elixirs from afar, but what little benefit it did provide goes away with this ruling
With a 1 action command, your lab assistant can use Quick Alchemy twice, I believe.
It can, but you have to spend an action to take one from your familiar, to the net actions are the same
Actually, it's worse for lab assistant. Quick alchemy, use item ×2 is 4 actions, command familiar, take items, use both is 5. If we assume the familiar can use it's acrions to hand both to you, it becomes command familiar (lab assistant x2), command familiar (hand both items), use item, use item is 4, so breaking even, and in order for lab assistant to use either methods, it requires enduring alchemy and assuming it works for you familiar as well
What is the purpose of lab assistant?
What no one ever mentions is that to use Quick Alchemy you have to "either holding or wearing alchemist's tools" which means that even before this, your familiar had to have Toolbearer to use it AT ALL as it stated in lab assistant that Quick Alchemy has "the same cost and requirement as if you used it". So it never had much use as it required manual dexterity and toolbearer before that and then people wanted independent and valet so... you're 5 abilities deep into a familiar to get... not much.
Manual dexterity should allow for familiars to administer potions, so if your hands are otherwise occupied, that could be handy.
It does not: they can use items which means administer or drinking potions. That's what the video says.
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I’m not even really sure what the intention of familiars are anymore. It’s a class feat, it should be giving some sort of combat benefit right? At least on par with reach/widen spell as a level 1 feat.
Maybe it’s not intended as a patch for the bad action economy of activated items (which I can understand), and to be honest I’d rather they make better action econ on item use an alchemist base feature rather than requiring the workaround of taking a familiar to save one (or more) actions every combat, which always seemed janky.
As it stands though, if they still wanted to make Lab Assistant have a use, just don’t require the familiar be in your space.
It's pretty clear they never intended it to be a patch for item activation action economy. Although Valet can still be net positive in that regard by using one action to draw two items you're wearing.
Even if it doesn't enhance action economy, it's clearly meant to do something, which in it's current state does not. I'd actually be more than happy with it if it was like the alchemy version of deliver touch spell, but it's very much not the case.
With familiars unable to activate items, lab assistant does literally nothing that the alchemist cannot already do by using QA themselves
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So with a Familiar it can use Quick Alchemy twice, which are still usable until the start of your next turn. So two people can grab an item from it and use them themselves. Once you can make two, or three, items at once they can use one action to wander over and deliver stuff.
This is still useful because you have a large number of items you can situationally make, it just has a tight window of usefulness.
Or your teammates can just grab items off of your person
It's not even clear if your familiar benefits from class features of feats that improve quick alchemy, making the double brew/alchemical alacrity point dubious. There's actually a stronger argument for familiars activating items then there is for it getting those
Even if it doesn't enhance action economy, it's clearly meant to do something, which in it's current state does not.
Well is CAN do something: it can use quick alchemy when you do not have a free hand. For instance, you're using your cool alchemic crossbow and someone needs an elixir. Your familiar can brew it up and even hand it to them if they're adjacent. It's niche, but it's a use.
There's zero argument for them activating items because it's directly stated that they can't ever do that.
Actually:
Manual dexterity explicitly allows you to use manipulate actions. Interact is a manipulate action. All elixirs are actuvated via interact actions
There is very much an argument that this ability gives it the ability to use this. In general, they cant use interact actions, but this specific ability changes that
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Even if it doesn't enhance action economy, it's clearly meant to do something, which in it's current state does not.Well is CAN do something: it can use quick alchemy when you do not have a free hand. For instance, you're using your cool alchemic crossbow and someone needs an elixir. Your familiar can brew it up and even hand it to them if they're adjacent. It's niche, but it's a use.
I think one problem with this is that the familiar has to be in your square and typically doesn't have a reach of 5 feet.
It could make an item that someone else comes to grab even though the alchemist's hands are full. It can even make the item then rush to the person that needs to grab it.