So, in my group we are looking at doing a mostly non-magic party and I was wondering how viable it would be to do an alchemist. The action economy tends to be the downfall but I was reading up on the Injection Spear (and the Injection trait), It reads as below.
This weapon can be filled with a liquid, usually an injury poison. Immediately after a successful attack with the weapon, you can inject the target with the loaded contents with a single Interact action. [b](If the target is willing, the injection takes only 1 Interact action total.)[b] Refilling the weapon with a new substance requires 3 Interact actions and uses two hands.
My question is about the part in bold (my editing). If I am reading that correctly it seems to indicate that you can inject a willing target without an attack. Would this allow you to do so without doing damage? If it still would do damage, can you do just the minimum or maybe without adding your strength modifier?
Thanks in advance.
If your entire group - including the GM - is looking for a way to make this work, then yeah. Injection spear should work fine.
There are rules lawyery arguments to be made that it doesn't work, but what's the fun in that?
Some other things to mention are Healing Bomb and using Advanced Alchemy and handing out healing elixirs before battle starts.
I know there is someone on these forums who promotes Alchemist as being a primary in-combat healer.
As you noticed about the action economy, trying to massage that issue is what'll really help.
Battle Medicine being a 1-action makes it worth the Feat slot IMO, even if you skip Assurance. It's just that good.
The other nearly gamechanging action-saver for me has been the Familiar's Independent + Manual Dexterity.
Each of your turns, the familiar can spend 1 action to either draw something from your gear, or spend 1 action handing the item to you.
Basically, with a 1-turn cooldown, you can "free draw" an item, making an elixir, ect only cost the 1-action use. This is tremendous, but I totally get the familiar possibly clashing w/ a character idea. If it does, consider asking the GM if you can reflavor it significantly, possibly even into some personal tool of your own invention.
Injection spear to heal is a neat idea. Definitely not going to be refilling it in combat though.
Healing Bomb is not really worth the Feat slot. *Maybe* if the Alch is a non-Chiurgeon (and doesn't carry healing) it can be justified, but needing to spend a full Reagent, and action to Quick Alch is brutal for how little they heal.
With the ability to spend a Class Feat on Wizard, Archer, Medic, ect, Healing Bomb does not compare favorably. Literally the Wiz Dedication's 2 Cantrips (Shield) are better.
[...] Minions cannot Activate items.
Are you sure about this? I looked in the Minion trait but did not find it.
(Which doesn't have to mean anything because I very often don't find all allegedly relevant (parts of) rules for certain topics spread over the CRB or further books.)
Could you or s.b. else please point me to a source?
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[...] Minions cannot Activate items.Are you sure about this? I looked in the Minion trait but did not find it.
(Which doesn't have to mean anything because I very often don't find all allegedly relevant (parts of) rules for certain topics spread over the CRB or further books.)
Could you or s.b. else please point me to a source?
It is hidden in the Companion Items paragraph :
"Companion Items
Source Core Rulebook pg. 604 4.0
You might want to acquire items that benefit an animal or beast that assists you. These items have the companion trait, meaning they function only for animal companions, familiars, and similar creatures. Normally these are the only items a companion can use. Other items can qualify, at the GM's discretion, but a companion can never Activate an Item."
Note that I made a mistake : this is for Companions (ie, Familiars and Animal Companions) and not for all Minions.
So, theoretically a summoned creature could activate an item unless some other part of RAW prevents this.
To be clear, letting a Dexterity familiar feed potions, ect is a very common houserule, and it is worth asking your GM about how they handle familiars in general.
While RaW the handoff thing is legal, it's also RaW that any familiar riding on your back will be hit by AoE damage, and likely die. A lot.
Actually, now that I say that, I think it also might be RaW that the familiar cannot ride the character without spending actions on that. Yikes.
Though, a tiny familiar can share your square an have reach upon everything in it, so handoff still works... it just would look way less believable RaW to have a little creature jump x feet vert to reach stuff, but not technically ride you.
Also would mean they don't move with the character, and have to chase you.
So... yeah. Ask your GM. Odds are they already ignore one or more familiar rules, and which ones matter a good deal.
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To be clear, letting a Dexterity familiar feed potions, ect is a very common houserule, and it is worth asking your GM about how they handle familiars in general.
While RaW the handoff thing is legal, it's also RaW that any familiar riding on your back will be hit by AoE damage, and likely die. A lot.
Actually, now that I say that, I think it also might be RaW that the familiar cannot ride the character without spending actions on that. Yikes.
Though, a tiny familiar can share your square an have reach upon everything in it, so handoff still works... it just would look way less believable RaW to have a little creature jump x feet vert to reach stuff, but not technically ride you.
Also would mean they don't move with the character, and have to chase you.So... yeah. Ask your GM. Odds are they already ignore one or more familiar rules, and which ones matter a good deal.
This is good advice. But I will note the familiar satchel makes your familiar immune to AoE as long as you don't leave the item unattended. It also means your familiar can't be sitting on your shoulder, though.
It surprised me a bit that Forensic Investigator with the medic archetype isn't mentioned here.
Despite the slack Investigator is getting, this particular combination imo does fine as a non magical healer.
Later levels he can pick up Herbalist dedication to double down with more alchemical healing if needed as well.
It's great as a side-dish or supplement, but IMO the hard cooldown limit is very dangerous / deadly.
Medic is amazing to grab on that, but it still only gives you *one* more heal to dish out with the emergency CD override.
Honestly, it might be worth it for an Investigator to save the Feat or two, and instead just buy and keep a stable of 5ish Healing Potions in their inventory to use when Battle Medicine is on cooldown.
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In short: FM Investigator is *great* if you're already leaning into the class and Battle Medicine, but I do not at all recommend it for the primary combat healer.
If the party is willing to buy and use Healing Potions, it might be enough.
Nah, usually the 1-2 battle medicines per person per hour, if supplemented with something on the side (like herbalist, or for magical healing I've seen Witch archetype quite often), is enough.
I mean, yes. I guess I wasn't clear enough in saying that, as we seem to agree. It's not a good idea for a FM Investigator to be the only combat healer, but it is amazing as a supplement to on-demand options.
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Just to be clear for readers, the Medic override is once per the medic.
You will be allowed to Bttl Md someone once, then that's on CD.
If you need to heal them a 2nd time, that burns the Medic override, which cannot be done again to anyone else. If you have to heal them a 3rd time, you need a different tool, like a healing potion.
While pricey, imo healing potions might suffice there, but even something easy to throw out like the Kineticist Ocean's Balm would make me a whole lot more comfortable with that setup.
There's just too many ways for someone to take a lot of unexpected dmg, from getting poisoned, a crit, ect.
Honestly, my party has been in more than one situation that would have had more deaths if we did not combo my Char's Bttl Md w/ the Cleric's normal Heals. This game can be super swingy.
Chirurgeon and healing bomb is weird, once you get 13 than it become pretty good because while its less total healing than the 3 elixirs at that point you can afford to quick alchemy some out and they are actually pretty decent from being maximized while being a lot easier to position for.
That's a very good point that I wished I had thought about, thank you.
The Chiurgeon L 13 that auto max-rolls all Quick Alch Elixirs of Life does really change up a lot of decision making.
It's annoying as hell that it is mutually exclusive w/ being able to make 3 Elxr o Lf w/ just 1 Reagent, but it does still work with the Perpetual L5.
That really seems like it'll make the decision-making get weird, and I'm wondering if it's normal to stop prepping Elixirs of Lf altogether at that point.
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Currently playing a level 8 Gunslinger and this is my first character going full Medicine skill, and tbh if you want to be able to heal well, just get Battle Medicine and some Healer's Gloves and then a nice collection of healing potions. So far this entire campaign, we've used exactly 12 healing potions total.
Current party is Champion (doesn't have Lay on Hands, has Touch of Corruption instead), Rogue, and myself (gunslinger), and so far we haven't had a single issue with healing because of how good Medicine skill + Battle Medicine feat are naturally.
Also of note, my party is pretty handy with the Aid Action, and Aid is a godsend for the Medicine skill because critical heals are the bee's knees.
If you want to get a bit crunchy:
Unlike enemy creatures w/ HP values that can vary a whole lot to balance with the number you'll be fighting (solo creatures --> lots of HP) PCs don't work like that.
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The fewer number of PCs in a party, the greater % of the party HP is held by each single member.
This means weird things for Battle Med, and healing in general.
It's better in that damage and healing will be less swingy, meaning it's more true that an ally can stay on their feet after eating a big hit, in general allowing more time to heal someone before they can go full --> down.
It's also better in that the party's total HP number will be lower, meaning all the fixed healing across the board is worth much more of the % party HP (minus the rare thing that scales by players, like 3-action Heal).
Battle Med is worse in that you only get 1 per character, but that can also be seen as a good thing, as in this example that's just 3 actions total to get max use out of the ability each fight, while a party of 5 would need 5 uses of the skill.
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Pretty neat to think about, happy to hear yall are making it work w/o character-dedicated healing magic.
Crazy that 3 Elixirs of Life (lesser) are more expensive (30x3) than those healing gloves (80), that's some great value on a great magic item.
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I just checked battle medicine in Nethys, and my memory is correct. Person A can only use it on Person B once per 24 hours.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of Continual Recovery? it's 2nd level feat that requires you to be an Expert in medicine, though.
I'm not entirely sure who you are addressing.
As for the Forensic Medicine Investigator with Medic Archetype build mentioned earlier, the Forensic Medicine Methodology overrides Battle Medicine to only lock out for an hour instead of a day.
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I just checked battle medicine in Nethys, and my memory is correct. Person A can only use it on Person B once per 24 hours.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of Continual Recovery? it's 2nd level feat that requires you to be an Expert in medicine, though.
I'm not entirely sure who you are addressing.
As for the Forensic Medicine Investigator with Medic Archetype build mentioned earlier, the Forensic Medicine Methodology overrides Battle Medicine to only lock out for an hour instead of a day.
Also Medic Dedication allows for Retries. And Godless Healing reduces the cooldown but only for yourself (though on all Battle Medicine you receive).
I just checked battle medicine in Nethys, and my memory is correct. Person A can only use it on Person B once per 24 hours.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of Continual Recovery? it's 2nd level feat that requires you to be an Expert in medicine, though.
I'm not entirely sure who you are addressing.
As for the Forensic Medicine Investigator with Medic Archetype build mentioned earlier, the Forensic Medicine Methodology overrides Battle Medicine to only lock out for an hour instead of a day.
Plus a sizeable bonus in the amount recovered.
Getting from automatically giving 2d8+10 to giving 2d8+21 at level 6 with Medic+Imethodology is quite a sizable increase.
Especailly since at 7 you can, with just 2 actions, move next to a target and give him 4d8+44 every hour (and 2d8+22 on everyone else)
Gotta be mindful when bringing Feats into the conversation, as that can also be traded for a whole lot of things, but yeah, FM Investigator *should* be front and center in discussions of non-magic healing.
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What is pretty great/elegant about the design is that while the Battle Medicine #s get real nice and chunky, they still keep the "can't do it often" base principle of medical healing intact.
Even the Medic's emergency override is *once* per the CD, so your decision-making as a Medic healer still feels noticeably different and more "triage" than the usual caster healer.
Honestly an exceptionally made subsystem, IMO.