I'm not a fan of Quick Bomber, which lures Alchs into relying on bombs for combat. A L1 Feat that makes bomb-throwing 2x as good is nuts potent, but IMO it's a bit of a trap, luring players into only using bombs in combat. This is especially painful for the 3/4 non-Bomber Alchemists out there.
More importantly, this 2x bomb-only power jump means that the rest of the Alchemical items are left with completely 0 Feats or Features to help. Kinda hard to bother with something like a Sun Dazzler when Quick Bomber is still there. Elixirs, ect needing 2x the actions of a prepared bomb is seriously rough.
These homebrew options, alongside the Knuckle Pinch from another thread would be an alternative that promotes a more diverse playstyle, instead of bomb-only.
Absolutely looking for thoughts and criticisms. As a player I'd personally still go w/ Knuckle Pinch, but I suspect a lot of players might prefer the Fine Motor Frenzy for the more spiky cool moments.
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Combat commitment version:
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Fine Motor Stance: [one-action] [stance]
Abandoning defense, you focus on your manipulation of small items. While this stance is active, you are Off-Guard to all. You can Draw any item of L or lower Bulk as a Free Action.
When you reach Master in Alchemy, this includes any item of 1 or lower Bulk.
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Always there, lower impact version:
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Fine Motor Flourish: [free-action] [flourish]
With practiced dexterity, you Draw or Pick Up an item of L Bulk.
When you reach Master in Alchemy, this includes any item of 1 or lower Bulk.
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"Nova" high impact version:
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Fine Motor Frenzy: [two-actions]
Once per hour.
With a rush of intense focus, you enter a momentary frenzy of item use. As long as they are of L or lower Bulk and unattended, you ignore any Draw or Pick Up action cost, and can Interact, Activate, Strike, or Hand Off for up to 4 action cost. Stow and Reload are Interact actions.
When you gain Expert in Alchemy, this increases to 5 actions and functions with items of 1 Bulk or less. At Master, the actions increase to 6, and it can be done once per 10 min.
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To be clear, these would all be independent alternatives / replacements for Quick Bomber, and not a Feat line w/ each other as prerequisites.
As the most restricted, Frenzy could easily be offered alongside another Quick Bomber alternative.
Nice idea. Some edge cases:
-Stance: The thing with making Draw a Free action is that Release is also a free action. So this would allow the character to empty the entire contents of their bags 1 item at a time without spending any actions.
-Frenzy: Does anything prevent using it simply to make 6 strikes with a weapon? Because we're talking about something a Fighter could get with just 2 feats...
-Stance: I think Draw/Pick Up is exclusive to stuff that's not stashed, as I don't intend for it to allow for grabbing stuff from a BoH at no cost.
I think specifying it makes *1-action* item retrieval free would dial that in quite well, w/o bloating the word count. Good addition, thank you.
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But yes, I was thinking about and loving the idea of having a bunch of leftover items at their feet, like Sun Dazzlers, hand-crossbows, ect. My first pf2e Character is a Ratfolk, so the (currently) bad idea of dumping one's whole cheek pouches could actually have a viable edge use case. There's actually a lot of "dump items" options, like those stomach storage spells.
I love the idea of an Alch dumping their BoH onto their square and getting ready to play Kng o t Hill over their pile. While niche, if that could be "viable" in combat once or twice, that's a picture-perfect Alchemist power moment, IMO.
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-Frenzy: Only MAP, and the Alch's bad accuracy is there to stop it. I don't know how well a Fighter (or other class) can Strike at the worst MAP, so it def may be worth addressing further. These are raw Strikes, and would prevent the fancy combat maneuvers.
At Trained, it's just L items, but idk how limiting that is.
Limiting it to 1-H is another easy to add restraint that doesn't crimp the Alch too bad.
Same with dex-based or ranged Strikes.
Oh, I should/would add Flourish to the activity, to at least lock off those 3-action options, that's a good idea.
I think specifying some flat accuracy penalty to Strikes would be easy to include, but that does hurt the Alch.
Heck, this may be the one time that the idea of "Simple" weapons could be used as an appropriate mechanical/thematic limitation. Can't do any fancy martial stuff in that Frenzy (bombs excluded). Honestly, now that I type that, it might be an unconventional, but appropriate restraint.
There's also the option of Feature, not (Archetype possible) Feat.
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Back to Stance,
I would like to ask about your thoughts on Off-Guard vs a -Circumstance AC penalty.
Alchs are certainly used to taking dangerous penalties via Mutagens, but I don't have monster experience to know how many key off that Condition w monster abilities. I like that there's a real danger to it, but idk, a -2 AC may be scary enough.
I think it's worth mentioning Take Cover, as while making an Attack action ends it (thank goodness), it's the power-gamer detail I hesitated over. Especially as F Token Bush enables instant cover (6gp, 1-action, "This bush can provide standard cover").
That's also why I didn't put some "restricted movement" condition into the stance, to put more cost/lost opportunity on planting ones feet.
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What other significant, but non-debilitating Stance penalties do you find interesting?
Half movement speed? -1 Strike Accuracy?
The design space of "penalty caused by intense hand focus" has a whole lot of room.
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IMO, the Alchemist should be allowed to become the "item junky" class, and everyone loves talking about niche protection.
What I really want to avoid is limiting these item-user activities to Alchemical items, as that locks a giant weight around the Alch's neck just to give other classes a harder time abusing what the Alch can do. There's also 0 way to enable Alchs to, but stop off-class from throwing Bombs anyways.
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It is kinda funny that yes, the biggest problem w/ Alch still is that others like Fighter can use every option the Alch has, but do it better.
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PS, bombs are should be simple weapons, cmon Paizo. You honestly expect people to buy that it's easier to throw a bloody dagger or spear with combat efficacy, but not a bomb??? There's also always the option of "alchemical weapons" being their own weapon group.
But "Trained in Alchemical Bombs" is just a painfully clumsy and narrow thing to have, especially when there's no need for it.
IMO either let Alchs get full Martial access, or keep things Simple.
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Thematically off-guard makes perfect sense to me. Balance-wise I can't tell either if it's fine or too much.
My guess would be, against creatures with off-guard synergy you just don't use it, at which point you're not worse off than a precision class going against a precision-immune enemy.