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6 bombs per combat without even touching daily resources is a huge plus for a low level bomber, kind of excited about that.
Though the shift from daily resources to encounter/constantly regenerating resources seems potentially less useful for lower-consumption builds. Hopefully a lot we haven't seen but nothing discussed in this thread gets me super excited for, say, my friend's toxicologist getting a glow up.
Which sort of feels weird to put on paper because bombers were already good and some of these other builds less so.
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Btw, completely unrelated, but I've just learned Toxicologists get to ignore poison (and Acid?) immunity/resistance. Not sure how exactly that works though, but it is available at level 1.
That's MASSIVE. As a toxcicologist you've always been severely crippled against undead/fiends/constructs in particular because with a handful of exceptions, you've just been unable to use a lot of your kit in those fights.
Okay, I'm confused. So We Can make so many items per day. Then we also have versatile vials which can make so many items/ 10 minute rest, then we also have some spammable vials?
Prep items are isolated, you can X daily prep items total, this budget cannot be used for anything else.
Then there's the V Vials.
You start w/ X VVials each day and that is your max number. When you use any VVials, every 10min of exploration mode will recharge 2 up to your max (no need to actively Refocus).
Quick Alchemy is to turn 1 VVial into a formula alch item, use it or loose it. Any buffs/effects of these items only last for 10 min, then fade.
VVials are not just resources, but items that can be thrown like bombs, and used by each sub-type of Alchemist for their RF-specific action. Bomber's is just throwing as a better type-chosen bomb.
So Alchs can either use VVials raw like items, or Q-Alch them into items just before use.
Quick Alchemy also has a new 2nd use, Quick Vial.
Q-Alch: Q-Vial poofs a temporary VVial into existence, but this can only be used for the bomb throw or RF-specific use, and is also use it or loose it.
The purpose of writing Alch in that confusing way seems to be to seriously boost the power of Quick Bomber and Double Brew. Because both of those invoke Quick Alchemy, they also now interact with this Quick Vial.
Once an Alchemist reaches L9, they can do a Quick Bomber + Double Brew to compress a 3 action activity into a single action. (Quick Alch #1: Craft bomb + throw bomb + Quick Alchemy #2)
It's absurdly centralizing, and will basically make the entire class revolve around that specific combo.
Quick Bomber was the best Alchemist Feat for being a 2:1 action compression, and now it is even better.
I really, really hope there's some action helpers for the other Alch types that have simply not yet been shared.
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Btw, completely unrelated, but I've just learned Toxicologists get to ignore poison (and Acid?) immunity/resistance. Not sure how exactly that works though, but it is available at level 1.
The way I saw it described was (1) bypass poison immunity if it has it, (2) if it has poison resistance, it can switch to acid damage instead of poison if the acid resistance is lower than poison resistance.
And remastered Quick Bomber will not save you because you still have to draw the Vials before you can Quick Alchemy them into something decent.
no you don't?
They work the same way as Infused reagents for Quick Alchemy.
There's no requirement to "holding them" to use the Quick Alchemy.
Quick Alchemy essentially gets to draw the item of the VVials for free by creating them in-hand, and not listing the holding of the VVials as a requisite.
Quick Bomber explicitly mentions drawing a VVial to throw it raw, implying that you must hold a VV in order to be able to throw the raw VV as a bomb.
This also means you (95% likely) need to draw/hold a VV in order to use the RF-specific action for the other sub-types of Alchemist.
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This is also why I think the Q-Bomber + D Brew combo is going to be so over-centralizing, it basically adds the throwing of a 0 cost VV-bomb for no extra actions, while the 2nd Q-Alch item made via Double Brew can craft a VV into an item.
Q-Bomber gets to skip the draw part of the action cost, but other uses of VV may not be able to.
[...]or use Quick Alchemy to create a bomb [...]
Note that as mentioned by others, VV as items are bombs. So using the Quick Vial option to make a temp VV is compatible with Quick Bomber for infinite 1A bombs.
So Alchemist can use Quick Bomber to both create a 0 cost little VV & immediately throw for the same action.
This means that the action tax that is the intended trade to use infinite VVs for their lesser functions is skipped, but only if you throw them as bombs via Quick Bomber. If you didn't have that Feat, you would need to spend 2 Actions on them.
Hence, the entire Alchemist gameplan will revolve around using Q-Bomber's 1-A bombs, either the 0 cost insta VVs, or the properly crafted bombs that burn your VV supply.
With that Feat, Alchs have a permanent d6 ranged bomb throw that costs nothing. And when Double Brew comes online, that routine will also include a 2nd Quick Alchemy that is a blank check. Meaning even non-bombers will have every incentive to use that Feat 3 for 1 action compression.
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Okay, I'm confused. So We Can make so many items per day. Then we also have versatile vials which can make so many items/ 10 minute rest, then we also have some spammable vials?
If you want to think of it another way, think of Alchemist like a caster.
Each morning you can pre-make X many items during Daily Prep (don't have the text, so with the changes to General Crafting IDK if you need to have the Recipe in your book or not for these). These are full potency items, all the bells and whistles, full durations, etc. These are your Spell Slots.
Then you have your Versatile Vials, which regen 2 every ten minutes. These can be used on the fly to create any item in your recipe book (spellbook), but it has to be used by the start of your next turn, and if the effect has a long duration that duration caps at 10 minutes. These are your Focus Spells.
Then you have the Quick Alchemy instant Vials. These are infinite, but have to be used by the end of the turn they're created, and can only be used for either really basic bombs or your Field's unique ability. These are your Cantrips.
And then there's the secret fourth option, items you spend downtime and money to Craft. These last forever, function at full potency, may or may not be limited to their Item DCs (depending on how things get phrased), etc. These are your Scrolls.
I'm a little disappointed by the 10-minute duration restriction on Quick Alchemy, though that might be because I hyped myself up on all the free buffs the party would get otherwise. Still, losing the extra duration on higher-level mutagens and certain elixirs feels a bit funny.
Hemming and hawing over what this means for combat aside, the recharging vials are amazing for all those weird out-of-combat items. (Well, all of them you don't mind fading after 10 minutes. Not-so-Timeless Salts.) As long as you're not expecting combat too soon, you can dig deep into your formula book for help with all sorts of exploration problems without taking from your combat resource budget.
I guess the other angle on making those 2 vials every 10 minutes work is to keep drinking the same pair of elixirs on repeat just as you finish the new vials. That way you can still keep two "free" buffs on you or another party member without digging into your combat resources, though you'll need to drop it if you want to use utility items outside of combat like above.
I'll also be curious to see what they gave Toxicologist for its new field benefits. It was hardly a graceful beast before, but the 10-minute limit looks like it could really kill the approach of using perpetuals to slather infinite low-level on a bunch of arrows or knives. You also lose the spontaneous use of most ingested poisons, since they usually have onset times of 10 minutes or more. (I'm actually a little confused why they nerfed a bunch of injury poisons in the first wave of the remaster. I assumed it was a prelude to making it easier for Alchemists to abuse low-level poisons, not harder.)
Has anyone seen if powerful alchemy (i.e., L5 feature that sets the item DC to your class DC when you use quick alchemy) is still there? That was a critical feature of quick alchemy, otherwise a number of static DC alchemical items become duds.
Any news on Class DC progression (same?) or expert scaling on bombs/unarmed/simple weapons (L7?)
Someone on the PC2 product thread mentioned that Powerful Alchemy is still there. We can also guess from Alchemist getting Master weapon proficiency 2 levels behind martials that they're probably still getting Expert 2 levels late as well.
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It's been confirmed that Alchemist gets Expert Proficiency in Strikes at Level Seven, same as before.
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The way I saw it described was (1) bypass poison immunity if it has it, (2) if it has poison resistance, it can switch to acid damage instead of poison if the acid resistance is lower than poison resistance.Btw, completely unrelated, but I've just learned Toxicologists get to ignore poison (and Acid?) immunity/resistance. Not sure how exactly that works though, but it is available at level 1.
I'll also be curious to see what they gave Toxicologist for its new field benefits.
I've got the screenshot open in front of me, and the specific language is:
- Infused poisons can ignore poison immunity- If it would be more beneficial for you (GM call, typically due to weaknesses or resistances), your infused poisons can instead deal acid damage instead of poison damage
Their field vials also get the choice to do poison damage if you want to, and can poison a weapon or piece of ammo to deal the initial damage of the vial as an injury poison (later they also take persistent damage equal to the splash damage). Later they get poison resistance (half level), and finally they get the ability to potentially poison two enemies from one strike; when someone fails a save against one of your infused injury poisons, you can choose for it to spray to an adjacent creature, who is also exposed (but you can't do this a 2nd time for 3 targets).
As a side note, everything that has come out is such a huge boost for alchemists that I am honestly shocked to see a bunch of the negativity on this thread. There's definitely a less of versatility from the CRB class - it was by far the most versatile class, so not surprising - but alchemist has received such an increase in power from this remaster, it's wild to see it talked about as a downgrade.
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So of the people who are lamenting the action economy, which of you has the book?
Does Quick Alchemy create the versatile vial in your hand? How does that work? Because my understanding would be Quick alchemy would be everything involved in creating the Vial, including it popping into your hand, and then you would use or chuck it. that's two actions, but I'm hearing everyone talk about three actions. What am I missing?
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Okay, this, shroudb is how I was thinking it worked, so I was very confused with everyone talking about 3 actions. and frankly from what I'm seeing the versatile vials acid bomb seems to be on par with cantrips.
While yeah, the versatility of all the prepared items is lowers significantly, I'm very okay with this. It allows for a lot of customization still.
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I've got the screenshot open in front of me, and the specific language is:
- Infused poisons can ignore poison immunity
- If it would be more beneficial for you (GM call, typically due to weaknesses or resistances), your infused poisons can instead deal acid damage instead of poison damageTheir field vials also get the choice to do poison damage if you want to, and can poison a weapon or piece of ammo to deal the initial damage of the vial as an injury poison (later they also take persistent damage equal to the splash damage). Later they get poison resistance (half level), and finally they get the ability to potentially poison two enemies from one strike; when someone fails a save against one of your infused injury poisons, you can choose for it to spray to an adjacent creature, who is also exposed (but you can't do this a 2nd time for 3 targets).
Thaks for this. Ignoring poison immunity is really nice, of course, particularly when there were some poisons that did other damage types but were still blocked by immunity due to their trait. Depending on the wording it might extend to skunk bombs too.
Poison vial bombs probably won't shake things up too much, but it's nice synergy with the poison resistance to be able to bomb a target without splashing yourself.
Do you know what the action economy on the vial-poisoned weapon is like? If it's the full bomb damage I doubt they'll be letting us pre-buff a bunch of weapons with it, but it'll be interesting to see how much of an edge it has over just bombing the target (at least until you get the persistent damage perk).
The final part sounds a lot a better version of the Chemical Contagion feat. It's nice to see them free up some of that feat space, as well as maybe tune things up since it was pretty situational before.
As a side note, everything that has come out is such a huge boost for alchemists that I am honestly shocked to see a bunch of the negativity on this thread.
Speaking only for myself here: I'm well aware that Alchemist has its problems, but in playing it I've grown attached to the few high points or funny pranks it gets. So when a rebuild comes out that makes things overall a lot better but means that my fond memories are now stuck in the past, it's bound to feel bittersweet.
Give me some time with the full text and I'm sure I'll come to a new understanding eventually, and find myself looking back in horror at how bad things used to be.
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Before the Remaster, infused reagents were not items that needed to be held to be used and interacted with. Handling the reagents to make insta-items via Quick Alchemy was a part of that action cost.
In the Remaster, VVials are bombs themselves that need to end up in ones hand to be thrown.
It is not mentioned in the new Q-Alch where the created item ends up, and the listed requirement to perform the action does not mention having a VVial in hand.
It is NOT the normal assumption in pf2 that you get to draw items for free, especially now that VVials are usable items in and of themselves. But assuming the created item ends up in the required free hand is how Alch has been played previously, and that part of the equation is safe to say remains true.
Until I have reason to think otherwise, I also will act under the assumption that the Alchemist only needs to have VVials on-hip before performing Quick Alchemy, and the created item is in-hand after the action.
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And I've seen the snip blurb for the VVail throw, which *does* require the item to be in-hand first.
What this means is that there is nearly 0 reason to ever throw a proper VVial as a bomb if you have an open hand, because Quick Alchemy will poof a new temp one into your hand for a single action.
Moreover, this why I'm saying that Quick Bomber will be so centralizing. It is a small assumption, but I think the non-bomb RF-uses of the VVials will require the VVial to held in hand to perform the action.
And again, there's no generic Quick ___ option for anything except bombs.
This means that while any Alch w/ Quick Bomber can poof and throw VVials in 1 Action, there is no tool to bypass the draw for the other types. This means that they will all need 2A by default to do the non-bomb VVial thing.
While this may seem really bad, so long as Paizo balanced the special actions around that 2A minimum, it's actually a good thing for players. While Quick Alch would still be stuck at 2A, Draw circumvention via familiars, etc, can relay the recharging VVials for 1A uses.
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Overall, Quick Bomber will be even more potent than before (don't forget it's now compatible w/ Additives), and any Alchemist build that does not take advantage of the ability to 1A throw bombs will suffer from leaving that power budget on the table.
Quick Bomber is like casters having the option to take a L1 Feat and make their cantrips 1A instead of 2A.
Except, only your damaging cantrips. All other cantrips still take 2A. What cantrips are you going to cast?
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My humble request for anyone w/ full pdf access is for them to skim the Alchemist and Chiurgeon for any otherwise unmentioned cooldowns and restrictions, especially for alchemical healing.
If VVials only have the recharge and 10 min effect limit, that's a big deal. It means that any Alchemist w/ Soothing Tonics + Elix o Lf + Healing Vapor in their book can heal the party to full between combats more efficiently than any other recharging resource class.
It also means that there's likely even less a reason to play Chiurgeon. The main thing I'm curious on is that if crafted VVial healing was really left unrestricted, there's a chance the Chiurgeon use of raw VVials was similarly not given a cooldown. Small chance, but it's there.
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There is now a video from the rules lawyer that goes into a deep dive on a lot of questions people have in this thread about PC2 Alchemist.
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My only criticism so far of this new alchemist is that the Quick Bomber, which was already a must have feat, became even more so. It is probably still kept as a feat to allow its use in archetypes, but other than that it is practically mandatory and should have been included as a class abilities.
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Thaks for this. Ignoring poison immunity is really nice, of course, particularly when there were some poisons that did other damage types but were still blocked by immunity due to their trait. Depending on the wording it might extend to skunk bombs too.
Poison vial bombs probably won't shake things up too much, but it's nice synergy with the poison resistance to be able to bomb a target without splashing yourself.
Do you know what the action economy on the vial-poisoned weapon is like? If it's the full bomb damage I doubt they'll be letting us pre-buff a bunch of weapons with it, but it'll be interesting to see how much of an edge it has over just bombing the target (at least until you get the persistent damage perk).
The final part sounds a lot a better version of the Chemical Contagion feat. It's nice to see them free up some of that feat space, as well as maybe tune things up since it was pretty situational before.
The action economy on the vial-poisoned weapon is affected by an element of their field benefit that I don't think I mentioned - you can apply the poison to a weapon as 1-action, not 2. My understanding is then that it should be:
- 1 action to use Quick Alchemy to make a Versatile Vial and have it in hand (IMO it'd be a pretty wild GM call to say that the thing you just made is not in your hand); this can be skipped if you're using one of your actual VVs, but I imagine you're more likely to use the action to make it into a better poison in that case- 1 action to use your field benefit to apply the Versatile Vial to your weapon
- 1 action left to Strike with the weapon
In terms of pre-buffing with the poisons, I'd like to make clear I'm guessing here; I only have a screenshot of the actual toxicologist sub-class. Standard VVs have their effects expire after 10 minutes, but there's the perennial question of "has a poison taken effect when applied to a weapon/ammo, or only when it has hit someone". If you go for the former, there might be more cheese available? For the infinite VVs, it does explicitly say that the substance becomes "inert" at the end of your turn, so that seems pretty clear to me that you have to actually hit the enemy in the same turn you apply it.
Speaking only for myself here: I'm well aware that Alchemist has its problems, but in playing it I've grown attached to the few high points or funny pranks it gets. So when a rebuild comes out that makes things overall a lot better but means that my fond memories are now stuck in the past, it's bound to feel bittersweet.
Give me some time with the full text and I'm sure I'll come to a new understanding eventually, and find myself looking back in horror at how bad things used to be.
That's very reasonable, and I wasn't meaning to come after people who understandably are acclimating to a new design that substantially changes what the class is focused around! It's the people saying that the changes are unimpactful, or "the gameplay power of alchemist is dead". People are saying this is in-line with their most pessimistic expectations! It just seems completely at odds with the reality of the magnitude of the buffs being given here. I understand that the power ceiling has been reduced for some builds, and maybe even overall though that will take much more time to determine, but the floor has been boosted so much, and the builds required to reach that power ceiling were extremely finicky and unintuitive, so seeing this framed as the worst-case scenario did catch me off-guard.
Alchemists previously were weak in low level play, and required system mastery to make good in mid and high level play. Where they could shine really brightly but only if the player leaned into the class advantages.
Now they are quite decent in low level play, and fall off a bit for mid and high level play. I wager they will still be seen as the ugly duckling of pf2e and sadly this time there won't be any real system mastery arguments. But at least they won't be terrible in the hands of a newbie who wanted the flavour, just kinda subpar.
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Any news on the Alchemist archetype? It sounds like my Investigator/Alchemist who can DaS/RK on a enemy and then grab the most effective bomb to hurl with quick alchemy might have to revamp his actions. Unless he wants the basic VV acid bomb?
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Any news on the Alchemist archetype? It sounds like my Investigator/Alchemist who can DaS/RK on a enemy and then grab the most effective bomb to hurl with quick alchemy might have to revamp his actions. Unless he wants the basic VV acid bomb?
I read the dedication gives you four uses of quick alchemy per day (feats can increase that up to 7). At 4th level you can get four infused daily items during daily prep. More feats to modestly increase that.
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Alchemists previously were weak in low level play, and required system mastery to make good in mid and high level play. Where they could shine really brightly but only if the player leaned into the class advantages.
Now they are quite decent in low level play, and fall off a bit for mid and high level play. I wager they will still be seen as the ugly duckling of pf2e and sadly this time there won't be any real system mastery arguments. But at least they won't be terrible in the hands of a newbie who wanted the flavour, just kinda subpar.
They change niche a little at higher levels, but I find it hard to say that a class with Master proficiency in their bombs, likely boosted to-hit from their mutagens on top of that, unlimited useful alchemical options, and 6-9 max-level alchemical items you can flexibly make in a fight and that regenerate faster than Focus spells as subpar. Some of the most absurd mechanics one could use to power them up have been reduced (it seems pretty clear you can't have unlimited poisons on your arrows anymore), but the floor has been raised dramatically and the ceiling is still plenty high. I am pretty confident that a Bomber is going to be competitive with martials for damage, it looks like ahead of the ranged martial options (except magus shenanigans, probably). Hell, even Chirurgeon which looks weaker than most of the other options to me still has some of the very best condition removal in the game (I'd confidently say the best) and at higher levels has 1-action administering elixers that heal more than an average max-rank 2-action Heal for that level. They're really not looking subpar, IMO.
The action economy on the vial-poisoned weapon is affected by an element of their field benefit that I don't think I mentioned - you can apply the poison to a weapon as 1-action, not 2. My understanding is then that it should be:
- 1 action to use Quick Alchemy to make a Versatile Vial and have it in hand (IMO it'd be a pretty wild GM call to say that the thing you just made is not in your hand); this can be skipped if you're using one of your actual VVs, but I imagine you're more likely to use the action to make it into a better poison in that case
- 1 action to use your field benefit to apply the Versatile Vial to your weapon
- 1 action left to Strike with the weaponIn terms of pre-buffing with the poisons, I'd like to make clear I'm guessing here; I only have a screenshot of the actual toxicologist sub-class. Standard VVs have their effects expire after 10 minutes, but there's the perennial question of "has a poison taken effect when applied to a weapon/ammo, or only when it has hit someone". If you go for the former, there might be more cheese available? For the infinite VVs, it does explicitly say that the substance becomes "inert" at the end of your turn, so that seems pretty clear to me that you have to actually hit the enemy in the same turn you apply it.
Oh right, I forgot I was assuming Toxi still got the 1-action apply too. Not that it ever really came up in my experience, since applying was usually done before combat. Sounds like it's the exact same economy as before.
For the duration of applied vial poisons, if there's nothing mentioned in your screenshot then that's useful info too, since it means it should (probably) be determined by the generic QA rules. The wording for temp QA vials going inert is the same as for other QA'd items, so it's (probably) the case that your answer to "do vial poisons stay on the weapon for more than one round?" is the same as your old answer to "do perpetual poisons stay on the weapon for more than one round?". (Assuming there's not some drastic change in damage output, at least.)
...Admittedly, the 10 min time limit on the QA effect duration might mean it's annoying for the Toxicologist in question to be wiping goop on their knives every few minutes "just in case". It might be something you only pre-buff with if you know a fight's coming.
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Notes from RL's video (Not finished watching):
Powerful Alchemy: Still L5, now upgrades the DC for all infused alchemical items. Super important that this change is in there!
Confirmed that Calculated Splash Feat is MiA and not printed.
Chirugeon use of raw VVial: 20 ft range Interact to heal w/ the VVial, doing the listed _d6 of healing (no splash). This is an Interact and does not enable any way to boost the range, and here's the new limiter trait
Coagulant: Healing alchemical items with the coagulant trait lose effectiveness when many are applied in a short period of time. If a creature heals Hit Points from an item with the coagulant trait, that creature is temporarily immune to healing Hit Points from subsequent items with the coagulant trait for 10 minutes (but not immune to any other effects of those items).
Damn it. A 10 min is actually really bad, if it was a flat out temp immunity, I was really hoping for a 1 min. There have been a lot of times where my tables will spend a few rounds after a fight to toss out a few heals, but do NOT camp in a hostile room for a full 10 min.
This limit is absurdly harsh.
So yeah, a single difference would have made it compatible w/ Quick Bomber, but that Interact classification keeps it s#%#outtaluck. Throw-Heal w/ a hard VVial for 1A via Draw circumvention is possible, but for crazy low _d6 healing. L5 Elix o Lf is 3d6+6. Meaning the 1A version will generally only be done due to action and range constraints, as the 2A Make + Feed will be more HP / Actions.
Formulas | Two common 1st-level alchemical elixirs with the healing trait (like lesser antidote, lesser antiplague, or minor elixir of life).
Field Benefit | You can use your proficiency rank in Crafting for anything that requires a proficiency rank in Medicine (such as prerequisites) and use your Crafting modifier in place of your Medicine modifier for all Medicine checks.
Field Vials | Your versatile vials can be used to heal a living creature a number of Hit Points equal to the vial's initial damage. A creature can drink the vial for this benefit, or you can throw the vial at a willing creature within 20 feet as an Interact action to heal that creature. In either case, a vial used this way loses the acid and splash traits and gains the coagulant and healing traits, plus the elixir trait if a creature drinks it.
Field Discovery (5th) Your medicinal elixirs are quite fortifying. When a creature drinks an infused elixir with the healing trait that you have created, that creature gains a number of temporary Hit Points equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 0); these temporary Hit Points last for 1 minute.
Advanced Vials (11th) When you use a field vial to heal a creature that has half its maximum Hit Points or fewer, the coagulant trait doesn't apply to that healing.
Greater Field Discovery (13th) When you use Quick Alchemy to create any type of elixir of life, the creature healed by the item regains the maximum Hit Points possible, instead of rolling to determine the number of Hit Points regained.
L9 Elixirs of Life heal 5d6+12. The VVial raw upgrades to 3d6 at level 12.
If we've established that the 2A heal for bomb-damage amounts is hilariously behind the Elixirs of Life, it's easy to see why the L11 Feature is worthless inside combat, and at 11th level, the out of combat recovery boost is meaningless.
The L13 Feature is copied from before, and it is genuinely overpowered, even more so in the new R:Alchemist. L13 Elixirs of Life heal for 7d6 + 18. Meaning 60 HP. Previously, this Q-Alch benefit was counterbalanced against the bonus prep batch efficacy, which is now gone. For a 3A Double Brew activity, that's 120 healed HP spread btwn 2 targets within reach for a 10 min recharge. G** d*@n it Paizo, I don't want this OP nonsense, especially not when it pops into existence at a random high level to completely invert the balance of the class. That old "max your elixir healing" feature was already noticeably OP when it was written, and that version was designed around the hard daily limit on infused reagents. I am really stunned that the Feature was copied over without being changed for the VVial system.
If you ever live to see L13 play, then Chiurgeons may need a nerf.
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It seems Additives can only work for consumables, and are prevented from being integrated into the temp VVials of Create Vial.
Healing Bomb:
HEALING BOMB FEAT 4
[ADDITIVE] [ALCHEMIST]
You can add a foamy catalyst to an elixir of life to turn it into a topical projectile. You can throw the elixir as though it were an alchemical bomb, with the following results.Success | The target is affected as though it drank the elixir, and each living creature adjacent to it regains HP from the bomb equal to the elixir's number of damage dice (3 HP for a lesser elixir of life, for example).
Failure | The target regains HP equal to the elixir’s number of damage dice.
Critical Failure The healing bomb has no effect.
The OLD Healing Bomb explicitly said you grant the elixir the bomb trait and make a Strike with it, this new one does not. It seems that they may have intentionally prevented Healing Bomb from being compatible with Quick Bomber, as that deleted text would make it compatible w/ the new version of Quick Bomber. My guess is they did not want Healing Bomb to be possible as a 1A thing.
Now that it is much much harder to use elixirs for 1A, the main downsides of Healing Bomb being reagent inefficient and stuck behind the action tax of Q-Alch are not as relevant. If you are going to be playing slow with lots of recharging, it's a good-ish Feat now. Though that's more to do w/ the Chiurgeon being so nerfed.
Whoops, almost missed that the new Healing Bomb does not get a full effect on miss, it only heals the damage dice.
Even if a permissive GM allows H-Bomb to be Q-Bomber compatible, this miss issue kills the Feat. Not only are you giving up the turn's MAP to use the Feat, but you now need to actually be able to hit the AC of your allies, rofl. Who the hell thought that was a good idea. Seriously, that just kills the Feat.
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Soothing Vials, L1 Chiurgeon only Feat allows immediate Will save to end an ongoing mental effect. Only works for raw VVials, and if it takes 2 Actions to use them, might as well make a Focus Cathartic. Still possibly useful, but super niche for the only Chiurgeon-specific Feat in the system.
Invigorating Elixir L4 is a more generic elixir additive that adds a counteract check for the 4 status penalty conditions. Not bad due to being a 0 cost upgrade to your existing elixirs. Does have some redundancy with Combine Elixirs, but does not cost additional VVials to mix in the appropriate condition curative.
L8 Improved Invigorating Elixir adds 1/2 lists of mental or physical conditions that can be cured via Additive, can be taken a 2nd time for the missing half. Very weird Feat. The opportunity cost of needing a prereq and being L8 makes this hard to justify taking. It provides a silver bullet type remedy that either will feel very good to have, or literally be useless.
L12 Supreme Invigorating Elixir. Ugh. Treat your counteract level as 2 higher, add stunned & petrified (how can a statue drink it). And can now cure diseases. Too bad Contagion Metabolizer is an item that already does that. It's clear that this is the Feat line that Chiurgeons are supposed to be excited about, and I am not seeing its value.
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Clotting Elixirs L2 Feat
Somehow not an Additive. If you make an infused elixir with the healing trait, any bleeding drinker makes a DC10 flat check to stop the bleeding. Another niche passive upgrade that's going to do nothing 95% of the time.
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Alchemical Familiars are now Constructs at base. Mandatory, not optional.
Wtf. This means that if they ever hit 0 HP, they are destroyed/dead with no chance to recover/revive them. This is actually really bad, as you can no longer react to things getting too dangerous after a KO and have the familiar disengage. If they get caught in an AoE and crit fail to 0, they are dead and need a full week to replace.
Moreover, your familiar is completely immune to your alchemical healing, and now requires the Repair activity. Was this a intentional attempt to nerf Alchemical Familiars, or is Paizo that out of touch?
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I'll get back to this later and OCR all the text blurbs from the Rules Lawyer video so we can get the actual text wording out there.
Overall there's too many new changes at play for me to make any final calls until I can plot out a built PC.
At a glance it's easy to say post L13 Chiurgeon is going to be outputting an absolutely problematic amount of healing, so those playing L11-20 campaigns may consider it. Looks like <10 for Chiurgeon is going to be seriously rough. Even if the GM rules Quick Bomber works with Healing Bomb (which I don't think is the intent), the need to hit allies AC is too severe a limit for even that to save it.
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One more thing real quick about the Dedication Feat granting 4 daily items that match PC level and do not lag.
The base Dedication grants 4 VVials, these will be action taxed by Q-Alch to need 2A to be crafted and used, and still have the 10 min effect issue.
Still good, but not as crazy as some are saying.
It's the L4 Advanced Alchemy Feat that grants 4 daily prep items, which is crazy good, especially when paired w/ the prior 4 VVials.
This Feat is when something as simple as a Retrieval Belt will grant 1A consumables 4x a day.
Long duration mutagens, 1 elixir for all-day Darkvision, etc. Super good compared to the prior daily consumable Dedications.
Has anyone seen the list of alchemical items?
The new Coagulant trait limits alchemical healing to once per 10-min, preventing any other Coagulant items from healing them.
This could be a huge complication/nerf, but that depends on which items have the trait. And of course, Elixir of Life is the most important one here to get a look at.
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If the elixir lacks the trait, a L13 Chiurgeon can do 120 healing per turn for 2 VVials across 3 actions.
Or 240 HP a turn via Combine Double Brew for 6 VVials. Which will recharge in 30 min...
So... yeah. As the insane "heal the max possible instead of rolling" feature only functions with Elixirs of Life, the presence/absence of the trait is rather significant.
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10 minutes is standard out-of combat healing time. Everything that doesn't spend daily resources is 10 minutes. The basic Treat Wounds takes 10 minutes, but has one hour immunity without a feat.
And it looks like Alchemists will be able to use their Quick Alchemy for elixirs of life, so they have two different pools of 10-minute-recharge healing to use. And the coagulant one is per target and can be done once before the 10 minutes start, which makes it one of the stronger options.
For the infinite VVs, it does explicitly say that the substance becomes "inert" at the end of your turn, so that seems pretty clear to me that you have to actually hit the enemy in the same turn you apply it.
Nevermind, I scanned through the Rules Lawyer video and realised I misread you here. The vial poison explicitly only lasts until the end of your current turn, and adds its poison damage directly rather than forcing a save like normal poisons. (Good for reliability, but means it doesn't trigger the lv13 double-target effect.)
It's... kinda meh? 3 actions to make 1 strike, which deals the damage of your (one-handed, simple) weapon plus the damage of the bomb, minus splash. That's most likely 1d6+1d4 melee, or 1d6+1d6 if you levelled Str or make this cost 4 actions by going ranged. And since you're losing out on splash... it would actually do more expected damage to just take 2 actions to throw the vial, then another action to attack with MAP. And that's before you start thinking about Quick Bomber.
I suppose this has the niche of avoiding splashing allies and letting you get off-guard via flanking, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself a Toxicologist would actually want to use this much until you hit level 11 and turn the splash damage into persistent damage. (It's also killed off the Quick Draw Toxicologist, since you need to already be holding the weapon before you can poison it.)
Mind you, the Toxicologist isn't alone here. The Mutagenist's field vial is 2 actions to remove a mutagen drawback until the start of their next turn, which I can't imagine is getting that crowd excited.
Elixir of life is in GM Core, no coagulant.
Usually the 10min immunity is reserved for at-will heals like Kineticist impulses or the old perpetual Healing items, or the new Quick Vial.
So I wouldn't be too worried about miscellaneous elixirs having it.
Edit:
134hp with 2 VV with Unstable (at the risk of you taking 13acid)
Combine is lower though, you can only use an additive once per round, so you'd be at 180 for 4 VV not 240 for 6 VV.In between 134 for 2 vs 180 for 4, I think I know which I'd take^^
I'm not going to trust that Elixirs of Life lack the trait until I see them in PC2.
It is quite possible the Coagulant mechanic was not conceived until after the GM core 1 was done, and the elixirs may have a 1 line note somewhere to include them.
Also possible is for the new version of the Infused trait to add Coagulant to all HP restoring alch items.
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Because, again, the Chiurgeon's L13 feature that heals for max instead of rolling is completely absurd when you recharge 3 VVials every 10 min.
Even when assuming "yes Coagulant," as written there is the Chiurgeon's "ignore Coagulant when < 50% HP" feature.
So they would get 1 heal at their convenience, and be free to do a 2nd heal any time the ally drops below 50%.
And seeing as you can dump 3 VVials with a single Combine Elixir heal for 120 HP at L13, it's obviously insane.
If there was a 2 A, touch range Focus Spell that healed 120 HP, even if it cost 1 Feat to get and had the same Coagulant restrictions, it would rightfully be called stupidly OP.
Because it is just stupid.
Previously, that kind of burst would burn 9 elixirs worth of prep to do, and they would not recharge. Now, it's literally just 10 min, same as a focus spell.