Alchemist research fields balance

[Zergor]

After finally playing a toxicologist in a high level setting (17+), I feel that there is a huge gap between the effects of the different research fields. Some help you a lot doing what you want to do, some not so much.

The most well rounded one is bomber. Nothing is useless here. When you increase your field, your bombs become more versatile and powerful. You get extra splash, you can trigger more weaknesses. The field vials are solid. All elements mean you can easily avoid resistances and target weaknesses. Also bombs have insane action economy compared to the rest. They work very well with double brew and a feat even allows you to throw one immediately.

Chirurgeon is good too. Healing for "free" in combat is good even if its a limited number of times. Allowing to throw heal bombs is great for the action economy (which is usually horrible for the alchemist). The greater field discovery increases heal substantially which is great.

Mutagenist is not great. Only the greater field discovery is good (it is great even). their shtick of drinking potions to remove the drawback would be nice if it wasn't 1 turn. Using two actions (creating vial + drinking vial) to suppress a single drawback for one turn is not great (even if you gain a bit of resistance). Gaining temporary health on a mutagen would be good if it wasn't one minute. Starting at level 3 your mutagen last for 10 minutes and go up to an hour later so there is no reason to use them during fight. You can't switch mutagen during fight as you would stack drawbacks except by using the field discovery to purge the old but the effect require a trigger.

Mutagenist would clearly gain from an option to purge a mutagen for a benefit at any point. That could be the use of field vials : You drink it and purge the current mutagen for a bonus that lasts more than the current turn. That could be a heal for example.

And toxicologist... I really have to thank my GM that allows fancy things like poisoning an ally weapon that they are still holding or I would seriously feel underpowered. I have done many fight just not using poisons and relying on mutagens, elixirs and bombs because they are more reliable.
The problems are :
-Poisons are not great. Most enemies will save on a 6 on the dice. They do nothing on a success (except with the pernitious poison feat)
-Injury poisons are clunky. Even with the "cheat" of using only one action to apply it you need 3 actions to use them : create, apply, strike. They work terribly with double brew as you need a weapon in hand to use them.
On top of that nothing in the toxicologist kit makes them better with poisons after their field benefit (which is great. 100% love it).
The field vial is clunky to use as any injury poison. "The substance becomes inert at the end of your current turn." is horrible. You can't even apply it one turn and strike the next. You have to commit 3 actions. My nice GM consider that the "inert" part only apply to the vial before it is applied (after it is the normal 10 minutes). But that doesn't seem like the intended ruling.
Non of the discoveries after help with poisonning. Poison resistance is ok but it's just a worse version of an alchemist feat (and doesn't even stacks with it). Persistant poison damage is ok but it is on the clunky vial which could have been thrown as a bomb and would have dealt those damage as splash which can be as good in some configurations.
And the last is super cool... but as you don't have anything to help the poison work, it will almost never have any use.

There are feats that help poisoning like "pinpoint poisoner" but I would expect the toxicologist to be a bit better with poisons. One of his field discoveries could be that a crit on a strike (which will not happen a lot as an alchemist as you are no fighter) decrease the initial save on the poison by one level. This would at least help the poison stay one turn.

[Vodalian]

Chirurgeon is actually terrible. The heal bombs require you to hit the target, they don't heal almost at all on splash, making them quite useless. And the elixirs have so much worse action economy than a cleric's 2-action heals, and the healing amount sucks as well:

lvl|Spell|d10 2-Action Heal| Avg Heal|Elixir(s)|Elixir Healing| Avg Elixir
---|-----|-----------------|---------|---------|--------------|-----------
1 | 1st | 1d10+8 | 13.5 | Minor Elixir of Life (1) | 1d6 | 3.5
3 | 2nd | 2d10+16 | 27.0 | Minor Elixir of Life (1) | 1d6 | 3.5
5 | 3rd | 3d10+24 | 40.5 | Lesser Elixir of Life (5) | 3d6+6 | 16.5
7 | 4th | 4d10+32 | 54.0 | Lesser Elixir of Life (5) | 3d6+6 | 16.5
9 | 5th | 5d10+40 | 67.5 | Moderate Elixir of Life (9) | 5d6+12 | 29.5
11 | 6th | 6d10+48 | 81.0 | Moderate Elixir of Life (9) | 5d6+12 | 29.5
13 | 7th | 7d10+56 | 94.5 | Greater Elixir of Life (13) | 7d6+18 | 42.5
15 | 8th | 8d10+64 | 112.0 | Major Elixir of Life (15) | 8d6+21 | 49.0
17 | 9th | 9d10+72 | 121.5 | Major Elixir (15)/True (19) | 8d6+21 / 10d6+27 | 49.0 / 62.0
19 | 10th | 10d10+80 | 135.0 | True Elixir of Life (19) | 10d6+27 | 62.0

[yellowpete]

You should double the values after level 6, as that's when you get Combine Elixirs, and additionally maximize them at level 13 when you get that feature. So at level 13 you're actually looking at 120 HP from the Chirurgeon. Melee range, but beats the cleric in pure potency as long as he's not absurdly lucky on the heal roll.

[Zergor]

Vodalian wrote:

Chirurgeon is actually terrible. The heal bombs require you to hit the target, they don't heal almost at all on splash, making them quite useless. And the elixirs have so much worse action economy than a cleric's 2-action heals, and the healing amount sucks as well

I don't agree. First, nowhere it is written that you have to hit. It's an interact action not an attack one. You always hit. Compare that to https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1899 that indeed requires a hit.

Second, comparing it 1 to 1 to the best heal spell of the game is not fair. You are an alchemist not a cleric. Your advantage is versatility. Everything you do is a bit worse than a caster but you can choose on the fly how to use everything.

Third, it's for the versatile vial not the elixir. Your free resource. Being able to use it at range makes positioning less of a pain. The heal is bad but you can spam it on allies with less than 50% health which is a plus compared to heal.

At high level you can double brew 2 quick vials, throw them at an ally for 48 HP at the cost of your turn. It's a bit less than a third of a level 10 heal but you used exactly 0 resources. At that level you can also just use your perma-quicken and an action every turn to heal someone for 24. It's not impressive but that's a free option of your huge arsenal.

[shroudb]

After level 13 the pure output of hp from a Chirurgeon outshines Cleric indeed (although only a couple of times per battle).

And the new feats make him also an excellent condition remover.

Toxicologist is "ok" , but really requires system mastery to reach that ok when you're building him to actually end with a workable action economy.

Bomber is all around good.

Imo, it's only Mutagenist that really trails behind without any worthwhile benefit from choosing him as a Field. Even if you want to play with Mutagens, picking a different field and simply using the Mutagens ends up as the better overall deal.

[Zergor]

shroudb wrote:

Toxicologist is "ok" , but really requires system mastery to reach that ok when you're building him to actually end with a workable action economy.

I partially agree. I still feel it's a mess.

First, toxicologist never get to the efficiency of the rogue/poisoner that draw plus use a poison in one action.

Injury poisons are terrible from the start. 2 actions to apply them make them unusable in combat for most people. You can put them before combat at the risk of them being useless (encounter against poison immune or just big high fortitude monster). Granted the toxicologist ignoring immunities partially ignores that but still you would prefer to use the good poison for the good enemy.

Going from 2 to 1 action partially mitigate that but you still need 3 actions. Two of those have to be consecutive because poisons become inert at the end of the round (applied poisons stay for 10 minutes). That makes double brew clunky as you can't for example make two poisons and only apply one. If you want to make two poisons you need double poison and use both in the same turn.

All those problems can be mitigated by carefully using your actions, checking your positioning and making good use of the quicken status but that's work. Compared to the rest of my arsenal as a toxicologist :
Bombs : I just recall knowledge, find the weakness, throw the good one.
Elixirs : 1 action to draw, 1 to use even on allies.
Mutagens : Everyone has the correct one way before combat using the advanced alchemy stock (It's quicksilver 90% of the time). Never used mutagens on quick alchemy (and I agree that this makes the mutagenist feel redundant)

Side note : While that a toxicologist has no problem using any of those and I used and abused them, a non toxicologist can't use poisons efficiently at all. I feel that paizo could probably buff them in general. Make them cost 1 action to use and instead make the toxicologist craft and use them in one action and keep the fact that poison weapon (rogue and poisoner) allows to draw and use a poison in one action (I always found funny that transforming 3 action in 1 was balanced. In any other case that would be broken. That show how bad the normal action is). I feel that the toxicologist should make the poisons go from "sometimes useful" to "main weapon" instead of "unusable" to "sometimes useful".

[shroudb]

Zergor wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Toxicologist is "ok" , but really requires system mastery to reach that ok when you're building him to actually end with a workable action economy.

I partially agree. I still feel it's a mess.

First, toxicologist never get to the efficiency of the rogue/poisoner that draw plus use a poison in one action.

Injury poisons are terrible from the start. 2 actions to apply them make them unusable in combat for most people. You can put them before combat at the risk of them being useless (encounter against poison immune or just big high fortitude monster). Granted the toxicologist ignoring immunities partially ignores that but still you would prefer to use the good poison for the good enemy.

Going from 2 to 1 action partially mitigate that but you still need 3 actions. Two of those have to be consecutive because poisons become inert at the end of the round (applied poisons stay for 10 minutes). That makes double brew clunky as you can't for example make two poisons and only apply one. If you want to make two poisons you need double poison and use both in the same turn.

All those problems can be mitigated by carefully using your actions, checking your positioning and making good use of the quicken status but that's work. Compared to the rest of my arsenal as a toxicologist :
Bombs : I just recall knowledge, find the weakness, throw the good one.
Elixirs : 1 action to draw, 1 to use even on allies.
Mutagens : Everyone has the correct one way before combat using the advanced alchemy stock (It's quicksilver 90% of the time). Never used mutagens on quick alchemy (and I agree that this makes the mutagenist feel redundant)

Side note : While that a toxicologist has no problem using any of those and I used and abused them, a non toxicologist can't use poisons efficiently at all. I feel that paizo could probably buff them in general. Make them cost 1 action to use and instead make the toxicologist craft and use them in one action and keep the fact that poison weapon (rogue and...

You almost no time want to poison midcombat.

Unless you have a constant state of Quickened, which some builds/parties, can achieve, the easiest way is Thrower's Bandolier.

With Quick Alchemy you can keep 3 thrown weapons poisoned every encounter, plus like 2-3 more with Advanced. That should cover most combats. The rest of Quick/Advanced for the usual mutagens, utility, heals, etc.

Pinpoint plus a status debuff can lower Fort saves to a manageable degree.

If you want to go melee, Injectors can help a lot, but mostly, you want Quicken.

Toxicologist has the unique benefit of ignoring Poison immunity, which is also a way to inflict unique, poison, debuffs on stuff normally immune to them.

Is it the best?
No.

But it is an actual "ok" way to build a themed character that can stay competitive.

[Teridax]

For all the improvements the Alchemist received with the remaster, I agree with the OP that some glaring problems remain. The class's action economy is still terrible, and while that could perhaps be framed as a deliberate weakness to counterbalance their versatility, it still means the Toxicologist has to spend their entire turn making an injury poison, applying it to their weapon, and making one Strike with it. Even that could possibly be worth it were it not for the fact that the Alchemist's Strikes are not very accurate, injury poisons are often not worth the extra hit on their own, and their Fort saves tend to be extremely easy for enemies to beat. Adding to this, the class still has several feat taxes, Quick Bomber being the most obvious, and as also mentioned in the OP, their subclasses vary wildly in effectiveness and functionality, so the Alchemist I think could certainly do with another pass to smooth those bits out.

[Xenocrat]

Yes, pre poisoned weapons for the party is the way to go. You can start each combat with 2-3 weapons poisoned from your vials that regenerate every 10 minutes, and dig into your dailies for surge capability. Getting Quick Draw and a Throwers Bandolier is good for the toxicologist himself using dailies, let the other martials use your 10 minute vials.

Throw a skunk bomb to open combat to debuff 1+ targets before you go wild applying multiple doses.

[Trip.H]

I've played a Chir all the way from 1 to 18, and it's rare for me to actually find the direct healing elixir to be useful, even with the auto-maximize ability.

Touch range is so bad at high level, everyone is flying around and AoEs are so common, even if you spend the actions to move, it'll just make the team take more damage.

The only time touch range is not a deal-breaker is turn 1, but that's also the turn when everyone is at 100% HP. Meaning, *if* I use touch-range buffs, it will not be for elixirs of life.

The other case in which touch-range isn't a deal-breaker is when you are yourself the patient, which is why my Chir tries to tank despite being an 8HP class.

That honestly doesn't really work in pf2, as there's not much mechanical coercion that would have the GM damage my PC specifically. Even if I went all-in with that idea and took a Wrestler archetype, foes are only coerced into breaking the grapple, and will favor hitting someone else once free.

.

The Crafting instead of Medicine is still the best ability of the Chirurgeon RF, and it's not even a close contest.

It enables you to advance 2 skills for the price of one, and make proper use of Battle Medicine to take the burden off your limited VVials.

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Because, that's the real issue with Chirurgeon, and Alchemist as a whole.

Even with only Quick Bomber, any Chir, Muta, or Tox will be better off spending their VVials to opportunistically steal actions via bombs when those chances present themselves.

Post L12, you have way more odd bombs, including those that reposition and block squares. It becomes *way* easier to know that the VVial spend on that boulder seed bomb will be much more valuable due to taxing the foe an action.

This complication, where you not only have to look at the value of spending 1 (or 2 for a Combine) VVials for their direct benefit, such as Chir healing or Tox poisons, but you have to compare that spend to something like Quick Bomber throws, is why Alchemist is such a mess.

What's even worse is the comparison to pre-buffing. If I am free to act before a door-kick, then there is no better use of my VVials than to pass out 1-min buffs. Because now the real comparison is those effect benefits, plus whatever actions I'm doing now that those actions are free.

So normally a VVial spend on 2A to get a Numbing + Soothing buff is a decent first turn. When that is instead a prebuff, I also add the benefit of casting a 2A spell, be it something disposable like R6 Heroism, etc.

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Basically, the actual mechanical incentives of Alchemist all align to motivate the Alchemist to not actually do alchemy actions in combat. With the main exception of Bomber, but imo when run RaW, they also struggle badly if they lack archetype actions. Being able to only make 2/3 Strikes per 10 minutes is absurd.

Bomber got hit *really* bad with the removal of Perpetuals; those bombs lagged a damage tier, but they still carried their debuffs & secondary effects, worth way more than one die of dmg. I've not seen much talk about how much of a downgrade the Q-Vial throws are compared to the old Perpetual infinite norm.

Honestly, I kind of think Chir being naturally incentivized to use alt actions like Battle Medicine, and being the type the most likely to prebuff, has them being one of the "best" alchemists to actually play.
It's still a world of a difference if that PC goes for a spellcasting dedication, but even something like Ranger for Hunted Shot, etc, is totally viable/helpful.

When your main class sets the bar that low, it's that much easier for an archetype to clear it, lol.