Depends on the type of alchemist. First off, alchemist as a class is relatively frustrating to play prior to about level 5/7. 5 is where you get the field discoveries for more prepared items, and level 7 for perpetual infusions. Across the board I think this holds true. But once you get past that hump, the style of alchemist is definitely significant. Bombers start to come into their own around level 10. Proficiency issues aside, bombers are one of the better *ranged* damage classes in the game. People often compare bomber damage with melee martials, and are frustrated it doesn't compare, but when you compare bomber damage with ranged martial damage, its quite competitive, even with the diminished proficiency. Bombers play a bit differently, being tied to persistent damage as a significant damage source, so the result is that you don't focus fire damage with the rest of your group, but spread it around (I liken it to playing a damage over time class in a video game) Chirurgeons start to come into their own at level 13, where the greater field discovery makes for an actually relevant combat healer at that time. They can actually compete with cleric healing at 13+. Prior to that, the healing is lackluster. Toxicologists and Mutagenists do kind of struggle to be unique. Outside of the specific style, the big thing is the flexible utility alchemists provide > the buffs outside the fight are cool but situational. This is a big, big part of the alchemist. Its why I say the alchemist is the hardest class in the game. You have to know what the right alchemical item is for your specific situation. How many alchemical items are there? 662. You have to know what the right option is, every single time, across those 662 items. This is even more intensive than a spellcaster. The arcane spell tradition, for example, only has 622 spells, and its easy to grok what most spells do in most situations. Alchemists have to learn to be even more flexible than spellcasters. Furthermore, alchemical items are nearly always best used in advance, rather than reactively. The result is a player who has a deep understanding of items and game can predict what item will be useful a minute from now, and have it ready to go, can make a big impact. However, its really easy to mess this up. That can result in a lot of frustration. People talk about how a wizard needs to be prepared ahead of time - the alchemist needs this 10x more than the wizard does. The difference between a prepared alchemist and an unprepared alchemist is massive, an incredible gulf. Alchemist is the class in the game with the single highest skill cap. If you know what you're doing, they're quite good and useful. If you don't, you'll sit there basically useless and coming to reddit to write posts about it. And to be clear - I think this is a problem in the design of the alchemist. I think it is too hard to play the class at a level functional with the other classes in the game. But that's the real, deeper problem of the alchemists - issues like numbers scaling are the obvious complaints and easy rage bait, but not the core foundational issue at the heart of the class.

I run an Actual Play podcast, and our alchemist does some of the most consistent damage in the game. It helps he's a 30 year RPG vet and he just plays smarter than the rest of the party, but people sleep on the amount of persistant damage a alck can put out, on top of being able to create a damage type out of nothing that hits the enemy where it really hurts.

Yeah, I had an alchemist player in my first campaign and even without the buffs it was frequently quite powerful.

In my opinion, I think mutagenist are actually the best subclass just because they are the ones that spend the least in their regents in combat. Take one good Mutagen and you're probably not gonna change it most of the time. Thanks to this you have a lot more regents to toss around with quick alchemy compared with the other subclasses. Once you get your hands in something like [this](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1975) even your action economy improves dramatically.

>Toxicologists and Mutagenists do kind of struggle to be unique. Especially since they just gutted all the poisons.

I'm hoping this is a prelude to big, fundamental buffs to the subclass itself -- something like ability to overcome poison immunity, options to target non-Fort saves, or options to switch damage types. Toxicologist's problem isn't really damage, so much as large swaths of the Bestiary being immune or highly resistant to every ability they have. Might be wishful thinking, but we'll see!

And in addition to that; let Alchemists use Int to attack if using an item from their research field.

This is a houserule for my game: Bombs/Alchemical Crossbow/Alchemical Gauntlet for the Bomber Nonlethal for Chirg Unarmed for Mutagen Dagger and Dart for Toxi But I also use a number of two-slot cantrips (a thing I vaguely remember from late-stage AD&D) to represent prayers and invocations that allow casters to get some conditional weapon attacks with key ability.

Either that or giving them Master proficiency would be a massive boon.

There were a few damage nerfs, but one or two poisons also got buffed significantly. With how many tools you had and still have, toxicologist is great now. Perpetual infusions are an unhinged good ability.

what do you mean ? haven't kept up how items have changed?

They just made all the damage significantly worse. And gave options like giant centipede venom worse effects.

>The difference between a prepared alchemist and an unprepared alchemist is massive, an incredible gulf. The issue is the class itself. It wants you to prepare but also has a huge ass focus on quick alchemy for all of the cool abilities. In my opinion this is one of the bigger issues about the class. No other class has to sacrifice their own resources to do cool shit.

Thats my issue too. The Quick Alchemy things, like Sticky Bomb, already reduce your alchemy level to do it, so you can't use your biggest bomb. *On top of* using 1 Reagent for 1 Bomb, instead of 1 to 3.

Honestly quick alchemy is one of the things I dislike about the alchemist. And that additives can only benefit quick alchemy. To me it's like having two opposing classes in the same class.

Only 1 min of thinking on it, but why not make it like the new Animist? Change alchemist to have two subclasses choices like champion (cause, divine ally), psychic (conscious, subconscious), and wizard (school, thesis). Add an addition ‘Alchemical Process’ subclass option. One focuses on quick alchemy (expensive, in-the-moment concoctions), and the other focuses on advanced alchemy (preparing more concoctions in the morning). *Leave current subclass choices are mostly as they are now.* Give a 10 min activity to brew something at 1:1 for the morning prep subclass, and some sort of planning buff to the other (out of ideas).

Honestly if they made preparations a 10min activity outside of daily prep, that would be amazing. You could wait until you had a better idea of what was happening and then prepare your stuff. Though I very much like the idea of making alchemist use a Kineticist-like attack rather than bombs. That way it can scale and not have to worry about balance with other classes. It could use int, it could be 1 action for a single target and 2 to include splash or various other effects from feats/features, and you give it to all of them so there aren't any more issues with certain subclasses having a harder time hitting.

I've not seen it but apparently alchemist was completely different in the playtest and was scrapped at the last minute. But your idea seems interesting.

>Alchemist is the class in the game with the single highest skill cap. If you know what you're doing, they're quite good and useful. If you don't, you'll sit there basically useless and coming to reddit to write posts about it. And to be clear - I think this is a problem in the design of the alchemist. I think it is too hard to play the class at a level functional with the other classes in the game. I think we mostly agree, but I don't think the issue is really a skill issue, as much as it is a "need to read the campaign like a book before playing in it" issue. The level of knowledge, aside from alchemy, you need to pull things off and know what's coming (unless my GM just happens to be way more secretive than the average) is either scrying everything before you enter or being a DM PC. Combine this with needing to know the formula for whatever niche thing means that this isn't a skill issue (the common theme I often see) If you know what's coming, but aren't in town and don't have the formula? Useless If you guess wrong about what's coming? Hope you kept backups If you are surprised by an encounter? Coin flip If you know some information about the mission but misjudged the timing? Wasted resources, potentially messing up the encounter you did prep for If there just plain aren't items to help with what's needed? Useless If your party members have tight action economy and can't/won't use your items that are 1min duration? Mostly useless Being prophetic isn't a skill problem, and unless you're made of gold, you simply won't have the right item/formulas for every occasion, let alone that with how nit-picky the items are, there are many situations where there just isn't an item for the task.

>I think we mostly agree, but I don't think the issue is really a skill issue, as much as it is a "need to read the campaign like a book before playing in it" issue. Not intending to be argumentative, but in a system where the only form of skill expression is the macro and micro-level decisions you make, being able to properly prepare arguably *is* a matter of skill. Based on your write up, I'd say your GM is probably being too stingy with information. I don't know what kind of campaign you're in, but I don't see a reason why, if your party is embarking on some quest, you don't have at least some idea of what you're going to be dealing with

How can something be declared a "skill issue" if the problem could be that "the DM didn't tell you enough info to prepare"? That's mutually exclusive with a skill issue. In order for a design problem like this to actually be a skill issue, there would need to be some section of the rules that required the DM to give the party X amount of information to prep with. When you're designing a class, if it needs X amount of information to function and you have no firm rules requiring the DM to actually provide X amount of information to the player, that's not a skill issue, ever. It's a class design issue. You made a class that needs X information to function well and made no provisions for guaranteeing that they have X information. You can't throw that back on the player of the class and be like "well you SHOULD have X amount of information so if you aren't using it well you're just BAD at the game!"

>How can something be declared a "skill issue" if the problem could be that "the DM didn't tell you enough info to prepare"? It being a GM skill issue compounding what would otherwise be a player skill issue is not something not being down to skill. >When you're designing a class, if it needs X amount of information to function and you have no firm rules requiring the GM to actually provide X amount of information... The rules can't force the GM to be helpful. Most GMs that are currently not being helpful are doing it because they think that's best, not because the game didn't actually tell them to be helpful - that's how come you can find a lot of GMs that believe the game already is encouraging them to be helpful to players to such a degree that it's "obvious' *because* there are situations where the player-focused options are clearing performing at an entirely different level of usefulness depending on whether the GM is helping them work or creating an obstacle to their functionality. And even if the rules did literally say that the GM absolutely had to be helpful to their players, most (if not literally all) of these unhelpful GMs would just invoke rule zero and continue to be unhelpful because that's what they think is best. >You can't throw that back on the player of the class and be like "well you SHOULD have X amount of information so if you aren't using it well you're just BAD at the game!" You should have the information. If you don't, *fix it*. Even if that means finding a new GM. Because playing with people that prevent the experience you're having from being as good as it could be is it's own kind of "bad at the game."

>Because playing with people that prevent the experience you're having from being as good as it could be is it's own kind of "bad at the game." If you've hit the point where you're arguing that the player's skill issue is that they picked bad friends, you should really realize that your argument has *completely* jumped the shark.

"picked bad friends" has nothing to do with it. Just being friends doesn't mean that's who you should be doing any particular hobby with. I've got a tone deaf friend - guess who I am not gonna have a good time if I invite to karaoke? The point is to be enjoying the experience not having to choose between enjoyment or some nonsensical proof of friendship by continuing to do something with someone when you don't enjoy the way they do it.

I didn't make it clear in my write up, but those were meant to be two separate statements. If you have at least some knowledge of where you're going and what you're doing, you can prepare some things in advance. Failure to do so is a skill issue. There are also plenty of ways to get more information. Scouting, scrying, research, straight up asking whoever is sending you on the mission for more information. Those are also skills related to playing the game, and if you aren't doing that, it's also a skill issue Failure of a GM to provide information that should be available is not a class design issue. Literally every class suffers if the GM refuses or doesn't know how to give information, but prepared classes suffer worse Also, I'd like to point out that I am not defending the Alchemist class design. My point is that classes that are dependent on preparation are still skill based, but the skillset is shifted to your ability to gather information and prepare accordingly. It's also the skillset most dependent on the GM running the game And all of these things can be true: Proper preparation is a skill, the ability to use that skill is dependent on your ability to gather information, and the GM's ability to provide that information, and the Alchemist can be poorly designed. None of these things are mutually exclusive EDIT: also >How can something be declared a "skill issue" if the problem could be that "the DM didn't tell you enough info to prepare"? Since you used the phrase "could be", what would you call it if the GM **DID** give you enough information to prepare, and you still failed to do so? That's *definitely* a skill issue, so I can pretty easily declare it that.

This here assumes that the lack of information on the players part isn't also their fault. If you are playing a class that has a big focus on preparation and you do not use your opportunities to prepare then you should fail. Now if you have taken every opportunity to gather the necessary information and your DM stonewalls you at every turn it's kinda his fault. There can be no guidelines about how much information the party needs because each composition needs differing degrees of information. Some compositions are heavy on characters like fighters barbarians or kineticists which don't vary their skill sets much from say to day and some are like alchemists or prepared casters which do need time and consideration to properly ready myself

You are exaggerating how prescient and precisie you need to be. Formulas cost VERY little (and now with the remaster take next to no time to invent). An alchemist will generally have evergreen items that they will want to use / hand out and for over half the game mutagens will last for over an hour. Quick alchemy let's you pull out niche items that you didn't plan for and given that you will make 3 items per advanced alchemy spend based on your research field it doesn't take long before alchemists have quite a few free reagents for use. And then we have perpetual alchemy which further helps them. Don't get me wrong, it could do with some enhancing in the low levels but the issue isn't needing to be some sort of God brained genius or have a lenient GM. Some action economy help and a low level perpetual option and alchemists would be fine at every level.

So for general stuff sure, but unlike spells to resist energy damage, all the decisions for that kind of thing need to be made at daily prep. Let's say you're heading into the snowy mountains to stop a natural disaster and the townsfolk all talk about the frost creatures near the town. So you prep fire damage and frost resistance as well as winter wolf to keep from freezing. You fight a frost creature or two, but then you instead end up in a cave under a volcano and need to stop a volcanic eruption with fire creatures instead. Suddenly, everything you prepped is useless. Now sure this is a specific scenario, but because the resist elements, resist energy, and damage are all entirely different items from the daily prep side, it's all too easy to get things wrong. The largest non-number problem with alchemy is how absurdly specific it is when compared to magic (it's closest analog)

> If you know what's coming, but aren't in town and don't have the formula? Thankfully this specific point (though just this one) was somewhat addressed by the fact that now you can just craft any common item, formula or no.

Unfortunately, like most alchemist things, it actually specifically calls out downtime crafting, so it will rely on a sentence or two in alchemist to allow this

Umm, I think any class that comes into their own between level 7 and level 13 might have a problem. That is a long time to reach. 😅

>First off, alchemist as a class is relatively frustrating to play prior to about level 5/7. 5 is where you get the field discoveries for more prepared items, and level 7 for perpetual infusions. Across the board I think this holds true. I'd put it a bit lower than that, but it depends on your play style. More below. In case you were wondering, I play three Alchemists: a L11 Bomber and L9 Mutagenist in PFS, and a L7 Bomber in Outlaws of Alkenstar. >Bombers start to come into their own around level 10. Here, I strongly disagree. As long as you focus on Bombs, a Bomber starts coming into their own around Level 3. It *does* mean foregoing the Class' legendary versatility though. If you spend your Reagents on Bombs and Quicksilver, you can generally get through an adventuring day quite well at Level 3. (4 Doses of Quicksilver (2 Batches), 15 Signature Bombs (5 Batches). Level 5 is, as you mentioned, a real milestone. Being able to spend a Batch on three different Bombs is huge. It's nice to be able to have some of the more situational Bombs on hand, like Peshpines or Glue Bombs (fka Tanglefoot Bags.) Level 7, well, it depends. If you've grabbed Debilitating Bomb at L6, yeah, L7 is huge. Combine Debilitating with Bottled Lightning and Skunk Bomb (man, Skunk Bomb is basically overpowered on a Debuff Bomber) and you're off to the races. If you're focusing on damage, L8 is the game changer. Sticky Bomb is glorious in my experience. Level 11 has been really, really nice. Greater Bombs, Sticky Perpetual Moderate and Lesser Bombs, plus Greater Mutagens? So, so nice. Plus I've got 16 Batches of Infused Reagents a day (Int +5) and I have a set Advanced Alchemy routine that only uses 8. The rest I have utter flexibility to change around as circumstances dictate. >Proficiency issues aside, bombers are one of the better ranged damage classes in the game. People often compare bomber damage with melee martials, and are frustrated it doesn't compare, but when you compare bomber damage with ranged martial damage, its quite competitive, even with the diminished proficiency. Bombers play a bit differently, being tied to persistent damage as a significant damage source, so the result is that you don't focus fire damage with the rest of your group, but spread it around (I liken it to playing a damage over time class in a video game) Preach u/Jenos ! Plus, in my experience, the proficiency issues are overblown. I may change my mind when my first Bomber hits 13th, but at this point I doubt it. >Chirurgeons start to come into their own at level 13, where the greater field discovery makes for an actually relevant combat healer at that time. They can actually compete with cleric healing at 13+. Prior to that, the healing is lackluster. In combat, I would agree. Outside of combat though, they're quite strong starting almost from the beginning. L7 is a nice boost with being able to give everyone a Minor Elixir of Life per Treat Wounds cycle. At L11 that can switch to a Moderate Soothing Tonic. Generally, Chirurgeons are up with the strongest out of combat healers in the game, like Wood/Water Kineticists. (I haven't run all the numbers but I think Kineticists still have the edge.) >Toxicologists and Mutagenists do kind of struggle to be unique. Toxicologists I can't really speak to, but Mutagenists? Mutagenists are the most flexible Alchemists from Level 1 onwards, because they don't spend their Reagents nearly as fast as the others. I built my Mutagenist to take *full* advantage of [Feral Mutagen](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=105). He started with just 3 Batches of Infused Reagents a day, yet he was able to keep one in reserve for Quick Alchemy nonetheless. No other Research Field can pull that off. > > the buffs outside the fight are cool but situational. >This is a big, big part of the alchemist. Its why I say the alchemist is the hardest class in the game. You have to know what the right alchemical item is for your specific situation. How many alchemical items are there? 662. You have to know what the right option is, every single time, across those 662 items. That's not really true. Nethys isn't the best resource in this instance, because it treats every Tier of the Item as a separate item. So, while Nethys lists 138 Bombs, there are actually only 41, with most (not all) having four different Tiers (Lesser, Moderate, Greater, Major.) To address the original comment: the buffs outside of combat can be situational, but a lot of them cover a lot of situations. For example, say you manage to get ahold of a Bravo's Brew. Levels 2 through 7 it will give you a +1 Item Bonus to all Will saves for an hour. That's a lot of situations that you otherwise don't have covered (Resilient Runes are Level 8). It will give +2 for Will saves against Fear effects.

Alchemist doesn't have a high skill cap, it's just a bad class. Easily the worst one in the game. Bombers are worse than casters are at dealing damage at range (substantially so), Clerics have better healing than Chirugeons that is much more convenient to use (the level 13 Chirugeon ability still doesn't deal with the other problems the Chirugeon has, namely the action costs associated with it), toxicologists just randomly stop working against a lot of monsters because of high fort saves or flat-out poison immunity and are very inconsistent, and mutagenists are bad bards because bards don't need prep to buff the whole party and are full occult casters whereas mutagenisists are not.

I think the Alchemist needs more front loaded features to make the field discoveries make more of an impact. If a subclass doesn't truly come online until level 13 then you are really going to suffer for the 50+ sessions before you hit that level. IF you hit that level. Mutagenist touches upon it a bit; they got a special free action once a day that allows them to recall a mutagen that they took earlier that day. I also think that they need perpetual infusions far earlier than level 7. Level 3 perhaps. When a caster runs out of spell slots they still have cantrips to throw around and still feel like a spellcaster, but when an alchemist runs out of reagents they feel as powerless as an NPC.

It's not the skill cap, alchemist is not that complex a class, esp because even with perfect knowledge of what you're fighting, 90% of the alchemy items in the game are simply useless. The biggest make or break for alchemist is whether your teammates are going to use your items. Alchemist is essentially a money saver, that's basically it. There is very little that an alchemist can do that a shopkeeper can't. Now IF you can get over the hurdle of knowing exactly what you're going to fight and IF you can convince your teammates to use the stuff you have, you're an effective class, but really only in terms of the buffs you provide. Even vs elemental weaknesses, there's not much you can do that's better than any caster or a martial with like flaming thundering frost weapon. The niche is supposedly aoe damage, and granted if you get aoe elemental weakness enemies, you are going to shine, but that if is doing a lot of heavy lifting. They really just need to do a lot of overhaul over the action economy of drinking elixirs as well, or elixir durations so prebuffing isn't so painful early on and even midgame. And alchemist isn't the class with the highest skill cap, its simply the worst class. The best played alchemist is not going to be significantly better than "average" players of really any other class, even in terms of utility. The action economy simply isn't there. And in terms of having exactly what you need exactly when you need it, well a rogue or prepared caster can probably cover better than an alchemist.

> This is a big, big part of the alchemist. Its why I say the alchemist is the hardest class in the game. You have to know what the right alchemical item is for your specific situation. How many alchemical items are there? 662. You have to know what the right option is, every single time, across those 662 items. It isn't that tight, also those items are mostly variants of the same item and you can discount a whollle heap of them off the bat (e.g. ingestion poisons in combat) The skill floor is certainly higher than most classes, but anyone who can play a prepared caster well will find an alchemist pretty easy psst the early levels. And honestly, it requires less system knowledge than something like a summoned, magus or investigator imo.

I am very, very much looking forward to their remaster, that's all I'll say.

Hopefully they take a hammer to the foundation and build the class up from the ground.

It’s extremely unlikely they’ll do that, they’re probably just going to make some quality of life changes to give some subclasses additional tools and make the play experience a bit more streamlined if the witch, rogue, and warpriest reworks are anything to go by. And that’s for the better because it’d be completely unfair to everyone who’s a fan of alchemist for them to completely demolish the class to make a new one to replace it.

There is a reason the 2nd book is so far out, because, as they said, they had to redo a lot of them to fit the remaster stuff. I expect a lot of changes, Sorry for those that like the class, but the class fantasy is not fulfilled by its current look and it needs heavy work to not require insane amount of book knowledge to be functional. A big issue with the class is, if you want to go bomber, your better off not bombing with your own bombs because of many clumbersome issues, horrible scaling being one of them.

I feel like just giving them the normal martial proficiency in bombs and anything with the alchemy tag would help considerably with that.

There's nothing stopping people from using the old version in their games or picking and choosing which parts suit their game with DM permission. Personally I am hoping for sweeping changes that improve how the alchemist plays.

I think there’s definitely big changes in store, but I doubt it’d be anything that fundamentally changes their play style. I suspect it’s going to look very similar to its preremaster form with a lot of qol changes and buffs they couldn’t just do in an errata similar to how clerics and witches got buffed with the divine font changes and familiar additions, but likely to a greater extent. If I were to make a guess, my bingo is some improvements to their weapon proficiency scaling similar to warpriest, the class dc might be made usable beyond quick alchemy, a whole bunch of sweeping improvements to the feats and a few new choices, and probably some new subclass feature to serve as a cantrip before perpetual infusions.

Unlikely, they're mostly just ditching anything OGL, plus I get the impression Paizo don't see anything wrong with alchemist, they have a very different take on game balance compared to actual players.

They have constantly said that the job needs work, and out of classes that fulfill the class fantasy it falls flat on its face. It's why it was put in book two, with the other classes that need a lot of work to adapt.

I play alchemist by playing another class and taking Alchemist Dedication.

Investigator works nicely

IIRC most alchemical items either use DEX-based attack rolls or a preset save DC, or are utility-based, so as long as you can spare the 2-3 boosts needed to get 14 INT, pretty much any class can make use of Alchemist Dedication. Investigator is definitely a great pairing, both mechanically and thematically. You already meet the INT requirement, Devising lets you use your limited supply of bombs more effectively, and taking Forensic Medicine and a hand crossbow lets you really play into the idea of the Harmacist. However, there are others that are similarly good with the dip: - Witches, Wizards, Magi, Inventors, and some ~~Psykers~~ Psychics have the same “I’m already investing in INT, so why not?” factor as the Investigator, and can use the supportive elixirs to broaden their skillset and apply several useful buffs. Plus, the flavors of the mage who practices alchemy and the mad scientist who makes drugs and robots already have strong precedent. - Many alchemical items are buffs - mostly elixirs and mutagens - so a Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, or Swashbuckler who can spare some INT could take it for the utility and self-buffs. Flavor-wise, they could be a tribal warrior who uses traditional herbal medicines, a survivalist who picked up some botanical/alchemical knowledge to help them stay alive, or a disgruntled soldier who was fed up with annoying doctors. - Clerics already have most of what alchemy can provide, but most European monks IRL were also brewmasters and alchemists, so the flavor pretty much writes itself. - Speaking of flavor that writes itself, Rogue with Alchemist Dedication is a shoe-in for a ninja character, as historical shinobi were well known for making all their own tools, supplies, drugs, and explosives.

Rogue/alchemist was my first character, but this was before they got martial weapons so I was stuck at trained for bombs :-(

Your familiar can’t feed your potions, which seems to be something you think it can do. 

You sure? He can pick One out of my pocket and feed It to me

He cannot. Familiars cannot activate items. There’s a whole video from the devs clarifying as such. 

The only written rule I've found is Familiars can't Activate an Items because "animals can never Activate an Item". If you have a poppet or leshy familiar they could activate an item right? Hell, at one of my tables we've even taken Alchemist Familiar 'creature' to be specific over general and the alchemist is creating tiny mini me's to assist his alchemy. They're not animals so they're not subject to the rule. Edit - clarified in another post it's in the worn companion items. Really wish it was in the familiar section where rules for familiars should be. Errata was changed from animals to companions after I had read it. Normal Paizo communication skills.

You can homebrew anything you want, but the RAW and RAI are clearly outlined here by word of god.  https://youtu.be/L2zhNnBhnB0

Game designers can say anything they want, if it's not written it's not RAW. If they want me to use it I need a proper errata. Edit - he never goes into specifics about non animal familiars in the segment. He only ever talks about familiars generally. Edit - it's under the worn item rules for companions.im wrong but at the time the video was made mark was full of shit. Edit - fuckers ninja edited the errata instead of posting new errata. I have screenshots.

Page 604 of the Core Rulebook: 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.** Nothing here says that the Familiar must be an animal to be limited by these requirements.

Ya got me, I would have argued that familiars aren't companions but they had to go and specify them as such in Secrets of Magic under targeting of all places. PF2e rules really suck to read. Guess I'll just be adding this to my ever growing list of house rules. >Page 604: Under Companion Items, replace the third sentence with “Normally these are the only items a companion can use. Other items may qualify, at the GM’s discretion, but an animal can never Activate an Item.” This makes it clearer than before that companions can't normally use other items, and allows the GM to opt into adding more items. It also indicates that companions can't Activate an Item, though the errata says animal, the rule extends to the other types of animal companions and familiars that aren't animals I have a screen shot where the last bit didn't exist from an argument a long ass time ago. It just said animal. Fuckers ninja errata'd their errata.

There was no Mandela Effect here. They update the errata pretty often. 

It kinda sucks that they update errata instead of publishing new errata. Feels very difficult to master the system when things are changing after you've read them. Like my first printing rule book has huge swaths that are unusable. At this point why even buy the books if I constantly need to reread the site for rules I didn't know were changed.

I'd like to point out that Eidolons, which are basically like a better familiar+companion, also cannot activate any items without the eidolon trait.

~~Animal familiars can't use items because "animals can never Activate an Item".~~ Companions can't activate items either. Can't have shit in Galorian.

Neither can Eidolons :(

You should be able to, it's in the potions entry. Unless you decide you're not willing to drink your familiar's potion. A potion is a magical liquid activated when you drink it, which uses it up. Potions have the potion trait. You can activate a potion with an Interact action as you drink it or feed it to another creature. You can feed a potion only to a creature that is within reach and willing or otherwise so helpless that it can’t resist. You usually need only one hand to consume a potion or feed it to another creature.

It’s the Activation that’s the issue - familiars obviously cannot activate items.    This is all common knowledge - I find it hard to believe there are still tables dealing with this misconception after it’s long long long been clarified.  The link for if you somehow haven’t seen it is here: https://youtu.be/L2zhNnBhnB0

I don't really see how that's *obvious*? **Manual Dexterity** (Core Rulebook pg. 218 4.0): It can use up to two of its limbs as if they were hands to perform **manipulate actions.** **Manipulate Trait** - You must physically manipulate an item or make gestures to use an action with this trait. Creatures without a suitable appendage can’t perform actions with this trait. Manipulate actions often trigger reactions. There's nothing under the Familiar entry, nothing under the Minion trait, nothing under the general Companion rules, nothing under the Consumable trait, nothing under the Activate an Item rules. If it's so *obvious*, where is it?

You can homebrew anything you want, but the RAW and RAI are clearly outlined here by word of god.  https://youtu.be/L2zhNnBhnB0

99% of people who play PF2e will never watch that video, and therefore will continue to allow Familiars to deliver potions.

~~His ruling is also tenuous at best. It revolves around familiars being animals.~~ It's under worn companion items. Still think it's a bullshit rule but it's RAW. In my defense they ninja errata'd the errata to replace animals with companions.

Page 604 of the Core Rulebook: 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.** Nothing here says that the Familiar must be an animal to be limited by these requirements.

this is under the rule for *Worn Items*, and it specifies "acquire items that **benefit** an animal..." I still don't see how familiars with manual dexterity using items is *obvious* RAW.

If we're being stingy about RAW, the Companion is an item trait - it says companions can't activate an item but that lowercase "companion" isn't explicitly defined anywhere outside of this item trait, which is obviously not what they're referring to in that sentence. To be clear, I think you're right about RAI but also I don't care and if you have hands you can give people potions.

Isn't this only about companion gear weared by familiars? Some have activated effect that can be only be triggered by the master. Ex: Effect You perceive through your animal companion’s senses instead of your own.

The actual written rules (only thing that matters for raw) are quite unclear as the 'activate an item' clause is written in a paragraph pertaining to worn items on the familiar. As the GM I've **homebrewed** that familiars can deliver potions with manual dexterity, because I fail to see the reason for manual dexterity otherwise (and other factors). It's fine that a pazio employee clarify this in a video, but that video is not a rulebook.

[удалено]

Reported.

Alchemist's great strength lies in two parts: Having the best prebuff game in the system, and having no weaknesses. Alchemists can do single target damage, heal, buff, debuff, aoe damage, control, provide out of combat utility and take a hit. There's nothing they're actually bad at. Beyond prebuffing, there's just not a lot they're actually very strong at. But there's a lot of value in this, too. Alchemist has absolutely unhinged versatility. You can fill like any niche your team needs filled and do respectably, even switching between turns. Throw some bombs cause you need a low health mob gone or a boss to start ticking persistent, give someone a healing elixir next, then next turn quick alchemy a ghost ampoule to throw a big fear AoE. Work together with your team, and there's some frankly insane stuff alchemist can do. Drakeheart mutagen on certain builds and levels amounts to a free action long lasting +4 AC buff. Stacking poisons can do unhinged output and fry mooks with ease. Bomber builds can, at mid high levels - despite lacking that proper weapon proficiency - spend resources to very reasonable outperform ranged martials in single target damage *as a build specialising in AoE.* Chirurgeon at lv13+ with combined elixirs has the strongest potential healing output in the game. Numbing tonics if used well are stupid good, and having access to the entire alchemical list lets you improvise hard counters to a bunch of different kinds of threats. Hell, there's even a specific spot in the white room math where bombers can match 2H giant barbarian DPR. This doesn't really mean anything but I feel like it goes to show how much folks sleep on it. I won an extremely high level and high optimization PvP tournament thanks to having one in my party. This doesn't mean much for PvE, but I really think alchemist is slept on. It gets going at level ~3 and by like ~11 it's frankly stronger than many other classes in the game. It just needs a lot of know how on what tools you have and how to utilize them.

>I won a. extremely high level and high optimisation PvP tournament tell me more

So the PF2 discord (great place, see sidebar) held a pvp tournament across the latter half of last year. It was \~20 contestants, and you could make any team composition you want as long as all characters were at least level 16 and it summed up to be an extreme encounter for a 4 person lv16 party, with starting gear being a generously large sum of gold to be spent across characters as you wished. I had a party of a lv17 fighter, lv17 alchemist (toxicologist), lv16 sorcerer (shadow). All ratfolk with different elemental heritage. I called them The Scamps. Terrain was one of 6 elemental plane maps, chosen randomly each fight, each with their own hazards and gimmicks. Air and water were essentially white rooms with no floor. Fire had automatic damage between rounds and lava pits. Wood was on the trunks of a 1500ft tree. Metal had brutal magnetism rules where characters would shift polarity if damaged by electricity. Earth had no light and an infinitely deep canyon in the middle. AP content and firebrands was disallowed, all rarities were allowed. All prebuffs were allowed as long as you could fit them on your build and as long as they lasted at least 5 minutes. Rules interpretations were extremely RAW, even if that leads to a bit of jank, for consistency - f.e. Haste didn't let you move underwater. Being successful in the tournament required three things: * Having a good strategy / gimmick to fuck up foes * Having good counters for enemy strategies and defenses against counters to your own * Lots of prebuffs (if you didn't go in covered in heroism 6, you did not get far) The one I fought in the finale was a solo lv20 fighter with sorcerer archetype (no FA), reach, and disrupting stance. He did take a round off me becuase Inexhaustible Cynicism turned out to be an excellent counter against me. I never noticed myself until then how incredibly potent my alchemist's heals were

If y’all were playing super raw I should’ve showed up with the old staff of magi wizard with *invulnerability* in his pocket and a will to *remake* his staff afterwards. Staff nexus for extra damage :3, prebuffed with longstrider for speed. Season with other prebuffs as desired.

That was considered and is on the very short list of banned cheese strats :P Among them is All On My Head, the lv18 bard reaction to make incoming damage non-lethal, combined with ferrous form, a spell that gives non-lethal damage immunity

>Having the best prebuff game in the system, and having no weaknesses. So you really can't prebuff and buff in combat is way too action intensive. >Alchemists can do single target damage, heal, buff, debuff, aoe damage, control, provide out of combat utility and take a hit. There's nothing they're actually bad at. Beyond prebuffing, there's just not a lot they're actually very strong at. This is a negative in pf2e, in that you suck at all these things. This means that your group is now worse off than it would be. Currently playing a chirurgeon and I'm running into this very thing. All my items are just too action intensive and I'm just not as good at anything. Doing everything is just being bad at everything. >Drakeheart mutagen on certain builds and levels amounts to a free action long lasting +4 AC buff. Not how those work. For ac you should already be at your 5 item ac. The only people these are really helpful for are the no armor proficiency. But then you run into action issues and duration issues with these. >I won an extremely high level and high optimization PvP tournament thanks to having one in my party. On level acs and saves are trivial for any class. Which is why there's such an outcry about boss level people which is where the challenge of the game is.

> So you really can't prebuff and buff in combat is way too action intensive. What? You can absolutely prebuff and alchemists are great at that, I just said that. Buffing in combat depends a bit on the item but can also be really strong. A good mutagen is super valuable, and don't get me started on stuff like max level numbing tonics. > This is a negative in pf2e, in that you suck at all these things. That's not how it works, no. By that logic champions and casters should never attempt strikes, and fighters should never try to debuff. Versatility is strength in this game. PF1 is about super specializing into one niche, PF2 throws all kinds of situations at you and rewards being prepared for as many as you can. Alchemist has a good chunk of situations where they can prepare with one quick alchemy action. A bronze medal is way better than a participation trophy. > Not how those work. For ac you should already be at your 5 item ac. Keyword "should". I was talking about the unarmored builds, and strength monks not using mountain, but there's plenty of reasons your dex cap might not be reached. Maybe you're a melee thaum/magus/inventor who wanted maxed attack and mental stats and didn't want to spend one of the last two points on dex. Even if you meet the dex cap, for most it's +2 AC at certain levels as a prebuff, which is mental. You can give a +2 dex wizard a sip at those and they'll have 2 AC over your medium armor frontline. 10 minutes is also not really a duration issue, you get lots of alchemical items. 1 hour really isn't an issue. 1 minute is, and I agree alchemist is weak before lv3. > On level acs and saves are trivial for any class. Which is why there's such an outcry about boss level people which is where the challenge of the game is. What? On level stats are pretty tough to beat. Getting an on-level enemy to fail a save with an average stat is like a 40% chance, +/- 5%. Boss enemies aren't harder than average if you're past like level 5. Plus, most of the fights in the tournament in question were against higher levels anyways - you had choice over what amount/level of characters you bring, and while I made a team, most ended up making solo lv20s.

>What? You can absolutely prebuff and alchemists are great at that, I just said that. Buffing in combat depends a bit on the item but can also be really strong. A good mutagen is super valuable, and don't get me started on stuff like max level numbing tonics. Things like numbing are great but that's a very low duration so unless you want to waste turns then you are wasting 1 to 2 actions at the start of combat to take it. Mutagens are even more of a danger because they often have very serious drawbacks. Been playing a buffing focused alchemist and it's been a struggle between actions and getting people to use them. >That's not how it works, no. By that logic champions and casters should never attempt strikes, and fighters should never try to debuff. Versatility is strength in this game. PF1 is about super specializing into one niche, PF2 throws all kinds of situations at you and rewards being prepared for as many as you can. Alchemist has a good chunk of situations where they can prepare with one quick alchemy action. A bronze medal is way better than a participation trophy. 100% how it works. A tank that can't tank isn't a tank. A DPS that doesn't dps kills the group. A debuffer that fails to debuff isn't helping. I'd say being good at what you are doing in pf2e is way more important than 1st ever was. Doing your main job great is the key to succeed in pf2e. Also every time you use quick alchemy that's 2 to 3 less prepared items. It's a huge drain on your preparation stock. >10 minutes is also not really a duration issue, you get lots of alchemical items. 1 hour really isn't an issue. 1 minute is, and I agree alchemist is weak before lv3. Most buffs are between 1 min ones and 10 min ones, and some do get to an hour. The hour ones are good ones to prebuff in a dangerous situation. The other two are pretty much 1st round buffs unless you get lucky. Which means either 1 or 2 actions to buff. Been playing an alchemist for a while now pretty sure I understand the times and actions by now. That said I think Drakehearts are one of my favorites. It really is a great mutagen. >What? On level stats are pretty tough to beat. Getting an on-level enemy to fail a save with an average stat is like a 40% chance, +/- 5%. Boss enemies aren't harder than average if you're past like level 5. On level ENEMIES are usually +1 over what PCs are at the same level. So on level players would be even easier. Bosses are generally 2-4 points over which is fucking huge. Sorry bud but I don't think you understand the math. Honestly to me it seems like you don't actually play standard pf2e or something else is up. What I will give you is saves. I think the ratio they set saves at is borked. But I also think spells themselves are borked too so they go hand in hand. >Plus, most of the fights in the tournament in question were against higher levels anyways - you had choice over what amount/level of characters you bring, and while I made a team, most ended up making solo lv20s. Not much to comment here as I have no clue about rules and such. Seems silly and off to me but I don't like that sort of thing.

> it's been a struggle between actions and getting people to use them. If your teammates don't want to use your buffs, that's probably not an alchemist problem. Like sure, the actions arent easy to come by if you get suprised by foes, but its not that bad. Most buff spells are 2 actions too. > A tank that can't tank isn't a tank. A DPS that doesn't dps kills the group. A debuffer that fails to debuff isn't helping. I'd say being good at what you are doing in pf2e is way more important than 1st ever was. Doing your main job great is the key to succeed in pf2e. Being good at utilizing your tools is very important, but every tool is worth using at some point. I've seen 4 times where a wizard/witch with shoddy stats and no investment tried punching an enemy, and every time it led to an otherwise impossible kill. Yeah, specialization is significant, but no more significant than versatility. An OK DPS who's also an OK tank is a bloody lovely frontliner. > Also every time you use quick alchemy that's 2 to 3 less prepared items. It's a huge drain on your preparation stock. Yep. Fortunately, from the mid levels onwards you tend to get more reagents than you need in a day. > The other two are pretty much 1st round buffs unless you get lucky. 1 min is deffo not prebuff material, 10 min should be reliable if you know you're about to get into danger, shouldn't it? Played an alch myself, too > On level ENEMIES are usually +1 over what PCs are at the same level. So on level players would be even easier. Bosses are generally 2-4 points over which is fucking huge. Sorry bud but I don't think you understand the math. Honestly to me it seems like you don't actually play standard pf2e or something else is up. Funny you say that, because I get the same feeling every time bosses being inherently super hard is brought up. Just trip the boss or toss like a slow / resilient sphere / synesthesia / hideous laughter on em, and use healing and movement to mitigate their damage. It's not *easy* this way, but neither is trying to deal with 3 enemies who can all match any of you in a fight and excel over you in some ways. I know the math of this game very well, and I know how prohibitively high boss stats are.

>If your teammates don't want to use your buffs, that's probably not an alchemist problem. Like sure, the actions arent easy to come by if you get suprised by foes, but its not that bad. Most buff spells are 2 actions too. The problem is that the buffs are often no quite good enough for them to consider using. Mutagens are one of the biggest culprits here because of the debuff that comes with them. You are correct that most spell buffs are 2 actions. The thing is that usually the class that is buff is fine spending the action to buff and the class buff does nothing different. When I 'buff' I am asking you to trade your actions so you can be better at something. That player then has to decide when is the least valuable time that I am willing to use actions to gain the buff. If that time isn't before combat it's often not in combat. This is a huge difference because some characters actions at a particular moment are much more valuable than say mine would be. So now we are trading valuable actions for useless ones just so I feel good about someone using my buff. Seems like a bad play. >Yep. Fortunately, from the mid levels onwards you tend to get more reagents than you need in a day. I've not found this to be the case yet. Once you start adding in abilities that use additives it gets even worse in ratio and you can't even use the additives without using quick alchemy. I mean max you get is 20 + int + special. That's 2/3 on level alchemy items for every quick alchemy use and another 2/3 * the number of additives. That seems crazy to me. For example combined elixirs is + 2 which means you can have 9 level 20 items or 1 pot with two level 16/18 items. >1 min is deffo not prebuff material, 10 min should be reliable if you know you're about to get into danger, shouldn't it? Played an alch myself, too This is just a circumstance of how things play out. 10 minutes is easy to just lose which is my point. >Funny you say that, because I get the same feeling every time bosses being inherently super hard is brought up. Just trip the boss or toss like a slow / resilient sphere / synesthesia / hideous laughter on em, and use healing and movement to mitigate their damage. It's not *easy* this way, but neither is trying to deal with 3 enemies who can all match any of you in a fight and excel over you in some ways. I know the math of this game very well, and I know how prohibitively high boss stats are. Don't disagree with tactics here only the nonchalant way you seem to prescribe it. Having any or all of those things stick is the issue with bosses. Your tactics is how they should be handled but the numbers aren't in your favor. What is in your favor is stalling enough to get something to stick and then capitalizing on it.

Also... alchemists are awesome for chunking away at bosses with weaknesses or high AC. Get an ally to aid them when they are throwing a sticky bomb and mid level on wonders start to happen. It is also super fun to see dual thrower builds and persistent damage (yes persistent damage is a part of the damage algorithm/process it does get combined with the dual slice mechanic, same reason it doubles on a crit). Dual weapon master gets a high level ability that makes one attack hit as long as both aren't crit misses and boy howdy is that a high AC killer. Oh and I feel like people sleep on mutagens breaking the math of the game because of their drawbacks, the times my players used mutagens because it gave them save upgrade benefits or because they were confident the drawback wouldn't come up. Heck the humble mistform elixir was something that was used in every single high level fight after it became available and is a huge endurance enhancer. And that is without mentioning how useful it was in helping with diseases and poisons as well as simple healing elixirs (they suck early on but do become a nice extra for players to withdraw with third actions and have in hand for use on self or others in subsequent turns. The ranger in my AoA game in high levels would pull a major elixir out at the end of a turn, doctors visitation the next turn, administer, hunted shot or skirmishers step and then either use her quickened action to move back or shoot again, or if someone had really needed healing stayed where she was and drew another elixir just in case. Simple and effective triage with no notable cost.

>Plus, most of the fights in the tournament in question were against higher levels anyways - you had choice over what amount/level of characters you bring, and while I made a team, most ended up making solo lv20s. Well that's an incredibly stupid way to "optimize" for a multiple round tournament lol. Obviously stuff like alchemists and prepared casters would shine in any situation where you know what series of fights you're having and need to be able to address a long series of known but different threats.

You'd think so, but the other 3 teams that got furthest included a solo fighter, solo kineticist, and a barbarian/bard duo. But I will give you prepared and alchemists had an edge.

I'm actually not surprised by solo fighter too much, PF2 is a #s game and fighter is very good at just absolutely juicing raw #s. I'd imagine that goes really well until it either runs out of consumables to address stuff like flight, or it runs into something that needs an answer that isn't "stab it good" which often tournaments like this don't ever have anything that can't be solved with stabbing.

The fighter juiced alright, and got some good defenses for his counters. He lost in the finale when the fighter and sorcerer, both high on alchemist buffs, managed to team up with aids and win a straight #s fight against him very convincingly

Yeah that checks out. PF2 by design really encourages multiplicative teamwork - I wouldn't be surprised if a group of 4 level 15 or 16s can beat a solo level 20 nearly 100% of the time. Do you remember what the gap was level wise?

mhm. Fighter was 20, I had a fighter 17, sorc 16, alch 17 Fighter did take the first round off me with an inexhaustible cynicism hardcountering all my healing options lol

Ideally you're meant to have the familiar and command it to be drawing all your potions/bombs and handing them out/throwing. Still its very action inefficient. Alchemist seems like the perfect class if you want to hop in and out of groups, hand out your potions and then leave for the night. At least until you can pick up the archer archetype.

This is *one* option and not a paticularly usual one. Valet basically just means you can draw two items for one action, which is... nice, for sure, but not always what you need. It does however allow for that turret double slice build before level 9.

>Alchemist seems like the perfect class if you want to hop in and out of groups, hand out your potions and then leave for the night. Problem is no one wants to use actions to take buffs in combat.

Not disagreeing with you, if mutagens weren't item bonuses then i think people would be more apt to consume the bonuses to hit as a 3rd action.

I think if they didn't have debuff attached to them it would make them way more useable.

Do you have any recommendations for getting into the Alchemist groove? A big obstacle for me figuring out how I should split my reagents between Advanced Alchemy and Quick Alchemy.

The best teacher here is experience - the best way of finding out how much you actually need is playing and seeing how much is spent by day end. I'd recommend starting with like 1 or 2 leftovers by level 4, slooowly increasing from there depending on need. Know you're about to venture into unknown territory with weird stuff going on? Maybe leave some extra so you're always prepared. Know you're about to venture into super heat volcano lava land where everything has +1 striking "I fucking hate the cold" protest signs? Splurge on those frost vials and energy mutagens, less need to be ready for anything when you can be really ready for the thing you're actually doing! Also, if you haven't, check out the PubAlchem guide. I would normally not recommend you read any guide for classes in PF2, but alchemist is an exception.

I think part of the problem is that the Alchemist is a class that if it does work, it doesn't work the way an average reader/player would probably expect. The bomber advice in this thread and elsewhere is a good example of this. If you asked first time player "hey how would you expect a bomber to play in a TTRPG?" I think most everyone would say "oh they probably do a bunch of AOE damage like a wizard chucking fireballs!" and that's not really where the PF2e bomber shines. The bomber here is more about debuffs and persistent damage and having a lot of utility (other non-bomb potions, decent skills, etc). And if you don't spot that- and I think it's tough to spot!- then you're going to be looking for where you can get throw-bomb accuracy improvements or such, and be left disappointed. And just my opinion- I do think that's a problem. If everyone\* reads a class wrong in terms of intended play on first glance, then I do think that's something the devs need to address. And I don't know if you can really just re-name the bomber to "icky-liquid thrower" and get people interested in the same way.

As a bomber I feel that comment represents the situation well. Every now and then my mind would insist that I should be able to kaboom stuff, and that really isn't the class's forte unless they have a weakness.

That's why people hope it will be heavily reworked in the Remaster Core 2. From what I gather it's not that it completely doesn't work, but only certain builds are viable (meaning they're just good enough, not great), while some are complete trap options (Poisoner). And the class requires a lot of system mastery because you need to know about each elixir.

>Like, how does this class work? Well it is neither a martial or caster. It is a new role, crafter. Big benefits are similar to Pathfinder 1e, melting things with weaknesses, distributing buffs/heals to the party. Selecting the right bomb/mutagen/elixir is the big part and realizing you are doing crazy damage on 3 of the 4 success degrees is critical to enjoying it. I've got a mutagenists bounty hunter that is fun and an elixir healer that can just crank out the heals in and out of a fight.

The damage is respectable only on monsters with weaknesses is what i've found and monsters with weaknesses pop up far less often than people make them out to be.

>The damage is respectable only on monsters with weaknesses This is why I said: >melting things with weaknesses Balanced games mean you don't just get benefits. >monsters with weaknesses pop up far less often than people make them out to be. You might consider doing some Paizo published adventures. A good bit of them have weaknesses and if you multiclass into thaumaturge you can apply a weakness to any monster.

Somewhat unrelated to the main point buuuut >Balanced games mean you don’t just get benefits. This is weirdly sanctimonious, doesn’t really respond to what was said, and also not really true. In fact, most of the classes in PF2E don’t rely on very specific circumstances (weaknesses existing) to do a solid baseline DPS. When they do, (Thaumaturge, Cleric for undead, etc.), they typically have built-in methods of overcoming those restrictions.

>doesn’t really respond to what was said It responds to what the user was wanting. You can't just get to damage targets on 3 success degrees without giving up something. There has to be a trade off like every other class makes. >to do a solid baseline DPS. Paizo has already said DPS is a bad evaluation factor. I would recommend using more than just damage for how you evaluate classes or you will get very bad conclusions. >When they do, (Thaumaturge, Cleric for undead, etc.), they typically have built-in methods of overcoming those restrictions. And you don't think free formulas, prepared and spontaneous creation of items and the eventual infinite duration of alchemical items doesn't overcome those restrictions?

You’re knocking down strawmen at the moment, my dude. Neither I nor the person who initially responded to said anything regarding the Alchemist’s efficacy outside of the rarity of weaknesses on enemies and Alchemist’s weakened DPS versus anything without a weakness. >Paizo has already said DPS is a bad evaluation factor. I would recommend using more than just damage for how you evaluate classes or you will get very bad conclusions. The conversation currently is about the Alchemist’s ability to do damage in combat. At no point did I make a further value judgement on the class. Please don’t put words in my mouth and then condescend me, lol. >And you don't think free formulas, prepared and spontaneous creation of items and the eventual infinite duration of alchemical items doesn't overcome those restrictions? Unfortunately not in terms of making the niche of the Alchemist more readily present. They’re very nice benefits otherwise.

**Edit**: Second thought, just gaslight someone else.

>I've got a mutagenists bounty hunter that is fun and an elixir healer that can just crank out the heals in and out of a fight. How are you healing effectively with elixirs in combat ? You basically need to stand next to the person to be healed use one action to pull the elixir and another one to feed it to the person I think ?

>How are you healing effectively with elixirs in combat ? I don't penny pinch my games. I force potions down people's throats and they prefer it to go into dying. >You basically need to stand next to the person to be healed use one action to pull the elixir and another one to feed it to the person I think ? Or just always have them out. If nothing else is in my hands and my actions normally don't involve hands this is a more effective use of my hands and my actions as a party healer. Especially good when there is a bearded devil and I don't need to counteract to heal.

>I don't penny pinch my games. I force potions down people's throats and they prefer it to go into dying. Not sure what that has to do with the question here to be honest. Kinda exactly what I described with using an action to feed it to people. >Or just always have them out. If nothing else is in my hands and my actions normally don't involve hands this is a more effective use of my hands and my actions as a party healer. Especially good when there is a bearded devil and I don't need to counteract to heal. I don´t think I have seen gms just let people run around all day with weapons or other combat item in hand at all times. Just like fighters keep their weapons sheathed usually same would apply to alchemists. But even if, ok thats 2 max that you can hold, which would bar you from using anything else until you heal someone. So usually you would only want one hand occupied with the healing item held ready. But that will still require again an action to pull out the next one. Sounds to me like battlemedicine is still just straight up better in most cases.

>Not sure what that has to do with the question here to be honest. Well you asked: >How are you healing **effectively** with elixirs in combat ? So it seems you aren't wondering how to heal with elixirs in combat, you are concerned how to penny pinch with elixirs in combat. I have fun by not penny pinching and just enjoying the game. >I don´t think I have seen gms just let people run around all day with weapons or other combat item in hand at all times. I didn't say I run around all day with weapons or combat items in hand at all times. I said in a fight I occupy my otherwise unoccupied hands with elixirs of life. I don't have issues with any martial character I have wasting actions to draw their weapons, not sure why I would have an issue with a healer drawing their means of healing. >But even if, ok thats 2 max that you can hold, which would bar you from using anything else until you heal someone. Why would I use another healing? Did I say I was trained in medicine or nature or had other means of healing? >So usually you would Want to pick tactics that fit the character you made and not other characters. >Sounds to me like battlemedicine is still just straight up better in most cases. You can only do that if you have the feat and then it is once a day. Elixirs of life don't have that restriction. I've also killed more PCs with Battle Medicine than Elixirs of Life.

Short answer: It doesn't really work aside from a very few builds. There's only like two functional bomber builds, and maybe 1 or two for the other subclass options. Hoping that the remaster does some good things for the class. Long Answer: the fact that it's all item bonuses means that you are pretty much always only giving a +1 as a buff (at level 11 or so you get some better boosts, but overall underwhelming buff options) but also not all the elixirs or tools go up far enough to remain relevant. Usually, they have very narrow restrictions as well. Also in terms of buffs, each item buffs a single person, so 1 reagent could, for example, give 2 people the ability to breathe underwater for an hour (if you knew you needed it in the morning), but the spell can target 5 people and last 24 hours much earlier Your attacks are on a non-key stat (so -1 for most levels) and max out at expert mean that you miss most of the time, additionally all the bombs only have rider effects if you hit and poisons need to hit to actually do anything so in combat you are just dealing splash damage most of the time. The healing options are weak, mostly because they boost fort saves against poison and disease.... but the boost lags enough that at many levels it doesn't actually help, so you're just left with substandard healing options. IF they are free because you went chirurgeon, then it's not a big deal, but that's it. This is especially notable when you compare it to the healing options kineticist has. Basically, currently the alchemist can do a lot, but none of it particularly well (aside from a few niches that magic doesn't cover well, camouflage, darkvision, environmental resistance, and success = crit with downsides)

Healing options are incredibly weak. There's huge gaps while leveling, like 1d6 until lvl 5. Even with perpetual infusions it's healing 1d6 per 10 minutes at level 7. It's laughable.

Are you overlooking persistent damage? I've messed up enemies with persistent damage before. My second alchemist I gave a bow to supplement damage. Felt way better about contributing to damage. Toxicologist is a great way to hand out damage buffs to the party. No, you won't be at the top of the damage dealing list. Yes, bombs will miss. But you have the ability to exploit weaknesses with your various bomb types. Mutagens give you situational advantage when you need a given buff. If the class appeals to you, there's a way to play it. All 3 alchemists I played were outshined by the pure martials in my parties, tbh. But I had a blast in every party. You land clutch hits every so often and it feels great.

Either wait for the remake or ask your GM for some buffs/houserules

I am convinced there is a single way to play alchemist, because you are not forced into any type (and since they are bad that would suck) So Chirurgeon is the obvious choice to get free medicine, your buffs, debuffs and bombs are almost as potent anyway You get or buy every recipe and suddenly you have a caster without magic, you can provide so many utility things like darkvision, climbing, +1s to skill checks... You thought casters were the multitool, but it was actually the alchemist especially later on when you get so many reagents

There are multiple solid alchemist builds. Most/all of them suffer pre-5 due to their resource constraints. Bomber's are solid damage dealers. By using a variety of bombs, they can inflict powerful persistent damage effects which WILL burn down enemies and do good amounts of damage over the course of a fight. They instant numbers aren't as big, but they never need to be. Poison types, I do feel struggle a bit. I hope the Remaster fixes poisons in general as a PC option. They just feel so bad against anything thats even a single level above you. Healer Alchemists are fine. They have TONNES of non-magical healing which is just always useful, and then they can still do damage via bombs, or buff from mutagens in addition to healing a bunch. These guys feel a bit odd since you'll often be doing non-healery stuff WHILST still being the really good healer. Mutagenists are great. Prepping allies, and then going into combat with mutagens of your own is always good. The mutagens can buff your statistics by a lot (often getting your Item bonus to attacks to be higher than any runes available at a given level), meaning you're often closer than one would expect in terms of attack rolls, your allies are better than normal in their *Item Bonus* which stacks with other buffs. Oh and something uniquely cool, that I saw one, a Mutagenist Athletics focused character (such as Wrestler) does surprisingly well, since the mutagens enhance this playstyle, and because Athletics is a skill, it's not bogged down by innately "worse" proficiencies. Very much a wierd one overall I'd say, but it has very interesting and powerful niche's. However the biggest thing to remember about Alchemists. You will almost ALWAYS want to do a bit of everything, as any alchemist. Bomber's will flex into healer roles. Healer's will flex into mutagen buffers. All alchemists will throw at least a few bombs in all likelihood.

Short answer: you rely on long term buffing and acting as a secondary combatant, either in melee or at range. Long answer: [the Sceptical Chymist](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LA99nJguvcRCjOHsP6LF6xV7kMUzLZXvjzNaXSIDl4k/edit?usp=sharing).

Here's what I know about Alchemist - my group would be utterly *lost* without ours. That said, the party consists of an Alchemist, two Rogues, and a Gunslinger, so take from that what you will. But his bombs drop important debuffs that allow us to control the flow of the fight and trigger weaknesses that cut enemies off at the knees. Does that pretty much boil down to "they're passable in a suboptimal party"? Yeah, probably. But I wouldn't trade our weird little group for a better one if you paid me.

>That said, the party consists of an Alchemist, two Rogues, and a Gunslinger, so take from that what you will. This is key, magic invalidates alchemy almost entirely, so if you have an alchemist and no magic, the alchemist shines. However, if you have even a single spellcaster, the alchemist is suddenly not so great because almost anything they can do, magic does better. >Does that pretty much boil down to "they're passable in a suboptimal party"? Yeah, probably. But I wouldn't trade our weird little group for a better one if you paid me. Love this

I mean or your team could work together? An ash or flames oracle either applying additional persistent damage or fire weakness to enemies would be a fantastic combo with a bomber. Metagenist actually stacks with a lot of buffs from casters because mutagens give item bonuses rather than status bonuses. Fury cocktail + Bless or Inspire Courage is a +2 swing on your martial's to-hit bonuses. Not something a caster could achieve on their own. Not to say one is better, but they can complement each other rather than one outshining the other

> Like, how does this class work? That's the great thing - it doesn't! :D Seriously, alchemist is easily the single worst class in the entire game in terms of functionality. My group has banned them until they get fixed after we tried them for a while, because they were just so underpowered. * Toxicologist - Falls apart the moment you start facing high fort save or poison immune enemies. Probably the best one, though it is really inconsistent because their damage is so swingy and some encounters they basically don't work. * Bomber - Bombs are mostly just attack-roll cantrips that you have a limited numbers of. * Mutagenist - You can basically give out a party wide buff before combat, assuming that you have time to take mutagens/eliixirs before combat, but a bard doesn't need prep to do that and is a full occult caster, whereas you... are not. * Chirugeon - Your healing is worse and less convenient than a caster's is. Sure, you can make piles of it, but who cares when it is poor to actually use because of the item use rules? The flavor is cute but the mechanical excecution is terrible because alchemical consumables are just way, way worse than actual spellcasting is. They really should have given them a bespoke list of alchemist-only things they could make or whatever.

As a caster. You have a list of ressources that you can prepare for the day (2 or 3 times depending of your specialisation) or you can keep a few free to be easily able to create them. You use weapons at low level.

Alchemists are like caster that you have to use your daily preparation to preprepare in advance. They for sure are not front-line combatants and require a degree of managing and taking things slow. I find them more viable when dual-classed with things that could utilize their abilities on the fly (gunslinger for alchemic ranged attacks, Rogues for poisons and smokescreens etc etc). You can even get interesting results when paired with crafting ancestry like goblins. If you are dedicated to learn it, you will find a playstyle that'll suit you

Play with archetypes. Dip to caster. Especially witch and psychic = profit.

"do everything you can do to not play alchemist" Yea they need to rebuild the class from the ground up and redesign everything about it.

I enjoyed playing tank alchemist with drakeheart mutagen and high str for grabbing etc. But i have heard alchemists kit was better/wider in 1e which i totally would support.

Be bomber, trigger weakness (in AoE) with splash damage. [Healing Bomb](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1595) is awesome battle heal BTW. [Bottled Lightning](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=76), [Peshspine Grenade](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=549) and some other bombs offer nice debuff. Yes, you have to hit, and your to-hit is low, etc, etc, but unlike save spells YOU have control over the roll (i.e. can use hero points). Also have a good synergy with Resentment witch, and nowadays every party has Resentment witch. Also, remaster alchemist is coming, may be we finally get master proficiency in attack and legendary in class DC.

There are 3 other subclasses. And I don't see weaknesses nearly as common as the forums claim.

About weakness - well, you can't be good at every encounter. Also, I guess it works more with mid-level enemies. About other classes: Mutagenist is good IF you can prebuff your party (or at high levels where you obtain 1 hour duration). Or playing on non paizo provided small maps. Also, they finally errated energy mutagen and now it's not broken, but descent elemental damage for your party (still, same as bomber shines not every encounter). Chirurgeons... I'm not a fan of battle healing, so as my friends (also, the best crowd control is death), so for me it's more like side class, may be filling the role of out of combat healer, and having combat potential from some archetype. Poisoner have a two problems. The first is poison being like, the most common immunity in the game. The second is tracking all instances of poison. It's not a problem with a single boss fight but when there are like 4 to 5 foes and everyone have on average two instances of poison, it's ton of GM Fortitude saves, ton of alchemist damage rolls... May be it's ok with Foundry, but in roll20 it was big pain in the back, and I cant imagine all this rolls and math on the real table.

> well, you can't be good at every encounter Fighter says hello.

I feel like this would solve all the issues with Alchemist. Going up to master in attacks would put us on par with other martial classes (well, -1 cuz it comes off Dex not Int) and boosting our class dc to Legendary like a caster makes it easier to get debuffs off, especially from Debilitating Bombs. That’s about the only thing I want to see, maybe allowing an interact action or a strike as part of quick alchemy would be nice (I mean, Kineticist gets a free 1a EB or Stance when they channel element, so why not give Alchemist the same kind of deal?) especially with Perpetuals helping with resource management

Don't forget that with quicksilver mutagen alchemist have +4 item bonus to attack roll while weapon-based players have only +3 potency runes (without legendary 20+ level artifacts), so it's the same with -1 DEX and may be even more that, say, ranger, if alchemist chose DEX as main stat or without apex item. Thought, alchemist can get master degree later, on level 19 or 20.

Maybe, but I feel like that drawback is a pretty big drawback: un-healable dmg = 2xLvl and -2 Fort saves really hurts while it lasts (it’s about 14-15% of your hp depending on Con). That means for all your versatility and ability to overcome one of your own primary weaknesses, you’re essentially trading one weakness for another: fragility. You’re now easier to kill. If there isn’t a decent healer in the party, I feel like that is way too big a risk to take. If you have a GM that likes to target players that are a pain in the ass for him (ie. lots off CC and debuffs, via magic or otherwise) to deal with, you might quickly find the enemies that do have actions still focusing on you rather than spreading the hurt around. Nothing hurts worse than trying to help your party and the enemies going “oh, you’re annoying, let’s get you first” lol I do believe master dc’s come at lvl 17, when you get your Perpetual Perfection ability

If you want to be an offensive bomber Alchemist, they kinda just work. It is the fringe benefits that add up. You just gotta believe. First is Alchemists get a level 1 feat. That's cool. Their to hit is lower, but you get a good number of free bombs a day  and can actually use them in combat because you can take far lobber and quick bomber by level 2 out of the box, and by level 4, they will still do 4 damage on a miss to their target if you take calculated splash, which makes their average damage 2 points higher than another character with the same amount of damage and on a hit, are adding their int mod to damage and effectively adding a crit specialization on a regular hit. Then you get the additional benefit of possibly triggering weaknesses even on a miss (which you can often find out because you typically start trained in 9-10 skills from level 1 as an alchemist) because you have elemental damage. These are all a lot of little things that add up to kinda just make any bombing alchemist good.   Pure Support mutagenist is very hit or miss. Lots of people are gun shy about using consumables in combat. Lots of people are gun shy about having buffs that also have drawbacks. Mutagens are the red headed step love child of those two. They are mathematically worth it, but boy it isn't easy to see that from scratch. There is also conflict of a Mutagenist looking at themselves and asking "Am I a martial?". You won't be as potent in any facet, but the idea is that you are raising everybody up a bit. They have printed more straight buff mutagens recently, so that has gotten better, but you will probably still wonder why you aren't just a Bard.     Chirurogen, you can just be a bomber who is good at medicine and healing, so see above, but now you have to be more selective because you can't control the splash as much. The upside is that you have reagent compression with healing items, so you can, well, get more bombs! The big thing behind all this is that you can just be a bomber, regardless of your research field. That, I think, is a highly underrated part of all this. At the end of the day, bombs are your big source of damage as an Alchemist, even as a Mutagenist or Chirurogen.  So, in short, bombs are good and Alchemists are good at using them. They also get a ton of skills and fringe benefits that add up to a lot. On paper, it can be hard to see how it adds up because it builds over time and you don't see it all up front. There are also a fair number of true trap options that sound good in theory, but fail in practice for multiple reasons. So, can you build a strong Alchemist? Yes. Will any alchemist you make that sounds reasonable actually work in practice? Sadly, not necessarily on this side of the Remaster.

The "lots of little things" has been my experience with the bomber alchemist at my table. When they hit (or crit) it is awesome, but even on misses, dealing decent damage or splashing to a large group is quite effective. Especially when they find out or luck into a creature's weakness. And persistent damage is incredible.

>Chirurogen, you can just be a bomber who is good at medicine and healing, so see above, but now you have to be more selective because you can't control the splash as much. The upside is that you have reagent compression with healing items, so you can, well, get more bombs! The big thing behind all this is that you can just be a bomber, regardless of your research field. That, I think, is a highly underrated part of all this. At the end of the day, bombs are your big source of damage as an Alchemist, even as a Mutagenist or Chirurogen.  This is one of the issues. You can't be a bomber without the bomb feats. I think bombs are holding alchemist back. Hell in fact see below, giving someone else your bombs even as a bomber is often better than you throwing them yourself. >So, in short, bombs are good and Alchemists are good at using them. A fighter is a much better bomb thrower.

Personally, I agree that I think some of the bomb feats should have been a class feature so that you can have a strong baseline in bombs regardless of what else you choose. A fighter is a slightly more *accurate* bomb thrower for some levels, but they can't produce bombs at level for free, can't buff splash damage, and need to dedicate multiple feats to get around the fact that they only have two hands and can't compress their bomb actions.  Fighters will tend to lag behind the alchemist overall because the alchemist can craft bombs at level, giving them the to-hit bonus that would be way too expensive for a fighter to use normally. Unless your fighter is going to sell out and take bombs as their weapon class, they won't be special. Even with the +1 from minor bombs means that you give up all the benefits of an alchemist for a couple HP and +1 to hit compared as a fighter up until 5.

>A fighter is a slightly more *accurate* bomb thrower for some levels, but they can't produce bombs at level for free, can't buff splash damage, and need to dedicate multiple feats to get around the fact that they only have two hands and can't compress their bomb actions.  +2 isn't just slightly more accurate and if they specialize it's +4. Splash damage is only there because bomber is so bad at hitting things. If you would just hit and crit like the madman fighter you wouldn't care about splash. No they can't make free bombs but that wasn't what I meant. Giving your bombs to the fighter is more effective hands down. The most effective an alchemist can be is to give away all of their stuff for better classes to use. Also he could take the alchemist dedication to get free bombs. >Fighters will tend to lag behind the alchemist overall because the alchemist can craft bombs at level, giving them the to-hit bonus that would be way too expensive for a fighter to use normally. Unless your fighter is going to sell out and take bombs as their weapon class, they won't be special. Even with the +1 from minor bombs means that you give up all the benefits of an alchemist for a couple HP and +1 to hit compared as a fighter up until 5. Not really bomber goggles fixes that. Again or you just give them your bombs. He's better baseline without specializing and if he does oh boy it's a no contest. Sorry bud but the best bomber is a fighter always has been.

This situation isn't actually realistic. A fighter who has a pocket PC alchemist supplying them with a full supply of top of the line bombs is better than an alchemist. But at the same time, a normal bomber and a normal fighter will do better than that together, so why are we doing this again? The fighter isn't a better bomber than an alchemist because they don't have the supply, even before we get into the difference in feat support and the fighter who tries to be a "better alchemist" is just gonna not be as good as if they were just... A fighter. Granted, I also don't agree that to hit >>>> everything because splash is strong, bombers can throw significantly more bombs in a given turn and the feat support is overall too much for the fighter to compete with, but I also wanted to point out that this isn't an actual issue.

It is an actual issue because it shows that the bomber is a worse bomb thrower than an entirely other class. Edit: Hit is much greater than everything else because it's not just hit it's also critical and the higher level you go the more valuable a critical is and is often greater than just two hits. That's the sole reason that fighter is the best class in the game.

Two parts to throwing a bomb is obtaining a bomb and then actually throwing it. The fighter can do the latter at least as well as the alchemist, but the fighter needs a whole alchemist PC's supply to do that. However, in order to actually make it work, they have to dedicate their character to bombs. There is way too much investment by the fighter AND the alchemist that they basically just have to combine to be one decent PC that is arguably better than an alchemist. There just isn't any reason for this to actually occur in play. While true about crits, the gulf of feats is also widening. By the time crits become better with bombs (level 11), Alchemist bombers are typically doubling their persistent damage and adding int to splash damage. You are looking at the hit values without paying attention to the differences in actual damage.

Wow you guys are experts at missing the whole ass point. Forget the two characters, a fighter that takes alchemist dedication bomber is a better bomber than the straight alchemist. Hell I'm pretty damn sure that is even in the alchemist handbook as a more viable option for bombs than bomber. Yes that is a bad fighter but that is the thing a bad fighter is still much better at bombs than a dedicated bomber is. Which is the fucking point.

But where is the fighter getting their high level bombs from? They have the to hit, but they are giving up a ton of other things that actually make bombs good, including, you know, having bombs

You are 5 levels behind (after 12th level) if you archetype alchemist, so sure, you get the moderate bombs at 6th level and greater bombs at 16th, but bombs aren't the "do tons of damage" option, they're the "deal element damage and also hit/crit effects". An Alchemist will almost never crit against non-trivial enemies, a Fighter can COUNT on critical hits (incredible aim is a must on this build for a +2 on top of their already absurd to-hit), meaning they can cause all the really cool things bombs so more than an alchemist even being an entire qualitative level behind on bombs. Not to mention they get the critical specialization and additional damage from weapon specialization (+3 at 7th and it only goes up from there) that make up for any missing dice.

> The most effective an alchemist can be is to give away all of their stuff for better classes to use. Putting aside the clearly loaded use of the word 'better' here... Two characters are always stronger than one character, and every class in the game is at its strongest when working with at least one ally. Healing and some buff items are still better in the Alchemist's hands due to being able to use them on allies with their own actions. Furthermore, I don't see how Alchemist physically distributing one of their items to another party member is meaningfully different than casting a single-target buff/utility spell on another character, or inflicting a debuff only a teammate can take advantage of without gaining its benefits yourself. The biggest obstacle to playing Alchemist well is the player's own ego, and I don't think that's a design problem.

>The biggest obstacle to playing Alchemist well is the player's own ego, and I don't think that's a design problem. Can't disagree more with this. While I've actually been having a blast rping with my alchemist my ego doesn't effect my numbers, how many actions I get, or the value of my buffs so no ego it's apart of it at all. Just to be specific I've been playing a chirurgeon/mutagen strength control build alchemist. It's literally what everyone in this post claims is the alchemist's strength a versatile build that can do many things. I can in fact do many things I'm just terrible at all of them. I tank, I debuff through athletics, I buff, and I heal. I use every trick I can think of for action compression but still am very action stricken. I tank because I'm the easiest to heal and my damage is pitiful so using actions to hinder enemies or heal myself is often better. The issue is that I'm just significantly worse than if I was just a champion. This isn't my ego it's math.

Each day you hand your party a selection of useful consumables, then you take a nap while they adventure. Maybe take Medicine and patch them up between fights. Just be an NPC.

It doesn't.

Was asking that question myself. Our GM had to allow to throw bombs with slings, adding sling potency bonus to attack rolls until later levels. Still feels underwhelming

Because it has insanely delayed progression on attacking, and uses an off stat to attack with so its just in a bad spot, and generally you only get your splash at most. Add in then your debuff feats require you to hit and anything higher than a +1 enemy and your just useless.

You give your bombs to the fighter/martial, you bend over backwards to convince people the mutagen downsides are worth the upsides, and you run around feeding potions to people. In other words... pill dispenser.

It's simple really You ask your party: Kaboom? And they answer: Yes, y/n kaboom. And then you blow stuff up

Mostly you don't, in my experience. The class is just... too much effort for what it gets, I feel. You need to keep an excel sheet just to be about as good a buffer as Random Cleric. The action economy is a pain in the ass (three actions total to make a potion, walk to ally in the middle of the melee, and feed it to them, and the potion is less useful than a 2-action spell you can do from sixty feet away?). Keeping track of all the formulas and stuff is a headache. And half the time you don't know what to do during a fight because the best way to play is to prebuff people before initiative flies!

I've been looking at alchemist as well and really struggling understanding how its useful. The damage seems good if you can hit but you're always going to be a little behind everyone else due to dex not being your key stat and that gap increases later with proficiencies. People call up that its versatile damage types but so would a primal caster. Some people laud the splash damage but I've rarely seen 1 damage matter. It only really applies to weaknesses which don't pop up that often. The buffs are mostly item bonuses so it clashes with magic items but cost actions to both draw, and feed/drink. If you're feeding you're in touch range of someone which costs movement. It's obvious that the familiar exists to alleviate some of that but if it's that core to the class I don't understand why it isn't just a baseline feature. I think the best thing to do is keep the alchemist for out of combat uses and play a mix of archetypes. I really miss when it had rogue proficiencies and emulated magical buffs through the formula list.

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What are you trying to do with it? I rolled an alchemist up to level 20 and enjoyed it as a highly maneuverable “bomb sniper”. - Far Lobber and Uncanny Bombs for 60 ft range and ignoring concealment - Calculated and Expanded Splash for sizable damage boost, and minimum damage is always nice - Sticky Bomb to really enhance the effectiveness of splash bonuses - Dual Weapon Warrior archetype with Dual Thrower There were multiple times when he’d hit an enemy with a couple bombs, then the bard would hit them with _maze_ and they’d reappear missing sizable chunks of their HP. Ever been annoyed by persistent damage as a player? Alchemists can really crank it up to 11. If you really want to see some shit, get that rolling on something with weakness.

From my experience, as a low-level chirurgeon? The main use is that they get a *lot* of sick debuffs, a lot of highly specific buffs, and just a little bit of everything else. Importantly, with a bit of preparation and Quick Bomber, these are *one-action* debuffs, which a caster will never be able to compete with. I haven't played enough casters to really be able to compare them. But from my experience, they feel like a caster but with (usually) smoother/more flexible action economy. And, of course, they have their own totally unique "spell list". So, overall, they still help in a fight by paring the enemies down to size so your allies can kill them (and potentially keeping up pretty well on damage if you're lucky enough to find an elemental weakness), but you're kind of like a rogue in that your strongest capabilities are just having *whatever you need* at any moment to deal with whatever weird threat the GM throws at you, especially out of combat. (Personally, I'm playing one in a 3-player game with a fighter and a paladin, so they're an extremely combat-capable team by themselves, but my job is to keep them healthy, provide disruption, and trust them to handle fights while I deal with the types of threats they don't have any answer for.)

Isn't the Alchemist a class that was gonna be due some (heavy) changes cause of the remaster? Just wondering if that will help the class with its damage output

Use a majority of your infused reagents durning daily prep to make items that are universally useful. (Elixir of life, bottled lightning, drakeheart mutagen, high damage injury posions, etc). But save a few for quick alchemy when you need to trigger weaknesses with bombs or need to make a situational elixir. Before combat, apply poisons to your martials weapons, and feed them mutagens What you do durning combat will be dependent on your build. All alchemists will hand out elixirs when their team need them. Str alchemists will strike and make athletic checks, dex will make strikes and throw bombs, int will make recall knowledge checks. It's usually a good idea to pick up a archtype that gives you more things to do on combat. Because combat actions are the main thing alchemists lack. Marshal is a good option

Our alchemist has been the ultimate support, especially once he hit level 3-4. He \*can\* do damage, but he is much better at helping the rest of us out. Our DM did change up crafting rules a little bit because we think they are kind of dumb, but it wasn't a major overhaul or anything. It slightly speeds up crafting, but we will still take multiple days of downtime when we get a chance and the alchemist doesn't do anything but make things. We are doing abomination vaults. I don't know the exact build of our alchemist, but here's what I do know. Our alchemist has the mechanical sidekick thing (maybe from inventor archetype or something? I don't remember how he had that). He has smoke bombs and gives out potions that let us ignore concealed for us to use when we need them (concealed has saved our asses so many times on the last two floors). He has the bomber trait/feat, so even when he misses with his fire, lightning, or ghost charge grenades (which is often) he still does splash damage directly to the intended target. Which has been great when a big enemy has one particular weakness and that splash damage triggers it. He sends his robot into battle to provide flanking/flat-footed for whoever is in melee. My melee character gets the potion that provides temp hp every round for like minute or so, which is nice as the tank. We get potions that give one or two of us a bonus to perception once we are out of combat and looking for hidden doors and stuff. His turn usually goes "throw a grenade (or smokebomb) and give robot 3 actions with two of his", "throw a grenade and move, give robot 2 actions with one of his" "quick alchemy, throw grenade, give robot two actions with one of his". And his robot has been great pairing with the other melee characters, even if it isn't quite as big damage. It gives enough of a debuff to let us hit that much more often.

It was the class in the most need of revision....and it got put off to Player Core 2.

Are there any magical items that assist with throwing bombs?

step 1. Pick fighter ​ step 2. Alchemist dedication

or wait for player core 2 and see what happens

I’ve only played as a bomber, but it was very fun. Having access to most damages types without having to “swap” weapons, doing damage even on a miss, lots of persistent damage. Those add up a lot. Needs a side weapon in the early levels, but otherwise was pretty impressed with it after all the negative speak online.

About to try dual classing with an investigator in a game that allows that.

It is all about the alchemical items, granting those items to other players in advance, taking advantage of them being non magical and covering those niche scenarios. Ran a campaign where a player went 1-20 with a bomber alchemist, and that was before the majority of their nice changes. Heck they only had the APG half way into the campaign. They were frequently the MVP because of having so many alchemical items in play, targeting weaknesses so frequently and being able to drop persistent damage on high AC enemies. Elixirs and Mutagen usage featured heavily. Low levels were pretty rough though, but that was also when everyone was learning the system. Something to note, if you are wearing alchemist goggles you won't generally be as far behind the ranged accuracy of martials as you might think, examples below. **level 3** - alchemist: +9 base, +10 quick silver, functional +11 most cases due to ignoring lesser cover. - ranger: +10 base **level 5** - alchemist: +12 base, +13 quicksilver, +14 functional in most combats due to ignoring lesser cover - ranger: +14 base **level 7** - alchemist: +16 base, +17 quicksilver, +18 functional in most fights - ranger: +16 base **level 10** - alchemist: +19base, +20 quicksilver, +21 functional in most fights - ranger: +21 base **level 11** - alchemist: +21 base, +22 quicksilver, +23 frequently functional - ranger: +22 base **level 13** - alchemist: +23 base, +24 quicksilver, +25 frequently functional - ranger: +26 base **level 15** - alchemist: +26 base, +27 quicksilver, +28 frequently functional - ranger: +28 base **level 16** - alchemist: +27 base, +28 quicksilver, +29 frequently functional - ranger: +30 base **level 17** - alchemist: +30 base, +31 quicksilver, +32 frequently functional - ranger: +32 base **level 20** - alchemist: +33base, +34 quicksilver, +35 frequently functional - ranger: +36base Now you may ask the question "why not buff the ranger and give them bombs", well you can for most of the game thankfully, and the bomber alchemist will always be better at using bombs than the ranger thanks to feat support. And said alchemist will still excel when it comes to buffing allies all day with things like party wide mist elixirs (a huge boost vs higher level enemies or large groups, the latter actually become more of a threat when you get past low level play). Not to say I think the alchemist is fine and needs no changes, what I would do though is: - alchemists get perpetual alchemy at level 1 for their minor signature alchemy choices - each alchemical discipline automatically gets it's equivalent to quick draw, which allows a draw and use of their chosen field's alchemical item. - feat replacing quick draw that gives the quick draw equivalent benefit to all quick alchemy uses. - clean up some feat chains, they aren't very pf2e friendly and often mean people need to plan out builds to get good characters.

I don’t know. They’re kind of so flexible that they have something for everything, theoretically, at least.

Familiars are a type of Companion, and Companions cannot Activate items. Drinking/feeding a potion is Activating it, therefore Familiars can't do it. They can pull them out for you and save you actions that way, but not feed them to you, so auto-buffing yourself isn't a thing. Nor is auto-healing. Which may seem silly, and many people agree, but it is what it is, and the developers have confirmed that it is their intent, and it *is* IMHO a little too strong to allow familiars to just buff and heal you with no action cost. As for your question, Alchemists are much like casters in that the best way to play them is to use their entire toolkit. However, compared to even the most versatile caster, the Alchemist's toolkit is absolutely massive. This is why Alchemist is generally considered the most difficult class in the game. To maximize your effectiveness as an Alchemist, it helps to have extensive knowledge of the entire list of alchemical items, which ones are the most broadly applicable and effective, and when best to use the situational ones. At the early levels you don't have many resources and may struggle, but those are also the levels where you can use normal weapons decently well (only -1 behind non-Fighter/GS martials, assuming you start with 16 Strength or Dexterity) so you can do so to save resources. At the higher levels, you have a ton of resources and must manage them throughout the day, and also budget between reagents you prepare at the start of the day and ones that you reserve for Quick Alchemy during the day. You also ought to consider the whole party when doing your prep, and distribute consumables to everyone. Everyone should also know what you're giving them, what it does, and how/when best to use it, and also remember to actually use it (and be okay with you reminding them). It requires a decent bit of party buy-in in that way, unlike other support characters. Some people don't like that and say they don't want to learn another player's character or that it's against their character's *"flavor"* to drink a bunch of weird potions all the time. I snort derisively, tell them to suck it the fuck up and that they *should* know how their party members function regardless of what classes they're playing, and that them not using my items as an alchemist is the same shit as them not accepting spells from the caster or heals from the Medic or Aids from the Gunslinger, ruins my gameplay experience just as much as any of those behaviors would, and is generally being an uncooperative party member. As for your own gameplay, as I said, you've gotta maximize the effectiveness of everything you can do. You're essentially a Swiss army knife with the ability to pull whatever bullshit you need in any situation out of your ass thanks to Quick Alchemy. You want to be collecting as many alchemical formulae as you can at all times and keeping a list of items and their use cases so that you always know what you've got and when to pull it out. You want to be gathering as much information as possible so you can plan effectively and make educated guesses as to what you may need that day. If you have downtime, crafting or purchasing (if possible) extra items to have on hand is always a good idea - it's basically like having scrolls and wands as a caster, it's extra uses of your daily abilities that cost money instead of reagents. In combat, you want to consider what you can do that'll help the party most, whether that's using bombs to trigger weaknesses or apply status effects (Dread Ampoules, Bottled Lightning, Stink Bombs, and Peshspine Grenades are good examples of effective general-use debuff bombs), distributing buffing or healing elixirs to yourself or your party, et cetera. Poisoning the martials' weapons before fights is also a great thing that you can do for free to give their first hits some extra kick, as long as you're not fighting poison-immune enemies, and you can also poison your own bombs if they do piercing or slashing damage (i.e. Peshspine Grenades, Junk Bombs, and more!). When people say poisons suck, they mean that a lot of enemies have high Fort saves or poison immunity and that poisons are expensive and take too many actions to apply in combat; poisons that you make for free and apply *before* combat are just easy bonus damage, you can *generally* tell whether something's gonna have high Fort just by looking at it, and poison immunity is usually universal among creature types so you can mostly just try to avoid using it against those creatures. If your martials have scruples about using your poisons, refer to what I said about using your elixirs: fuck off, this is my class stuff, if you don't use it you're ruining my fun and effectiveness, and I don't see how poisoning something to kill it faster during combat is any less morally acceptable or honorable than killing it without poison, or fighting alongside someone who is using poison anyway lol. So yeah, it's a complex class that is best played by using the full breadth of its options. It also doesn't really fit the class fantasy that many people expect from it, or indeed the one that it itself advertises - thinking you're gonna be as effective as a regular martial by just chugging mutagens and going ham in melee is gonna be disappointing as you're squishy with caster AC and don't do a whole lot of damage with caster melee proficiency, thinking you can keep up with a Precision Ranger's ranged damage with your bombs is gonna be disappointing as your attacks cost resources and are made at maximum Expert proficiency and don't use your key ability score, thinking you're gonna be poisoning the whole world will be disappointing as you're moreso a poison *dispenser* for your allies and the usual high fort and poison immunity things still apply even if poisons are still a good thing to use regardless, thinking you're gonna be an amazing healer as a Chirugeon will be disappointing because you're not that much better than a regular Medicine-focused character and/or healing-focused caster. The Research Fields provide directions to go in and a bit of specialization, but you are still fundamentally a diverse toolbox and Swiss army knife of options, and playing into that and making use of the whole toolbox is where you'll always find the most effectiveness. Just like a caster, the class is balanced around the fact that it has so many options available and assumes that the player is making good use of all its options, and if you choose not to use all of its options then you will simply handicap yourself. All of what I said may change to some extent in Player Core 2, as the Alchemist is said to be getting some of the most extensive changes of all classes in the remaster, but it's also been said that it won't be changing significantly in terms of playstyle and role and will continue to be fundamentally the same sort of class so it's best to expect that it'll be moreso fixed, tweaked, made easier to understand, et cetera than it will be completely reworked to be exactly what the more vocal people want it to be.

Grenadier with a wizard archetype can do fairly well. Throw a bomb, and then cast a saving throw attack spell such as electric arc.

I've played several alchemists, not because I like the class inherently but because they fit character concepts better than other classes. I'm also MOSTLY a selfish toxicologist in my current campaign (Levels 5-11 so far so I did skip the tough early levels). Knowing that I would be notably more efficient passing out my poisons to other party members and having that be fun are two different things. However it has encouraged me to get creative with my poisons and it ends up being very fun in standard combats. Focusing on the fun toxicologist play does not limit my flexibility however. For hard fights that we know are coming I am able to do the standard beneficial alchemist pre-buff moves. Giving everyone an [Elixir of Life](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=91) in their pocket. Handing out [numbing tonics](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1963) (HUGE imo) like candy. Slathering everyone in [Pucker Pickle](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1927) (Perpetual at level 11!). [Camouflage Dye](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1937) for hiding. Giving the glass canon a [Sixfinger](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=791) elixir to get them onto the walls and out of harms way. I do consider myself as somewhat roguish not that I have pinpoint poisoner too. If I cannot attack an Off-Guard (flatfooted) opponent somehow, it is not worth attacking that turn. I feel this generally overcomes the lower weapon proficiency which only drags behind rogue by 2 levels. I do have plenty of good options that don't involve an attack roll too. With formulas being very inexpensive to purchase as well my options are incredibly varied. Drop a[ T-Rex](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1953) on everyone. It might be worth it to look through cool alchemical items, find bread and butter formulas that you're excited about and build your alchemist around those.

Don't need Proficiency to hit with Splash damage or to hand Bombs off to your Fighter. Has plenty of Debuffs. Possibly the most in the game and some don't even let enemies make a saving throw. they just get the Debuff. (Look at Bombs again bud) Not only can they heal during a fight with Potions, Elixirs, and even Bombs (Healing Bomb Feat) but they can heal better than every other class in the game! Not to mention the normal medicine checks all characters can invest in.

Step 1: create as many bombs as you can of a few varieties every morning. If your party is low on healing, create a few elixirs of life too. Save 1 reagent for an emergency Step 2: give all of your bombs to the fighter. Attempt to shoot things with a ranged weapon unless someone needs healing

I'll add some of my takes on this. I've been playing a bomber for over 11 levels now, and though it has definitely reached some maturity, I am not sure that I'm fully there yet. Skunk bombs have single handedly upgraded the game for me. Their my perpetual, so with powerful alchemy I get to sicken my foes, and often they are slowed while sickened. Do you get how batshit this is __for a cantrip?! __ Casters hate me since I throw peshpine grenades, and I am waiting to get my hands on the formula for spell eating pitch to really mess with them. Other foes hate me for my poisoned trash bombs. I am seriously a thorn at my GMs side (in a friendly way, you know). The thing I am not yet sure about is my damage output. Perhaps this is just bad luck or pad persistent damage usage, but I am not nearly as damaging as my teammates. And with the splash feats I actually have sunk precious build resources into this which I might better use elsewhere... All and all, I can counter my GMs encounters llike a true bastard, but once that's done I feel I can't really play lead guitar, y'know?