[PF] How Does One Handle Their First Alchemist?

[Zartemis]

The thread title is extremely relevant here, but I'll give some background.

Despite the desire to, I never really got to tabletop much. I've played a TINY bit of 3.5, a fair bit of 4E, some Dark Heresy, a tiny bit of Rogue Trader, and one session of AFMBE. A character-making savant, I am not. That said, I'm also not the crunchiest person. I love my fluff, to the point that I center characters around it, even if it gimps them a tiny bit. However, being my first time to Pathfinder, I decided to leave my class to the dice, and came up with Alchemist.

I have no idea what to do with an alchemist.

So it would be very much appreciated if people could offer suggestions/builds for alchemists here. I searched a couple pages but couldn't find a relevant thread, so I suppose this could be used as a catch-all Pathfinder Alchemist base as well. In my personal case, I don't really want to be the hardest numbers-blaster. That's well and dandy, but doing it in an interesting way, or doing something in an off-the-wall 'I didn't expect that but it works surprisingly well' sort of way is a good type of build for me.

(That said I am not an ingrate and will take any and all help I can get, please and thank you very much!)

[Silus]

The thread title is extremely relevant here, but I'll give some background.

Despite the desire to, I never really got to tabletop much. I've played a TINY bit of 3.5, a fair bit of 4E, some Dark Heresy, a tiny bit of Rogue Trader, and one session of AFMBE. A character-making savant, I am not. That said, I'm also not the crunchiest person. I love my fluff, to the point that I center characters around it, even if it gimps them a tiny bit. However, being my first time to Pathfinder, I decided to leave my class to the dice, and came up with Alchemist.

I have no idea what to do with an alchemist.

So it would be very much appreciated if people could offer suggestions/builds for alchemists here. I searched a couple pages but couldn't find a relevant thread, so I suppose this could be used as a catch-all Pathfinder Alchemist base as well. In my personal case, I don't really want to be the hardest numbers-blaster. That's well and dandy, but doing it in an interesting way, or doing something in an off-the-wall 'I didn't expect that but it works surprisingly well' sort of way is a good type of build for me.

(That said I am not an ingrate and will take any and all help I can get, please and thank you very much!)

Well I'm no guru (I come here for help more often than I'd like) but it would seem that there are at least two major ways to play an Alchemist.

You got your bombs and your Mutigens. Now, I'm sure there's all sorts of shenanigans that you can do with bombs, but Mutigens are where the real fun is at (along with all the nifty discoveries).

One idea I saw on here was take three levels in Alchemist until you get your first Discovery (specialize in mutigens by the way). Pick up Vestigial Arm. Then go the rest in some martial class like Barbarian or Fighter using a two-handed weapons and a shield (or pick up Extra Discovery for a second Vestigial Arm and go full Two-Weapon Fighting). Not optimized, but certainly memorable.

[Thattaman]

Well, the first thing you need to decide is what kind of alchemist you want to be. The main two types are bomber alchemist who focuses on his bombs and improves them attacking from behind rather than going up front. The other kind of Alchemist is the beast alchemist who uses mutagens to their full potential, he would make sure his mutagens were as powerful as possible and improve physical abilities as well as mental ones. He would fight up front rather than going behind and could even serve as party meat shield tank.

[Harugami]

Alchemists are fun because they play sort of like a combination of a druid and a liquid wizard with bombs and poisons don't let them railroad you into just using either or I say abuse it to its full potential and cram as many archetypes together as you can make work. Here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist) look through some of the archetypes and discoveries and see what fits your characters personality best, its always better to have fun then be optimized after all its the point of games.

If you want some general ideas
ragechemyst gains a barbarian rage ability through the mutagen
clone master gets some fun options at the expense of bomb damage
grenadier gets to add alchemy effects to bomb and weapons
vivisectionist gets sneak attacks
cryptbreaker is paladin in bomb form
mindchemist gets basically all the int skills as bonus
psyconaught gets divination specialization
beastmorph gets basically druids wildshape

just from that you see you can play the class as a utility version of many of the other class choices making it one of the most versatile classes and also one of my favorite. The alchemist is a swiss army knife and can be played as a support version of any class or a full on damage version of itself even when woefully unoptimized.

[StreamOfTheSky]

As said, you should choose to be a bomber or warrior, first and foremost. Personally, I think the bombing is weak and kind of a lame gimmick with odd restrictions and rules and the Alchemist class didn't appeal to me at all until Vivisectionist came out.

But if you do want to make a bomber alchemist, I will give you some basic tips.

1) You will never have enough bombs per day to do a "damage dealer" build, and bomb damage is weak anyway. Think of yourself more like a neutered sorceror focused on battlefield control and self-buffing. Because that's what you will play like. But playing like a weak caster is still better than most mundane classes, so it's not that bad.

2) Int is your most important stat, then dex. Touch ACs are pretty easy to hit. Int is bombs and extracts per day and save DCs. You're playing like a caster first and foremost, remember?

3) Goes in with #2, but... always take Mindchemist / cognatogen if it is available for your game. Always.

4) Your first discoveries are set in stone: Smoke Bomb at lvl 2, Stink Bomb via feat at level 3. Always do it this way. Getting a (weak, smaller radius and only lasts 1 round) Stinking Cloud 2 levels before the wizard does is one of the few genuine benefits you have over the casters. Don't miss out.

5) After that, you will want Dispelling Bomb and Confusion Bomb as soon as they are available. Note that Confusion Bomb has no save to resist and that Dispelling Bomb lacks an * and can thus be used with Stink Bomb (and Confusion Bomb, but confusion bomb requires doing damage, so the combo would be self-defeating). You may want Fast Bombs just as an option (don't rely on it), Tanglefoot Bomb, Precise Bombs, Breathweapon Bomb (dispel on multiple foes!), and/or the Cloudkill one. And possibly force bomb just so you can use confusion on fire / other energy type immune foes. No other bomb discovery is worth learning, beyond those stick to other things like Wings, Tumor Familiar, etc...

6) Consider being a Goblin despite lack of an Int bonus. Rocket Bomb is really nice for a bigger Stinking Cloud with longer range.

[Psyren]

Bombing isn't weak at all. Check it:

1) Supernatural: you name it, you can bomb it. Constructs, Outsiders, Undead, Fey, Oozes, all the things that the casters in your party are tearing their hair out over, you're raining death on. Remember all those threads about "GitP, how do we kill this flesh golem???" You've got the answer, blow it to kingdom come.

2) Splash weapon damage boost: All those crappy Alchemists Fire and Holy Waters your DM loves to give out as "treasure" at low levels? Make the party give them to you - you get Int to damage on all that. Now you are one-shotting all kinds of annoying critters (like Shadows) that typically give low-level parties fits.

3) Iteratives: Fast Bombs burns through your stockpile quick, but if you ever need to go nova on something you can. They're all touch attacks, plus you're pumping your to-hit via your Mutagen, so you're going to connect with every single one.

4) Elements: The big one here is Force, which lets you tear through monsters and doors with equal ease, but you've got them all - fire, electric, cold, acid, even sonic. Nothing in the game can resist you.

5) Status effects: This is the big one. Fog, Nausea, Stagger, Knockdown, Immobilize, Confuse, Blind, even Dispel - and you're doing tons of irresistible damage the whole time.

6) Friendly Fire: There is none, thanks to Precise Bombs. And unlike a mage, it costs you nothing to shape your battlefield control as precisely as you want to. And you yourself are immune to many of these too.

Bombers are awesome, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Any monkey can cut a tendon.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Uh, gotta disagree with you there....

1) Is this a joke post? Golems are a pain to martials, not casters. Pretty much all of the stuff you listed....did you forget no-SR spells exist a-plenty. Seeing a golem means it's time to break out Glitterdust and Grease and such....like any other fight. Ho-hum. You don't need to kill yourself as a caster, just gimp the monster heavily and let the meat shield slowly beat it to to death.

2) Even with the damage boost, splash damage is still too low to matter against anything close to the party's level past the very early game. It is pretty good at level 1, sure.

3) Yeah, an Alchemist can nova. But not nearly as strongly as a caster can (unless you don't consider it a nova if no direct damage was involved...) AND the alchemist will run out long long long before the caster does. In any case, single encounter days are pretty much always curb stomp battles for the party to show off in anyway, so being able to rock them isn't so important. And if you're blowing your load like that on other days, you're going to pay for it later.

4) I don't even know what to make of this... You make it sound like a direct damage caster w/ the full energy type suite at his disposal is the top of the heap. You also seem to vastly over-rate bypassing resistances. Melee people? They just PA and don't care about most DR. Archers? They pick up Clustered Shots and laugh at DR.

5) Yeah, I said to play the Alchemist as a poor man's caster. And "tons" of damage? Hyperbole, much? You're doing half the damage of an evoker (or you're fast bombing like mad because you feel like sucking in later encounters). I guess you're debuffing and doing some damage. But once the debuffs are laid, the fighter types can lay out the damage for the party just fine anyway.

6) Selective Spell. You get to spend a feat/class feature to say "no friendly fire," so does the caster. Except the caster can just buy a rod for as cheap as 3000 gp and not need to spend a feat at all.

[Psyren]

Rather than get into a quote war, I'll point out the painfully obvious and say that yes, an alchemist is weaker than a T1/T2 caster. I never once said otherwise. But you're making the oft-repeated mistake on these boards that "weaker than wizard" (or even "weaker than sorcerer") somehow equates to "weak overall." It's like calling someone "slow" because they can't outrun Usain Bolt; it's a pointless and fallacious argument.

Also, casters have fewer SR: No spells in PF (no twinmaxed Orb of X), so while they can lock down a tenacious and resistant attacker with greases and glitters, they have less options to seal the deal than they did in 3.5. That's dandy if you have meatshields around to finish the job for you, but an alchemist can at least lockdown and finish the job totally solo.

[ArcturusV]

Plus, if it matters? Throwing bombs around is just plain FUN. Particularly if your DM is of the fun variety that will let you do weird, fun things with it and proper collateral damage.

[Tokuhara]

The most fun I ever had in PF was a Pyromaniac Gnome Mindchemist. I spent my turns chucking bombs like they were covered in hepaghonnasyphilaids and bathed the battlefield in fire and crowd control.

Given a chance, I'd roll another alchemist up in a heartbeat.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Rather than get into a quote war, I'll point out the painfully obvious and say that yes, an alchemist is weaker than a T1/T2 caster. I never once said otherwise. But you're making the oft-repeated mistake on these boards that "weaker than wizard" (or even "weaker than sorcerer") somehow equates to "weak overall." It's like calling someone "slow" because they can't outrun Usain Bolt; it's a pointless and fallacious argument.

Also, casters have fewer SR: No spells in PF (no twinmaxed Orb of X), so while they can lock down a tenacious and resistant attacker with greases and glitters, they have less options to seal the deal than they did in 3.5. That's dandy if you have meatshields around to finish the job for you, but an alchemist can at least lockdown and finish the job totally solo.

I was mostly seeking to correct your statements dismissing casters (by the way, it's not on d20pfsrd yet, but paizo is working hard on giving you the no SR direct damage spell (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pg62&page=1?The-new-orb-spell) you seem to want anyway) and claiming the alchemists are great damage dealers. Even compare them to a mundane archer. They might be able to do a little more damage on a full nova, but not that much more, and then they're out of bombs soon enough. The things you mention like DR don't really matter or change things.

D&D/PF is a team game, and rewards specialization, so I don't see the problem with assuming you'll have other allies to cover other roles. I think building a bomber alchemist up as a damage dealer as the primary goal is a trap, and wanted to warn the OP of it, as many people look at alchemist the first time and think that way. He does respectable as a poor man's caster, I've said so twice now; nothing wrong with being a subpar caster, you'll still be fairly powerful.

[thorgrim29]

I'm also going to be playing my first alchemist soon. I was thinking of focusing on bombs. This seems like a good resource: http://pathfinder.ogrehut.com/2010/07/alchemist-build-guide/. Since one of our players is going to be a gunslinger, I was wondering what are the playground's thoughts on gun toting alchemists.

[limejuicepowder]

One does not simple handle their first alchemist....

Especially me, cause I know nothing about the class.

[Psyren]

Even compare them to a mundane archer. They might be able to do a little more damage on a full nova, but not that much more, and then they're out of bombs soon enough. The things you mention like DR don't really matter or change things.

Mundane archers may have comparable damage, but don't have the breadth of status effects and buffs that Alchemists do. If one class can do damage, and one class can do damage while simultaneously inflicting a laundry list of debuffs, plus provide buffs and utility to himself and to the party, I know which class I'm taking.



D&D/PF is a team game, and rewards specialization, so I don't see the problem with assuming you'll have other allies to cover other roles.

PF as a whole is based on that assumption, but tiers - the tool we use to rank classes by power - are not. Tiers are based on solo capability. For instance, JaronK gave the example of a Factotum (T3) that was separated from the party, and that had to fight/sneak his way back to them, then pointed out how much more difficult the same task would have been for a straight Rogue (T4.) Obviously, splitting the party is something that doesn't come up often at a true gaming table, but there is some truth to the assertion that a class that is self-reliant will also be less of a drain on party resources, as it can handle itself in a pinch. (e.g. the Fighter gets Mazed and you need to kill something without him.)

In addition, this goes both ways - the party is a team, but often the enemies are as well - i.e. they have casters too. Glitterdust, Solid Fog, Grease and other SR: No attacks you mentioned can still be dispelled, to a man; Alchemist bomb effects, meanwhile, cannot be removed by anything beyond AMF. If an alchemist creates a nauseating cloud, that part of the battlefield is a done deal for the entire duration, whereas Stinking Cloud can be dispelled right away. There are clear advantages that you're just not considering.


I think building a bomber alchemist up as a damage dealer as the primary goal is a trap, and wanted to warn the OP of it, as many people look at alchemist the first time and think that way. He does respectable as a poor man's caster, I've said so twice now; nothing wrong with being a subpar caster, you'll still be fairly powerful.

Again, "subpar" is a misnomer that you insist on incorrectly using. It implies that "wizard" is par; it most certainly is not. The true "Par" is the CR system, and Alchemist is decidedly level with if not outright above that.

[Edenbeast]

I think the whole tier thing is complete BS, but that aside.

I think the alchemist is an awesome class, with alot of fluff and alot of options. Ogre's alchemist guide has some nice tips. You can focus on either bombs or melee.
The melee guy can make a mutagen useful for melee by boosting STR, throw a few bombs at the start of the battle, then drink your mutagen and jump right in. Ragechemist and Grenadierare both good archetypes for this concept.
If you go the bombing route, which is just as fun, it's better to use a mutagen to boost your DEX or CON. A few tips here: make sure you have a crossbow or bow on the side, and pick up the Explosive Missile Discovery. Not only do you have a backup weapon that takes advantage of the same feats like point blank, precise shot and rapid shot. You can infuse the the missile with the power of a bomb and increase your bombing range dramatically.
You also have a good skill selection and since you have a high INT you can master quite a few.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Comatose Chemist is never a good archetype for anyone, other than those whose goal it is to spend half the adventuring day comatose.