Grenadier - Martial Archetype

[quinron]

As a companion to this rogue archetype (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?484127-Hitman-Roguish-Archetype), I've created a gunpowder-oriented fighter - this time focusing on bombs instead of guns.

GRENADIER
Few who encounter a Grenadier ever forget them: skin marked with the scars of burns and stained with strange chemicals, hair and eyebrows singed and impossibly frazzled if not burnt away altogether, braces of flasks and bombshells hanging from bandoliers strapped to their armor. The Grenadier doesn't worry about the odd looks and whispers, though; they know that no one with half a mind is willing to threaten them and risk a splash of acid to the face or a firebomb hurled into their garden.

When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with alchemist's supplies. Using alchemist's supplies, you can produce a number of bombs, flasks of alchemist's fire, and vials of acid quickly and easily: you can craft up to 150 gp worth of these items in any combination for free. You can craft these items as part of a short or long rest. The value of the items you can craft this way increases every 2nd level after 3rd, as shown on the Free Concoctions Table.
These items are cobbled together in a rush and are of poor quality. Items crafted using this feature have a value of 0 gp. After you finish a long rest, any items that you made using this feature before you began that rest lose their potency, dealing no damage and failing to ignite anything.
Using the standard rules for crafting items (PHB p.187), you can also craft these items for 1/5 the price and in 1/5 the time they would normally require, though once completed their value is reduced to 1/5 the standard.
In addition, the Dexterity saving throw to avoid taking damage from bombs you throw is equal to 12 or 8 + your Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus, whichever is higher.



Fighter Level
Value of Free Items Crafted (in gp)


3rd
150


4th
150


5th
225


6th
225


7th
300


8th
300


9th
375


10th
375


11th
450


12th
450


13th
525


14th
525


15th
600


16th
600


17th
675


18th
675


19th
750


20th
750



At 7th level, you greatly enhance the speed and precision with which you throw flasks and bombshells. You add your proficiency bonus to attack rolls with flask and vial weapons (such as alchemist's fire, acid, and holy water). In addition, when you take the Attack action, you can use one of your attacks (rather than a full action) to throw a bomb or a flask or vial weapon.

Starting at 10th level, your own alchemical substances become more potent. Any flask weapon, vial weapon, or bomb which you personally created deals one additional damage die of its type when it hits.

When you reach 15th level, you develop more efficient methods for creating concoctions. By spending one hour working with your alchemist's supplies, you can craft 30 gp worth of bombs, vials of acid, or flasks of alchemist's fire, though you must expend gp for resources as normal. The value of these items is reduced by the Chemist feature for the purposes of determining the number of each item that you can craft using this feature, their cost to produce, and their value once crafted.
You can work for a total of eight hours in such a fashion, after which you must complete a long rest before you can use this feature again.

At 18th level, you have long grown accustomed to being burned, and you are more likely to cauterize a wound than to stitch it. You gain immunity to fire damage. In addition, whenever an attack or effect would deal fire damage to you, you are instead healed for 1/4 of the damage that you would have taken.
You can only use this feature to recover a number of hit points equal to half your hit point maximum, after which you must complete a short or long rest before you can do so again.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I've updated this post to be in line with my changes through post #12.

[Final Hyena]

I rather like the archetype, it makes up for bombs being good at level 1, but the damage buff at level 10 keeps them competitive. My biggest concern is how much money a PC could make from this feature given how the reduced material cost and time needed.

This is a hard problem to deal with for a bomb centric class, I'm currently trying to design a bomb class and the only way I see to balance that is to just give them several bombs that visibly only last a day.

[PoeticDwarf]

I agree with Hyena. This is pretty cool but are some concerns

[quinron]

I started having the same concern soon after I posted this. Cribbing off Pathfinder's Alchemist a bit, how does this sound as a rework of the Chemist feature:

When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you gain proficiency with alchemist's supplies. Using alchemist's supplies, you can produce a number of bombs, flasks of alchemist's fire, and vials of acid quickly and easily: you can craft up to 150 gp worth of these items in any combination for free. Doing so requires 1 minute for each 10 gp in the total value of the items you craft. You can craft these items as part of a short or long rest. Using the standard rules for crafting in downtime (PHB p.187), you can also craft these items for half the price and in half the time they would normally require.
In addition, the Dexterity saving throw to avoid taking damage from bombs you throw is equal to 12 or 8 + your Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus, whichever is higher.

So this way, figuring 2 short rests per day as is recommended, you're averaging 3 bomb, 9 alchemist's fires, or 18 flasks of acid per day. Seems like a reasonable number of free items to get, and you still get the discount when you stock up. Though it's going to require some change to the Advanced Chemistry feature.

EDIT: Wow, can't believe I didn't think of this one before either - a buff to Advanced Chemistry:

When you finish crafting a bomb, instead of fire damage, you may choose to change its damage to one of the following types: acid, piercing, poison, slashing, or thunder.

So you've got firebombs, chemical weapons, gas canisters, concussion grenades, and shrapnel grenades. I'd consider adding another type or two, but cold, lightning, etc., don't really seem like the kinds of things you could put in a bomb without some magic.

[Final Hyena]

Perhaps add in an addendum that those freely made bombs because rushed lose potency in a day, it stops you from making a lot of money at low levels.

The price limit doesn't scale, which is rather bad for such an attack centric class I'm currently considering using a formula (for my class) of prof + int mod or 1/2 level (rounded up)+ prof. The reason for rounded up is so that you get 6 bombs at level 5 which is 3 full rounds of bomb lobbing. Given that this is a fighter archetype I lean towards the latter as when you get 3 or 4 attacks you'll otherwise burn through those bombs very quickly.

I also like the varied weapon damage types that's the same thing I'm doing. Another thing I'm doing is the idea of excluding one of the outer areas from damage (based on a PF feat).

[quinron]

Perhaps add in an addendum that those freely made bombs because rushed lose potency in a day, it stops you from making a lot of money at low levels.

The price limit doesn't scale, which is rather bad for such an attack centric class I'm currently considering using a formula (for my class) of prof + int mod or 1/2 level (rounded up)+ prof. The reason for rounded up is so that you get 6 bombs at level 5 which is 3 full rounds of bomb lobbing. Given that this is a fighter archetype I lean towards the latter as when you get 3 or 4 attacks you'll otherwise burn through those bombs very quickly.

I also like the varied weapon damage types that's the same thing I'm doing. Another thing I'm doing is the idea of excluding one of the outer areas from damage (based on a PF feat).

That's a good point. I'll definitely make them useless after a day, and I also think a 75 gp-per-2-levels scale could work. This means that by level 7, when you first get the ability to use a bomb as an Attack, you can make up to 2 per rest; at level 11, when you get your third attack, you can make 3. This becomes less useful at level 15, when you a) can make 4 free bombs per rest and b) can make up to 8 bombs per day at half cost that don't lose power.

15th level is meant to be a pretty big power jump, so I think that's a good time to be able to sling bombs with abandon. Past that, you're probably going to be making enough money that you'll get more mileage out of your long-lasting, paid-for bombs.

[Final Hyena]

Marvellous, one thing. It might just be that I'm tired but if you get x bombs, y acids and z fires per level it should be the same but less time spent mathsing.

[quinron]

Marvellous, one thing. It might just be that I'm tired but if you get x bombs, y acids and z fires per level it should be the same but less time spent mathsing.

I'm actually changing Advanced Chemistry to be gp-based to fit how I've changed Chemist. Both features are a bit more fiddly, but I don't want you to have to choose bombs, acids, or fires in bulk; I want some mixing and matching. Since the increase is 75 gp per 2 levels, you're going to have leftovers as well if you're making bombs, so I want to let you get something out of that.

EDIT: Updated the original to be in line with my changes up to this post.

[Final Hyena]

CHEMIST
Doing so requires 1 minute for each 10 gp in the total value of the items you craft.

ADVANCED CHEMISTRY
By spending one hour working with your alchemist's supplies, you can craft 75 gp worth of

How is that better?

With regards to the last idea I meant that you can make X bombs per level, but instead of each bomb you can make Y acid or Z flasks.

[quinron]

CHEMIST
Doing so requires 1 minute for each 10 gp in the total value of the items you craft.

ADVANCED CHEMISTRY
By spending one hour working with your alchemist's supplies, you can craft 75 gp worth of

How is that better?

With regards to the last idea I meant that you can make X bombs per level, but instead of each bomb you can make Y acid or Z flasks.

Sorry about that unfinished sentence; it's been fixed in the original post. Also, Advanced Chemistry may have been a bit unclear - the reduced cost from Chemist is supposed to apply to the 75 gp you can craft in an hour.

As for the "fiddliness" of using gp values rather than hard numbers (x bombs, y fires, z acids) - this allows you to mix and match which items you'd like to make, and it doesn't really take that long since those items all have nice, round gp values. Totaling up the items to create won't take any longer than a wizard preparing spells - which is also the comparison I used for the "1 minute per 10 gp" rule.

EDIT: I just realized how illogical it is to say that you have to spend a certain amount of time crafting these things, but you can make them during a rest anyway. I'm going to remove that element.

I don't want to hand out too many bombs per day without having to expend resources (other than time, but so long as there's either a prepared caster or a heavy armor wearer, you're going to have to spend time on spells or armor donning). A bomb has greater range and does higher average damage than thunderwave, the most comparable spell at early levels; while a Grenadier under this setup doesn't get nearly as many bombs as a wizard gets spells, he also gets better armor and the ability to add his ability bonus to his standard attacks (as opposed to a wizard's die-only cantrip damage).

ALL THAT SAID, I have decided to reduce the crafting time for the Grenadier's main concoctions further. Rather than 1/2 price and time, I'm changing it to 1/5 price and time, but the value of the items is also reduced; so you can make, for example, a vial of acid in 1 day for 5 gp, but you can only sell it for 2 gp 5 sp.

EDIT: Updated the original with this.

[Final Hyena]

I think I explained poorly, I didn't mean that you can make 10 bombs or 20 acid or 30 fire I meant more along the lines that you can swap out any number of bombs. for example (I don't have the prices in front of me and also think bombs are over priced).

You can make 1/2 your level + int mod bombs per long rest.

Instead of a bomb you can get 2 acid. Instead of an acid you can get 1 fire.

Thus a level 4 with +3 int can get 5 bombs or he could get 3 bombs, 1 acid & 3 fires or any other combination.

I think this method is easier because the gp value is confusing when you consider all the multipliers, the half value for crafting, and the 1/5 value for the feature and however advanced chemistry gets involved. And when you get down to it it's the same system, but with smaller numbers. It would save a lot of text in explanations, get rid of the scaling table, save players looking up crafting rules and it would save you having to look up the prices of items in the PHB and DMG.

[quinron]

I think I explained poorly, I didn't mean that you can make 10 bombs or 20 acid or 30 fire I meant more along the lines that you can swap out any number of bombs. for example (I don't have the prices in front of me and also think bombs are over priced).

You can make 1/2 your level + int mod bombs per long rest.

Instead of a bomb you can get 2 acid. Instead of an acid you can get 1 fire.

Thus a level 4 with +3 int can get 5 bombs or he could get 3 bombs, 1 acid & 3 fires or any other combination.

I think this method is easier because the gp value is confusing when you consider all the multipliers, the half value for crafting, and the 1/5 value for the feature and however advanced chemistry gets involved. And when you get down to it it's the same system, but with smaller numbers. It would save a lot of text in explanations, get rid of the scaling table, save players looking up crafting rules and it would save you having to look up the prices of items in the PHB and DMG.

The way I see it, if the DM is permitting you to use this subclass, there's going to be some expected system mastery and understanding on your part anyway. My main concern has been wording things properly to prevent misunderstandings, which I think I've done adequately (though I need to make a quick edit to the original because I'm dumb and forgot to properly read the entries for alchemist's fire, etc., in the PHB).

There's going to be some bookkeeping, yes. But considering this subclass is centered around only 3 items whose prices are in nice base-5 values, it shouldn't be too hard to get the hang of it - if you're smart, you'll just write down to the values of bombs, alchemist's fire, and acid and the top of your character sheet. There's going to be at least as much number tracking for the healing limit from Heat Therapy as there is for the crafting and modified costs from Chemist and Advanced Chemistry.