Is the MFoV Alchemist class any good?

[LuminousWarrior]

In the group I'm DMing one of my players decided he wanted to play an Alchemist. Sort of based off of Plague Knight, with various explosives and potions. My original plan was to let him use the Alchemist class made by Middle Finger of Vecna, but after reading some posts around the forums and Reddit I've noticed that there are a decent amount of conflicting opinions on MFoV. Unfortunately, I'm still a bit of a novice when it comes to Homebrew, so while I initially thought it looked pretty good, I'm beginning to second guess myself. Is the MFoV Alchemist any good, and, if not, what would a good alternative be?

[Sariel Vailo]

A lot of other stuff on their i can give you an opinion on however this is out of my area of expertise however it can suffer from the same debuff the craftsman has actually needing a forge to craft so actually having your multiple tools plus downtime to craft.equal to gp for the bombs or alchemical formulas

[Moredhel24]

An alt would be Dibastet's Artificer and go w/ the alchemist subclass. 1st 6 levels can be found over in the homebrew section and full class on the dm's guild. On the MFoV version ask Ninja Prawn, Dracoknight, or Submortimer, they're contributors to it.

[Ninja_Prawn]

On the MFoV version ask Ninja Prawn, Dracoknight, or Submortimer, they're contributors to it.

I wasn't involved in the Alchemist, so I'm afraid I won't be able to help much with that one. Sorry. It's before Draco's time as well.

If you have specific questions though, we can always forward them on to our colleagues. :smallsmile:

[DracoKnight]

If you have specific questions though, we can always forward them on to our colleagues. :smallsmile:

Indeed! We'd be very happy to do that.

[Theodoxus]

I'm not MFoV, so grain of salt and all that...

I read through the Alchemist last night. Given the replies by NP and DK here, it makes sense - it feels older. I did a conversion for a player back in 2014 when 5E was shiny and new, using the warlock as a chassis. It was probably on par for power with MFoV's version...

I don't know if y'all ever go back and revisit concepts with an eye at including new and updated material WotC has published (either UA or official), but I think the Alchemist could use a bit of a touch-up...

The alternative bombs in particular should follow other cantrip norms - and possibly ideas from PF as well. Force bombs dealing a d8 shocked me. Paizo knew that Force was hardly resisted in PF and WotC has kept the same idea... reducing the damage from a d10 to a d8 isn't enough. The pushback alone is worth a die drop. The damage type another.

I have similar concerns with other damaging bombs... frost and acid...

I do like the cantrip like unlimited nature of bombs. The shorter throw distance and small aoe effects offset the standard Fire Bolt comparison. That you have to use discoveries to modify the bomb types is also well done.

All in all, I think it has the same flavor as the PF version it's trying to emulate, which is good. The healer archetype is nifty. I like the Temp HP bomb, and that its use is limited by the target, rather than the alchemist.

10/10 would allow in my games, which some modifications to bomb damage as noted.

[Submortimer]

I didn't put a lot of work into the alchemist, but amongst all our full classes it probably has the most playtime and playtesting.

My immediate reaction to the Force damage + push mechanic is that it requires use of one of the very few bomb formulae alchemists get. In general, the damage seems to be balanced against the warlock, trading out range for the ability to deal some AoE damage, and this then makes sense: EB with AB and Repelling blast does more damage and pushes further while still doing force damage.

My reccomendation? Try it out. See if it overshadows the rest of the party. If it does, roll something new and give us some plates feedback.