See all my Alchemist Resources

General Stuff

Discoveries

Arms and Parasitic Twins – Ooo fun stuff. Having an extra limb can often save you actions. It’s also nice so you can use a buckler without taking the penalty to your attacks Nice! The benfits of the twin are pretty cool but I’m not sure it’s worth taking this three times to get them.

Cognatogen – It’s like mutagens but for brains! Great for mid-high level bombers, slightly higher bomb damage, and +2 to DCs is golden. Greater and Grand Cognatogens are less exciting.

Zombies – Yet another option that takes the class in a whole new direction. I might have a whole article on this, too much to say in this post.

Simulacrumania! – It costs 2 discoveries but at 10th level you get the ability to craft a simulacra of himself and project his consciousness into it…  I’m still trying to figure out exactly what you could do with this, you have half hit points and half your level but since extracts are made in advance it seems you could use all your extracts. I think bombs would be out of the question though. My feeling here is this is perfect for scouting or similar things but not as a true clone that can replace you. Definitely opens up some new interesting ideas for the class. (And really nasty options for a GM creating NPCs)

Spontaneous Healing – It’s like having a bunch more hit points, and being immune to bleeding. Automatically kicking in when you lose consciousness is gravy. Combine this with Lingering Spirit and you are quite difficult to kill.

Tumor Familiar – It’s like 2 bonus feats plus gravy. Particularly interesting if you take the Infuse Extracts discovery.

Archtypes

Wow… the archetypes really branch out here and there are tons of options and combinations. You can now build an all alchemist party and have no two characters filling the same general party role. Artillerty, Controller, Debuffer, Buffer, Melee Brute,  Striker…

My 10 word or less description of the various archetypes:

Chirurgeon – Healing stuff in exchange for Poison Use
Clone Master – Wimpy bombs, Make clones and Simulacra, never die.
Internal Alchemist – Cool breath holding suspended animation stuff. Combines with nearly everything.
Mind Chemist – Cognatogens = Brain Mutagens. Plus some Knowledge Stuff.
Preservationist – Little animals in bottles (Summon Natures Ally). Pokemist? Alchemon?
Psychonaut – Diviner/ mind-walker Alchemist.
Reanimator – Braaaains! Yep… this is the zombie maker alchemist
Vivisectionist – Sneak attack sort of makes this the go-to archetype for Mr. Hyde.

Archetype Permutations

It looks like some care was taken to make the Alchemist Archtypes compatible with each other where appropriate. The following is a list of all the valid permutations of the various archetypes…. I highlighted my favorites.

Chirurgeon, Internal Alchemist
Chirurgeon, Internal Alchemist, Vivisectionist
Chirurgeon, Reanimator
Chirurgeon, Vivisectionist
Clone Master, Internal Alchemist
Internal Alchemist, Preservationist
Internal Alchemist, Preservationist, Reanimator
Internal Alchemist, Preservationist, Vivisectionist
Internal Alchemist, Psychonaut
Internal Alchemist, Vivisectionist
Preservationist, Reanimator
Preservationist, Vivisectionist

My 10 words or less assessment of the new bombs:

Blinding Bomb/ Sunlight Bomb – Decent, really good in an undead heavy game.

Confusing Bomb – With a Will save to avoid, it’s good; Without, ridiculously good. (thread in the forums)

Plague Bomb – Pick your disease vector, mass ability score debuff.

Strafe Bomb – Change bomb splash area to a line.

Tanglefoot bomb – Freeze ground critters in place and Ground fliers.. very nice

Feats

Discoveries

Who?
Everyone who wants to hang out and participate in the first ever PFS frat can. I’m not picky here, I would love to see 20 people. Everyone must commit to the idea that the characters will be [i]friends[/i] who enjoy working with each other. Any rivalries will be friendly competitions. The other goal is I would love to see a gathering at Paizocon of Order of the Board members.

Goal
The goal is to create a group of characters which we will wind up playing at Paizocon 2011 and hopefully 2012, 2013… and ongoing multi year journey. My expectation is that we would all play at least a little bit outside Paizocon so the characters could advance over those years. The rough goal I have in mind would be to have all the characters third level at the end of Paizocon 2011. (we’ll hammer out something more specific down the road)

Can’t participate in PFS but want to do Order of the Board
If you can’t (or won’t) participate in PFS that’s Ok too, Paizo provides some pregen characters at various levels for Con play and you can plan on re-branding one of the pregens for your personal character. For example if you want to play a wizard you can play Ezren with the serial numbers filed off. Then you can hang out here and role play on the Order of the Board and use the pregens when we gather at Paizocon.

You are limited to using the pregen characters which can be limiting but if the character doesn’t exactly match the statblock it’s not a big deal. Supposing you want to play an elf warrior you would play here as the elf warrior and grab the Valeros pregen at Paizocon and use it.

The Characters
The goal is to make a group of characters who are close friends who went through the Pathfinder Society training together and formed a tight bond. A Society mini-frat if you would. Rivalries and fights between characters are friendly and the group has trained together for

Outside Paizocon Play
I’d love to get at least a few online games put together, and someone suggested a PbP. If we can get together for something like this it would be great but it isn’t part of the core assumption. This would be a particularly good option for those who want to participate but won’t be able to make it to PaizoCon. I’ll try and organize a monthly OotB online game and a play by post is possible.