Unstable Reactions: A Remastered

Alchemist Guide

Unstable Reactions:

A Remastered Alchemist

Guide

By Solkanar

First, a big word of appreciation to The Sceptical Chymist and Exocist’s Guide to the Alchemist! These are excellent resources on the alchemist, a great source of inspiration and an absolute recommendation to read. This guide is by no means a critique on those guides. You will find a lot of similar ideas here. You will also find some differing ideas but there can never be enough opinions about this complex but wonderful class, certainly after the remaster in 2024! As of now (4/2025) both these guides are in the process of being upgraded to the remaster but not finished. That means there is currently no complete full guide on the remastered alchemist. As the alchemist is one of the most complicated classes in the system, I wanted to plug that gap. This guide is aimed at new players trying their hand at this unique class. If you’re an experienced player, I still hope you can value some of the opinions here. I am not a native English speaker, so forgive any weird sentences, grammar errors or strange typos. Any tips are highly appreciated.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Welcome, brave adventurer! So you want to play an alchemist! The most unique of all support classes in the game! Welcome! I hope this guide will give you some guidance on how to enjoy your alchemist character the most!

If you’re looking for raw power: more buffs than the bard or more healing than the cleric or more damage than the magus, I’m going to have to disappoint you. The alchemist is not a powerhouse. Even after the remaster there are issues with some playstyles. Some playstyles of the old alchemist are now next to impossible. While I do think the remaster

is an improvement for the alchemist in general, I will not try to make it look better than it is! Action economy is still not your friend! Damage is mediocre at best! You are primarily a support class, adjust your expectations accordingly!

Before I scare you off completely, let me tell you that while the alchemist is not the best, he is quite unique in that a proper alchemist is decent at everything. He is the ultimate swiss army knife. He will always have a solution to a problem, it may not be the best solution possible but it will be a solution! He is the ultimate proof of an important Pathfinder 2e concept: to reward teamwork! The main strength of an alchemist is his flexibility. You will always have what the party needs and you will (almost) always have it instantly: need cold damage, throw a frost vial; need to sweet talk the guards, give your bard a silvertongue mutagen; need to silently dispose of those guards, spike their drink with a knockout dram. You get the idea! It is therefore very important that no matter what research field you take, never turn your back on the other types of alchemical items not directly related to your field.

Now for the ugly part, to play a good alchemist it is very important to familiarize yourself with as many alchemical items as possible. The more formulas for bombs, elixirs, mutagens, poisons, tools…you know, the more effective you will be. The remaster has given us a marvelous gift: we now automatically learn higher level formulas of the formulas we already know. Of all the changes, this is the biggest QOL improvement possible. When creating your character, check with your GM to use your leftover gold to buy as many formulas as possible! Try to memorize what every item you can create does! Keep everything organized so you don’t have to search ten minutes to find the formula you need. Know your stuff, your fellow players and GM will love you for it!

At the end of this chapter, a confession: I lied! There is a part of the game where the remastered alchemist excels. That is the out of combat and exploration phase. With your regenerating versatile vials and sheer limitless flexibility, you’re always going to be able to provide top level support for your party!

The Rating System:

I’m going to go for the classic 4 tiered system. Please notice that there is only one bad option!

Blue( ★★★★ ): Excellent Choice! You won’t regret taking this option!

Green( ★★★ ): Good choice. Maybe not a must in some builds but generally very good. Orange( ★★ ): Average choice. Take it when it enhances your build. Can be a bit niche or require a certain setup but this choice can be useful with some work. Red( ★ ): Bad. Very niche. I don't make a difference between bad, very bad, horrific,...You can certainly take this option for flavor or fun but it will not make your alchemist mechanically better.

The Alchemist Ingredients

Before rating all the choices available, it is important to look at which ingredients you have to work with. How Paizo designed the remastered alchemist, for better or worse, is going to influence every alchemist build. Understanding the alchemist building blocks is essential to make an efficient character!

The Foundation

Proficiency Rating Trained Level Expert Level Master Level Legendary Level Perception ★★ 1 9

Weapon (Simple+Bomb) ★★ 1 7 17

Armor (Medium) ★★★ 1 13 19 Class DC ★★★ 1 9 17 Fortitude ★★★ 1 11 Reflex ★★★ 1 15 Will ★ 1 7

Your Perception will never increase past expert proficiency. Not the absolute worst, but certainly not good. Increase your Wisdom score to alleviate that problem a little bit. Going first in an encounter is very important for an alchemist to have time to buff yourself with elixirs and mutagens or to avoid damaging your melee friends with splash damage from your bombs.

The remaster finally increased our weapon proficiency to master! But for some reason, alchemists need to wait two more levels for their bumps than most other martials. Also, the selection of weapons is very slim: just simple weapons and bombs is a problem for weapon wielding alchemists. Look for ways to increase your weapon choices through your ancestry or archetype feats if you want to wield decent swords or bows.

You can use up to medium armor. Most alchemists won’t have the Strength score to use it properly but at least you have the option to do so. Together with a shield you can have a decent Armor Class if you want to.

Growing up in toxic fumes gives the alchemist decent Fortitude saves with master proficiency at level 11. Solid! Just don’t forget to increase your Constitution score, you’re not a barbarian!

Evading unexpected explosions from your unstable concoctions advances your Reflex saves to master at level 15. Not the best but with a decent Dexterity score, most alchemists will have acceptable Reflex saves.

Standing in all those fumes clearly did affect your sanity. You have literally the worst Will save in the game, only becoming expert at level 7 and never increasing after that. Another very good reason not to neglect your Wisdom score! A lot of mutagens will also lower your Will save even more. So be aware of this gaping hole in your defenses! Luckily a mind controlled alchemist is not as dangerous as a mind controlled barbarian.

Note the empty Legendary Level column! You’re considered to be a hybrid and together with other hybrids (like magus, summoner and warpriest), nothing reaches the level of legendary proficiency!

The Alchemist Building Blocks

Alchemy( ★★★★ ) (lvl 1):

Your bread and butter ability. Without it, you cannot be an alchemist! It is divided into several parts. The biggest changes to the class after the remaster can be found here. Paizo made a hard effort to explain this in a very convoluted way as if they wanted to create an IQ prerequisite for the class. I will try to simplify things so that even my tiny brain can wrap my head around it.

Advanced Alchemy ( ★★★★ ) : At the start of each day, you can prepare 4 + Int Mod of alchemical items for which you have the formula. These items are usable for 24 hours or until your next preparation. Look at this as your daily prepared spell slots, although spells are much more powerful. Nevertheless you can use this to prepoison some weapons, provide long lasting buffs, hand out some vital elixirs to your party members,...You will never have enough of these daily items. They scale very slowly and there are feats to increase that number further. You have to take an action to draw one before you can use it. From now on I shall call these items _daily vials_.

Versatile Vials: ( ★★★★ ): During your daily preparations you also create up to the maximum of 2 + Int Mod of versatile vials. These are your workhorses. During the day, you can use the Quick Alchemy action to create any alchemical item you have in your formula book as a single action. That item must be used by the start of your next turn or it becomes inactive. Effects created by the item have a maximum duration of 10 minutes, even if the duration of the original item is normally longer. (e.g. higher level mutagens and elixirs). You need a free hand to be able to perform the Quick Alchemy action so be careful when wielding weapons or shields. When using Quick Alchemy, you automatically also draw the versatile vial as part of that action. You don’t need to spend a separate action to draw them. Another good part of your versatile vials is that they regenerate at the rate of 2 per 10 minutes until you reach your maximum again. This regeneration even occurs when performing other exploration activities like Treat Wounds, Repair or Avoid Notice. So when there is half an hour between combat encounters, you start with a fully recharged batch of versatile vials. That is why I will call these items _encounter vials_. An important detail is that you can only use alchemical items with the additive trait on these encounter vials. More on the additive trait later.

Field Vials ( ★★ ) : As Paizo describes it, you can use the Quick Vial feature of the Quick Alchemy action to create a versatile vial (different from the one above) that can be used as a weak acid bomb or as the versatile vial option of your research field that can be found under the section of field vials. Are you still with me? That is just a convoluted way of saying that you can use the Quick Alchemy action to create a field vial that can be used as a weak acid bomb or as something else dependent on your research field. These are very short lived and must be used before the end of your current turn. Since they do not consume any resources, I will call these from now on _cantrip vials._ These are not your most powerful option, but they ensure you have something alchemical to do when all your other vials are depleted.

Other Freebies ( ★★★ ) : You get a formula book for free with two free formulas. In addition, you also get the Alchemical Crafting feat for free, giving you four free common formulas. Together with the two free formulas from your research field, you start with 8 formulas known. In addition, most common 1st level alchemical formulas only cost 1gp, so RAW you can spend more of your starting gold on extra formulas. If your GM agrees, I would recommend that. Who needs armor anyway? Every time you level, you learn two new common formulas. The free feat also lets you Craft Alchemical Items during downtime, if you have that at your table. Finally, you can automatically identify alchemical items you have the formula for. It may not be relevant often but some GMs can be a real stickler on identifying found items.

Powerful Alchemy( ★★ ) (lvl 5):

This may seem like an amazing power on paper, replacing the item DC with your class DC but in reality you don’t use your Class DC all that much. With automatic knowledge of higher level formulas, a lot of alchemical items level automatically. In practice, it is mostly used for low level poisons with a powerful rider effect. Still handy for those items but less useful than you would like.

Double Brew( ★★ ) (lvl 9):

You can make two items with the Quick Alchemy action. You can make any combination of cantrip vials and encounter vials if you have any left. Beware that you have to use them both before they expire. Also note you have to have both hands free to use this feature. It can be handy sometimes but chances are low you will use this a lot.

Alchemical Expertise( ★★★ ) (lvl 9):

Apart from the boost of your Class DC to expert, you get the nice bonus that your encounter vials regenerate faster: at the rate of three per 10 minutes.

Abundant Vials( ★★ ) (lvl 17):

You get an extra action to make one cantrip vial with Quick Alchemy. The value of this feature depends evidently on the value of your cantrip vials, which depends on your research field. Bomber and chirurgeon find this rather underwhelming. Toxicologists can use it a bit more to alleviate a little bit of their atrocious action economy for poisoning their weapon. It makes a ranged poisoner style a little bit more viable. Mutagenists are

the big winner of this feature! They can use the extra action to give them the unique benefit of their cantrip vial more frequently. Overall an average ability.

The Alchemist Finishing Touch: The research

fields

Research fields give you bonuses on the use of certain Alchemical Item groups. Every Research field gives you two additional formulas at first level from its group for a total of 8 formulas at level 1. Furthermore you get a Field Benefit at first level, giving you some bonuses in relation with your chosen field. Also at first level you get extra options for your cantrip vials. At 5e level, you get a more general benefit. At 11e level, your cantrip vials get another boost. At 13e level you get the capstone benefit of your field.

The alchemist research fields are not to be seen as hard subclasses like in some other classes. There is currently only one class feat that is exclusive to a specific research field. So, it would be a big mistake to only use the Alchemical Items of your specific research field. Remember, flexibility is your greatest strength! In fact, I would argue that some of the research fields are kind of a trap. They give you the impression that you can play a specific kind of character but they don’t give you the tools to do that. A chirurgeon player might be thinking that he can play as a healer but with just your research field, you will be very disappointed in your capabilities as a healer (at least until lvl 13). Even the bomber needs proper feat support to become an effective bomber!

Bomber( ★★★ ):

The bomber is easily the winner of the research fields. Every benefit you get ranges from very good to at least situational useful. Together with some feats you can do some reasonable damage. In the case of the bomber research field, they amplify each other to make for a satisfying character.

Field Benefit( ★★★ ) (lvl 1): You will rarely go first in the round. With your bad Perception and mediocre Wisdom, chances are your barbarian will already be in the face of the enemy and your rogue is already in flanking position when your turn comes

around. Limiting your splash area to just the primary target will be appreciated by your melee friends. At later levels, there are magical items to mitigate damage from friendly fire and this becomes a little less useful. Hitting multiple enemies with splash damage is important for your efficiency, so use this benefit only when necessary. Field Vials( ★★★ ) (lvl 1): Being able to deal different kinds of elemental damage with your cantrip vials is great for triggering weaknesses. Note that splash damage is also applied on a normal miss (not on a critical miss) so even at a MAP or range penalty this is an option. Field Discovery( ★★★★ ) (lvl 5): You get a great feat from pre-remaster as a free benefit. Great ability! You will use this with every bomb you’ll throw, including your cantrip vials. Advanced Field Vials( ★★★ ) (lvl 11): You don’t care about physical resistances, but triggering weaknesses to those metals is situationally very useful. This applies to more creatures than you think! Recall knowledge is your friend here! Greater Field Discovery( ★★★ ) (lvl 13): Extending the range of your splash is necessary at this level. Enemies tend to become larger from now on so getting more than one in your splash should be something you want to do as often as possible. This will help you with that!

Chirurgeon( ★★ ):

The chirurgeon is presented as the healer and support field. Let me make it clear once more, you are not a healer! Your in combat healing is atrocious until your capstone. If you want to focus on that role, I recommend the Medic dedication! Your out of combat healing is much better, but not a lot better than your colleagues from other research fields.

Field Benefit( ★★★ ) (lvl 1): This is actually not a bad start. Crafting is an Int based skill and chances are you’re going to invest in it anyway. Taking Battle Medicine and the Medic dedication is strongly recommended if you want to make the best use of this feature. Field Vials( ★ ) (lvl 1): This is bad! Real bad. Your cantrip vial can now heal for 1d6+1hp at first level. At first level the amount is OK but it drops off in usefulness very quickly. (4d6+4 (avg 18) at level 18 is a joke, even a wizard has 200hp at that level). Then they make it worse by limiting the range of your heal to 20ft. (no range, just plain 20ft). As written, there is no way to increase that range! You are healing an ally at maximum range of 20ft for 1d6+1 hp with two actions (one to make the vial and one to throw it). A heal spell heals an ally at maximum 30ft for 1d8+8hp. This is disappointing!

To make it even worse, this is the only item in the game that has the new ‘coagulant’ trait, restricting your measly healing to once per 10 minutes per person. So they invented a new trait especially for this vial! I understand the problem of unlimited healing but this is a nerf into oblivion. You can use them to stabilize a dying character at range. Once. Field Discovery( ★★ ) (lvl 5): You add your Int modifier to your elixirs with the healing trait. This is rarely going to make a lot of difference. I am generous with my rating here. Advanced Field Vials( ★★ ) (lvl 11): Now you can use your ineffective healing cantrip until half the maximum hitpoints are reached. Still not great but out of combat you can be a bit more effective. Greater Field Discovery( ★★★★ ) (lvl 13): At last something good! Your elixirs of life are still not as efficient as an equivalent heal spell but they heal a significant amount and you can spam more of them if your adventuring is long enough. This does not make the chirurgeon a good research field but at least it saves it from utter uselessness. For reference: At level 13 your elixir heals 60hp and a rank 7 heal spell heals 87,5.

Mutagenist( ★★ ):

The mutagenist enhances your mutagens. It gives your cantrip vials some extra abilities to increase your tankiness. On paper, they seem to make your character able to go into melee with your fighter and barbarian. At the table you soon run into the big spectre of doom of an alchemist player: the action economy. I will get back to this but to summarize: it takes too many actions to use your cantrip vials efficiently. Melee combat thrives on being able to make as many attacks as possible and constantly making and drinking your cantrip vials in the face of an enemy will not let you do that. If that enemy has reactive strike, he will kill you with a big smile and the compliments of the PAIZO design team. That said, it is possible to make a decent melee alchemist but you need more tools for that than just your cantrip vials. The biggest boost to the playstyle of a mutagenist is not in the research field itself but comes at level 17 with the Abundant Vials class feature. Now you have an extra action each round to make your cantrip vial. Spend another action to drink it and you have two actions remaining for your attacks. (Enemies with reactive strike will still kill you, so don’t get cocky)

Field Benefit( ★★ ) (lvl 1): This benefit is very underwhelming. Your Int modifier temporary hp when you drink a mutagen! At the first few levels it is mediocre but the scaling is bad. Keep in mind that in most combats, you won’t be switching mutagens a lot. There is a common elixir that gives you 2 temporary hp at the beginning of every

round for one minute at lvl 1, and it scales up to 25 temp per round at lvl 19! This benefit is likely to reduce the impact of one hit. Not good enough. Field Vials( ★★ ) (lvl 1): This lets you suppress the drawback of one mutagen when you drink your cantrip vial. This looks good on paper but has a few problems: First, it only lasts until the beginning of your next turn. That means that you must be fairly certain your drawback will be a problem during that time that is so dire that you have to spend two actions to get rid of it! Those actions could just as well be used to move away, smash your target into the ground or to drink another mutagen to give you a boost to the problem you face. It can be useful in a few situations, so it is not terrible but it is not great. Field Discovery( ★★★ ) (lvl 5): Being able to reroll a Fortitude Save after you’ve seen the result will save your ass a few times. Fortitude saves are bad saves to fail in this game, a lot of bad effects like poisons, conditions like drained and doomed, death effects are mostly Fortitude Saves. Yes, you lost your mutagen but with some luck from the dice gods you’re still standing. I like this, even if it is situational. Advanced Field Vials( ★★★ ) (lvl 11): Now we are talking! Decent scaling resistance to all physical damage. See Paizo, it is not that difficult to scale something decently! Until lvl 17, You’re still screwed by the actions you have to burn for this but haste spells exist at this level, so try to charm your party caster! This does wonders for your survivability! Greater Field Discovery( ★★★★ ) (lvl 13): Two mutagens at the same time! Let your imagination run wild! Good combination are Energy and Bestial for melee but you can go crazy with this one. You can make this on the fly so keep your options open and adapt! Beware of the drawbacks because they stack too and you can only suppress one with your cantrip vial.

Toxicologist( ★★ ):

Oh boy, the toxicologist! It is a very popular fantasy trope: the sneaky assassin shooting poisonous arrows from the dark or Oberyn Martell poisoning his daggers and spear to dart around his opponent fatally weakening him (and get his head crushed by a mountain but that is another trauma). This is another one that promises that playstyle but painfully fails to deliver. It is even more cruel because it starts out nicely! But the small amount of poisons you can create combined with the lack of actions (actually the excess of actions needed to pull it off) make it a lackluster playstyle with little reward for a lot of effort. To make matters even worse, Paizo thought for some mysterious reason that poisons were overpowered and decided with the remaster to nerf the damage on some common poisons.

Do they not know that having to beat two defenses (AC to hit an Fortitude save to poison) is worth at least some satisfaction? Even as a toxicologist, you have to devote all your actions to try to do this. (one action to make or draw the poison and hold it in your hand, one action to apply the poison and one action to strike). I will go deeper into the pain of poison use later in the guide so you have been warned! This is a big disappointment of the remaster. It is another one that fails to deliver on the promise of its name. Is it bad? Not really, it starts off great but after that falls flat and doesn’t provide enough tools to make due on its tantalizingly promising playstyle.

Field Benefit ( ★★★★ ) (lvl 1): We are off to a good start! Being able to do poison damage to any creature is an amazing benefit. It is explained rather hazy but basically anytime a creature has resistance or immunity to poison or a weakness to acid, you deal acid damage instead of poison. If there would be a creature with a weakness to poison you would deal poison damage but to my knowledge, there are currently no such creatures in the bestiaries. As written, the benefit applies to all ‘infused poisons’ and not all ‘alchemical poisons’ so it should work on your poison bombs too but ask your GM to be sure! This fixes the biggest problem of the toxicologist: resistances and immunities to poison. Also you can poison your weapon as one action instead of two. Note that you still need both hands to do this and you have to be holding your poison in your hand. You still need an action to make or draw the poison!. Field Vials( ★★ ) (lvl 1): This makes your cantrip vials deal poison damage and your field benefit applies so you deal the normal acid damage in case of resistances of immunities to poison. It also gives you the option to use a cantrip vial to poison your weapon to deal its damage through that weapon. At low levels, this is not bad but after level 5 or so the damage falls off and becomes irrelevant very soon. Field Discovery( ★★ ) (lvl 5): Poison resistance equal to half your level. This was a mediocre feat before the remaster and it is a mediocre benefit now. When it comes up, it is handy but most of the time it will not be useful. Advanced Field Vials( ★ ) (lvl 11): When you hit with a weapon poisoned by one of your cantrip vials, you now deal a pitiful amount of persistent poison damage. Remember you must take three actions to attack with a weapon poisoned by your cantrip vials. They expire at the end of your turn! Terrible! Greater Field Discovery( ★★★ ) (lvl 13): You can try to poison two creatures with one poisonous attack as long as the original target fails its Fortitude save and the secondary creature is adjacent to it. You can choose if there are multiple targets and you don’t have to use it if there is no enemy adjacent to the target.This gives you some action economy benefit and will come up once in a while depending on what you are fighting.

A lot of creatures at this level are large and have reach. Cooperate with your party to get them adjacent if that is the case! All in all, not game breaking but not bad.

The Flaws in the Formula

Before playing an alchemist, we have to look at a few issues the alchemist has. It is important to understand these issues so you can adjust accordingly.

Reading this section, you might refrain from playing an alchemist but don't be deterred! The alchemist is a fun class but this would be a bad guide if it didn’t warn you of its limitations and problems.

1) The first issue is that an alchemist must be very aware of the ‘hand economy’. This means that, more than most other classes, you should be able to have a free hand to use your Alchemy Class feature. On first view, this might not be a big issue but I strongly suggest you read up on the rules of drawing and storing. Drawing a throwing weapon costs an action. Releasing your grip from a two handed weapon is a free action but it is an interact action to put your free hand back on the two handed weapon again. A lot of things you have to do in your round as an alchemist will cost that pesky interact action: drawing a daily vial, drawing a weapon, it means you cannot hold a shield and a weapon at the same time and use alchemy. Poisoning your weapon requires your poison in one hand and your weapon in the other. Of course, in the course of a campaign there are ways around some of these limitations. Having a decent unarmed attack gives you some melee option without taking up a free hand! Another solution might be the use of items with the free-hand trait like a gauntlet. Magic items like the retrieval belt or the talisman retrieval prism are the most obvious. It is also one of the reasons that a familiar is very handy for an alchemist: apart from great master abilities giving you an extra daily vial or an emergency encounter vial, a familiar with the valet ability or the combination manual dexterity/independent are a great asset!

2) Everything you do has the manipulate keyword, including the interact action that you will use a lot as described above. Enemies with reactive strike are your bane! They can shut you down completely. Be aware of that. Avoid them like the plague!

3) Your flexibility is your main strength! That ties into the fact that you must know enough formulas. If your GM never gives you formulas or there is no downtime to invent new formulas yourself, you’re stuck with two formulas per level. Like a wizard with an empty spellbook, you will feel unhappy about that. Talk to your GM about that. Do your homework and tell him of the common alchemical items you’d like to have. Most GM’s will appreciate your effort and keep it in mind when attributing treasure.

4) Third but not least I’ll look at the elephant in the room that is staring at us all the time when playing an alchemist. That elephant is called action economy. Your action economy is bad, I would argue one of the worst in the game. Let me explain: to use your Alchemy feature in an encounter you have to use at least two actions: One to draw (for a daily vial) or make (for an encounter and cantrip vial) your alchemical item and then one to use it or give it to another player. That is the equivalent of a spellcaster using his two actions to cast most of his spells. But your vials are not as potent as spells. At low level you can compete with the damage, but from level 5 and up your damage, even with your more damaging bombs, will be about the same amount of damage as a cantrip of the same level. Your elixirs and mutagens are essentially single target buffs. It takes the whole fight to buff your entire party. Most buff spells are more potent or affect more creatures.Your healing elixirs are a joke compared to other healing spells or even battle medicine. And poisons have the worst of it! Poisoning your weapon in combat requires all your actions and two hands! One to make and administer the poison and one that holds your weapon or ammo. So no shield for you, you poor melee poisoner! Bottom line, without feat support, you’re stuck doing lackluster damage, healing or single target buffs or debuffs with two very precious actions.

Pre-remastered, a lot of alchemists found the solution to this problem by playing the ‘vendor-machine’. At low levels an alchemist had very few items but once you reached level 7, you could make a lot of items during your daily preparations in the morning. So you provided your party with all the elixirs, mutagens they would need during the day or prepoisoned their weapons and ammo. Basically, you spent all the actions to make your items at the beginning of the day in order to be more efficient. The drawback of that playstyle was that you as an alchemist didn't have a lot of alchemy stuff to do during combat encounters because you had little infused reagents left. A lot of alchemists multiclassed into a caster archetype to throw some cantrips at the enemy during combat encounters.

Paizo wanted to give the alchemist more alchemical things to do during encounters and with the remaster came up with the new system of daily vials, encounter vials and cantrip vials that we now have. I understand that and I even like the new system. It gives an alchemist plenty of options during combat and makes for a more active playstyle. But they failed to structurally address the action economy problem.They even made it more painful. The first level class feat Quick Bomber solves the problem, but only for throwing bombs. They clearly prefer that the alchemist is played as a bomber and so they fixed only that playstyle. Poisoners, healers, partybuffers were left in the cold and are even worse off than before the remaster. You don’t have the resources anymore to prebuff the party or prepoison the ammunition with daily vials. To elaborate, an 8th level alchemist had 12 infused reagents to make a maximum of 36 poisons or mutagens or bombs. Now that same alchemist can make 8 (or 10 if you take a feat). As a non bomber you’re forced to suffer from your bad action economy every encounter. At best you can use your two regenerating encounter vials to keep two prebuffs going, but you’ll begin an encounter with two encounter vials less and those are your most powerful vials, so that hurts!

If I sound a bit harsh, it is because I am disappointed at the wasted opportunity by Paizo to really fix the alchemist! They got halfway and then stopped.

How does it all come together?

Now that that is off my chest, how do you play as an alchemist? There are basically several ways of playing an alchemist:

The ‘Classic’ Alchemist:

You stand behind your melee friends and throw your alchemical bombs at the enemy. By ‘Classic’, I mean this is clearly the way Paizo wants most players to play the alchemist. Their iconic alchemist is clearly this type of alchemist. It is a playstyle that has a lot of Class Feats to make it perform better. With the proper selection of feats you can focus more on doing damage or going more in the direction of a debuffer. The king

of the feats is the already mentioned first level Quick Bomber feat. This allows you to treat all your bombs as weapons that can be used with one action instead of weak spells that take two actions to pull off. This feat alone makes this hands down the best way to play an alchemist.

You are a ranged character, so Dexterity will be your second most important stat, after Intelligence. You will probably be one point behind other martials but that can be mitigated by the appropriate mutagen, quicksilver mutagen in most cases. Your bombs will never have property runes but the higher level bombs have their item bonus to attack built into their formula. With these adjustments, you will be on par or even a little above your average martials. Your bombs have a very low range increment of 20 ft. You will be camping just outside the front line so don’t neglect your defenses! The range can be increased with proper feats but alchemist feats are precious and you find yourself delaying certain feat choices until later levels. This playstyle really benefits from triggering the weakness of enemies. Even if you didn’t take the bomber research field, chances are great that you have the right elemental damage in your back pocket to take advantage of that weakness. So don’t neglect your Recall Knowledge.

Of course, the bomber research field aligns perfectly with this kind of alchemist. I strongly suggest taking this research field if you don’t know what to choose. There is a lot of synergy to be found here without a lot of effort. That said, the other research fields might at first sight not be an ideal match, they can still provide you with some unique and potentially powerful tools. Toxicologists can freely throw their poison damage bombs at enemies without caring about poison immunity or resistance (Skaven fantasy galore!). Mutagenists give you extra survivability. Chirurgeons are probably close to the front line to heal with their elixirs or battle medicine so the opportunity to throw a bomb is always present.

Beware that you have a low Perception, so you will often be late in the initiative order. Faster enemies will often get into melee range with you. Having a finesse weapon or a finesse unarmed attack at hand will make you better equipped to deal with melee if the need arises.

The Melee Alchemist:

You can choose to join your melee buddies. This is actually a remarkably viable playstyle. You have medium armor and shields right out of the gate, so your defence is

decent from the start. Your weapon proficiency however leaves a lot to be desired. You can solve this elegantly by going full Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and use the bestial mutagen for good unarmed attack and damage. The remaster removed the annoying AC penalty of the bestial mutagen, so it will not impact your melee staying power anymore. You can even achieve respectable amounts of unarmed melee damage if you can combine your bestial mutagen with some other elixirs that give elemental damage to your unarmed attack (iron wine or rainbow vinegar come to mind).

If you want to use a decent melee weapon, you will most likely have to look at ancestry feats. The ancestral weapon familiarity feats have gotten an update with the remaster and are actually good now: they make eligible martial weapons count as simple weapons and give access to the weapon critical specialisation effect at level 5. There are a lot of good weapons available through ancestries so chances are good you will find something you like. Beware of your ‘hand economy’ if you’re going for a two hander. When looking at archetypes or other feats, make sure you are looking at weapon familiarity. Just acquiring training can be a trap, unlike with weapon familiarity where you can treat those martial weapons as if they were simple weapons. That means that your proficiency increases to expert at 7 and master at 15 as if it was a simple weapon. But for example the fighter dedication feat gives training in all martial weapons. That looks great but to become expert you have to take another archetype feat at level 12.

Either with Handwraps of Might Blows or with property runes, melee attacks can be enhanced for additional damage or effects. That is a significant advantage on bomb usage.

As said, your defences are fine, if you choose to take elixirs like numbing tonic or soothing tonic, you can actually become quite tanky. You probably will prefer Strength over Dexterity to maximize your damage output and hit chance and to be able to wear your medium armor without penalties. This will leave your Dexterity lower so throwing bombs loses accuracy. It is of course possible to stick with finesse weapons to keep throwing bombs but that cuts into your melee damage, making you a flexible switch hitter.

Of course the best research field for this playstyle is the mutagenist who has additional benefits to increase his survivability. Chirurgeon has no real synergy but nothing stops him from taking a mutagen and turn into a rampaging monster once in a while. Weapon users might look greedily at the toxicologist to further enhance their damage potential and on paper that would be a possibility. In practice however it saddens me to say that while you could prepoison your weapon for poisoning the first successful strike, on the subsequent turns it is not advised to use your three actions to keep your weapon

poisoned. All the enemy has to do is take one step and they’ve rendered poisoning your weapon useless.

Other Alchemists:

First, let's talk about the ranged weapon alchemist that does not exclusively throw bombs but uses weapons to increase the range or the damage. Unfortunately that playstyle is not optimal. As with the melee alchemist, you’re going to look at ancestries and archetype feats to broaden your scope of weapons. Luckily the archer archetype does give familiarity with bows and crossbows. Note that it does not give you access to advanced weapons. Unfortunately, there is not much in the alchemist class that elevates you beyond that of a mediocre ranged damage dealer. You are designed as a support class! You can also opt to go for throwing weapons but that loses the range advantage that bows or crossbows have over just using bombs.

Now let's bite the bullet and address the poisoner playstyle. The way poisons work in this game make it very difficult to be effective. Let me elaborate! First you need to hit with your poisoned weapon against the AC of your opponent. If you hit, critically hit or critically fail, your poison is expended. If it is ammunition you also lose it on a normal fail. Secondly, that opponent makes a saving throw (typically Fortitude) against the DC of the poison or (from level 5) your class DC if it is higher. If they make their save, your poison does not take effect. If they fail the save, they are afflicted by the first stage of the poison and suffer those effects instantly. (as long as the poison does not have an onset time but injury poisons don’t have that). Note, the stage of the poison depends solely on the result of the saving throw. That means that if you critically hit your target and he makes his save, you deal double weapon damage but no poison damage. Thirdly, at the end of his turn, the opponent makes a saving throw against your poison. A success means your stage decreases by one, a failure increases the stage by one (or by two if critically succeeding or failing), immediately suffering the effect of the new stage. When the stage reaches 0, he gets rid of the poison. If anybody manages to hit the opponent with the same poison and he fails his save, the stage goes up again until the maximum stage for that poison. So, the big downside is that you have two defenses to overcome for any poison to begin its work. This will be exacerbated in boss fights where the bosses defenses will be through the roof. The more difficult the battle, the less efficient your poisons and therefore you become.

Poisons at higher stages can be very debilitating but getting there takes time and several failed saves. Battles usually don’t take very long so by the time your poison is at its maximum effect the battle will already be won (or lost if you intend to wait for your poison to work!). The main method to increase your odds is to hit the poisoned opponent several times with the same poison triggering a save with every hit. Unfortunately as mentioned before, actively poisoning your weapons in combat is very action heavy. You can try to prepoison weapons with your limited daily vials, hand them out to your party members and try to go for a few full poison attack rounds with the whole party but that requires a lot of coordination and you won’t have the resources to pull this off more than a few turns per day. Definitely not an efficient use of your resources. More on poisons later.

A lot of the people playing a poisoner want to try the ranged poisoner playstyle. Ammunition loses the poison on a miss so that is a bad idea. Prepoisoned thrown weapons with a returning rune work a little better, certainly if you can combine it with the Quick Draw feat from an archetype. But as demonstrated above, poisoning is not very powerful in this game system. As cool as I find the character concept, I cannot recommend it.

Before the remaster, some alchemists went very far into multiclass spellcasting. And they had a good reason for it. They have a high Intelligence attribute score and they didn’t have a lot to do in combat if they prebuffed the party. So it was a good idea to multiclass into wizard, witch or even psychic to acquire as many spell slots as possible. With the remaster, the dynamic has changed. You have a lot more things to do in combat with your encounter vials. It is still not a bad idea to multiclass into those classes but the opportunity to cast those spells is a lot less. If you really want to give up on using your encounter vials in favor of more spellcasting, you give up one of the alchemist's most powerful features. Why play an alchemist at all? Why not take the alchemist dedication on an Intelligence based caster class instead. That would be a better combination. Multiclassing into a spellcasting archetype is still a very good choice but the playstyle of a primary spell casting alchemist is not that interesting anymore.

If you want to play as any of these types, don’t let me stop you! Just beware you might feel ineffective or you might not feel like an alchemist. If you’re fine with that, have fun!

Building your very own Alchemist

The Attribute Scores

The alchemist is an Intelligence class. This means that your class attribute boost will go to your Intelligence. After that, choose your attack attribute between Dexterity and Strength. This means you won’t start with an +4 in that stat. It also means there are only two stat boosts left to put into other attributes. Choose wisely!

Strength( ★★ / ★★★★ ): If you want to go the route of a melee oriented alchemist, this will be your attack attribute, so boost this to +3 at character creation. If you want to wear medium armor without taking the speed and skill penalty, you should also boost this. Otherwise, it is not that important. All your daily vials and encounter vials have light bulk so keep that in mind but your maximum bulk will likely not be reached. Be mindful of this if you dump it too hard. Also one boost lets you use studded leather with no skill penalties at low level.

Recommended: +3 for melee alchemists or medium armor users, 0 or +1 for the rest

Dexterity( ★★★ / ★★★★ ): Most alchemists will use this as their attack attribute and it is a good choice because it also increases Reflex saving throws and Armor Class with light armor. It also improves a lot of useful skills like Stealth and Thievery. For that reason, it is also not a bad choice for melee alchemists to boost this to +2 if they have the ability boost left to do so.

Recommended: +3 for most alchemists, 0 to +2 for melee

Constitution:( ★★★ ) Of course this is good for everyone. Fortitude saves are important and you can never have enough hitpoints. This is certainly true if you plan to go into melee. It’s unlikely however you will have the boost to spare to get this really high at character creation but boost it every opportunity you get!

Recommended: at least +1 at character creation for every alchemist

Intelligence( ★★★★ ): Before the remaster, there was a fairly good argument that melee alchemists could lower their Intelligence to take a boost in other more melee attributes. They had more than enough reagents and never used their class DC anyway. Sadly this is no longer the case. Your Intelligence modifier directly generates the amount of daily and encounter vials. Losing a single point diminishes your daily vials by 12.5% and your encounter vials by 17% for a long time in your career. That is like

asking spellcasters to give up their spell slots. Even melee alchemists need every vial they can to perform adequately. Max this out!

Recommended: +4 for every alchemist

Wisdom( ★★★ ): Your Perception is bad and your Will save is the worst in the game. Do yourself a favor and try to boost this at every opportunity. Going last every combat is not fun and frightened, confused and controlled are very bad conditions you should try to avoid at all times. Unfortunately, getting this higher than +1 at character creation is not possible if you don’t want to hurt your more vital stats.

Recommended: +1 if you can, boost it every time

Charisma( ★ ): Something has to take last place. There are a lot of good skills or archetypes tied to Charisma, but you do not have the urgent need to boost it or the resources to do so. Unless you really want to qualify for an archetype, leave this alone. At least you have one attribute that can be dumped without detrimental effects to your character.

Recommended: -1 to 0

Ancestry

There are a lot of ancestries in this game and combined with the versatile heritages, there are a staggering amount of choices to make here. But I will try to make it a bit more comprehensible.

Most importantly, since the rule that any ancestry can have Two Free Attribute Boosts, there are really no bad ancestries anymore. That makes choosing your ancestry a positive choice! My advice is to choose an ancestry that suits your character or roleplay concept. As long as your attributes are fine, this choice will not mechanically make or break your character. But since this is, more or less, an optimisation guide, some ancestries give more good options than others. You should look for ways to complement or augment your alchemist framework. Some general guidelines to help you along:

• Expanded options for your vision like darkvision or low light are always nice as is any imprecise sense.

• Additional movement options are good options. Most handy of course is flying but that requires investment of several feats. Remember, if you have the listed movement, you don’t have to roll skill checks when using them. So a Climb or Swim speed means you don’t have to worry about Athletics checks or being off-guard during climbing or swimming. Climbing will be more useful than swimming in most campaigns!

• You don’t have any inherent reactions as an alchemist so you might go look for those.

• Since we have to deal with the ‘hand economy’ a natural weapon can help us out. If you are going for a Dexterity build, try to go for an agile one.

• The various Weapon Familiarity feats are a good place to start looking if you want to use some specific martial weapons. As mentioned before, the remastered ones are seriously buffed with the introduction of the concept of weapon familiarity.

• A lot of ancestries give us options for innate spells. Beware that most innate spells use Charisma as their spellcasting attribute so avoid spells with saving throws or attack rolls. But there are a lot of useful utility spells out there.

• Don’t ignore the different Lore feats. They got buffed in the remaster with the Additional Lore general feat. That means automatic increase of that Lore feat to legendary. Also Lore feats are an Intelligence based skill so they are right up your alley. Do mind that some ancestries give you daily skill proficiency. I advise you to use those for a Lore skill you will most likely use that day.

• You will find a lot of elemental resistances, either in heritages or in ancestral feats. These come in two forms: half your level or a fixed amount (mostly 5). Low level campaigns benefit more from the fixed amount while at higher level it is the other way around. If you know a certain element will come up a lot, you can go for that element. Otherwise, they are nice to have but no dealbreaker.

• Some ancestries give the option to take a familiar, which can be an amazing asset to every alchemist.This saves you a precious class feat.

• Everything that plugs the hole of our abysmal Will save and Perception a little bit is something to look out for.

• Finally, keep in mind there is the Adopted Ancestry general feat that enables you to pilfer other ancestries' feats in addition to your own.

Common:

Dwarf( ★★ ): The speed penalty really brings this down. Otherwise there are some handy things here. The Ancient-Blooded Heritage gives you a reaction that boosts a save versus a magical effect. The darkvision is also nice. There are also a lot of Crafting bonuses like Dwarven Reinforcement and Lore feats to be found like Dongun Education and Clan Lore. Dwarven feats tend to be focused on defence like Mountain Stoutness, Stone Bones and Stone Wall. A specific alchemy feat is Demolitionist. Better for a melee alchemist.

Elf( ★★★★ ): The heritages are nothing special. Ancient Elf is still amazing if you don’t use the free archetype variant rule. The big kicker here is of course the speed boost, even more impressive with Nimble Elf. The Weapon Familiarity contains all the finesse ranged and melee weapons you will ever need. Forlorn helps with all Will saves against mental effects. Elven Instinct improves your initiative but doesn’t stack with the Improved Initiative general feat. Special mention to the Ancestral Longevity feat line to become trained in the appropriate Lore feat of your choice every day. Elves make amazing alchemists

Gnome( ★★★ ): Gnomes make excellent casters but have a lot of good options for alchemists too. Heritages can give you an innate cantrip from any tradition, darkvision or scent. You can get a pet chipmunk familiar with Animal Accomplice. You can pick up some nice spells with First World Adept. Gnome Obsession and its follow up Eclectic Obsession are fantastic for any Intelligence based character. Combine it with Theoretical Acumen and you can even use it for defense, sadly only once per day. Unexpected Shift is weak but Fortuitous Shift is a great defensive reaction. Razzle Dazzle is worth noting for alchemists who tend to use the Debilitating Bombs class feat to extend the dazed condition once per combat.

Goblin( ★★★★ ): The iconic alchemist is a goblin. That should tell you something! The heritages have nice options like Charhide Goblin, Razortooth Goblin or Unbreakable Goblin.

The real winner here is of course Burn It!. It makes all your fire bombs a lot better! It is one of the only feats good enough for an alchemist to spend the Adopted Ancestry feat on. There is more. The Weapon Familiarity feat gives the excellent dogslicer. Goblin Song is amazing in the right party. Goblin Scuttle lets you step as a reaction. There are feats that enhance Stealth or give you a climb speed. Hungry Goblin gives you temporary hitpoints with every bite if you have a wounding rune. And the capstone Reckless Abandon is essentially a daily one round invulnerability. So much good stuff for every kind of alchemist.

Halfling( ★★★ ): The heritages are nothing special. Just the Halfling Luck feat chain makes this a great ancestry. I could stop there, but there is more! Distracting Shadows and Ceaseless Shadows lets you hide and take cover behind your friends. The Weapon Proficiency gives you one of the best finesse weapons in the game with the Filcher’s Fork. Cultural Adaptability lets you snatch any 1e level ancestry feat from another ancestry(Burn It!!!). You cannot go wrong here.

Human( ★★★★ ): Humans excel at first level. Versatile Human can give you Canny Acumen feat right out of the gate to patch up your Will Save or Perception. The infamous Natural Ambition gives you a free first level class feat. That level is stacked with great feats. General Training gives you another free general feat. Unconventional Weaponry can make you proficient with any ancestral weapon. Later levels are a bit sparse in mechanically good feats but Clever Improviser and Incredible Improvisation make you very capable at Recall Knowledge. Do not underestimate the power of the Aid action as a support character. Cooperative Nature and Cooperative Soul make you excellent at aiding your party. Sadly, Group Aid is a lot less useful in combat. If your DM is not a stickler on regional requirements, you can get a free Fly spell with Aeromancer. As always a very good ancestry but a bit bland.

Leshy( ★★★ ): So cute plants are common in this game. All jokes aside, they are not a bad race. Especially the Gourd Leshy, weird but great, this lets you take one item like a daily elixir, for free as part of the action to use it. After the encounter, you store another daily elixir in your head to pull it out for free in the next encounter. A powerful boon for any alchemist. Cactus Leshy gives a nice unarmed attack and Seaweed Leshy is the best common ancestry choice for an aquatic campaign. A free (Lore) skill per day with Ageless Spirit is wonderful. You can boost your Will saves with Undaunted and all saves with Leshy Superstition and Lucky Keepsake. A +1 circumstance bonus on all saves is amazing! Seedpod gives you an at will ranged

attack. Melee Alchemist will really like Defensive Needles, Spore Cloud and Cloak of Poison.

Orc( ★★★ ): Orc is an ancestry focused primarily on combat and more specifically melee combat. None of the heritages are of particular interest to a standard alchemist but the darkvision is nice. Hold-Scarred Orc gives you some extra survivability. A melee alchemist will find some good feats here. Survivability is a strong theme with the Orc Ferocity line of feats. Bloody Blows inflict persistent bleed damage but only on a crit. Orc Superstition and Pervasive Superstition are nice for any alchemist to increase every saving throw with a +1 bonus. Tusks give you a decent unarmed attack. Not a bad choice but not a lot of synergy with the average alchemist.

Uncommon

There are a truckload of uncommon and rare ancestries in the game and more are being added with every splat book. You need GM permission to play one of those ancestries and while I can’t see a lot of problems with any of those ancestries from a power standpoint, your GM might have problems fitting those ancestries culturally or story-wise into their campaign world. So I am not going over all ancestries here. I will list some races with good synergy or with good abilities tied to alchemists.

Catfolk( ★★★ ): Catfolk have some unique heritages. Clawed Catfolk has one of the best finesse natural weapons of the game. Nine Live Catfolk gives you bonuses to recovery checks. You should always avoid getting to roll those checks but these bonuses are very welcome when you need them. Liminal Catfolk gives the Detect Magic cantrip and a bonus to occultism checks. Furthermore you can get scent with Hunting Catfolk. The Cat’s Luck chain gives a reroll on a saving throw with Expended Luck, expanding to once per hour with Reliable Luck. Black Cat Curse is a unique ability that forces an enemy reroll a saving throw (that does not need to be one of your abilities). Saber Tooth gives an unarmed attack that loses the finesse trait. Caterwaul is a unique rescue feat if one of your party members goes down. Surprisingly good alchemist ancestry.

Centaur( ★★★★ ): Darkvision out of the gate is nice. Being a mount for a fellow PC looks like a good idea, but beware you and your rider can only take two actions and your own action economy

is already strained, so be aware of that. Of course, being on four hooves can occasionally be very awkward, certainly in three dimensional dungeon crawling. Being Large can also be a nuisance in tight dungeons. Fleetwind Centaur gives a nice speed boost. Ironhoof Centaur gives a good finesse natural attack. Mottle Coat Centaur can be handy in the right campaign, but I prefer bonuses that always work. Ponygait makes you small and gives a rare bonus to Reflex saves. There is also the option to get a primal or divine cantrip. The clear winner of the feats is Skilled Herbalist. It gives your four free formulas at level one of which you can only choose one but the others are staples you would have chosen anyway at some point. Steelhoove makes a good natural attack an excellent attack. Speaker in Training can give you the nice Bless spell. Herbal Forager gives a free healing elixir per day. Stubborn Defiance gives one of the best boosts to your Will saves with a bonus to mental saves and the option to reroll a failed save! Miraculous Medic gives a nice bonus healing spell with Breath of Life. Merge with the Source gives a polymorph spell. Very good ancestry for an alchemist!

Fetchling( ★★ ): Apart from the darkvision, no heritage stands out as remarkably interesting or gives unique bonuses. Resolute Fetchling helps with saves versus emotion effects but you have to make your save first to have its effect. A lot of the feats deal with Stealth, Deception and illusions. Not really a strong point of an alchemist. Clever Shadow is very flavourful but does not grant a better action economy. There are some spells you can get but beware that they will use your (probably very bad) Charisma score as the casting stat. Flavourful ancestry but not a lot of use for an alchemist.

Hobgoblin( ★★★★ ): Smokeworker Hobgoblin gives your Smoke Bombs more punch (but you can replace it with the low level elixir Cat’s Eye Elixir).The other heritages are rather bland. That said, hobgoblins have some great and unique ancestry feats for alchemists. At first level, there is Alchemical Scholar, giving you a first level crafting Skill feat but more importantly giving 50% more learned formulas. Remember, flexibility is your strong suit and more formulas you know, the more flexible you can be. Hobgoblin Weapon Familiarity gives access to all the powerful composite bows but also to the Breaching Pike, a very good one handed reach weapon. Stone Face aids against fear effects. Vigorous Heath gives a small chance to evade the very dangerous drained condition. Less relevant at higher levels but until level 9 a nice boon. Runtsage gives access to all the goblin feats, including the almighty Burn It. Can’t Fall Here and Cantorian Restoration give a reaction that can save an ally’s bacon in a close fight. A great ancestry for alchemists.

Kholo( ★★ ): Used to go by the more common name of gnoll before the remaster. Their racial Bite is a nice unarmed attack but be aware that it does not have the finesse trait. The heritages are nothing special giving you darkvision or a situational speed boost. Hyena Familiar gives you a free familiar. Sensitive Nose increases your senses. If you use the Aid action a lot then Pack Hunter is nice. Affliction Resistance combines a bonus against poisons and diseases with the crit effect and the crit fail effect if you already have bonuses against poison from another source. Left-Hand Blood is a kick in the butt of the toxicologist as it shows it is possible to create a poison and apply it to your weapon in one action. Right-Hand Blood lets you use Medicine with a bonus without taking a healer’s kit, occasionally saving you an action. Very average ancestry for an alchemist.

Kitsune( ★★ ): Shapeshifting foxpeople! A lot of its features are tied to deception or innate spellcasting, reliant on Charisma. That makes it a rather poor match for an alchemist. Earthly Wilds Kitsune gives a decent bite attack, at least. Beware of Star Orb. It looks like a free familiar and it is a very unique one but it is immobile and has a master ability already taken that is not useful for you. So to use it as a functional alchemist familiar, you need to invest in familiar enhancement feats that a core alchemist does not have. The rest of the feats are lackluster. A cool ancestry but unfortunately not much extra value for alchemists.

Kobold( ★★ ): Strongjaw Kobold gives the standard but decent bite attack. Venomtail Kobold lets you deal persistent poison once per day, but only if your attack hits. Not very powerful but flavourful for a toxicologist. Darkvision out of the gate is good, obviously. Cringe gives a weak reaction for some damage reduction. Snare Setter and its follow up feats give you another new realm of pain to inflict upon your enemies. Some snares are really nasty! Winglet and Winglet Flight are not real flight, so be aware of that. Two feats are very expensive for this weak effect. Normally there would be another feat at higher level for a genuine fly speed but apparently kobolds are too heavy or dumb for that.

Lizardfolk( ★★★ ): You get a weak natural attack as a standard. The heritages can give you immunity to fall damage with Cloudleaper Lizardfolk. Bakuwa Lizardfolk gives a free medium armor nice for Strength alchemists. Beware of Makari Lizardfolk, it forces you to choose between an attack cantrip and a weak sustain cantrip and makes all innate spells divine. Not good for an alchemist!

There are some surprising gems in the ancestry feats. You know how I feel about flexible daily Lore skills and that is exactly what Consult the Stars gives! Iruxi Armaments greatly improves your natural attack, its follow-up feat Shed Tail is a good defensive reaction. Crocodile Twin has a annoying heritage restriction but it is a free familiar. Guided by the Stars is advantage on a save. Primal Rampage is amazing and Scion Transformation is very good for a melee alchemist. All in all a decent ancestry.

Minotaur( ★★ ): Darkvision and a big non-finesse natural attack are the highlights. Being Large can be an issue in tight spaces. No heritage has any unique advantages for an alchemist. A lot of the feats deal with survival and melee combat. But Keen Nose gives you scent. Not the best for alchemists

Nagaji( ★★★ ): Good old Yuan-Ti. They have a good finesse attack and the Hooded Nagaji even has a weak ranged poison attack. Venomshield Nagaji gives bonuses versus poison. Titan Nagaji come with a built-in breastplate. Cold Minded give a boost to emotion effects. Serpents Tongue gives scent and Water Nagaji a swim speed. Skin Split is a nice defensive ability but only once per day! Higher levels have the excellent area control feats Pit of Snakes and Form of the Beloved Mother. Venom use is a theme in the feats too, Venom Gulp and Venom Spit and Envenomed Strike are all upgrades. A good ancestry for alchemist, particularly toxicologists.

Ratfolk( ★★★ ): The race for the Skaven fanboys! That said, they can make fine alchemists. Every ratfolk has a weak finesse bite attack. The heritages are nothing special, they can give you darkvision or scent. There are some good feats here. Rat familiar is nice. Everybody who has ever seen the movie Ratatouille knows how valuable a rat can be in cooking formulas! Ratspeak lets you talk with him, freeing a familiar slot. Vicious incisors makes your bite do respectable damage. Tinkering Fingers gives a bonus on Crafting checks to repair things. Note that Cheek Pouches seems good but still require an interact action to retrieve items from them. Later you get Rat Form, which is an excellent scouting tool. Uncanny Cheeks is really good, giving in essence, a free daily vial of up to half your level. Warren Digger is one of the only ways to acquire a Burrow speed. Finally there is the new Call the Swarm, a nice big area of damage and difficult terrain for your enemies. Very cool and thematic.

Samsaran( ★★★★ ):

Reincarnating for the win. The Sanctuary Samsaran gives a reroll on Recall Knowledge once per day as a reaction, the rest of the heritages are fairly standard. All This Will Happen Again is great! A reroll with a bonus whenever you fail against an emotion effect! And Will Do So Once More expands it to all failed saving throws and This Too Shall Pass increases the duration to once per hour! Remnants of the Past lets you steal an ancestry feat from any other ancestry. Samsaran Weapon Memory lets you search through other ancestries' weapon familiarity feats to take whatever you want! Amazing flexibility! All This Has Happened Before gives the largest bonus to initiative rolls and a free recall knowledge on top. Add a free temporary skill increase with Memory of Skill and Memory of Mastery. Defensive feats like Blood like Water or I Will Return or The Cycle Continues are also very nice. A very good ancestry!

Tengu( ★★ ): You have a nice natural attack as a baseline feature. Dogtooth Tengu makes it one of the best finesse weapons (akin to a rapier). Skyborn Tengu sets you on the path to a Fly speed. A lot of innate spells but those are not always very powerful for Int based alchemists. So feats like Mariner’s Fire, Storm Lash and the Tengu Feather Fan line of feats are not recommended. Tengu Weapon Familiarity give some very nice oriental swords if you are looking for those. Eat Fortune is too specific to be really useful. Not a lot of synergy for an alchemist.

Versatile Heritages

For even more customization, you can pick any of these heritages instead of a heritage of your own ancestry. If you want to build a unique background story with strange or exotic forefathers, you can also look into these heritages.

Aiuvarin( ★★★★ ): Half-elf for the rest of the world. Before the remaster this was exclusive for humans but after protest from the Dwarven Diversity Departement, elves have lowered their standard for procreating and can now make babies with any ancestry in the game. All jokes and disturbing mental images aside, this gives any ancestry access to the excellent elven ancestry feats.

Dromaar( ★★★ ): Orcs are all about breeding and populating the world. So if the elves can have babies with everybody so can they! I wonder if Dromaar kobolds hatch from an egg?

Unfortunately, the orc feats are not as good for an alchemist as the elven ones but still quite good for melee alchemists.

Background

There are a lot of backgrounds in this game and more are added constantly! Covering them all is an exercise of cataloguing the cursed souls arriving in Hell. Therefore some general guidelines:

• Backgrounds give two attribute boosts: one free and one where you have the choice between two attributes. Make sure to increase your Intelligence and your choice of attack attribute (Dexterity or Strength).

• A common background also gives the trained proficiency in a Lore skill and another fixed skill. You’re an Intelligence Class, so you’ll likely have all the trained skills you want. If the fixed skill is one you already have, you’ll get a free choice.

• The final benefit is a 1e level skill feat, related to the fixed skill. This skill feat is the gem of backgrounds. It makes something good even better. Look for skill feats that enhance your character. A good choice is Battle Medicine as a chirurgeon or Risky Surgery if you want to go for the mad scientist cliché. Other good choices are Arcane Sense, Cat Fall, Crafter’s Appraisal, Additional Lore, Recognize Spell, Schooled in Secrets.

Putting this all together, here is a non-limiting list of good common backgrounds for an alchemist: Alloysmith, Archeologist, Barber, Cook, Deckhand, Jeweler, Junk Collector, Medicinal Clocksmith, Mechanic, Merabite Prodigy, Mystic, Pillar, Occult Librarian, Once Bitten, Secular Medic, Thessalonian Delver, Tinker,... Remember that backgrounds cannot be retrained so choose wisely!

There are some rare and uncommon backgrounds that require GM approval but they can give you various other bonuses like a free cantrip. Since these are very table dependent I am not going to dive into these backgrounds. I would just like to point out Amnesiac which gives you three attribute boosts as a great rare option!

Skills and Skill Feats

You are an Intelligence based class, so you’re going to have a lot of trained skills at first level. Normally you would end up with Crafting and 7 other skills (Intelligence modifier +3). From your background you add another two, one of which is a lore skill. That makes a whopping total of 10 trained skills at level 1! That should cover all the skills at the first level that you want. However you are not a skill monkey. An alchemist doesn't get any extra skill increases during leveling, not even for Crafting. That means you can get two skills to expert at level 5, a maximum of three to master at level 13 and maximum three to legendary at 19.

Consider that in most campaigns you will want to increase Crafting at least to expert proficiency. I will mention later why this is a good idea. That leaves only one other skill to increase until level 7. That means you have to choose what to focus on. Possible options are better Recall Knowledge with Arcana or Occultism, increased survivability and combat maneuvers with Athletics or Acrobatics, party support with Thievery, sneakiness with Sneak,... To narrow down this difficult choice a bit, consult with your party if some of these can be filled by other members. Bribe them if you have to! Or make them addicted to your elixirs and threaten to stop their supply, if you're morally more ambiguous.

Pathfinder has this amazing mechanic to use some skills actively in combat. If you want to do that with a decent degree of success, you need to upgrade the skill and the attribute that goes with it. Be aware of that.

You have mutagens and elixirs that will boost certain skills and skill actions. Certainly in exploration mode, make full use of your encounter vials. From 3e level onward, the duration of most mutagens becomes 10 minutes so you can constantly buff your own perception checks or your bard’s diplomacy checks.

Another reason why an alchemist is not a skill monkey is because you gain skill feats at the same rate as most classes. These feats are tied to a certain skill and provide minor bonuses to the usage of that skill or new uses of the skill. At higher levels they often require you to be expert, master or even legendary in that skill to be able to take them. Some of these can be really good for an alchemist. I want to give a special mention to the skill feat Kreighton’s Cognitive Crossoveru. When you gain this 4th level skill feat, you choose two other skills that can be used for the Recall Knowledge action. When you roll a Recall Knowledge check with one of those

skills and fail the check, as a reaction, you can reroll the check with the other skill. Obviously as an alchemist, use two Intelligence based skills (Crafting and one other). This is a very good skill feat! Unfortunately it is uncommon, so bribe your GM, carry his bags, bring him drinks, rub his back! You won’t regret it!

Acrobatics( ★★★ ): Useful in combat when grabbed. Being grabbed is quite a common condition. You’ll likely have a high Dexterity so at least you have a chance to break free. Also gives access to Cat Fall and Kip up as decent skill feats that occasionally can be very useful.

Arcana( ★★★★ ): An important skill for the Recall Knowledge action. The alchemist is Int based so you will be good at this. The Unified Theory skill feat alone makes this a prime candidate to boost to legendary. Arcane Sense gives you a free Detect Magic. If you're increasing this skill, consider Trick Magic Item. Prime skill for an alchemist!

Athletics( ★★★ ): Even just trained, this is useful for basic mobility checks like Climb or Swim. Unless specifically specced for it, don’t try any combat maneuvers if you value the life of your character. A lot of those maneuvers have nasty critical fail effects. A lot of skill feats enhance your mobility like Quick Climb and Quick Swim, improve action economy of mobility like Quick Jump. Special note for Combat Climber, which improves your hand economy while climbing, very important for an alchemist!

Deception( ★ ): A good skill but you lack the Charisma and the skill increases to make this viable. Take it for roleplaying reasons if you want but don’t expect a lot of bang for your buck. Leave this to your party face.

Diplomacy( ★ ): A good skill but you lack the Charisma and the skill increases to make this viable. Take it for roleplaying reasons if you want but don’t expect a lot of bang for your buck.Leave this to your party face. Yes, I copy/pasted!

Intimidation( ★ ): A good skill but you lack the Charisma and the skill increases to make this viable. Take it for roleplaying reasons if you want but don’t expect a lot of bang for your buck.Leave this to your party face. Yes, I copy/pasted again! Sue me!

Lore( ★★★★ ) :

If you don’t know what to do with your many skill points; take a Lore skill. The DC is lower and it is an Intelligence based skill.See what kind of lore could be useful in your campaign. You will benefit more from Lore (Undead) or Lore (Demon) than from the Religion Skill. Seasoned gives you a bonus on brewing elixirs. Also consider the Additional Lore general feat. This feat gives you automatic skill increase up to legendary! Your Cognitive Mutagen gives you a free Lore Skill from level 11 onwards! Don’t neglect it!

Medicine( ★★ ): If you are a chirurgeon, you don’t need this. If you want to fill the healer role in the party without being a chirurgeon, you obviously will need this skill. You can be decent at this. But it also involves taking a lot of skill feats to do so like at least Battle Medicine, Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. So you’re kind of required to take a lot of Medicine related skill feats as your first feats in your career. You can do it, but you won’t be the best. If you’re not interested in the healing role, you can skip this.

Nature( ★★ ): This can be used for recalling knowledge about animals, plants and beasts or identifying primal magic. That is a broad category but except plants,they usually don’t have any very special abilities or weaknesses. Since it is a Wisdom based skill, you won’t be the best at it. Other than that, it has few uses. You can invest if you have a skill to spare, but if not, better invest in something else.

Occultism( ★★★★ ) : The other Intelligence based knowledge skill. If you don’t take Intelligence, you should take this. There are some neat skill feats like Root Magic to give an ally (alas not yourself) a circumstance bonus to a save, Break Curse to try to counteract a curse or Disturbing Knowledge to give a creature the frightened condition, expanding to every enemy within 30 ft around you at legendary proficiency. A good feat for an alchemist.

Performance( ★ ): You are not a bard. Seriously, stop singing! You are not a bard!

Religion( ★★★ ): Used primarily for recalling knowledge for a diverse group of monsters like undead, celestials and fiends and for identifying divine magic. Useful for that but not much else. Lore skills can be a better choice if you can narrow it down to certain creatures. Basic knowledge of religions and deities can be handy sometimes. Becoming trained is not a bad choice but skill boosts are better spent elsewhere. Pilgrim’s Totem lets you go first

on an initiative tie. Sanctify Water lets you make Holy or Unholy water for free, a very alchemy thing to do. Better than Nature.

Society( ★★★★ ) : This is the Intelligence based social skill. It has little use in combat but it is surprisingly useful in exploration mode, especially in an urban setting. Basically, it covers all knowledge dealing with civilization and, well, society, including contacting and dealing with criminal organizations, if that is your thing. This skill is also very useful in Recall Knowledge checks about any humanoid. That is a very broad category of creatures! The skill feats Courtly Graces and Streetwise let you use Society for Diplomacy related things like Make an Impression or Gather Information. Very useful exploration skill.

Stealth( ★★★★ ) : This is one of the best skills to take and to improve as an alchemist. Not only for the obvious boost to Hide and Sneak actions that can keep you safe, but for the ability to greatly increase your initiative. Becoming hidden forces a DC11 flat check to hit you. That is by far the best defence you can achieve. But there's more! If you upgrade to master and take the Swift Sneak skill feat; you can almost always try to walk around stealthed and begin combat by using your Stealth instead of your middling Perception to roll for initiative. That is amazing! Your Stealth score by now will probably be at least 3 points higher than your Perception score (1 from starting with a higher Dexterity and 2 from master proficiency). Add some very good skill feats like Foil Senses and Legendary Stealth and this makes for an amazing choice. If you’re not sure what skill to level up, take this.

Survival( ★★ ): There is little synergy with an alchemist. If your campaign takes place in a wilderness setting, you might consider this. The skill feats are related to tracking and other wilderness activities and utilities like Terrain Expertise or Predict Weather. These can be relevant at low level or when your DM is a stickler with rations or environmental hazards. At mid level however most outdoor problems become more and more irrelevant.

Thievery( ★★★ ): Thievery is a skill that could be a focus for an alchemist. If you want to go for it, beware you will have to increase this skill to stay relevant. Some higher level hazards require you to be expert or higher to be able to even try to disarm them. Of course, you’ll need it to do unsavory things like stealing. The new skill feat Dirty Trick Lets you inflict the powerful clumsy condition while in melee. Of course a melee alchemist will not have a lot of Dexterity.

The rest of the skill feats improve your thievery ways like Pick pocket, Quick Unlock or Legendary Thievery.

Crafting:

You get this skill for free as an alchemist. Depending on the source, people say this skill is borderline useless or incredibly powerful. The main problem is that they can both be correct. To elaborate: the use of this skill is dependent on the availability of downtime in the campaign.

That said: there is a combat use for this skill:

• You can use Recall Knowledge on all alchemical or mechanical creatures which includes constructs. They are not very common but a lot of dungeons have at least some mechanical guardians. Golems can be very nasty and a successful Recall Knowledge on them gives your team a big boon!

• Don’t bother to repair items in combat with the Quick Repair skill feat, since the remaster you don’t have to spend an action to take out your repair kit anymore. Most of the time however, you’ll have better things to do with your actions in combat. In exploration mode however, you can use it to repair items, most probably broken shields or your beaten down construct familiar!

You can also try to identify alchemical items with the crafting skill, taking 10 minutes per item.

But most of the time this will be used to craft items for you and your party. So, it is important to know the basics of how crafting works like described on page 237 from the Player Core.

First, you need to be of the appropriate level to craft the item (no 13e level Heavy Sky Chariot made by 1st level elves, sorry Santa) and have the appropriate skill feats like Magical Crafting or Alchemical Crafting. Second, you’ll have to have the appropriate tools and an Alchemist’s lab available (no Vorpal Sword with just the flint and steel from your backpack and a bonfire) and if the item uses spells, you have to provide for those spells somehow. Third, you’ll have to have half the cost of the item in raw materials available.

That’s it actually. If you don’t have the formula, you’ll need 2 days to set everything up. Then you spend your raw materials and make a Crafting Check. Note that even without the formula you

can make every common item in the book. If you have the formula, you only need 1 day to set it up and you can craft uncommon or rare items for which you have the formula. The DC for this check is set by the GM based on the level of the item, its rarity and other factors. This part of the crafting skill is very good and very powerful. Note that during the whole process you only have to make one Crafting Check: this initial one. Even if you critically fail this check, you only lose 10% of your initial cost and two days of work.

For easy reference, here is the Level-Based Table from the GM Core. Normally you should add +2 for uncommon items and +5 for rare items but your GM has the final word on that!

Level DC Level DC Level DC Level DC

1 15 6 22 11 28 16 35

2 16 7 23 12 30 17 36

3 18 8 24 13 31 18 38

4 19 9 26 14 32 19 39

5 20 10 27 15 34 20 40

You then have a choice:

• You pay the rest of the item's cost (the other half) and finish it immediately. This basically makes you an ‘Ye Olde Magic Shoppe’ with a one day delivery time for common items with an extra day if you don’t have the formula.

• You invest additional days to reduce the amount you have to pay to complete the item. This is done by using the very odd Income Earned table with your character level and your level of expertise in the Crafting Skill as parameters. This gives you a measly amount you can deduct daily from the total sum. For example: At 8th level and at master proficiency in crafting, you deduct 3gp per day from the total cost. An average level 8 magical item costs 450gp. Half of that is 225gp, so it will take 75 days to reduce that amount to 0gp. That is a lot of time for not a lot of saved money. Going on an adventure will be more lucrative! This time investment will rarely be worth it.

• If you craft consumables, you craft them in batches of four, but you still have to provide the raw material cost for all four!

Putting it together, being an alchemist, you get Alchemical Crafting for free. When making consumables you can make four at a time. So if you buy an alchemist’s lab, you can try to craft four alchemical items. You prepare your crafting one day and pay half their cost if you have the formula and two days and half the cost if you don’t have the formula. If your Crafting Check is successful, you can immediately pay the other half of the cost to finish the items. Note that the cost is the combined cost of the four alchemical items. If you want to reduce that cost you’ll have to spend additional days.

Now let’s get out the details on this and what it means when you have some downtime! You can craft ANY common alchemical item for which you DON’T have the formula in 2 days. Then you can make a Crafting Check to reverse engineer the formula from the item in your possession. That works as crafting the item again (see Player Core p. 294) The sidebar on p. 238 of the Player Core is very clear about the two functions of a formula: reducing the crafting time by one day and the ability to craft uncommon and rare items! This means that RAW you can acquire the formula for any common alchemical item in the game by spending a 4 days of downtime and passing 2 Crafting Checks. There is more: the Inventor Skill feat lets you do this by just attempting to craft the formula as if crafting the item itself without reverse engineering and your GM might allow uncommon or rare formulas to be researched but at a higher crafting DC. That means that with this feat you need 2 days and one Crafting Check to research any alchemical item in the game!

Of course, if you are in a campaign with no downtime, then the value of this feat goes down dramatically.

Most of the skill feats are prerequisites to craft specific types of items. Since you get Alchemical Crafting for free, the most important one is of course Magical Crafting, but there is also Snare Crafting and Tattoo Artist.

Crafter’s Appraisal lets you identify any magical item with the crafting skill, depending on the generosity of your GM, this can be very handy. Often not every skill for identifying is covered in the party. Craft Everything eliminates most additional requirements for crafting an item. You won’t need to bother the party wizard to help with your wand of fireballs. Seasoned gives you a rare circumstance bonus on your crafting checks.

Class Feats

The alchemist class feats are a bit hit and miss. Few feats impact the alchemist as a whole. Most of the feats only enhance one type of alchemical item: bombs, elixirs or mutagens. Some of these are also arranged in slightly annoying feat trees. This means there are a lot of feats that do not play into an alchemist's main strength of flexibility. You might be tempted to specialize in just one type of alchemical item. Don’t fall for that trap. Luckily there is, as of this writing, only one feat that requires a specific research field. That means that you’re not obliged to take feats that enhance your research field but you can branch out and I strongly recommend you do! Bombs have the most feats dedicated to them so bombers will have to make some tough choices.

First a word on an important trait that comes up regularly in alchemist class feats: the Additive trait. This trait is reworked in the remaster so it works differently. Now it adds a bonus on an encounter vial of a certain type of alchemical item you create (bomb, elixir, poison). The good news is that this does not take an action to use and you can use it on your highest level items with no problems. The bad news is you can only use it once per round and only one additive can be added to an alchemical item. Note that you read it right: the additive trait can only be used on your encounter vials, making those your most powerful resource.

Level 1:

Alchemical Assessment( ★ ) : Oh boy! Let's start with this stinker! Not even literally. This lets you identify alchemical items as a single action. Note that as part of your Alchemy class feature, you can automatically identify any alchemical item you have the formula for. Out of combat, you can spend 10 minutes to make a crafting check to identify an alchemical item. So, when will you ever use this? Never! Utterly useless feat! It even has no roleplay potential. I honestly don’t know why it exists.

Alchemical Familiar( ★★★★ ): This on the other hand is excellent. A slightly boosted familiar is a great asset to an alchemist. The uses are immense. It can give you an extra daily vial or an emergency encounter vial. It can scout, it can deliver your elixirs to other players, it can give you items into your hand and so on. Truly amazing. The only downside is that there are no follow up feats to this feat. If you want to enhance your familiar, you have to look at certain archetypes to do so. But that does not diminish the value of this feat!

Blowgun Poisoner( ★★ ): This feat tries to cater to the sneaky poisoner trope with a free stealth check if you attacked while hidden or undetected. It even gives your poison

a powerful critical effect. But ultimately it is brought down by the incredible weak weapon that is the blowgun. Flavourful but not very strong.

Far Lobber( ★★★ ): This increases the range increment of your bombs to 30 ft. This might not seem like a lot but it really makes a difference. Your accuracy is not the best so not having to move to avoid a range penalty is a big deal. Unfortunately the competition is strong at this level, certainly for bombers, so perhaps take it at a later level.

Quick Bomber( ★★★★ ): If you ever plan to throw a bomb in your campaign, take this feat! No ifs or buts, it is that good. It dramatically improves the action economy of throwing bombs. You can effectively use one action to make or take a daily vial, an encounter vial or a cantrip vial and make a ranged attack with it. This does not even have the flourish trait so you can use this three times per round. Remember that your bombs still deal splash damage unless you critically miss. This feat is so good for bomb users it really makes me mad. The other research fields can only dream of a feat that even remotely comes close to the power of this feat. Disgustingly good.

Soothing Vials( ★★ ): This feat is exclusive for the chirurgeon research field! It allows a new Will save with a +1 item bonus against a mental effect when the target regains hitpoints from your encounter or cantrip vials. That includes yourself! This looks fine on paper but has some serious drawbacks. As written, it only works on healing with encounter vials and cantrip vials so you cannot supply your party with those. So you will have to bring your healing elixir to them which will cost actions you probably don’t have. You can throw a cantrip vial but only once per 10 minutes. Also, a creature suffering from a mental effect like confused or controled will likely not be willing to drink your elixir. Some mental effects like frightened decrease on their own. Not a great feat.

Level 2:

Clotting Elixirs( ★★ ): This is a niche use to reduce an annoying effect. It does not have the additive trait so It works on every healing vial you make. Unfortunately, there are other and more convenient ways to reduce the DC of bleeding effects. The Administer First Aid action can do this and there is the Blood Booster elixir that even gives a resistance to bleed damage. Taking a precious class feat is too much of an investment for this niche use.

Improve Admixture( ★★★ ): Once per day, make some extra encounter vials. Even if you fail the roll, you gain one vial. Just don’t fail critically! These are your most powerful

vials in combat so if you regularly run out or don’t have enough opportunity to regain versatile vials this can be a life saver. You won’t need it every day, but you’ll be glad if it comes up. A solid feat.

Pernicious Poison( ★★ ): Additive. This is the only additive for poisons. That actually makes it worse. It can only be used on encounter poisons, not on daily poisons you made in the morning and poisoned your weapons with. To use it on a weapon, spend another action to apply it and your last action to strike. If not used by the start of your next turn, it loses all potency. Furthermore, it only has an effect if the target succeeds its saving throw. So it works on the powerful Stink Bombs. Enough to save it from uselessness but not enough to make it good.

Poison Resistance( ★★ ): This basically is the 5th level field benefit of the toxicologist so for them it is useless. It is mediocre in most campaigns for other research fields. Usually there are better options.

Revivifying Mutagen( ★★★ ): The healing is nice but not spectacular. The other useful feature is the ability to end a mutagen, allowing for changing to another mutagen when the need arises. Useful for everybody but certainly for the mutagenist.

Smoke Bomb( ★★ ): Additive. This creates a fog cloud and gives concealment to everyone inside. Can be used offensively to force movement of enemies but it is better defensively. Combine it with a Cat’s Eye elixir to eliminate the concealment check on your own attacks. Be mindful of your party, though. It can be easily replicated by other items like mistform elixir. Not stellar.

Level 4:

Efficient Alchemy( ★★★★ ): Ok, this feat makes me angry! Yes it is very, very good, It significantly increases the amount of daily vials you can make (probably from 8 to 10). This feels so very much like a class feature disguised as a feat tax. Of course, every alchemist will be extremely tempted to take this feat regardless of their research field. Would it make alchemists really overpowered if they tied this to the increases of the alchemist class DC or something. Other classes don’t have to take feats to increase their base class feature as they level up. So yes, this is a great feat but it is also very bad game design. The second effect lets you make double the amount of alchemical items when you craft them in downtime. Don’t bother with that!

Enduring Alchemy( ★★ ): Your elixirs and tools (not bombs or poisons!) last a bit longer. In some edge cases it could be handy, but don’t expect a lot of use of this feat. Why it doesn’t work on poisons, where it might be more useful, is beyond me. Borderline useless.

Healing Bomb( ★★ ): Additive. Oh how the mighty have fallen. For some mysterious reason, you now have to hit your ally for the healing to work! Your elixirs don’t have any item bonuses to hit, so good luck trying to hit your tank! Even the lousy chirurgeon field vial can be thrown 20ft. Before the remaster you had the effect even on a miss. This change baffles me once again. It is clear nobody at Paizo actually played an alchemist if they thought this was a valid change. It’s not even a bomb so even Quick Bomber doesn’t work. And yes, I am aware of some obscure violent healing rule buried in a creature description in the Bestiary 3 (the Gliminal) but until this rule makes it into an official ruling, I don’t consider this an official rule. Of course you can ask your GM to implement this. I know I would allow it!

Invigorating Elixir( ★★★ ): Additive. Allowing sickened creatures to drink your elixirs is a nice start; Allowing counteract checks based on your level and class DC make this significantly better than the specific elixirs. You can try to remove (not reduce!) a lot of nasty conditions like clumsy, enfeebled and stupefied. This is also the start of a feat tree. It is very action intensive and it is only usable with encounter vials, so that brings it down a notch but still very good.

Regurgitate Mutagen( ★★★★ ): Now this is how to end the duration of your mutagen in style! Decent amount of damage to a creature within 30 ft is nice. Note that this is not a breath weapon so no area effect. I still like this a lot!

Tenacious Toxins( ★ ) : What a stinker. The chance that your poison lasts its full duration is already very slim. The chance that the battle is over when, by some miracle, your poison lasts this long is very high. Another proof that nobody at Paizo ever played a poison-using alchemist. Utterly useless!

Level 6:

Combine Elixirs( ★★★★ ): Additive. An action compression feat! Combine two elixirs of life for actual decent healing, combine soothing and numbing elixir to greatly improve survivability,... Let your imagination run wild with this one! A godsend for your action economy! You’ll run out of encounter vials very fast, so beware! A very powerful feat for any alchemist.

Debilitating Bomb( ★★★ ): Additive. This is mostly for bombers. You can add some debuffs on your target with dazzled being the winner here. The other debuffs can be achieved with other bombs. Beware, it gives a Fortitude save versus your class DC which will not be very high, so expect frequent succesful saves. This is also the start of a feat tree.

Directional Bombs( ★★★ ): Additive. Doing splash damage is an important part of your damage output. If you have no way to exclude your melee party members from your splash damage with magic or other methods, being able to splash as a cone allows for far better targeting. In actual play, I find myself often using this feat to great effect. If you don’t have the bomber research field but still throw bombs this becomes even better.

Fortified Elixir( ★★ ): A powerful effect on two very specific elixirs. Also, since it does not have the additive trait, it can be used on daily and encounter vials. But still too niche to be really useful.

Sticky Poison( ★★★ ): Obviously only for melee toxicologists or thrown weapon users. For this subgroup its great action economy even if you’re still dependent on the dice gods. Everyone else should stay away.

Level 8:

Alter Admixture( ★★ ): You have your encounter vials that should give you a lot of flexibility. Perhaps if you want to go for long duration buffs at a higher level. But generally not having the right alchemical item is not something that will happen a lot after the remaster.

Improved Invigorating Elixir( ★★★ ) : A good improvement of the basic feat. It is still only usable with encounter vials. Use this for the physical invigoration: the addition of drained alone would be worth it and blinded, paralysed and slowed are also excellent. Don’t bother with the mental invigoration! Unless you want to spend three actions trying to administer your elixir to a controlled, confused or fleeing party member before the start of your next turn. Good luck!

Mutant Physique( ★★★★ ): At last a gift for the mutagenist! This allows you to go full unarmed monster build with bestial mutagen! Or go full defense with juggernaut mutagen. This used to be three feats before the remaster so finally a sensible

change.This feat has flexibility, powerful buffs and it does not have the additive trait! Good stuff!

Pinpoint Poisoner( ★★★★ ) : And another great feat, this time for the poison users. Inflicting off-guard is not very difficult (try hiding yourself). Fortitude saving throws are most of the time quite high so applying a debuff is much needed for efficiency. It does nothing for your action economy but as a toxicologist we value small mercies!

Sticky Bomb( ★★★★ ): Additive. This is a packed level. This feat does wonders for your damage, certainly as a bomber. As a bomber, due to your level 5 field discovery, you’ll likely be doing 4 splash damage and to be able to double down on that by adding it to the persistent damage is wonderful! Try to inflict weakness with your party and start melting faces.

Level 10:

Advanced Efficient Alchemy( ★★★ ): Here is the next of the class features disguised as a class feat. The impact is mathematically a little less than its lower level colleague but it still enhances your basic functionality. Luckily this one scales automatically at level

16. Still think this should be implemented in the basic chassis of the alchemist. Stupid feat tax.

Expanded Splash( ★★★★ ): And suddenly you’re throwing mini balls of death at your enemies. Expanding the splash is vital at this level as the enemies tend to become larger. The splash damage increases for any alchemist but it is the bomber who gets the biggest boon. Doubling the splash damage is a great damage increase! This does not have the additive trait so combine this with Sticky Bomb and watch your enemies burn into a pile of ash. Even the Directional Bombs feat gets an upgrade. Just be mindful of your allies!

Greater Debilitating Bomb( ★★★ ): The second feat in the debilitating bomb feat tree. This adds some nice effects with clumsy 1, enfeebled 1, stupefied 1. The same limitations apply: you still have to hit with your encounter vial and they get to roll a Fortitude save for the effect to go off. If you’re going for debuffing as an alchemist, this is not a bad choice.

Unstable Concoction( ★★ ): Additive. Increasing the size of your die is rarely worth it. Also works on your elixirs of life. But it does not increase the die of persistent damage or the unarmed damage of a bestial mutagen. For some reason Paizo thought it was

still too powerful so they added a 50% chance to damage yourself with acid on top. Too many limitations and downsides to consider this a good feat.

Level 12:

Extend Elixir( ★★ ): In itself, not good enough to take. Rarely will doubling the duration matter a lot. At this level, your mutagens last one hour or 10 minutes for encounter vials. So, you can take an encounter vial every 10 minutes if it is very crucial for your situation. Most other elixirs at this level have a fixed duration of at least 10 minutes and can thus be sustained indefinitely with encounter vials. The only thing keeping this from a worse rating is the fact it is a feat tax for a more powerful feat further down the line.

Supreme Invigorating Elixir( ★★★ ) The end of the invigorating feat tree. You might be very excited by the bonus on counteract checks but keep in mind it will only give you a +1 bonus on your counteract rank (counteract rank is calculated by using half your level rounded up). Not immediately obvious, but it also means you get to use your increased class DC to master 2 levels earlier at level 15 instead of at level 17. It makes counteracting a bit more powerful. Also expands your effects to counteract two uncommon but very annoying status effects. If you have been using the invigoration elixirs, take this feat.

Uncanny Bombs( ★★★ ): A nice increase in the range of your bombs. It will keep you further away from the frontline and you get no cover or concealment penalty. Great for bombers. Needs Far Lobber as a prerequisite but most bombers will have that anyway, so it stings a little less.

Level 14:

Double Poison( ★★ ): Being able to mix two poisons together can create a powerful concoction but this has some serious issues. Your Double Brew class feature might seem to save you but due to the awful action economy of the poisoner, this cannot be used effectively in combat. While you only need one action to make the poisons and you still need two actions to apply each one to your weapon individually. And then you have to use an action to strike with your doubly poisoned weapon. Yes, you read this right: you need four actions to use this feat in combat in the same round you made the poisons and since you made it to 14th level, you know you only get three per turn. So you’re stuck! This means it will have to come from your daily vials in the morning. This will drain your limited supply very fast! Even with Sticky Poison, you’ll need to poison

several weapons to have a meaningful effect. Also, the feat makes it very clear you cannot use it on ammunition, so ranged options are limited to throwing weapons. Disappointing feat.

Mutant Innervation( ★★ ): The equivalent of the great Mutant Physique feat but this time for the mental stat elixirs. It combines three (bad) feats from before the remaster into one. Unfortunately, all the extra abilities have very limited use in direct combat. They can occasionally be useful in exploration mode but ask yourself if you really want to spend your 14th level class feat on something that sometimes will be useful out of combat. If you say yes, good for you but I cannot recommend it.

True Debilitating Bomb( ★★ ): The next feat in the Debilitating Bomb tree. It increases the enfeebled and stupefied condition to 2 and the movement penalty to 15ft. For some unknown reason clumsy does not improve. While enfeebled 2 will make a difference, the main concerns remain and the benefits are too small to consider this a good feat (also what is the deal with omitting clumsy?). If you went full in on Debilitating Bomb, taking this will not hurt but don’t expect a huge power boost. Your class DC is still too low for this to work reliably (for now…)

Level 16:

Eternal Elixir( ★★★★ ): Requires the Extend Elixir feat from level 12 as a feat tax but it is absolutely worth it. This makes any elixir last indefinitely. Not until the end of the day but until you use it again. Note that this works with the Combine Elixir feat. This essentially gives you a permanent, flexible additional character ability. The possibilities are endless! Soothing/numbing tonic for unparalleled tankiness, permanent Mistform or Darkvision, …

Exploitive Bomb( ★ ) : Or throw a different bomb.You should have quite the choice by now even if you are not a bomber. Utterly useless.

Persistent Mutagen( ★★★ ): Also requires Extend Elixir but not as powerful as Eternal Elixir, but they do stack! You should almost always have a mutagen active in combat (Quicksilver for bombers, Bestial for mutagenist,...) so it is certainly not useless from an action economy and resource management standpoint. You don’t need to spend actions and an encounter vial to buff yourself in the beginning of a combat.

Level 18:

Improbable Elixirs( ★★★ ): On paper this looks amazing! Being able to craft 5 common magical potions as alchemical elixirs seems a significant boost to every alchemist. Unfortunately, the list of available potions is not very good. Some potions can already be duplicated with elixirs (potion of water breathing or potion of swimming), some other potions are limited by the level restriction (Potion of Resistance cannot increase beyond giving 5 resistance which will not matter at this level of play). Basically you’re limited to Potion of Flying and Potion of Quickness. At this level however, chances are you will have items that let you fly or other sources of the haste spell. If combined with Combine Elixir and Eternal Elixir you can still get to some powerful combinations. Comb through your formula list and let your imagination fly! When more and better potions become available, this could become even better.

Miracle Worker( ★★ ): You have two rounds to resurrect a dead party member. In a party with no divine spellcasting, this can be a valuable emergency button. Unfortunately, in a situation where party members are dying, you’ll need more than resurrecting them to 1 hp to get those PC’s back in the fight. If you have divine spellcasters in the party they’ll have better tools to deal with dead PC’s.

Perfect Debilitation( ★★★★ ): Now we’re talking! The capstone of the Debilitating Bomb feat tree and what a capstone it is! Now they only resist your debilitating bombs on a critical save. This essentially increases your class DC for debilitating bombs by 10! This suddenly makes you a very reliable debuffer. A must have for those who invested in debilitating bombs. You might even consider retraining into it thanks to this amazing feat.

Level 20:

Alchemical Revivication( ★★★ ): When you die, you come back with a bang! A nice option for any alchemist that likes to wade into melee, most likely mutagenists. Most of the time, you will be under the influence of a mutagen in combat so that is not a restriction. Beware, you have to die to trigger this effect, being dying is not enough. That will probably cause a delay while you lie unconsciously dying for a few rounds to wait for this feat to activate. You might ask your fellow player to ‘help’ you by casting AOE effects on you. Not stellar, but a good capstone for builds that like to put themselves in mortal danger.

Craft Philosopher's Stone( ★ ): You learn to craft the infamous Philosopher’s Stone. So far for the good news. If you think the Philosopher's Stone lets you do extraordinary things like a high level spell or item should do, you’re going to be very disappointed!

Once per MONTH, you can make a potion of rejuvenation or become rich. That’s it! As your capstone feat! PAIZO, come on! I kinda like the flavour behind this feat and the elixir is really good but either make it a class feature if the item is worthless or let the item do something capstone worthy. In comparison, all spellcasters can get an extra 10th level spell as a capstone! This is a garbage feat to craft a garbage item.

Mega Bomb( ★ ) : Additive. This might seem like a harsh rating if you read the feat for the first time but let me explain. Since this is not a Strike, you cannot use it with the Quick Bomber feat. This means you effectively need three actions to use this feat. And no, this is not a cantrip vial so your Abundant Vials Class feature does not work. Second, since this has the additive trait, you cannot enhance it into a Sticky Bomb or a Debilitating Bomb, leaving you with a vanilla alchemical bomb. Also, the targets get a Reflex saving throw, but your class DC only goes to master, increasing the chances of a save or crit save against your bomb. Finally, the vanilla damage on those high level bombs is awful compared to other high level abilities. Let’s compare: a max level alchemist’s fire thrown by a bomber using extended splash (which I am not sure works RAI) deals 4d8 + 12 splash and 4 persistent damage for an average damage of 18+12+4= 34. That is the average damage of a level 5 fireball. (Granted, spells are a limited resource but a 20th level spellcaster has a lot of 5th level spell slots). The most sensible comparison I could find was with a wand implement thaumaturge using Fling Magic. They deal 10d4 + 6(Cha) damage (average damage 31) with two actions. If they use an action to intensify it, it increases to 42 average damage and if they choose fire you add 2d10 persistent fire damage. That gives a total of 53 average damage for an intensified Fling Magic with fire using three actions. They can boost this action for free every 1d4 rounds for even more average damage (63). And that is using one of our more damaging bombs. Let’s make this even worse. If you are a bomber and use Quick Alchemy and Quick Bomber to make a Sticky Alchemist’s Fire with Extended Splash you deal (4d8 fire +6 +6 splash + 4 + 12 persistent fire to one target (average 46) and 16 persistent fire in an area for ONE action! So you see, the damage is atrocious for a three action ability! For all those reasons, it really pains me but I cannot give this a rating higher than red.

Plum Deluge( ★★★★ ): Uncommon. Now this is capstone power! Yes it also uses three actions, but this time to throw an area of effect of your choice of contact poison. Normally those are held back by their onset time but this feat specifically bypasses that. Use it with the common level 20 contact poison Tears of Death and see everybody die in front of your eyes. Let the poor toxicologist bask in its power for the last few sessions of the campaign after suffering so much for the previous 1000!

Legacy Feats:

Most legacy feats use removed class features like infused reagent or perpetual vials or have the preremaster additive trait. Those are redundant now. That said, there are a few that don’t fall into that category and are, at the moment of this writing, eligible to be taken.

Demolition Charge( ★★ ): You can make a booby trap that deals extra damage to inanimate objects. A bit niche but situationally useful. If you want this, look at the demolitionist archetype instead for more options.

Calculated Splash( ★★★ ): In the remaster, this became the 5th level bomber research discovery. If you are not a bomber, this is the way to increase your bomb damage. Even better combined with the Sticky Bomb feat, but if you are so desperate for more damage with your bombs, you can ask yourself why you are not a bomber. Still a good feat, though!

Inured to Alchemy( ★ ): You recover faster from poisons, on the condition you made your Fortitude Save. It does not grant you any bonuses to the save itself or to poison damage. This is very specifically tailored toward poison saves. This is a very narrow use. Perhaps if there are a lot of poisons in your campaign but in a normal campaign this is way too niche to be useful. If you are adamant on this effect, use the Fast Recovery general feat and get the same bonus on diseases for free.

Retaliatory Cleansing( ★★ ): First, the good news: it’s a reaction that deals automatic bomb damage. No attack rolls or saving throws. The bad news is that it is only useful on undead. Secondly, you can only use this when you are about to get hit. It is possible your bomb will kill the undead culprit but most of the time you will eat that hit. This is probably why it is called retaliatory; Thirdly, you must have the bomb in your hand at the end of your turn, most probably costing you an action you could have used to do better things like move away, hide or raise a shield to avoid getting hit. That said undead are common in a lot of campaigns so this feat is not absolute garbage.

Shaped Contaminant( ★★ ): The use of inhaled poisons is a big mess since RAW you are in the poison cloud when you use it. There are some decent inhaled poisons out there. This makes you more resistant to (sadly) only your own inhaled poisons and gives you more control over the area of effect of the poison. It makes inhaled poisons a bit more user friendly but not nearly enough to warrant taking a class feat for.

Perfect Mutagen( ★★★★ ): No more drawbacks from mutagen. Any mutagen! Any drawbacks! This eliminates the usefulness of the mutagenists field vials but his greater field discovery is boosted so much by this that you do not care. Also useful for other research fields if they regularly use mutagens as they should!

General Feats

General feats are relatively rare in pathfinder. You only get 5 during your whole career. You can also take skill feats instead of specific general feats in those slots. If you really want that legendary skill feat as soon as possible, you can take it in the level 15 general feat slot. Humans have a heritage option and a level 1 ancestry feat that both give a free general feat so they can be frontloaded with general feats. That said, general feats have some nice options among them. Some general feats have prerequisites an alchemist cannot normally make (like mastery in Perception). I will not include those!

Level 1:

Adopted Ancestry( ★★★ ) : Have your eye on a great ancestry feat that is not your own. With this feat you can gain access to another ancestry and its feats. Good options are Halfling Luck, Burn It, Natural Ambition or a specific weapon familiarity feat but there are a lot of other very good options to pilfer.

Armor Proficiency( ★★ ) : You are already trained in medium armor. For the majority of alchemists that is more than you need. If you are focused on a Strength build, you might consider this.You will have the Strength to pull it off and with some elixirs it increases your tankiness even more. Beware, you cannot increase your proficiency beyond expert so when you reach level 19 and medium armor mastery, this becomes redundant but most campaigns don’t last that long.

Breath Control( ★★ ): Suffocation rules are harsh and deadly in this game, so very occasionally this will come up and potentially save your life. But the main advantage for an alchemist lies in the benefit this feat gives you in the use of inhaled poisons. They are still a pain to use but at least you are more protected. The bonus stacks with that of Shaped Contaminant legacy feat for a hefty total of +4.

Canny Acumen( ★★★★ ): Very good feat and a good way to mitigate your awful Will save and Perception. Until level 7 you can use this to increase your Will save to expert, then increase your Perception to expert until level 9. Up until level 17 it does nothing but then you can increase Will save to master. Easy way to plug a hole in your defenses. Just retrain between 9 and 17.

Diehard( ★★ ): You die on dying 5 instead of Dying 4. You should avoid at all costs of getting in the situation where this feat actually matters. In most campaigns, you will never reach that point. If it does, however, it can save your life. It is a bit like insurance, take it in the hope you will never need it.

Fast Recovery( ★★ ): There is so much out of combat healing in Pathfinder that you will never go to sleep on anything less than full hitpoints. The first part of this feat is thus utterly irrelevant. The faster recovery from diseases and poisons is very niche. If your campaign has a lot of poison slinging, werecurse inflicting mummies, it might be handy. Otherwise too niche.

Feather Step( ★★★ ): Difficult terrain is more common than you think. The need to step into difficult terrain is only to avoid Reactive Strikes but those are the big hard counter to your entire set of class abilities. I give this a higher rating for alchemists because of that. Reactive Strikes must be avoided at all costs!

Fleet( ★★★★ ): The need for speed is great in this game! You will never regret taking this. Ever. Even stacks with Nimble Elf and Cheetah’s Elixir.

Incredible Initiative( ★★★★ ): Going first is important for any character but this feat is even more needed for alchemists because of our abysmal Perception. Being able to throw big bombs without including you melee friends is a lot easier when you can go first. Does not stack with Elven Instincts!

Pet( ★ ): If you want a familiar, take a familiar. This is a very weak alternative for it. Perhaps for roleplay reasons, this could be interesting but otherwise skip!

Ride( ★ ): A mount can be nice but there are far better ways of getting one.

Shield Block( ★★★ ): Everybody can wear a shield. You don’t have a reaction as an alchemist. If you’re going for a melee build with Bestial mutagen or a weapon, this will make you tankier. For other alchemists, it is a cheap way to increase your survivability and gain a useful reaction. You can repair those shields after combat anyway.

Toughness( ★★★★ ): Extra Hitpoints! If they reach 0, you’re dying and out of the fight. If you have 1, you’re fully functional. So more of them is always great! It even gives you better recovery checks as an added bonus. If you’re in doubt about what to take, take this.

Weapon Proficiency( ★★ ): Careful with this one. Most of the time, this is a trap! It looks nice on paper: proficiency with all martial weapons. But you only increase to expert at level 11 and nothing thereafter. As an alchemist you reach expert with your weapons at level 7 and master at 17. So this means this feat is only useful until level 7. Try to get weapon familiarity instead!

Level 3:

Ancestral Paragon( ★★★ ): This rating obviously depends on your ancestry, but most have at least a couple good ancestry feats at 1 level to consider.

Improvised Repair( ★ ): You are a crafter! You don’t do shoddy! You will probably have better things to do in combat than repairing. If you really want to repair things in combat, go for the Quick Repair skill feat.

Keen Follower( ★★ ): Exploration Mode bonuses. If your campaign uses a lot of those checks, this can see some use. Not for most players however.

Pick up the Pace( ★ ): A bonus to an exploration activity that will most likely never matter. Avoid!

Prescient Planner( ★★ ): Spend a minute to retrieve a tool with low bulk from your backpack.(so no ladders!) Fairly useless feat. The only reason this is not red, is that it is a prerequisite for a more useful feat.

Robust Health( ★★★ ): Extra hitpoints whenever you receive healing from Treat Wounds or Battle Medicine. Makes you receive Battle Medicine once per hour instead of once per day. This makes it even better as it can trigger several times per day. Don’t forget, you can also use Battle Medicine on yourself if necessary. Just bring a healer’s kit. Not bad!

Thorough Search( ★★ ): You need to be an expert in Perception for this so only from level 9 upwards. If you have time, any bonus to your Perception checks is welcome. You will never beat your party rogue in trapfinding, though.

Untrained Improvisation( ★★ ): As an Int based class , most likely you are already proficient in every skill you want. This will be a bit redundant but I’m not going to stop you if you want to be OK at all skills. Just don’t think you can suddenly successfully trip that dragon.

Level 7:

Numb to Death( ★★ ): Would be rated higher if the requirements weren’t so steep. You need to have died once (not dying but dead!) so this will hopefully not be for every party member. If you are eligible, it’s a nice bonus when you receive healing when dying for the first time.

Prescient Consumable( ★★ ): You can retrieve any consumable from your backpack. You are more knowledgeable than most on what consumables can be good. Essentially gives you a free low level daily vial. If it is worth taking two feats for, is another question.

Level 11:

A Home in every Port( ★ ): This requires steady investment in Charisma, your only real dump stat, so implicitly not boosting one of the saving throw abilities. Apart from that problem, at this level, your party should be able to afford the cost of living of 1gp per week.

Incredible Investiture( ★ ): This has the same Charisma issue as the previous feat. Apart from that, I have never hit the investiture cap in any campaign. Most GM’s don’t even know this exists.

Archetypes

You’re going to need a lot of class feats to enhance your alchemist so in a regular game there won’t be much space for multiclass archetype feats. Luckily, a lot of tables play with the free archetype variant so suddenly a whole world of customization and optimization opens up.

There are a lot and I mean a LOT of archetypes. I will not try to cover them all! Some are very campaign or setting specific so be sure to check with your GM if you got your eye on one of those.

Some archetypes have ability score prerequisites. Take a good look at those! Most multiclass archetypes want a +2 in at least one stat. As I said in the section about ability scores, you need Int as an alchemist. Set it to +4 at character creation. You will seriously regret not doing that. Then also take an attack stat, chosen between Dex and Str. You already lag behind other martials so if you want to hit anything, you’ll want to set it at +3 at character creation. That leaves only two other stats to be put at +1. I strongly advise you to put them into Wis and Con to increase your saving throws and survivability. At higher levels, I recommend you increase your Int, your attack stat and Wis and Con. If your campaign does not go past level 10, you can refrain from increasing your Int. All this to show that an alchemist is quite MAD. The real message is actually, you don’t have the room to put ability points into Charisma without serious sacrifices to your number of alchemical vials, accuracy or saving throws.

You can use free archetype feats for different purposes.

• Before the remaster, this was commonly used to acquire spellcasting. That is still a very viable option! Any spellcasting tradition will have value but arcane is considered the most powerful although it lacks healing, occult is very good in buffing and debuffing, primal is good for raw damage but also has good healing and divine shines as a buffer and healer.

• You can choose an archetype that improves your playstyle. This can be done with the various combat style archetypes. This includes but is not limited to archer to make you better at range, sentinel to make you tankier or wrestler to make your combat maneuvers more powerful and so on.

• Another popular choice are the archetypes that enhance your options as a character. I’m thinking of Beastmaster, Familiar Master, Blessed One, Undead Master,...

• Then there are the archetypes I call ‘pseudo-alchemists’. Currently, these are Demolitionist, Herbalist, Poisoner and Wandering Chef. These have alchemist feats to take and can be used to supplement your alchemy class feats. I will cover them in a separate section.

• Lastly, pick something for flavor or because it fits your character concept, even if it doesn't come with a lot of raw power. By all means, go for it! It will seldom make your character worse!

A note about spellcasting archetypes: When going for a spellcasting archetype, there are some other rules to consider.

• Your spell attack roll and DC will be calculated from the relevant ability score. So, if you plan on using your spells to attack in combat, obviously turn to Int-based spellcasters like psychic, witch or wizard. If you want support and buff spells, going for a Wis-based class like animist, cleric or druid is certainly viable. As I said, If you want to get into Charisma based classes like bard or sorcerer, you will have to make important sacrifices in important ability scores for your character. Therefore, although they can be very powerful, I cannot recommend them for an alchemist.

• Your spell attack roll and DC will also depend on your proficiency level with that spellcasting tradition. Apart from more spell slots the expert spellcasting feat at level 12 gives you expert proficiency and the master spellcasting feat at level 18 gives you (surprise, surprise) master proficiency. These feats are essential if you want to be effective!

• If you want to take that expert spellcasting dedication feat, you will need to be master in the associated skill for that tradition. Further, if you want the master spellcasting feat, you need legendary proficiency in that skill. In simpler terms it means you have to dedicate one of your few skill increases to augment the relevant skill of your spellcasting. Those are the Int-based skills Arcana for the arcane tradition and Occultism for the occult tradition. For increasing divine spellcasting, you need to raise the Religion skill and the Nature skill for the primal tradition! Chances are you wanted to increase Arcana or Occultism anyway but Religion or Nature are less evident. As an alchemist you can only increase three skills to master or legendary so keep this in mind when picking a spellcasting archetype. If you want to go full out on the spellcasting you’ll indirectly also pick a skill to increase to legendary.

Multiclass Archetypes:

These all have the dreaded ability score requirement. As an Int-based character, you naturally gravitate towards classes like the witch, psychic or investigator but it can be very good to expand into other classes to enhance your character.

Animist( ★★★ ): Alas, you cannot access vessel spells. But this is still a good choice. On top of the two divine cantrips, the daily choice of apparition gives you two free Lore Skills that scale as you level up.That is great for a Int-based character. The rest of the archetype gives you standard divine spellcasting. The feats can give you a nice familiar and more

importantly, the familiar enhancement feats which the alchemist itself sorely lacks for some reason. Unfortunately, a lot of the other feats require you to have vessel spells.

Barbarian( ★★ ): Since Bestial Mutagen and Rage no longer decrease your AC, this is no longer a death trap. Unarmed builds can get a damage boost. Beware, your claws are agile, so you will be stuck with a Jaw attack or a diminished damage boost. Feats can give you some hitpoints and enhance your senses and movement speed but there is not a lot of synergy to be found. Weapon users are better off with other archetypes.

Bard( ★★ ) Too bad this requires the Charisma you probably won’t have. Otherwise this would be stellar. Occult spellcasting has a lot of useful spells. You can even gain the courageous anthem composition cantrip for a one action buff for the whole party. Beware that sustain spells have an impact on your already strained action economy. Bardic Lore is also excellent on an alchemist.

Champion( ★★ ): You are here for the heavy armor proficiency and for the excellent Champion's Reaction. A Devotion Spell is also a very good choice. The champion archetype is special because it lets you pilfer all the champion’s class features. Most other multiclass archetypes are not so generous. Too bad about the Str and especially the Cha prerequisites, that brings the rating down.

Commander( ★★ ): An Int based melee class should be a good match on paper but the synergy just isn’t there. Yu gain some tactics but all of your tactics use actions and you are not you own squad mate limiting its use. You gain a banner but not its initial effect. You don’t gain heavy armor proficiency. There are some nice feats like Officer’s Medical Training and Rapid Assessment so it is not useless.Perhaps there are some nice combinations out there and I would be very glad to see them but for now a bit disappointing for an Int class.

Cleric( ★★ ): Not bad per se, but as a source of divine magic, there are better options available. Apart from the spellcasting feats you can get a domain spell with the feats, but while that is nice, it is not enough to bump it into recommended territory.

Druid( ★★ ):

A prime source of primal spells but you are probably here for the orders. Getting wild shape with untamed form requires a lot of investment to stay relevant. But if you ever wanted that cute plant creature from the Fantastic Beasts series, look no further. The leaf order gives you one of the best familiars in the game and comes with its unique enhancement feat giving your familiar 15ft reach! Great for delivering your elixirs. If you want to go for an animal companion, there are better choices out there.

Fighter( ★★★ ): A good archetype for extra melee capabilities. Becoming trained in all martials weapons is handy but be aware they don’t scale, you need another feat at 12 to increase to expert. Master proficiency is unavailable. Prime among the feats is of course Reactive Striker. Extra hitpoints are also nice. The low level fighter feats are full of good feats that enhance different playstyles, ranged or melee. Certainly a recommended choice for melee alchemists!

Guardian( ★★★ ): The other tank class! This one has prerequisites that are very easy for a Strength alchemist to have. Melee alchemists can already be quite tanky and this makes you even better at it. Heavy armor and the excellent Taunt ability right out of the gate are nice. There are a lot of good low level action compression feats like Defensive Advance or Shielding Taunt to be gained. Most feats don’t even require a weapon to use keeping your hand free! Be careful of the flourish trait however. Be sure to grab the Shield Block feat to make use of its full tanking potential. A very good choice for melee alchemists.

Gunslinger( ★★★ ): The dedication is OK as it gives you a lot of free training in martial firearms and crossbows. The same problem with proficiency scaling I talked about for the fighter dedication applies here too! Be aware of that. If you want to play a ranged damage dealer, this would be good. Unfortunately, a ranged toxicologist is a very suboptimal playstyle. That said, there are a few gems among the gunslinger feats that give nice reactions like Fake Out or action compression. Bombs are considered weapons so they are perfectly eligible to use with the Quick Draw feat! It lets you draw a daily bomb or weapon and throw it in one action! Amazing for you! The 1 lvl class feat Munition Crafting unfortunately is mostly redundant for you.

Inventor( ★★★★ ): An Int-based martial character focused on crafting! If you intended to invest in the crafting aspect of the alchemist, this archetype is golden for you. The dedication itself gives you a free skill feat you were very likely going to take anyway. Choose weapon or

armor innovation, don’t bother with assembling your private robot! You can gain free skill increases of your valuable Crafting skill, freeing up those precious skill increases for other skills. You can get free gadgets every day. Reverse Engineering is of particular importance because it lets you research the formula of every alchemical item you lay your hand on and you can replace Thievery with your better Crafting skill for important skill actions like Pick a Lock or Disable Device. There are even feats for mobility and healing. You cannot go wrong with inventor!

Investigator( ★★★★ ): If you want to become a real Skill Monkey this is an excellent choice. You will probably have all the skills you want but just in case the dedication gives you two more. Unfortunately you cannot Devise a Strategem with Int but with the 2nd level feat Person of Interest you can make it a free action! Do not underestimate this! If you know you will crit, throw a bomb with a nasty crit effect. Even if you roll low but want to attack anyway, it gives you the option of throwing and possibly missing with a cantrip vial instead of with a much more powerful encounter or daily vial! The resource management this free action gives you is very powerful! The real price is the Skill Mastery feat. While you have more than enough skills, you don’t have the amount of skill increases to be a real skill monkey. This feat remedies that and you can take it 5 times! As a shining cherry on top of this dedication, Master Spotter increases your Perception to Master. A very good and complementary choice!

Kineticist( ★★ ): You don’t care about Elemental Blast, so the dedication is a feat tax. There are some nice impulse feats for grabs. Most of them increase your mobility or defence. I’m looking at feats like Deflecting Wave, Ocean’s Balm, Timber Sentinel, Burning Jet or Armor in Earth. Beware that a lot of the impulses require sustaining. You do not have the action for that! Not a lot of synergy.

Magus( ★ ): An unfortunate red rating. A magus revolves around using and managing his spellstrike ability. You can only use that ability once per combat if you take a feat for it. Apart from that you have cantrips and the bad bounded spellcasting. It does not offer anything that cannot be found in better archetypes.

Monk( ★★★ ): A good archetype for the unarmed combattant. You have a good unarmed attack and some of the stances do not limit you to their characteristic attack. Look out for those. Unfortunately Monk’s Flurry got hit in the face with the nerf bat! It is still OK but nowhere

near the power it once had. Even if you are not an unarmed combattant, there are some good options. Perfection’s Path is one of the only ways to increase your Will save to master! And the Qi spells can give you mobility or a nice self heal. Lots of useful abilities for any alchemist!

Oracle( ★★ ): The Charisma requirement brings this down. Also, there are better ways to get divine spellcasting. What saves this from a bad rating are its first level cursebound feats which can be shamelessly pilfered from the poor oracle class by the other classes through this archetype. For an alchemist Oracular Warning and Whispers of Weakness are the most valuable. Most Revelation Spells have saving throws, so stay away from those.

Psychic( ★★★ ): An Int-based occult caster. So even if you cannot achieve legendary proficiency, you will be decent with these spells. This one focuses mainly on amped cantrips. There are a lot of solid choices you can make: a 60ft Telekinetic Projectile; more mobility with Warp Step, excellent support with amped guidance or message but the winner is the amped shield spell! Unfortunately, there is not much of value in the class feats but that amped shield alone is worth one star!

Ranger( ★★★★ ): Ranger is great! Hunt Prey effectively doubles the range of your bombs, possibly saving you a class feat. Far Shot even doubles that if you want so even without alchemist feats you can throw a bomb 80ft at your hunted prey. There are also a lot of action compression feats. Obviously, Quick Draw is still amazing! But also Munster Hunter gives you a free Recall Knowledge on your hunted prey. Hunter’s Aim gives a very nice accuracy boon but be aware, it does not stack with Quick Bomber or Quick Draw. Warden spells are largely aimed at your animal companion but there are a few useful spells that give you scent, a climb speed or a reroll on Recall Knowledge checks. And of course there is Master Spotter to give master proficiency in Perception. If you’re going for ranged combat with bombs or poisoned thrown weapons; this archetype is great.

Rogue( ★★★★ ): Rogue is very much like Investigator but without Device a Stratagem. It brings better combat feats and a sneak attack die. The dedication gives a free skill feat and the surprise attack feature of the rogue on top of two essential skills for this archetype, but that is likely to be an overshoot. The excellent Skill Mastery feat is back. Bombs are weapons so Sneak Attacker gives you an extra damage die on off-guard enemies. Rogue feats include the infamous Quick Draw but also Nimble Dodge as an excellent

reaction and Strong Arm for throwing builds. As cherry on top there is Evasiveness, giving you master proficiency in Reflex saves. If you are Dex-based, this is excellent!

Sorcerer( ★★ ): You know the drill: Cha-based caster so, while in theory a lot of potential, in practice not a lot of power. You can choose which tradition you want so there is a lot of flexibility there. Try to avoid spells with attack rolls or saving throws. Unfortunately not recommended for an alchemist.

Summoner( ★ ): You gain an eidolon. Weaker than that of a full summoner and without Act Together or Tandem actions which are the saving grace of a genuine summoner. You are making yourself more vulnerable by creating an extra target for enemies to hit you, additionally you put more strain on your action economy trying to command your eidolon. This archetype is so uniquely bad for an alchemist in that it will make you weaker! Avoid!

Swashbuckler( ★★★ ): Another archetype primarily focused on Dex-based characters. This time however, the focus is on panache and wielding finesse weapons. This does not synergize all that well with an alchemist's abilities. So while you still have Evasiveness, you lack Quick Draw and some other feats. Not bad per se but there are better archetypes out there for Dex based alchemists.

Thaumaturge( ★★★ ): What a shame about the Cha requirement, otherwise this would be a great archetype for alchemists! You gain an implement and with a feat its initiate benefit. Mirror is a clear winner but Amulet, Lantern, Tome and Weapon are also good. Beware that you need to hold your implement so this impacts your hand economy limiting the use of shields. Magical Knowledge is two free skill increases in a Recall Knowledge skill and a free skill feat. Resolute is a unique way to increase our dreadful Will save to master! You can get Familiar and Enhanced Familiar and Scroll Thaumaturgy as low level feats. If you can manage the Charisma boost, this archetype is certainly worth it.

Witch ( ★★★★ ): A prepared Int-based caster class with a focus on familiars. What is there not to like? The dedication alone gives only one cantrip but also gives you also a familiar. You get to choose your patron and thus your spellcasting tradition. This is the archetype if you want to play a Int based divine, occult or primal caster. You don’t get any hex cantrips but that’s fine. It would be ridiculous otherwise. In essence it is a very basic dedication with standard spellcasting feats and standard dedication class feats. There are so many

great feats for an alchemist. Thematically Cauldron stands out: for daily free potions or oils on top of your alchemical items. All the familiar enhancement feats are here. You can take Basic Lesson for some great focus spells: I recommend Lesson of the Elements for scaling fire weakness that you can trigger multiple times per round with splash damage and persistent damage. You are the best class to take advantage of Portents of the Haruspex. It’s very likely you will have the perfect damage type in your back pocket to trigger the weakness. Ceremonial Knife is amazing. All that on top of spellcasting of a tradition of your choice. It’s the archetype that keeps on giving!

Wizard( ★★★ ): The other prepared Int-based caster. Of course this one is exclusively the arcane tradition. Standard dedication with two cantrips. The only thing extra you can get is the initial spell of your chosen school. You have the familiar feats but other than that, there are not a lot of unique feats. All in all certainly not bad but compared with witch it falls a little short.

Pseudo-alchemist Archetypes:

These are archetypes that borrow heavily from the alchemist class feats. They are tailored to the use of a very specific subgroup of alchemical items: bombs for the demolitionist, healing items for the herbalist and poisons for the poisoner(duh!). Most have their share of unique feats not available for an alchemist so they can expand your options. Some of them have the same type of initial dedication feat that is essentially a feat tax for you. You get the Alchemical Crafting feat, which is useless to you because you already have it. You also get a limited version of advanced alchemy but the rules are very clear that you do not add those daily vials to your stack instead you have to take the most powerful advanced alchemy option, so that feature is also useless for an alchemist.

Herbalist( ★★ ): The dedication is a feat tax. You can make alchemical consumables with Nature instead of Crafting. Not a great upgrade for most alchemists. They are now called ‘herbal items’. You can get a situational bonus on Treat Wound checks with the Nature skill in natural environments. Or you can gain access to a lackluster uncommon formula. The only worthwhile dedication feat is Poultice Preparation that transfers your healing elixirs into oils that can be used to recover from persistent damage. A side benefit is that it allows your herbal items to be used by sickened characters. Endemic Herbs can give you nice

little bonuses; including to all saves and Perception, but fully dependent on your surrounding environment. Not really recommended.

Poisoner( ★★★ ): Another feat tax dedication. This one has almost all the poison related class feats of the alchemist in its list. This includes a stinker like Tenacious Toxins, but also Sticky Poison and Pinpoint Poisoner. This might seem redundant but you have a lot of good class feats you might want, certainly at the lower levels. Poison Weapon is a great action economy feat, allowing you to draw a potion and poison your weapon in one action. It is beyond my understanding why the toxicologist didn’t get that kind of action economy, his field benefit needs two actions to do the same! Why! Beware this feat only works on your daily vials not on your encounter vials because you have to draw the poison. It’s clear this feat was not made with the only poison using subclass in the game in mind. Again Why! Improved poison weapon is less stellar but it doesn’t make you lose your poison on a critical miss. Poisoner’s Twist is a little bit of free extra damage for a melee poisoner for an action. A good third action if you are already wielding a poisoned weapon, otherwise using your action to poison it again is more useful. Poison Coat is a nice defensive reaction against unarmed attacks. Poison Resistance is Meh but Acquired Tolerance is more useful if you’re encountering a lot of poisonous monsters. If you’re a brave soul going for the poisoner playstyle, this is one of your best options. Other alchemists can use it to pilfer some poison class feats.

Demolitionist( ★★★ ): Not a Feat tax dedication. It gives you the ability to do a lot of damage to inanimate objects, possibly setting up a trap. Don’t count on this being useful a lot but it’s another option in your toolbox. You’ll need Controlled Blast to make it do significant damage! The real value comes from the bomber feats that are here to take. Directional Bombs and Extended Splash are available. Unfortunately, Calculated Splash was removed from the remastered demolitionist. Safety measures is a great feat to become immune to your own splash damage so you can throw bombs in melee if necessary.

Wandering Chef( ★★★ ): Consider me confused. This archetype is all about creating alchemical food. I get that. The dedication clearly states you gain a whopping 4 encounter vials (an alchemist has a maximum of 6 at this level) and you gain Quick Alchemy exclusively to make alchemical foods. You later gain Advanced Alchemy to make 5 daily alchemical food items. So far so good. What it fails to mention is what happens when you are an alchemist and already have Advanced Alchemy and Quick Alchemy. I suppose for an alchemist nothing changes so these feats are useless for you. Although the dedication specifically states you can only use Quick Alchemy to create alchemical foods, I assume alchemists

can still do their normal stuff? It is not clear at the moment. At higher levels, there are some nice feats to enhance your alchemical foods so it is still a good choice for an alchemist.

Other Archetypes:

I‘m not going to list all the archetypes in the game. I’m already crazy to write an alchemist guide but not that crazy. The list will include archetypes that can possibly enhance the alchemist in general or specific playstyles or just because I felt like including them for some reason.

Archer( ★★★ ): Right out of the gate, the dedication gives you familiarity with all bows and crossbows. That means they automatically scale with your normal weapon proficiencies up to master at 15th level. That is great! A lot of support for fighting with those weapons. This can mitigate some of the problems weapon alchemists have. Remember that bombs are ranged weapons too, so some of the feats are useful for bombers as well.

Assassin( ★ ): Cool as it may sound, there is not much value in this archetype that cannot be found elsewhere in better archetypes like rogue or poisoner.

Bastion( ★★★★ ): As long as you are not poisoning weapons in combat or wielding weapons, you can wear a shield as an alchemist and keep a hand free.Taking Shield Block is already a good option and this archetype makes it a very good defensive option. It can protect you from enemy Reactive Strikes, increase Reflex saving throws and give you a free Shield Block reaction. You can even make you shield hand a free hand opening up weapon or poison use again.

Beastmaster( ★★★ ): Access to a full fledged animal companion and all the tools to sustain it. Great for any character and a real boon for your movement if you use it as a mount. A goblin throwing bombs from the back of his wolf mount is awesome! Loses a bit of steam at the high levels but never a bad choice!

Blessed One( ★★★ ): You gain access to the excellent champion focus spell Lay on Hands. Additional feats let you attempt to remove status effects with counteract checks. You are not the best at

this because those are keyed off Charisma. Despite this, a good choice for a more supportive alchemist.

Clawdancer( ★ ): You might be tempted by this archetype if you are an unarmed melee alchemist but you are required to enter a stance with a predetermined unarmed attack, not unlike a lot of the monk stances. The damage of those attacks will be lower than what you get with your mutagens. Avoid.

Clockwork Reanimator( ★★★ ): This one is for full Frankenstein vibes! It gives you a construct companion with a few nice and flavorful extras. It is just as powerful as an animal companion but has all the very nice construct immunities! Taking the invention dedication for even more synergy. Extra points for flavour!

Dual-Weapon Warrior( ★★★ ):: This is for dual bomb throwing madness. Obviously Dual Thrower is essential. But this also has quick Draw and with Dual onslaught, you can guarantee a hit. Combines great with your Double Brew class ability. Only for bombers but very good for them.

Drow Shootist( ★★★ ): Since drow do not officially exist in the PAIZO universe (all cavern elves, please look the other way) you are not required to be one to take this archetype. And it offers quite a lot of goodies for those brave souls wanting to play a weapon poison using alchemist. It gives up to expert proficiency in hand crossbows, excellent action compression and a very good extra daily poison on top of your other daily vials. If you’re not going to use hand crossbows or weapons, don’t bother.

Eldritch Researcher( ★★ ): Excellent dedication feat and the possibility to gain some focus points and access to some domains. The knowledge domain is not that bad. Obviously focused on boosting Recall Knowledge. A good choice for a more skill focused alchemist.

Familiar Master( ★★★ ): This one is one of the best archetypes if you want to gain or enhance a familiar. If you could not acquire one from another source, consider this archetype. Also even if you took the alchemist familiar, this archetype is excellent at improving its power because the alchemist class feats don’t offer that option for some reason.

Firework Technician( ★★★ ):

You are Gandalf at Bilbo’s party! You can create a new alchemical item with your daily vials called a Firework Display. It has been remastered but sometimes it mentions infused reagents, even though those don’t exist anymore. The most common rule is that they mean Firework Display. While the dedication says you get 4 versatile vials (aka encounter vials) , unfortunately alchemists keep their normal number (Int+2) so you don’t gain any extra vials. But the dedication is not that useless. You can use your encounter vials to shoot a firework that can have a minor effect. To complicate matters, you can also expend one of your encounter vials to launch one of your daily Fireworks Displays to create more powerful fireworks. These powerful effects can be neat like forcing flying creatures to land or as a reaction to counter enemy spellcasting. Complicated and very sloppy remastered but not bad for an alchemist.

Golem Grafter( ★★ ): Turn yourself into a golem by replacing some organs. This archetype could play into the mad scientist vibe, if that is what you are after. A cool concept and you do get extra hitpoints but unfortunately most of your granted abilities are lackluster. Most of the time, losing an action to reduce a slowed condition does not gain you a lot. The saving grace is the ability to exhale your inhaled poisons; Inhaled poisons are a shitstorm all by themselves that I will address in another part of this guide, but this makes them a little bit less useless.

Lepistadt Surgeon( ★★★ ): Another one for the Frankenstein lovers among alchemists. Your construct companion scales more slowly and is at higher level less powerful than that of a clockwork reanimator but you can get some bonuses to Medicine checks and to deal with dying characters. You can use Medicine to impersonate somebody! Gross but very cool. All in all a very flavourful archetype that gives a lot of little tools for your toolbox and a construct bodyguard on top.

Loremaster( ★★★ ): Does exactly as advertised. It makes you better at Recall Knowledge and can give you a free Lore skill every day. There are even a few utility cantrips for grabs. You do not have Bardic Lore so don’t bother with that.

Martial Artist( ★★★ ): This is the archetype for unarmed combat. There are a lot of monk stances here but remember, some of them lock you into a specific attack. If you want to go full into unarmed attacks, there are some good feats here that can enhance your mobility or defence.. Of course, if you rather throw bombs, this is not for you.

Medic( ★★★★ ): The trusted Medic archetype is the standard of becoming your party’s healer as a non-caster. It is excellent in that regard. Boosting in and out of combat healing is fantastic. If you want your alchemist to heal your fellow players, this is the perfect archetype for you. You don’t even have to be a chirurgeon to be effective at this.

Oozemorph( ★★ ): One of the oldest archetypes in the game and it shows. It has some minor defensive abilities that will rarely matter with resistance to precision damage as the most notable. If you think there is no power creep in this game, compare it to the next one on this list.

Ostilli Host( ★★★★ ): You are the very obvious host to a parasitic magic consuming creature. Originally only for the rare Surki ancestry but there is no ancestry requirement for this archetype. It gives a lot of very nice boosts. Defensively it gives bonuses to saving throws, scaling damage resistance and even a counterspell. Offensively, you have a ranged magical attack for one action targeting Reflex (so no MAP!) that can be enhanced. You even have a feat to become hidden for one action without cover or concealment. Amazing archetype!

Pathfinder Agent( ★★★ ): A free skill increase with the dedication is a nice start. A free magical item is also nice. A lot of enhancements for exploration and trapfinding but the most useful are the various boosts to Recall Knowledge. A surprisingly good archetype for alchemists!

Rivethun Emissary( ★★★★ ): You have to be in touch with the spirits around you, but that can include a party member. You get a boost to saving throws. More importantly, you can get all the familiar enhancement feats and even get a unique ability to deal spirit damage with your bombs. You can get a domain spell from a nice list and there are some utility spells to pilfer. The capstone feat lets you reroll a Will save once per day. Spirit power galore!

Rivethun Invoker( ★★★★ ): This rating is for melee alchemists only, but it is excellent for them. You have to enter a stance but it is a true powerhouse. Extra temporary hitpoints, extra spirit damage, the ability to trip are all available. Versatile scaling resistance to physical damage is also very good. Free fly, Swim or Burrow speed is utterly amazing! Fast healing and concealment is just icing on top. Serious contender for any melee alchemist!

Rivethun Involutionist( ★★★★ ):

A Wisdom based divine spontaneous caster with a full animal companion with minor spirit upgrades attached. Divine has a lot of support and buff spells so attack rolls and spell DC’s are not that important. Quite feat intensive but incredibly powerful. Those Rivethun archetypes…

Scout( ★★ ): An archetype focused on stealth and exploration. Not bad per se but you can get a lot of these benefits elsewhere. The speed boost is good but not enough to make the archetype great!

Scroll Trickster( ★★★ ): The dedication gives you a nice skill feat. The rest of this archetype lets you create one daily scroll of every level up to 7th of any tradition. You can mix and match all you want on a daily basis. This is crazy versatility! A nice addition to your versatile playstyle!

Scrounger( ★★★ ): You can craft items of half your level or lower by spending 10 minutes of tinkering without tools or resources. These can even be held, wielded or worn magical items but beware they only last for a few hours as your duct tape wavers off. Being able to reverse engineer found items and use Cratfing instead of Thievery is also very beneficial for an alchemist. Very inventor-light.

Sentinel( ★★★ ): The famous archetype for the heavy armor users. Melee alchemists will improve their AC with the heavy armor and the bulwark trait makes dumping your Dex a minor nuisance. You know what you want if you take this! You know what you get if you take this! Together with your elixirs, this can result in one of the tankiest characters in the game.

Snarecrafter( ★★★ ): You are a crafter and now you can create a number of snares per day. You automatically learn new snares when increasing your Crafting proficiency which is a nice benefit to keep your snares relevant. There are some nasty snares out there. They require some planning to use but all in all you will find a lot of use for them! Not essential but a good addition to your already impressive arsenal.

Sniping Duo( ★★ ): This might look at first sight to be useful for bombers but unfortunately, a lot of these actions and reactions require you to have a bomb in your hand at the end of your turn or even wield a loaded crossbow or firearm. That seriously reduces its value. A cantrip vial

expires at the end of your turn and cannot be used and your encounter vial expires at the beginning of your turn so you risk wasting that precious resource if the trigger never fires.

Stone Brawler( ★★ ): Unarmed melee alchemist can gain some damage reduction or an unarmed attack that deals cold iron, silver or adamantine damage. Situational for them. Other alchemists stay away.

Stonebound( ★★ ): Some nice defensive abilities like extra hitpoints, a little bit of damage reduction and better saves against poison. Some free innate spells and summoning. All in all not earth shattering.

Talisman Dabbler( ★★★ ): Talismans are underused and mostly underpowered consumables. Being able to make a few of those doesn’t seem not like a big powerboost. That is until 6th level. From that moment you only create Retrieval Prisms. Not spending any action to retrieve an item is priceless for an alchemist! Unfortunately, you can only create a maximum of six per day!

Trapsmith( ★★ ): An addition to the Snarecrafter archetype. This one focuses more on the mechanical side of your traps. Unfortunately, apart from some nice utility like placing traps in the air or underwater, there is not a lot of extra power here.

Undead Master( ★★★ ): In essence the same archetype as the beastmaster dedication but with undead companions. Could be less compatible in urban environments or social encounters. If throwing bombs from the back of a zombie horse is your wet dream, don’t let me stop you, you White Walker.

Unexpected Sharpshooter( ★★ ): More an archetype for gun users and characters with a high Deception skill, this has the ability to give one of your attacks advantage and one of the attacks against you disadvantage up to once per hour. Not really recommended.

Viking( ★★★ ): A dedication that is nothing special. But the feats are quite good and focused on Shield use. Also a nice group of weapon familiarity and a free Shield Block feat. Even some support for throwing weapons. Surprisingly good for shield using melee alchemists.

Wild Mimic( ★★★★ ): This archetype is a weird mix of monk, ranger and some unique feats. The dedication gives you a unique lore skill which is great. The monk stances have the usual caveat. The mimicry feats require you to have fought against creatures with different abilities but things like electricity damage or regeneration are not that uncommon. That said, there are some gems among the feats for unarmed bestial mutagem alchemists. Extra electricity damage with a chance to inflict clumsy is great, a free enlarge every 10 minutes is amazing, Pounce is great action economy. A petrifying gaze and a free regenerate are good abilities for any alchemist. The rating is for melee alchemists, the other alchemists subtract one star.

Wrestler( ★★★ ): Obviously only for Unarmed Strength Alchemists. This is all about grappling, throwing opponents on the ground, preventing them to escape. Very good support for that kind of movement restriction support tank build. you are quite capable of pulling this off. Definitely a strong archetype.

The Tools of Your Trade

So you're sitting at the table of the inn before your first adventure overlooking your party members. The barbarian is sharpening his greataxe, the wizard is shooting flies with his spells and the bard is charming the barmaid. What do you bring to the table? There are a lot of alchemical items in the game ranging from explosives, elemental ammunition, mysterious elixirs, deadly poisons, strange tools, bottled up monsters to enhancing food. You have the potential to learn the formulas of all of them if they are common. With time and some money you can invent all the uncommon ones yourself. With a kind GM even the rare formulas are within your reach. Looking through this seemingly endless list of alchemical items can be a daunting task, certainly for a player new to the system or new to the class.

So no alchemist guide is complete without some kind of inventory of useful alchemical items.

First some general remarks on how alchemical items work in regard to the alchemist.

A lot of alchemical items have different versions when leveling up. Since the remaster, when you acquire a formula of one of those items, as any character, you automatically learn all the formulas of that item of your level or lower. This means that every time you level up, you automatically learn all formulas for items that have a new, more powerful version at that level. As I said before, this is an incredible boost to the alchemist's power. This has several consequences:

1. It keeps you relevant. You will never be a powerhouse but your bonuses will always be on par with the rest of the party. Every alchemical itemyou create will be at its maximum level for your party. It is a bit like a spontaneous spellcaster with only signature spells and only maximum level spell slots. If only our items were as powerful as spells or updated as often! But if you wonder why they are not, this is the reason.

2. It allows you to also learn more niche items once your basic needs are cared for. This allows you to become more and more versatile and flexible. It is not a sacrifice anymore to acquire the formula of an alchemical tool that you will only use out of combat in social situations. It is an asset! Most games are more than combat encounters and a lot of characters are ill suited to deal with exploration mode or downtime. As the game progresses you excel at those! Never, ever decline the opportunity to learn a new formula. Every gold piece spent on researching new formulas, is a gold piece well spent. The alchemist’s endless versatility is its biggest strength, don’t compromise on that!

3. Of course this requires a lot of bookkeeping on your part. Try to have a list closeby with all your items. Try to know what they do. Arrange them for easy reference. For your most commonly used items, try to memorize them or note the metrics. Be proactive! Be attentive. Always think about which item would be best in any given situation. Don’t settle for the easy way. Before your turn comes up, look at the items you're most likely to use. You don’t want to slow the game down to a halt every time it is your turn because you’re not prepared. Whenever you level up, prepare in advance for the next level! Not every item improves at the same level, so research the ones that do at your next level and have that level prepared. When you hit that level, rinse and repeat. This is the ugly part of playing an alchemist.

A few words about the duration of your alchemical items:

1. Everything you make with your daily vials must be used within 24 hours or until you make your daily preparations again. The items made with daily vials have a maximum duration of 24 hours.

2. Everything you make with your encounter vials must be used before the start of your next turn or it becomes obsolete. The items made with encounter vials have a maximum duration of 10 minutes, even if the normal item has a longer duration. You regenerate two (three from level 9 onward) encounter vials per 10 minutes. So RAW you can use your encounter vials to buff yourself during exploration but it means you will be starting the next encounter with fewer encounter vials.

3. Everything you make with your cantrip vials must be used before the end of your current turn. Most cantrip vials have instant effects, only the field vial of the mutagenist has a duration and lasts until the beginning of your next turn.

Also remember that bonuses of the same type don’t stack. That is of course mostly relevant for alchemical items with item bonuses. All bombs have inherent item bonuses so other item bonuses from elixirs don’t stack. The most common bonus on your alchemical items is this item bonus. This is the same bonus that is usually acquired with other items. The fundamental runes on your weapon and on your armor are also item bonuses. That means that your +1 resilient leather armor gives a +1 item bonus on all saves. Drinking an elixir that gives a +1 to saves versus fear will no longer be effective.

Another important factor to consider when using your alchemical items is the action cost. I already mentioned how your action economy is very tight. Always consider your positioning because move actions are expensive.

I would like to remind you that everything you do with alchemy has the manipulate trait! Avoid creatures with Reactive Strike like vampires avoid the sun!

I will rate the items involved but don’t be discouraged by items with a lower rating because there can always be a situation where the item in question is the perfect item. Because of this variability, I will not assign any stars to the rating. The only really bad ones are the ones where there are better almost identical alternatives available.

I highly recommend checking out these resources: PubAlchem and Alchemical Items. Both are excellent and very comprehensive. They cover every alchemical item out there and are very knowledgeable and go over every item individually. I have no intention of duplicating their work but I will try to give my own view and tips.

Bombs

For most alchemists bombs are an essential part of their damage potential. Most common bombs start at level 1 with a lesser version and scale at level 3 to moderate, at level 11 to greater and at 17 to major. Each step increases the damage die and the splash damage or persistent damage if applicable. Since bombs are weapons, you do add the weapon specialisation damage bonus from level 13 onward! You cannot apply other runes to your bombs since they are consumables. The lack of property runes is alleviated by having an inherent item bonus to attack associated with the level of the bomb.

A lot of bombs have the splash trait. This is a small amount of damage that you deal to all creatures within 5ft of your primary target. Most of the time this also includes your fellow PCs who are in melee with your target. The field benefit of the Bomber research field lets you focus the splash damage only on your primary target if you want. You deal this splash damage to your primary target on a critical hit, a normal hit and a normal miss. You do not double the splash damage on a critical hit! You deal the splash damage 5ft around the primary target on a critical hit and on a hit. Note that the splash trait got a small nerf during the remaster: you do not deal splash damage around the primary target anymore on a failed attack. You never deal splash damage on a critical miss. Don’t underestimate the value of splash damage. With the proper feats your area and damage can be increased. Hitting multiple targets with a single bomb increases your efficiency especially if you can trigger weaknesses.

Bombs have two main properties: damage and rider effects.

Damage is of course the most straightforward. There is a bomb for almost every damage type in the game, unfortunately some of them are uncommon. Some of them are not in the remaster yet, so keep that in mind.

Acid: Acid Flask, Inflammation Flask(2)u Cold: Frost Vial Fire: Alchemist’s Fire Force: Lodestone Bomb(12) Mental: Dread Ampoule

Poison: Blight Bomb (a toxicologist automatically converts this damage into acid if the target has resistance or immunity to poison) Lighting: Bottled Lightning Sonic: Blasting Stone Vitality: Ghost Charge Void: Necrotic Bomb (actually negative but I assume this converts to void post remaster. Ask your GM to be sure), Defoliation Bomb(2)u^ (plants only)

Bludgeoning: Pressure Bombu Piercing: Durian Bombu, Peshpine Grenadeu, Nail Bomb(2)u Slashing: Junk Bombu Nonlethal: Water Bombu Persistent Bleed: Blood Bombu Underwater Bomb: Sticky Algae Bomb Radiation: Blightburn Bomb(15)u

Object Damage: Steelscouru^ (metal only) Shapeshifters: Trueshape Bomb(12) Cold Iron: Nail Bomb(2)u

The only types of damage I could not find are holy, unholy and spirit damage. Since these are recently changed in the remaster, I would not be surprised if they show up in a future supplement at some point.

Then there are the rider effects, often inflicting a condition on the target, sometimes just on a hit with the bomb, sometimes after a failed saving throw. I will not include effects that only happen on a critical hit or on a critical failure of the saving throw. Those are by far not reliable enough! If it happens, good for you and a high five, but don’t count on it! Some effects worsen as the bomb becomes higher level. Also, from level 5 onwards, you can use your class DC instead of the fixed DC of a bomb.

Blinded: Blindpepper Bomb(5)(15ft radius!)u Dazzled: Bioluminescence Bombu, Durian Bombu(on a failed saving throw) DC 5 flat checks on concentrate actions (that includes casting a lot of spells and the seek action): Vexing Vaporu Deafened: Blasting Stone Enfeebled: Ghost Charge (undead only)

Fascinated: Spider Satchel(2)u Frightened: Dread Ampoule Off-guard: Bottled Lightning (Lets light a candle to the infinite bottled lightning supply we had before the remaster with our perpetual vials) Push: Boulder Seed(12) Sickened: Skunk Bomb, Durian Bombu^ (even on a normal success on the saving throw!) Slowed: Skunk Bomb (on a failed saving throw) Speed Penalty: Frost Vial, Glue Bomb, Goo Grenadeu Stupefied: Peshpine Grenadeu Weakness to fire, acid and slashing: Inflammation Flask(2)u

I may sound repetitive but this insane amount of possibilities shows again the importance of the Recall Knowledge skill! The more you can finetune your bombs to the weakness of your enemy, the more effective you become! Juggling all these options is something you must try to master as an alchemist!

Elixirs

While bombs are all about dealing with the enemy using damage and debuffs, elixirs are your personal and party buffs and healing. They give you or your teammates advantages of all kinds. Most of your daily vials should be made into elixirs. So keep your party members and their needs in mind when deciding on which elixirs you make. Give them elixirs you think they will need. Elixirs need an action to activate. You drink the elixir as part of that action or you can administer the elixir to a creature within your reach as part of that action (but only if that creature is willing). Combined with making or drawing the elixir, this means you’ll most likely need two actions to effectively use an elixir, three if you have to move. Mutagens are a special group of elixirs. They come with substantial benefits but also a drawback that can bite you in the butt if you are not careful. They are polymorph effects so you cannot be under the effect of more than one mutagen.(unless you are a high level mutagenist). Elixirs that are not mutagens can be freely stacked as high as you like! Beware of the limitation on the duration of elixirs of any kind you make with your encounter vials! Those cannot last longer than 10 minutes! Just like bombs, elixirs also come with different, more powerful versions at higher levels. There is more variation, though. Most mutagens start at 1st level and increase at 3rd level, 11th level and 17th level, exactly like your bombs!

Mutagens

There is a whole research field dedicated to mutagens, so they deserve their own subsection! As said, mutagens come with a downside! Luckily, while the bonuses increase with higher levels, the drawbacks don’t. Also keep in mind that these are all item bonuses that do not stack with other item bonuses from other sources like magical items.

Bestial Mutagen: Bonuses to Athletics checks and unarmed attack rolls. You gain a scaling agile claw unarmed attack and a jaws unarmed attack. Drawback: A -2 penalty to Reflex saves and to Acrobatics and Stealth checks. This is the bread and butter mutagen for an unarmed Strength build. If you want the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde vibe, look no further. The damage scales nicely and you don’t care as much about the drawbacks. While Striking runes specifically won’t work, all other runes on your Handwraps of Mighty Blows do! Just try to avoid fireballs.

Choker-Arm Mutagen: Bonuses to reach and to Acrobatics checks to Escape, Squeeze, and Tumble Through. Drawback: You take a –1 penalty to Athletics checks, Stealth checks, Thievery checks, and attack rolls, and a –1 penalty per damage die to all weapon and unarmed attack damage. Not the most useful mutagen, but a swashbuckler will love this. Reach can be important in some situations, like administering elixirs from reach.

Cognitive Mutagen: Bonuses to Arcana, Crafting, Lore, Occultism, and Society checks and all hecks to Recall Knowledge. You cannot fail a Recall Knowledge check. Drawback: You take a –2 penalty to weapon and unarmed attack rolls, Athletics checks and Acrobatics checks. You can also carry 2 bulk less stuff. The Intelligence booster and more importantly the mutagen for Recall Knowledge checks (including those with skills not boosted by the mutagen) because not being fed false information is a big benefit. The attack penalty really hurts so try to use this out of combat or do things without attack rolls like skill checks or casting spells. The drawback does not mention spell attack rolls so your friendly wizard or witch still has all of their options left!

Deadweight Mutagen: Bonuses to Athletics checks to Shove and Trip, to your Fortitude and Reflex DCs against attempts to Shove or Trip you, and to effects that attempt to force you to move or knock you prone. Drawback: You become encumbered which means clumsy 1 and a 10ft speed penalty. A defensive bonus against all kinds of forced movement. Very specific and often not relevant with a rather hefty drawback.

Drakeheart Mutagen: Scaling Item bonus to AC with a Dex cap of +2 and a bonus to Perception. As a special treat, you can Stride twice as a single action to end the effects of the mutagen. Drawback: You take a –1 penalty to Will saves, Reflex saves, and all skill checks to Recall Knowledge.

Armor in a bottle! And good armor at that, keeping up with heavy armor. The saving throw penalty hurts but this is such a good mutagen! You never know when you or your party is getting in combat unprepared! Giving one to your champion before resting will make him much more effective when your camp is attacked at night.

Energy Mutagen: You gain scaling resistance to acid, cold, electricity or fire and gain extra damage of the same type on weapons attacks. From level 11 you can end the mutagen with a two action breath weapon with mediocre damage. Drawback: you gain weakness 5 to the other three damage types. This is good for weapon users or when used defensively for resisting specific types of elemental damage. The damage on the breath attack is mediocre at best but it is repeatable if you drink another mutagen. The weakness is scary at low levels but becomes more and more negligible at higher levels.

Fury Cocktail(4): This drink turns the character into a mini barbarian. They all give a scaling bonus on melee attacks. There are several versions of this mutagen giving additional bonuses like resistance to physical damage or elemental damage but the winner is the ability to become large and increase your reach by 5ft. Drawback: You are a pre remaster barbarian and lose 1 AC! On top you have a -2 penalty to Reflex saving throws. This is a great mutagen for melee characters with its attack bonus and a variety of extra bonuses. The enlarge effect is very good but comes with an extra drawback: it inflicts Clumsy 1. This makes the drinker very vulnerable to enemy critical hits so advise them to be very careful.

Juggernaut Mutagen: A bonus to Fortitude saves and a small amount of temporary hitpoints. Drawback: You take a –2 penalty to Will saves, Perception checks, and initiative rolls.

You can get the same bonuses to your saving throw with another mutagen without the nasty penalty to your Will save. The temporary hitpoints are barely enough to absorb one hit. Unfortunately, a disappointing mutagen. Look at Sanguine Mutagen and Numbing Tonic instead for more tankiness.

Quicksilver Mutagen: A bonus to Dex based attacks, Dex Based skills like Stealth and Thievery and to Reflex saving throws. And on top of all that, a speed bonus! Drawback: Lose twice your level hitpoints and a -2 penalty to Fortitude saves. Since a lot of alchemists use Dexterity as their attack stat, this one is very good for you (and of course any Dex based character). With it, you’ll be able to keep up with the accuracy of other martials. The attack bonus is usually one higher than the inherent item bonus by a bomb of equivalent level. The Speed boost is just icing on the cake! Use it to outrun the poisonous snakes! That drawback can hurt a lot if not careful.

Sanguine Mutagen: Bonuses to Fortitude and Reflex saves, improving against diseases, poisons and fatigue. Drawback: when taking piercing or slashing damage, take 1d6 persistent bleed damage. The bonuses on the saving throws are very nice, but slashing and piercing damage are very common melee damage and persistent damage can be very scary. But with a Blood Booster elixir, you can circumvent this drawback almost entirely. That gives it a big boost over the Juggernaut Mutagen.

Serene Mutagen: Bonuses to the important Will save and Perception to all Wisdom based Medicine, Nature, Religion and Survival checks. Drawback: a -1 penalty on all attack rolls and a -1 per die to all damage rolls. (including spell attack and damage) The offensive power suffers greatly but if you or another character are going full support or defensive, this is not bad!

Silvertongue Mutagen: Bonuses to all Charisma based skill checks (Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidation and Performance) and the inability to critically fail those checks. Drawback: You take a –2 penalty to Arcana, Crafting, Lore, Occultism, and Society checks and somehow you unlearn a skill.

Obviously not especially useful for the average alchemist but expect a big kiss from your charismatic party face for this boost to their abilities! Amazing in negotiations and charisma based encounters.Party support to the max!

Stony Body Mutagen(5): Resistance to Slashing and Piercing damage Drawback: Speed reduction by 10ft and -2 penalty to Reflex saving throws. Very straightforward mutagen! Good for tankiness. Unfortunately it doesn’t scale very well. So the rating is just for the lesser variant.

Theatrical Mutagen: Bonuses to Acrobatics, Crafting and Performance checks. And if you're untrained in any of these skills, your proficiency bonus becomes equal to your level. You also gain a bonus to your Speed. Drawback: You take a –1 penalty to Perception checks and Will saves. You have to spend at least 1 action to Interact with an object, Perform, Step, or Stride, or you're off-guard until the start of your next turn. Strange but flavourful combination of benefits, the hidden gem is the untrained improvisation effect on Acrobatics. If you aren't already trained in it, I can see this aspect being occasionally useful. You can get the Speed boost from other and better sources. Drawing a potion counts as interacting with an object, so that is an easy way of avoiding becoming off-guard if you don’t want to move. The penalty to Perception and Will save however really hurts, especially for an alchemist but perhaps your cleric friend won’t mind as much when trying to walk a tightrope.

War Blood Mutagenu: A bonus to the attack roll of one melee Weapon you hold and a bonus to disarm checks against that weapon. Also a bonus to fear saving throws. Drawback: It’s hard to get rid of your boosted weapon and you need to succeed at a DC 5 check to perform concentrate actions. That includes a lot of spells, skill checks and things like Seek. This is another good mutagen for melee weapon users. The bonus is usually one better than level equivalent item bonuses on weapons from property runes. As long as you are not a spellcaster the drawback is very mild. For some reason this is uncommon

Other Elixirs: There are a lot of elixirs left on the list that are not mutagens. It might seem like a daunting task to filter through all those items; so I will try to make some sense of them by grouping them together according to their general use. All those elixirs have different

leveling rhythms. As usual for these items, the ratings are relative. Even a niche item can be a life saviour and you can make them on the fly! Healing This is a subclass of elixirs that have the healing trait that is especially interesting for chirurgeons. Don’t expect any miracles! (no pun intended) The actual healing is low for its level and the elixirs that can counteract various effects have fixed counteract modifiers that are lower than those of equal level casters. Even worse, they scale very slowly so the difference becomes laughably big at certain levels. At level 10 the Surging Serum that in theory could counteract to remove the clumsy or enfeebled condition has a counteract modifier of +8, a caster of that level casting the Sound Body spell has a counteract modifier of +20. Something to keep in mind.

Antidote: Classic anti poison elixir that gives a bonus on your Fortitude saves

Antifungal Salve Bonus on all saves versus all afflictions with the fungal trait.

Antiplague: Same mechanic as antidote but for diseases

Elixir of Life: Your straightforward healing elixir. Compares poorly with healing potions but of course you can make a lot of them! Chirurgeons will use this a lot and get extra bonuses for it. Don’t rely on this to heal effectively in combat but use it in emergencies or in exploration mode

Elixir of Rejuvenation(20): Very difficult to make because you need a philosopher’s stone but the most powerful healing elixir! By far! Can resurrect or fully heal a character. As said, this is not something you can make with your daily or encounter vials. Alas!

Blood Booster(5): Resistance to persistent bleed and poison damage and an increased chance to get rid of it. Persistent damage can be very scary! Very synergistic with the Sanguine Mutagen!

Bottled Catharsis(2): Try to counteract emotion effects but with a low counteract modifier as illustrated above. Not a very good item.

Contagion Metabolizer(5): This tries to counteract a poison or disease. And it uses a scaling counteract modifier based on your level -10. That gives it a boost over other items relying on counteracting. Numbing Tonic: For 1 minute, you gain a scaling number of temporary hitpoints at the beginning of every round. That is very nice and can make the imbiber very tanky.

Surging Serum(2): Try to counteract clumsy or enfeebled but with a low counteract modifier. Annoying condition to be sure but it rarely will be effective. This was called Sinew-Shock Serum before the remaster.

Soothing Elixir(2): Scaling fast healing for 1 minute. This is good in combat for extra tankiness and healing but really shines in exploration mode! You can heal a lot if you use your regenerating versatile vials for this. More efficient than your Elixir of Life.

Vaccine: Paizo believes in science and so their vaccines work! If you have a sample of the disease you become immune to it, but only if the disease is of a level equal or lower than your own. You also get a bonus for other styles of the same disease. Extra points for science!

Pepper Poultice(7)u: Automatically reduce the sickened value by 1. No checks!

Mobility These elixirs all enhance the mobility of a character in a certain way. Note that there is currently no elixir that gives you a fly speed.

Cheetah’s Elixir: This gives you a straightforward status bonus to your land speed. Some mutagens also give the same bonus thus it might feel a bit redundant but mutagens often have their own issues so it still has a place in your formula book.

Leaper’s Elixir: The lesser version gives Quick Jump, the greater version at level 7 increases the distance of your high jump to the distance of your long jump! That is a substantial increase but beware it still relies on the Athletics skill of the imbiber.

Sixfingers Elixir(5)u: This gives a fixed 20ft Climb speed and a bonus defence against Disarm that will rarely come up. Still very good. Spiderfoot Brew(3): Spiderman in a bottle! When you drink the elixir, you gain a Climb speed and a bonus on climb checks! Simple and very good when you or your party needs it. Take this or Sixfingers Elixir.

Sea Touch Elixir(5): This elixir grants a swim speed and from its moderate version at level 12 it also grants waterbreathing. A little bit late perhaps but still very good!

Winterstep Elixir(2)u: Ignores the difficult terrain caused by ice or snow or reduces greater difficult terrain to normal difficult terrain. Very narrow in scope but handy if you’re in that situation! Defensive These elixirs can enhance some kind of defence. Some are very niche but remember that even they are not useless!

Bravo’s Brew(2): A straight up increase of your Will save with a little extra bonus against fear effects. Very good for alchemists with their very poor Will save.

Cooling Elixir(4): Protection against the environmental effects of heat. Niche but take it when visiting Hell!

Chromatic Jellyfish Oil(9): A unique effect of resistance against precision damage and the extra damage from critical hits! The boost to squeezing and crawling is a nice bonus. This can neutralize rogues or assassins completely. Great defence.

Frogskin Tincture(6): Hilarious elixir that is a great defence against the feared Swallow Whole. Your skin becomes poisonous and when a creature bites you or makes a jaw attack they have to save against the poison. If it swallows you whole, they get a penalty to their save!

Malleable Mixture(8)u: This gives a bonus on your DC against Grapple, Shove or Trip attempts. These are quite common abilities so this will come up quite often.

Mistform Elixir(3): The Blur spell in a bottle. Amazing for the whole party. One of the elixirs I strongly recommend you take!

Skeptic’s Elixiru: A bonus on Perception checks to detect lies. Very situational but not useless in an intrigue campaign or in social interactions.

Witchwarg Elixir(4): Protection against the environmental effects of cold. Take it when Hell freezes over!

Offensive Some elixirs give your offence a boost or at least try to.

Bomber’s Eye Elixir(4): Reduces the cover against ranged attacks, including of course bombs. Throwing in melee often gives your target a small cover bonus so this will come up more than you would want. Will also be negated by the feat Far Lobber but until then, this increases your accuracy!

Stone Fist Elixir(5): Makes your fist do 1d6 lethal bludgeoning damage. If you want to go unarmed, there are multiple better ways to do so. Redundant! Viperous Elixir(5): This gives you a poisonous bite attack with a bonus to hit. Unfortunately it only lasts one bite! This seems incredibly limiting and ruins an otherwise great elixir. Utility Every elixir that was hard to categorize is here. A lot of them enhance your senses in one way or another. The few mutagens listed here don’t scale so I do not consider them on the same level as the real mutagens but all your mutagenist field benefits still work on them!

Blood Sight Elixir(3)u: Gives an imprecise sense to detect creatures suffering from persistent bleed damage. I cannot see a situation where this will be even remotely useful, even for an elixir.

Darkvision Elixir(2): Provides darkvision to those who do not have it. This can be a lifesaver in some situations where not everybody has it.

Cat’s Eye Elixir(2): Eliminates the flat check to hit concealed creatures and reduces the flat check for hidden creatures to 5. Incredibly useful on all levels! Offensively to target creatures in the fog you created or defensively to counter the dazzled condition. A must have!

Comprehension Elixir(2): Lets you read all common languages. Unfortunately it doesn't give the ability to speak the language. A bit too limited.

Hydra Mutagen(13): For the price of Clumsy 1, you gain a head and all-around vision and a nice +3 item bonus on all Int and Wis based skill checks. On top, you cannot critically fail a Will saving throw. Good Stuff

Infiltrator’s Elixir(2): Polyjuice Potion for the Harry Potter fans complete with the low duration. Amazing for an infiltration mission of any kind!

Ommatophoric Mutagen(7): This puts the eyes on stalks giving all-around vision and a bonus on Perception checks. You also have a penalty on saves versus visual effects but those are not common. Not very useful in most circumstances.

Pallesthetic Mutagen(7): This mutagen blinds you but for 1 minute, you gain precise echolocation out to 40 feet, imprecise tremorsense out to 60 feet and a +2 item bonus to Perception checks using either of these senses. Very nice when you need it!

Poisons

The third group of alchemical items are of course the poisons. I have already written quite some things on their use but not a lot about the actual poisons themselves! Poisons are afflictions and follow the rules of afflictions. Those all have the same kind of description that looks a lot more complex than it actually is. Let’s look at the example of Arsenic to explain how they look and how they work. Arsenic Saving Throw DC 18 Fortitude; Onset 10 minutes; Maximum Duration 5 minutes; Stage 1 1d4 poison damage and sickened 1 (1 minute); Stage 2 1d6 poison damage and sickened 2 (1 minute); Stage 3 1d8 poison damage and sickened 3 (1 minute)

The Saving Throw is obvious. These are not different from other saving throws. Most poison saving throws are a bit higher than your class DC at that level. Unlike bombs and elixirs, poisons do not have higher level formulas as you level up. You have to learn all the different poisons separately as you level up. The DC of lower level poisons makes it so that they quickly become irrelevant as you level up. From 5th level you can replace the DC of the poison with your class DC, making them somewhat relevant again.

Onset is the time that will elapse between the failed saving throw and the effect of the first stage. When there is no onset listed, the stage 1 effects apply immediately after failing the initial saving throw.

Maximum Duration is the maximum time from the start of the effects that the poison remains active. If a creature makes enough saves to reduce the stage of the poison to stage 0, the creature is also cured of the poison. Most of the time that will happen sooner than the theoretical maximum duration.

Stages are the different steps in which a poison reaches its full effect. A creature enters at stage 1 after failing the save (or stage 2 after critically failing the save) after the onset time elapses, you immediately suffer the effects of that stage. Following any stage is a duration in brackets. That is the interval. At the end of the interval, the creature makes a new saving throw. Depending on the result of that saving throw, the stage will change. A failure increases the stage by 1 and a critical failure increases the stage by 2 up to the maximum stage possible for that poison. The creature immediately receives the effect of its new stage. A successful save decreases the stage by 1 and a critical success by 2. Whenever the poison reaches stage 0, the poison becomes inactive and no new saving throws are made.

Multiple exposures to the same poison trigger a new saving throw for every exposure, even if it is within the onset time. The onset time itself does not reset! A failed save increases the stage immediately if the onset time has elapsed or if there is no onset time. A successful save does not increase the stage. What happens with a critical success is not really clear but you could argue that you reduce the stage by 1 possibly reducing it to stage 0 and curing the creature before the onset time is finished. Ask your GM!

Another important trait to mention here is the virulent trait. This indicates a particularly strong poison. You need two consecutive successful saving throws to reduce the stage by one. Also a critical success reduces the stage by 1 (instead of the normal 2). Unfortunately for you, these are rare and high level.

Poisons come in four varieties depending on their method of delivery: contact, inhaled, ingested and injury.

Before getting into the specifics of those poisons, let's first discuss the glaring flaw that poison use has in this system! As shown above, the efficiency of your poisons depends largely on the height of the DC against Fortitude. Most poisons have an inherent DC that is a few points higher than your class DC. But what is that worth in combat? According to this chart, on most levels you have between 35% and 40% chance of punching through the Fortitude Save of a level equivalent monster to reach stage 1 of the poison. With a 40% ratio, you have a 21% chance of reaching stage 2 and only an 11% chance of ever reaching stage 3 and that is including the 5% chance of a critical failure on the save. That is depressingly low. Remember the initial save is all or nothing, if they make their save, your poison did nothing! Also your chances drop dramatically against tougher enemies that are of higher level than your party. Also, if you want to use your poison in combat, you will most likely use an injury poison. That automatically implies that you have to hit with some kind of weapon before all the calculations above even become relevant. Your chance to hit a level equivalent enemy can depend on a lot of factors but will likely be around 50%. That means you will have to halve all the percentages of your poison effectiveness. Putting it all together, with a hit chance of 50%, you have a 20% chance of poisoning an enemy of your level to stage 1 of the poison and a 2.5% chance of reaching stage 2 (when they crit fail on the save). So how to increase these odds? Obviously, when using injury poisons everything you or the party can do to increase your hit chance, like flanking, is recommended. To increase your odds for your poison to stick, Recall knowledge is your friend. Again! Try to identify those enemies with lower Fortitude saving throws. Avoid big, strong melee monsters. Go for the agile ones or the spellcasters in the back. You’re an Int based class so use your intelligence!

Poisons are a bit like bombs. They have two main effects: damage and status effects. Damage type is almost always poison, so not much variation there. The status effects are more varied and can be very powerful. Some poisons even have the incapacitation trait, so be aware of that! The damage is fairly low and for some reason nerfed in the remaster. If you are not a toxicologist, poison damage is very frequently resisted by whole categories of creatures. Poisoned creatures do take the damage every round they fail the saving throw so you could look at it as beefy persistent damage. Only the chance to get rid of it in most cases is higher than the flat DC15 of persistent damage as shown above. Therefore I

don’t recommend using poisons that do only damage, certainly not at low level. Try to inflict debilitating status effects with your poisons!

In order to grade poisons, I will only look at the stage 1 effects. That is the stage you have a reasonable chance of achieving. The higher stages are there as an unrealistic tease. A bit like going after a stunning cheerleader with a quarterback boyfriend as a dorky nerd. You have to be extremely lucky to ever get the girl. If you succeed: celebrate, put it on instagram, write it in your diary, enjoy the moment! I am of course talking about reaching the highest stage of a poison, you perverts. My main message is: don't count on those juicy effects on higher stages of poisons!

Injury Poisons:

These are the standard combat poisons. They generally have no onset time. You apply the poison on a weapon and on a successful strike that does piercing or slashing damage, the target has to make his save against the poison. Remark that you cannot use injury poisons with bludgeoning weapons. The interval is almost always 1 round, meaning the saving throw must be repeated every round. The multiple exposure rule is achievable by striking the target multiple times in a round with the same poison. This will likely require multiple characters with prepoisoned weapons. Difficult to coordinate but not impossible. Due to the lack of poisons you can make each day, it is not something you can do for a lot of rounds. So, while in theory you could try to expose a creature to multiple applications of the poison, I do not recommend it.

That said; you can inflict a lot of powerful conditions and effects with these poisons!

Can’t use reactions: Clubhead Poison(12) Clumsy 1: Giant Wasp Poison(7), Curare(I)(9), Pummelgrowth Toxin(13) Dazzled: Smother Cloud(7), Weeping Midnight(16)u DC 5 to perform manipulate action: Pummelgrowth Toxin(13) Difficult Terrain: Warpwobble Poison(8)(Will save!) Drained 1: Pale Fade(19) Enfeebled 1: Black Smear Poison(2)u, Giant Scorpion Venom(6), Curare(I)(9) Enfeebled 2: Cave Worm Venom (12) Frightened 1: Fearflower Nectar(4) Prone: Clown Monarch(5) Off-guard: Stupor Poison(I)(7)u, Clubhead Poison(12) Slowed 1: Lethargy Poison(I)(2), Stupor poison(I)(7)u, Oblivion Essence(19)u

Sickened 1: Spider Venom(5) Stupefied 1: Essence of Mandragora(4), Spell Eating Pitch(12)u Stupefied 2: Mage Bane(12)u

There are also poisons that only do damage. Certainly at a low level, the damage is disappointing. Remember, you have to beat two defenses to get it to stick and invest all of your actions to get it off once per round. For comparison a moderate Alchemist’s Fire at 3rd level deals 2 persistent damage, a Cytillesh Oil deals 1d8 poison damage at the same level. At mid and high levels it slightly increases but it is never really good. Wyvern poison was nerfed to do only 3d6 poison damage (down from 5d6! Again why???) at level 8. A cantrip against Fortitude like Frostbolt deals 5d4 damage at that level. The action cost is really too great for that kind of mediocre damage.

Spear Frog Poison Giant Centipede Venom Black Adder Venom(2) Cytillesh Oil(3) Graveroot(3) Antipode Oil(6) Scarlet Mist(8) Wyvern Poison(8) Nethershade(10) Death Knell Powder(14) Eldritch Flare(15) Cerulean Scourge(16) False Hope(17) Choleric Contagion(18)

Inhaled Poisons

Inhaled poisons have either no onset or an onset of 1 round, so you can try to use them in combat. They can have nice debuff effects and don’t rely on a hit to start working. That should be a huge bump in efficiency. That said, their use is not very well explained in the rules! You have to use a manipulate action to release the poison. It then fills a 10 foot cube shaped cloud for 1 minute. Every creature entering the cloud has to make a save against it. It is not specified if you have any control on the positioning of that cube. If it is a cube around the poison, the poisoner will always be entering his own poisonous cloud and has to make a saving throw against his own poison. Or can you fill a 10ft cube

adjacent to the poison, preventing you from poisoning yourself. You can take an action to give yourself a +2 bonus on the save when entering and that does alleviate the problem of accidentally poisoning yourself a little bit but not completely. It also costs an extra action and that is something a poisoner needs desperately for other things. Also note that you need to enter the cloud, not start your turn in the cloud for it to work. I assume that you technically enter the cloud when it forms around you but some stickler GMs might not agree and go with the interpretation that you actively have to enter an existing cloud to be affected. RAW it is also not possible to throw that poison to disperse the cloud away from you. That seems a very weird and very gamey limitation. I cannot imagine any logical reason why that would not work apart from some game balancing issues (that I don’t see, to be honest). So a lot of confusing rules make this awkward to use in combat. Speak with your GM to make it clear how they see these issues (or hope that Paizo clarifies things sooner or later).

Even more than with injury poisons, the damage is not why you are here. Use it for debuffs!

Confused: Nightmare Vapor(16) Dazzled: Mustard Powder(5) Drained 1: Breath of the Mantis God(10), Breathtaking Vapor(17)u Enfeebled 2: Brimstone Fumes(16) Fascinated: Yellow Musk Vial(2)u Frightened 1: Bogeyman Breath(11)u Frightened 2: Terror Spores(9)u Sickened 1: Tatzlwyrm’s Gasp(2) (this one is the only poison on this list that requires 2 actions to activate! I think and hope this is a typo) Slowed 1: Gorgon’s Breath(13)u Stupefied 2: Mindfog Mist(15) Suffocating: Breathtaking Vapor(17)u

Ingested Poisons:

All these potions have an onset time of at least one minute, so these can only be used in exploration mode.. This is the first poison where the maximum duration comes into play. That means that for poisons with an onset and/or a duration longer than 10 minutes, you cannot use your

encounter vials. That does go against the flexibility that is your strong point and limits the usefulness of a lot of those poisons as you need to spend some of your daily vials to make a lot of ingested poisons. There is of course also the problem of making a creature ingest your poison. This will most likely include the Stealth skill and skill feats and/or Charisma skills and skill feats. Not something the average alchemist will excel at. Also, if you plan on poisoning the water supply of the goblin camp, as it is written now, you need to use one poison per creature so start brewing! You can inflict some nasty effects but as it is used in exploration mode, you’ll need to plan ahead and not let those debuffs go to waste. All this to say that ingested poisons are most likely a roleplay tool and should be treated as such. I am not going to rate these poisons individually because of this. I am going to point out a few unique ones however.

Knockout Dram(7)u: Unconscious is the best condition in the game and it does not even have the incapacitation trait! Works within a minute! So can be used with an encounter vial.

Slumber Wine(12): This is the common version of the Knockout Dram; The onset is too long to be used with encounter vials; Requires a bit more planning but it still inflicts the unconscious condition!

Kings Sleep(18): This needs mention because it is the only poison you cannot make with your daily vials due to the onset of 1 day.

Contact Poisons:

These are also poisons that are plagued with ambiguous rules. According to the GM Core p.248, these poisons are too difficult to handle to be put on weapons. So applying them becomes a cumbersome hassle. Apparently alchemists are not smart enough to wear gloves. But the 4th level rogue feat Poison Weapon (also available to the poisoner archetype at 6th level) specifically states that you can apply any contact or injury poison to a weapon! So those pesky rogues have figured out what the toxicologist who has spent his entire life studying poisons couldn’t. So you see my confusion!

The contact poisons themselves are a diverse bunch. Most of them have an onset of at least 1 minute so combat use will be difficult, placing them in much of the same practical situation as ingested items. There is one exception: Spider Root(9) acts as a slower version of Giant Wasp Poison for inflicting Clumsy 1. And then there is the capstone feat Plum Deluge that gives the ability to use a contact poison as an area attack while bypassing any onset time! Combine this with the common capstone contact poison Tears of Death(20) and you create a cloud of an encounter winning death zone. This is a virulent poison that deals 20d6 poison damage and causes paralysis in a 20 ft burst! That is a ridiculous power spike! Quite the reward for a toxicologist after suffering for 19 levels! Let them enjoy their few sessions of campaign eradication bursts of power.

Other Alchemical Items

Alchemical Ammunition:

Extra abilities for ammunition. You don’t need a different formula for the different kinds of ammunition: bolts, arrows and bullets are all covered by one formula. Beware that it will take an additional action from the user to activate the ammunition. This activation lasts until the end of your turn. Luckily, if you don’t use the ammunition that turn, you don’t lose it but you have to use an action later to activate it again. That extra action cost makes it difficult to use for the average weapon using alchemist. It is possible with a bow to make the ammo and shoot it the same turn,but it uses up all your actions. The better use of these items is if you give them to an archer friend. Better yet, let them make it themselves. Gunslingers have their own excellent feat for crafting their ammunition and the alchemist archetype is very good for other interested characters to acquire the ability to craft their own alchemical ammunition. But you are still an alchemist! Knowing formulas is your schtick and some of them are quite good. Most of the time, you can achieve a better effect with other alchemical items like bombs but crossbows and some guns are on the simple weapons list and can have a long range. Automatic scaling to higher level formulas also applies here!

Black Powderu: Obviously only useful if using firearms.

Bane Ammunition: Persistent poison damage against a particular type of creature. Every different type needs its own formula! That makes it very cumbersome to learn and to use!

Elemental Ammunition: Extra persistent and splash damage. Every damage type has its own formula. Annoying but not as bad as for Bane Ammo..

Aromatic Ammunition(2): Makes the target easier to find with scent. Rather useless

Life Shot(2): A ranged healing option. The amount is very low but a hand crossbow has a range of 60ft; which is more than most healing spells. Could be very valuable in a pinch. You have to hit first though!

Ooze Ammunition(2): The damage type is a bit redundant and the speed reduction is not impressive. Redundant!

Exsanguinating Ammo(4): Cool effect but not nearly powerful enough to matter and requires a lot of setup and party coordination to work.

Glue Bullet(4)u: Non scaling speed reduction. Redundant, use a glue bomb instead.

Blister Ammunition(5): Now this is nice! A spellcasting creature has to spend an action or have the effect of stupefied 3 on its chance to cast a spell (or use any other concentrate action). It can lose its entire turn to get rid of the effect. It even has a saving throw penalty on a critical hit.

Eroding Bullet(5)u: Persistent acid damage. Redundant. Use Elemental Ammunition or bombs instead.

Freeze Ammunition(5): Don’t bother with the damage, you are here for the small area of slippery ice this creates. A 5ft burst would be better because a single. Step action neutralizes this effect completely.

Rusting Ammunition(13): Persistent damage to metal objects. Situationally useful.

Alchemical Food:

This is the playground of the Wandering Chef archetype!

This category of alchemical items has two new traits sprinkled in their items.

Lozenge(L): This is an item with a long duration you can have in your mouth. This does not interfere with other potions or elixirs. You can bite the lozenge, usually as a reaction, to gain a secondary benefit, ending the duration of the lozenge. A lot of those items give a small +1 item bonus for 24 hours. You can get the same item bonus from a resilient rune on your armor around level 8.

Processed(P): An Alchemical Food with this trait is impossible to create with a single action using Quick Alchemy. Creating this with Quick Alchemy costs 1 minute. Bottom line, these specific items cannot be used actively in combat.

Further, you have to be able to prepare the food in question. No Waffles without a Waffle Iron! So always bring your mobile kitchen with you if planning to make these items. Some of these are hilarious, some of these are really silly and some of these are quite good. Don’t disregard them

Iron Wineu: Extra Fire damage on unarmed attacks! Unfortunately not scaling but very good for an unarmed character build

Journeybreadu: Lembas bread for the Lord of the Rings fans. Provides food and water for a day. Handy in survival scenarios.

Missive Mint: The Message Spell concealed as a candy.

Cooperative Waffles(2)(P): A small boost to Follow the Expert and at 5th level Aid checks for 24 hours.

Mender’s Soup(3)(P): Bonus to use crafting to repair items and in downtime an unnamed +1 to Craft items. Those are rare!

Diplomat’s Charcuterie(3)(P): A small item bonus to Diplomacy and Perception checks in social situations. Your bard will like this.

Auric Noodles(3)(P): A bonus to Identify Magic. Sometimes useful during exploration

Sprite Apple(3): Consuming the apples lights you up like a torch. Additionally there is a small bonus to Diplomacy, Performance, Nature and fear checks.

Tracker’s Stew(3): A day long buff to Survival checks to Cover Tracks or Track and you can do so at a higher speed.

Witch's Finger(3): Not a real finger but a candy that protects against cold damage and environmental cold effects.

Phantom Roll(4): A 24 hour small item bonus to Stealth checks to Avoid Notice and the ability to do it at full speed. This might allow you to roll initiative with your Stealth skill instead of Perception.

Cinnamon Seers(4)(L): A bonus to Recall knowledge is nice and a free reroll as the secondary effect. I like this.

Saboteur’s Friend(4): A weak ingested poison disguised as a chocolate treat. You have better options available!

Rainbow Vinegar(4): Extra acid damage on unarmed attacks (that stacks with Iron Wine) and resistance to electricity. Great for the right build.

Grindlegrab Steak(4): Food for three days and a small bonus on saves against fatigue and the dreaded drained condition.

Egg Cream Fizz(5): The Speed boost is nothing special and the item bonuses on Acrobatics or Athletics skill can be found better elsewhere but the ability to Step into difficult terrain is unique and potentially life saving.

Ginger Chew(5)(L): A small bonus on saves against the sickened condition and a very nice secondary effect to reduce a sickened effect by 1. Just like that! I like that a lot!

Crackling Bubble Gum(5)(L): Hilarious item! While chewing gum you have a bonus on sonic or auditory saving throws. Then you can end it by blowing a bubble and letting it explode doing a small amount of sonic damage and a 10ft speed penalty. Not very powerful but very funny.

Pucker Pickle(5): Another hilarious item but a good one! You taste so foul creatures have a penalty to attack you after a jaw attack. If you are Swallowed Whole, the creature is automatically sickened 1 with no save. Very nice.

Silver Crescent(6)(L): You light up like a torch and to end the effect you create a beam of light that is silver and vitality damage. The damage is not stellar but it is one of the only ways to do silver damage as an alchemist.

Insight Coffee(6): This is not for you but for your investigator friend. For them it is as blue as blue gets.

Scholar’s Drop(6)(L): A bonus against the fatigued condition and the ability to suppress the effects of fatigue for 10 minutes. Nice if you need it.

Shodding Toddy(6): A small item bonus against emotion effects and your choice of visual, olfactory or auditory effects. Remember that our Will saving throw is weak so every small boost helps. But soon you will want to have resilient rune on your armor canceling out that small bonus.

Owlbear Egg(7): A big AOE Fear spell. Unfortunately not party friendly so you need to be very careful. Better on paper than in practice, I’m Afraid.

Preserved Moonflower(7)u: A +2 status effect against void damage is OK but the ability to reduce your wounded condition by 2 once per day is amazing and unique in your repertoire.

Firefoot Popcorn(7): Funny item but redundant due to the Leaper’s Elixir.

Galvanic Chew(8)(L): The electricity resistance is irrelevant but the chance to inflict stunned 1 as a reaction on getting hit is quite tempting.

Poison Fizz(8): A net bonus on poison saves and the ability to exhale a poison cloud like the last breath of Duke Leto Atreides. Unfortunately, the poison damage is very low.

Assassin Vine Wine(9): Tremorsense 30ft for 1 minute out of the gate! Amazing.

Aurochs Jerky(9)(P)u: Temporarily suppress the fatigued condition. Processed makes this hard to use in combat.

Delve Scale(10): Burrow Speed is hard to come by. This is your item for it! 15ft for one minute is solid!

Energizing Pill(10)(L)u: An item bonus to Initiative is good but the ability to reduce a number of nasty conditions by 1 as a reaction is wonderful!

Alchemical Tools:

This is the ultimate Swiss Army knife category of alchemical items.This large category is all about utility. This is the category that makes you the ultimate utility monster. Need something to light the fire in a storming tempest, use a Matchstick. Need to clean up the rust of a metal door, use your Rust Scrub. And that is just 1st level. There are a lot of items in this category but they are an essential part of your repertoire! Most of these items are only situationally useful or only useful in social situations but that is their point and there are a few gems speckled in there.

Matchstick: Literally a match! Lights a fire!

Rust Scrubu: Repairs rust on a metal item.

Snake Oil: Disguises wounds and signs of disease.

Alchemical Fuse: It’s a fuse. It delays the explosion of a bomb.

Animal Repellent: This one is a nice defensive item for the early campaign when animals are common enemies. You choose a kind of animal and that kind must make a Will save to approach you and can become sickened if they taste you.

Aroma Concealer: This is the opposite! It gives a bonus to Stealth checks against creatures tracking you with their sense of smell.

Blindpepper Tubeu: Redundant! Use the Blindpepper Bomb instead.

Bookthief Brewu: This makes a copy of a scroll or two pages of a book in one minute.

Forensic Dye: Go full CSI with this one. It detects one substance on an object or a 5ft square. More for investigators.

Ghost Ink: The classic spy ink to write secret messages to allies.

Glow Rod: An alchemical torch. You weren’t planning on using the primitive wooden stick were you? You're better than that!

Searing Sutureu: Deal a small amount of fire damage to greatly decrease the flat check on persistent bleed damage. Flavourful and useful.

Self-Immolating Noteu: Go full James Bond with this one!

Smoke Ball: This creates an area of smoke around it, making every creature in it concealed. Requires two free hands but still very good. Combine it with a Cat’s Eye Elixir for even more fun.

Armor Polishing Kitu: A small bonus on Diplomacy with other martials. Useful for your armored party face.

Dragons Blood Pudding(2): Try to counteract the slowed condition. Slowed is harsh but the counteract modifier problem brings this down.

Emetic Paste(2): Immediately give a creature a save against the sickened condition with a bonus on the save. Nice!

Moonlit Ink(2)u: Another one for transferring secret messages. This one uses symbols only visible in moonlight.

Quickmelt Slick(2)u: Melts ice or a frozen object. Very niche but in the right environment perhaps useful.

Bloodhound Mask(2): Instant imprecise scent ability with a bonus on Survival checks to Track. Very good for the tracker in the party!

Silver Salve(2): Making a weapon or 10 ammunition doing silver damage in a pinch is very good. Top level party support!

Sneezing Powder(2)u: Inflicting the slowed condition is great but the DC never scales and this becomes obsolete quickly. A shame!

Colorful Coatings(3): This is a group of items that are spread on a 5ft square surface within the user’s reach. While the effect look nice, I think they are held back by the very small area in which they are effective. It is not difficult to evade or not large enough to make a difference. They are colorful so hiding them is also likely not possible.

Blue: reinforces a door or stabilizes a ceiling from collapse

Green: makes a small area difficult terrain or more difficult to climb. Too easy to avoid.

Indigo: this one has its use in destroying an object silently like a door or piece of a wall.

Orange: very little damage and too easy to avoid.

Red: Avoiding falling damage during exploration can be handy.

Yellow: Nice on paper but the area is too small to matter. Just increase your speed;

Violet(4): could be useful but a small area and you have other tools that can do it more easily

Vermin Repellent Agent(3)u: This is a nice defence against vermin. They have to make a Will save to attack you and you get a bonus against their poisons. Works on vermin swarms also!

Revealing Mist(3): The alchemist version of See the Unseen. Unfortunately not as powerful because it only affect creatures in a 15ft cone and they can easily move out of that cone. But it is the best you have against invisible creatures.

Camouflage Dye(3): The alchemist method of becoming stealthy. You do still need a decent Stealth skill but apart from that it is amazing!

Cold Iron Blanch(3)u: Makes a weapon or ammunition deal Cold Iron damage. Obviously very good!

Minor Astonishing Ink(3)u: Ink that can be used to make 5 Recall Knowledge checks! Very good! Just let somebody with a higher Will save then you read the answers.

Metalmist Sphere(3)u: An area that deals damage to creatures with a weakness to a precious metal. Use Cat’s Eye elixir and stay in the mist for maximum effect.

Aurifying Salts(3)u^ Make something look more valuable.

Bottled Night(3)u: Darkness in a Bottle! Well almost.

Ectoplasmic Tracer(3): Let’s you track incorporeal creatures more easily. Ghostbusting tool, I guess.

Timeless Salts(4): Essentially a time stop for objects and bodies for a week. Should work on food too.

Oxygen Ooze(4)u: Let the creature breathe for one hour where it normally couldn’t!

Healing Vapor(4): A small area of increased healing after combat. Unfortunately out of combat healing is quite common and easy and this bonus is negligible.

Oozepick(4)u: Pick a lock without thieves' tools and with a small bonus. Could be useful.

Undead Detection Dye(4)u: Looks more like a cool tool for investigators but could be useful for knowing what you’re up against.

Absolute Solvent(5): The method of dissolving any kind of glue but especially Everlasting Adhesive.

Fungal Walk Musk(5): A defensive tool against fungi.

Animal Pheromones(5): The opposite of the Animal Repellent. Makes animals like you more and less likely to attack you. Unfortunately, by now, most animals are no longer a threat.

Pheromone Flare(5): Animal pheromones on a timer.

Soothing Powder(5): Gives you an immediate save versus persistent damage at a lower DC. Unfortunately, you need a different formula for every kind of persistent damage. Some kinds like fire or bleed have other options but some kinds like void are a lot less common.

Implosion Dust(6): A hilarious weapon against oozes and other liquid monsters, debuffing them by shrinking them.

Sense-Dulling Hood(6): Gives a saving throw bonus against visual, olfactory or auditive attacks.

Gearbinder Oil(6): An oil against constructs and other mechanical devices to make them slowed. Slowed is very debilitating!

Everlasting Adhesive(7): Superglue that requires a DC 50 athletics check to release. Can be very good. Be creative!

Skinstich Salve(7): Turning a success on a Medicine check into a critical success is what you’re taking this for! The rest is a small bonus.

Fire and Iceberg(7)u: Scaling resistance to fire and cold, both common damage types. The amount is not the best but it scales reasonably well.

Cold Comfort(7)u: Instantly freeze water, creating a 10ft square of ice. Creature inside have to make a save or get stuck. I can see the use of this!

Brewer’s Regret(9)u: A bonus against death and void effects is nice but the kicker is the daily reduction of the doomed condition by 1. Very good!

Philosopher’s Stone(20): This requires a capstone feat to be able to make this once per month. Needed for crafting the Elixir of Rejuvenation. The price to do this is much too high.

Alchemical Equipment:

I know this is a strange category, but let me explain. This is a group of items where your alchemy changes the original item and also items that enhance your alchemy. As the rules are now, you can make these items with your daily or encounter vials. I don’t know how you create a tanglefoot extruder out of a vial but here we are.

Spark Waferu: A pretty lightshow for enhancing performances of your fellow bard.

Alchemical Gauntlet: If someone is using a gauntlet as a melee weapon, this is a nice upgrade. Otherwise don’t bother.

Injection Reservoir: With a hit it inflicts a preinstalled poison on the target as an interact action. Only one time and your MAP is screwed This could be essential in trying to coordinate your party to do a full blown poison attack on a creature in one round as I wrote about earlier. A shame about the interact action (thank to SuperBidi for pointing this out)

Weapon Siphon: This is essentially making an alchemical crossbow out of every weapon. Also screws up your MAP so better on weapons used by precision rangers or investigators and the like. But an excellent tool to deal more damage. Tanglefoot Extruder(3): Create a net or a robe or a whip from a tanglefoot bag. You need the spell for this to work.

Alchemical Chart(4): When using Quick Alchemy, the items you make last one round longer like the Enduring Alchemy feat. Situational just like the feat.

Dread Helm(4): Use a loaded Dread Ampoule to give the wearer a bonus to Intimidate checks and a small aura of a little bit of mental damage.

Remote Trigger(5): Attune three bombs to be remotely detonated later. Situational.

Magnetic Shield(5): Uses a Bottled Lightning to increase the AC bonus of the shield against metal weapons for 3 turns. Great for your tank and metal weapons are common.

Collar of the Shifting Spider(5): As a free action when you roll initiative, activate a preinstalled mutagen for the cost of 1hp and half the duration of the Mutagen. Take this, use this, love this! Buy one or make one during downtime as soon as you can!

Ooze skin(5): Use an acid flask in a leather armor to increase Escape checks and deal a little acid damage on the grappler.

Living Leaf Weave(5): You need a leaf weave armor and an elixir of life. That gives a bonus to defence against grapple and trip attempts.

Poison Concentrator(5): Distill two poisons of the same type to gain one poison of that type with a +1 bonus to its DC. You don’t have a lot of poisons so not usable on a large scale. A +1 is not that much but you need every bonus you can get and this is a unique and rare way of increasing the DC of your poisons. Sun Dazzler(8): This needs a glow rod (sunrod before the remaster) installed and emits a 30ft cone of blindness without incapacitation. Even with a successful save, the targets are still dazzled. Very good!

Bone Dreadnaught Plate(10): Strange item. This fortress plate must be loaded with a lodestone bomb. But you cannot make one until level 12 and normally it costs 400gp. Then you have resistance 2 against fire, cold, electricity , slashing and piercing damage. That is just not enough to go through all that trouble for. The user probably has resistance from other sources like armor specialisation. Troll Hide(12): Use an elixir of life to regenerate hitpoints every round. You can even regrow arms and legs but the chance those are chopped off is quite low!

Bottled Monstrosities:

As they are written now, they are next to impossible to craft. They need you to have the corpse of the creature in your possession. How you haul a Kraken corpse into your lab and distill it into a potion is beyond me but those are the rules. I have a very kind GM that only requires me to have the corpse with me when I research the item and not when I want to craft it after I researched the formula. But your GM might not be so lenient! Alternatively, the description of your Advanced Alchemy class feature very specifically states that you ignore ‘any alchemical raw materials required’ so RAW you do not need

to haul that Kraken to your lab. You can just make the item by hearsay (thanks KnowledgeRuinsFun for pointing that out). Those items all cost two actions to activate so beware of the action cost.

Ghost Ampoule(4): An 15ft fear effect. Alas no effect on a successful save like the Fear spell.

Hippogriff in a Jar(5): A weird slow teleport of 65ft. You don’t have fly in your repertoire so not completely useless.

Tarantula Ampoule(6)u: One adjacent creature makes a Fortitude save or takes a pitiful amount of damage. Cool looking but very bad!

Sargassum Phial(6): A rather low Fortitude Save in a 15ft emanation or suffer a random, quite powerful effect for 1d4 rounds. Not party friendly, the incapacitation trait and no control over the effect or its duration make this a bad item. Unfortunately.

Hive Mother Bottle(8)u: This creates a 10ft deep pit 20ft from you. A basic Reflex lets creatures avoid the pit and the acid damage. But if they fall into the pit and take falling damage, they are also prone, possibly wasting a big part of their next turn.

Octopus Bottle(8)u: Reposition a creature within the reach of the octopus to another place in that reach. Also a bonus ink cloud in water.

Bottled Roc(9): Grab a creature (unwilling creatures must be Grabbed actively) and release them 90 ft further, possibly letting them fall.

Tyrant Ampoule(10): A T-Rex tramples everything in a Huge 40ft line. Basically a large area of bludgeoning damage with a basic Reflex save.

Whirlwind Vial(11): A cone shaped push attack with a Fortitude save. A bit underwhelming for its level and action cost.

Worm Vial(13)u: You can burrow a tunnel, even though stone. Or eat someone for medium damage and leave them prone within 30 ft.

Mukradi Jar(15): You can choose between a medium damage fire, acid or electricity breath weapon.

Kraken Bottle(18)u: Reposition 4 creatures to anywhere within 60ft and in water get a huge extra poison cloud.

Equipment:

There is a lot of gear that can be found or, if you’re lucky, bought in this game. If you build for it, you are also an excellent crafter so with enough funds and downtime, you can make these items yourself.

Adventurer’s Tools:

Don’t dismiss this category! There are a lot of useful things that can be found here! Also remember that you’ll need to have the relevant toolkit to perform certain skill checks. These can be quite expensive at first level but luckily later the cost is negligible.

Alchemist’s Lab: You need this to research and invent alchemical items during downtime. This is one of the most important items you’ll need. Beware of the 6 bulk however. The expanded version gives you a small bonus on your crafting checks. Moderately useful, but there are better ways to achieve that.

Basic Crafter’s Book: Allows you to craft any 0th level items.

Repair kit: Annoying to take and use in combat, but you need one to repair your shields.

Healer’s kit: You’ll need to hold one to be able to heal without magic. In the remaster you do not appear to need a free hand!

Mirror: Super handy tool for looking around corners, avoiding gaze attacks and flirting with one's reflection!

Air Bladder: The suffocation rules are brutal in Pathfinder! This is a cheap way to try to alleviate this.

Thieves Tools: Necessary for Disabling traps and opening locks. If you have that job in your party, don’t forget these. Also look at the replacement tools!

Held Items:

Spacious Pouch(4): You need to carry around your alchemy lab. Every party needs this

Skeleton Key(5): Bonus to Open Locks and a free Breach spell

Private Workshop(6)u: Your own portable alchemy lab with a crafting bonus!

Bountiful Cauldron(9)u: A free meal and a nice bonus to Crafting checks.

Worn Items:

Backfire Mantle(3): Not for you but for your melee friends. They will hate you a lot less!

Alchemist Goggles(4): They are named after your class! Of course they are good. Buy them, steal them, research them, craft them,..

Retriever Belt(7)u: Take this and be sad it only works a set number of times. Research it if you must! It is that good.

Brooch of Inspiration(8): A boost on all Recall Knowledge checks!

Alchemist Haversack(11): This resolves all your storage problems. But currently needing an update to the remaster!

Inexplicable Apparatus(18):Strange device that helps with crafting during downtime!

Other:

Retriever Prism(4): This talisman is the reason to take the Talisman Dabbler archetype. Free action retrieval is that good for you!

Wizard’s Tower(13)u: Your home away from home! Never take a rest without style! It comes with an alchemist lab!

Final Words

This turned out to be a whole lot more work than I originally thought! I am aware that this guide is not complete. There are ancestries, feats and items missing, either from recent sources or rare items. I will try to keep this updated as best as I can. I decided against including sample builds and formula lists. Those are soon notoriously outdated. I want you to experiment for yourself! Go with what you like. Play it safe or go bonkers. The world of alchemy is your playground. Don’t be afraid and have fun! After covering your basics, this class rewards innovative play. Remember, these are my opinions and interpretations of some rules. I might be wrong. Please tell me! You might not agree with me! Please, tell me! Your opinion is just as valued as mine and maybe you persuade me, maybe we agree to disagree. That’s perfectly fine! I sincerely hope this guide succeeded in providing some guidance on making and playing this unique class!

Changelog 4/29/2025: Fixed the mistakes I made in the Munition Crafter feat and in the Injection Reservoir. (thanks to TheMadTemplar and SuperBidi)

Changelog 5/1/2025: Fixed a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. Fixed the price of 1st level formulas. Added Perfect Mutagen and Dual-weapon Warrior. Clarified that you do not need to spend an action to take an encounter vial when using Quick Alchemy. Clarified some text on Crafting. Adjusted the rating of the mutagenist Field vial and Improbable Elixirs.(Thanks to Taurendil, InstantMirage, Folomo, ForeverNya, LincR1988, terkke and many others)

Changelog 5/9/2025: Added Antifungal Salve, Aurochs Jerky, Bogeyman Breath, Defoliation Bomb, Durian Bomb, Inflammation Flask, Nail Bomb, Pepper Poultice and Spider Satchel.

Changelog 23/5/2025: Changed the rating of the Society skill (thanks to ForeverNya). Continuing the layout improvements.

Changelog 18/08/2025: Added the Commander and Guardian multiclass archetypes.