ADDITIONS/ERRATA: -Medium armor proficiency was already an errata pre Remaster. (That's what I get for using a physical book!) -I don't think you need a versatile vial remaining to make a Quick Vial. -The bomber's "treat your versatile vial as Adamantine" ability can be used on any Consumable you make, including one of the bombs that does physical damage! (Also adamantine objects treat another "object" as having one-half its Hardness. PF2's rules on Hardness are a bit lacking, so I'd extend this to creatures as well.) -Toxicologist's feature helps against the many creatures with poison IMMUNITY. -Toxicologist's last feature lets them forego spraying poison on a 2nd creature. -Additive feats are now limited to once per round. -Combine Elixirs costs "+1 versatile vial more than usual" - since some subclasses allow you to create a Quick Vial elixir that doesn't cost a VV, the language was changed from a flat three to this. -The alchemist versatile vials cannot be replenished, but you can still make Quick Vial acid bombs at-will. MY SUMMARY OF THE BUFFS TO ALCHEMIST: -Big buff to Quick Alchemy: You have a pool (probably 6) that replenishes like Focus Points, AND you have at-will "quick vials" for decent acid bombs and a special ability from your research field -No longer starved for reagents, especially at low levels -Can reach master proficiency in your attacks -Medium armor proficiency (this, and Bestial Mutagen no longer penalizing AC, and merging of "mutagen-enhancing" feats make a fighting mutagen build more viable) -Improved features for subclasses -Items use your Class DC starting at Level 5 -Adding effects to your items via feats with the Additive treat no longer increase the effective level of the formula -Quick Bomber lets you use Quick Alchemy and throw bomb for 1 action -Feats to be MUCH better at removing negative conditions (I think every one in the game) -L17 permanently quickened to make your "quick vials"

Toxicologist acid damage is interesting, but the bigger thing is that line, "your infused poisons can affect creatures immune to poison." Affect is way more than just doing damage. All of the debuffs that before you could never apply to Undead or construct styles of enemies now work against them.

Adamantine isn't for damage reduction or regeneration. Adamantine is for *hardness.* An adamantine weapon halves the hardness of a target -- perfect for throwing at constructs.

«Not a lot of foes resist poison damage.» Every single undead: am i a joke to you?

Alchemists actually already had medium armor proficiency as of an errata a while back.

I've been so excited to see how Paizo handled the complex classes. So far they've been nothing but winners: - champions can freely pick their reaction, and use an Aura for targeting - oracles have cool options and are less confusing - alchemists are no longer broken, and are less confusing I'm really excited to try out a Chirurgeon now.

Finally an Alchemist guide. Everyone has been posting about everything BUT the Alchemist content I was interested in.

The toxicologist level one benefit is actually a huge buff, since there are realy many monsters immune to poison.

27:30 While the damage is indeed lower, the debuff on Giant Centipede Venom is a lot stronger IMO. Off-guard is a very common condition, while fatigued is much harder to inflict. More importantly, fatigued doesn't go away on its own: if they reach stage 2, they're gonna be fatigued even after the poison wears off.

The adamantine damage option is probably since some high level enemies are "resistant to all (except adamantine)". Similar to how some vampires are resistant to all physical except silver but don't actually have a silver weakness.

"If don't like it, it hurts, and if you do it doesn't. Kind of like something else."

18:08 more and more dry (humor) content... You're really living up to expectations here haha

Appreciate the Mork Borg rule book over the shoulder next to The Rules Lawyer Spicy Novel™.

Adamantine damage adds an effect when attacking objects. "...They treat any object they hit as if they have half as much Hardness..." -Archieves of Nethys, Adamantine Weapons. Thus if you create a versitile vial from a quick vial, it can be more effective in destroying pesky doors.

The 10 min thing is actually a stealth buff for mutagenist. A lot of characters don't want the mutagen debuffs for an hour, but when you combine the fact that you get 2 vials every 10 minutes, your party will never need to buy skill items for out of combat stuff again, since you just give them the juice for the skill check and they have the good stuff when making the check, but lose the bad stuff when they don't need the skill boost

Thank you for blessing us with your presence, Megan

The bomber subclass is so good that it's gonna make the Winged Warrior feat Bombing Run so cool. Just, unlimited bombing runs. It may not be strong, but it's damn flavourful. **Edit:** I'm pretty sure Combine Elixir is supposed to cost only two vials. That first bit reads like it's an RP description that's then followed by the rule implementation, which says you spend an additional vial (which I read as "in addition to the vial used to make the base elixir"). With the reduction from INT+Level reagents to just 4+INT, having it cost 3 vials seems a bit too prohibitive, imo.

I'm a little disappointed that the toxicologist is still getting a bit of the short end of the stick, but it's still WAY better than before, I really appreciate that.

With regard to foes resisting poison, try playing a poisoner in a campaign with lots of undead enemies. This us a huge change

I think the adamantine special material might be for attacking objects since you can treat their hardness as half as much as usual. Bring your alchemist to breach a vault of goodies.

From a third-party design perspective, alchemist remaster is huge.

The 'contagious poison' from the remaster says you can forgo that effect so the scenario where there's just allies around the initial target isn't a problem.

I was so hopeful for a buff to the Toxicologist because I love the RP and flavor of it. I've played a lot of characters over the years and my toxicologist was hands-down my weakest class/subclass experience. The damage and consistency were laughably bad. The versatility factor, which I love in theory, simply doesn't come up that often in actual gameplay. This game is designed with so many paths to success that your party will virtually always be able to easily counter problems without you having to cook up a special elixir or throw a special bomb to trigger Weakness 5 once a round on a boss. But it feels like they really ratcheted up the unplayability of the Toxicologist. Nothing screams "fun" like gambling a full 3-action turn (plus a semi-limited resource) on a single poisoned 1h-weapon stab which, on the off-chance you ACTUALLY hit your target with your bad proficiency, will ultimately do like 15 extra damage. As you said, apparently other tables have been playing very different from the tables I've been at because poison has never made a single notable impact on the game. (See: Most-resisted damage type, extremely high action cost for low to mediocre damage, almost exclusively Fort saves which are typically high on meaningful enemies, high gold cost to even access your "versatility" options, etc.) On a more positive note, I LOVE the poison/acid damage buff and I LOVE the alchemical bomb proficiency improvement. Honestly, those changes were needed just to bring the class level with every other class imo. I also generally like what they've done with every other Alchemist subclass. Overall, nice changes... But I sure am real disappointed about the Toxicologist...

Yaaaaay! Finally a full alchemist cover! XD I knew I could count on you!

I get that the new advanced alchemy makes it more manageable and safer but I really preferred the old version. Having to manage items and choosing between crafting now vs at the moment was fun. But not having to learn the same recipe's next level was a good call.

Your content is some of the most engaging on KZfaq imo, I am continually impressed with how well spoken you are. Your layout is simple yet very effective. Excited for the alchemist, though a bit sad it seems like toxicologist (my second fave of the subclasses is a bit underwhelming). My favourite mutagenist has some fun tools though (eating good with that master proficiency!) Alchemical HRT is very cute, and brings a whole new meaning to "DIY" HRT :p.

Bonus points for the Dr Strangelove reference at the end. 🤓

Love to get videos like. While working it’s really nice to have someone who explains things in details.

Important notice for anyone wondering, check description of Alchemist's Tools, as VVs are held inside, it's a free action to draw and replace them using action that uses them. Meaning that subclass specific uses of VV cost one action only.

Very excited for the alchemist remaster. Also love the Dr. Strangelove reference.

bestial mutagen is now the bestie mutagen, pass it around to your wrestlers before kicking down a door to a dungeon

18:04 you made me spit my coffee lmaooo

Didn't have time to watch yet, but you need a bunch of upvotes just for this title. Very excited to see what they changed. Probably the most difficult stuff they had to rework for the remaster.

The quick alchemy seems like Paizo wanted them to have a Cantrip style attack

I'm so happy with the new alchemist. Thank you for the video, RulesLawyer.

I'm so glad for these buffs, my chirurgeon player was having to put SO much work in to make his actions feel worth it.

15:41 So RL Alchemy was literally about turning one thing into another. Many alchemists had the specific goal of turning lead into gold. So the Bomber Advanced Vials is actually quite thematic. Just imagine that they brew up a potion that happens to grow bits and flecks of the material in question. When the vial hits the target, the material gets splashed all over the target. it doesn't need to be an injury in and of itself, as the material is what is triggering the weakness. Kind of like a Vampire grabbing a silver cross.

26:10 the feature specifies the attacker who applied the poison can choose to forgo the effect of spraying the poison

16:44 I think for the adamantine vials it’s meant to overcome the hardness of objects more so than triggering weakness in enemies. The only issue is if they specify whether it’s treated as standard or high grade for the purpose of determining the bomb’s “hardness” which I didn’t see yet

This drastically buffed the class and then heavily nerfed the multiclass archetype. My level 6 PC just went from being able to make 12 items a day (eventually scaling to 20+) to only 8 per day, and if Ronald is correct the archetype doens't get access to the refreshing vials. I often took alchemist as a multiclass archetype due to the versatility provided, and the ability to stockpile cheap healing items each day, but this just nerfed that benefit quite a bit. Still happy to see the class get such a sweeping set of improvements though.

Alchemical gender therapy was available in PF1e. The items were called the "anderos salve" and "mulibrous tincture". Pretty easy to miss, and I only remember because an NPC in the War for the Crown adventure path, Dame Malphene Trant, was using mulibrous tincture and my group ended up taking her on as a cohort.

I'm not saying this to pester you, pronunciations change over time, I say this because I think it's interesting in and of itself. The chi in chirurgeon is pronounced like Cairo, based on the greek letter Chi. Another place this affects us is the Chimera pronounced Kai -mer -a, not shim-er-a. The rest of the word chirurgeon is pronounced like surgeon (cause it's the historical source of that word) so Kai - rur - g - on

I quite like the changes, and I think they remove of a lot of the problems that the Alchemist suffered from. But I wish some of the new wording had been refined a bit, because there are some really confusing or convoluted parts, particularly in relation to versatile vials. Some examples: 1. Quick Alchemy creates a "versatile vial" that behaves differently to other versatile vials bit has the same name. 2. The research fields each have a "Field Vials" feature that gives them a new way to use their versatile vials. Other parts of the class refer to "the versatile vial option from your research field," which by process of elimination must be the option from Field Vial. IMO, it would much be clearer if the Field Vials feature was named as the place "the versatile vial option from your research field" is found. 3. By default, versatile vials deal acid damage and have the acid trait. However, the Toxicologist Field Vials feature makes their versatile vials deal poison damage and have the poison trait. However, the Toxicologist Field Benefit means that sometimes their vials will actually deal acid damage anyway, but keep the poison trait. This all feels like an unnecessarily complicated way of handling things. Honestly, I think part of the problem is that the word "vial" is spammed everywhere, which makes a lot of different things sound similar.

I think this is mentioned a little bit in the pinned comment, but from reading this I think the reason the versatile vile wording is used to describe both the versatile vile class feature is that the viles you have that last all day and the viles you can make with quick alchemy can be used the same way, either as slightly weaker acid bombs or for the special vile option you get in your research field. It's still worded weird though. New Alchemist is a huge improvement. Now we just need remasters for the Secrets of Magic, Guns & Gears and Dark Archive stuff, although realistically the only things that really need it are the archetypes they haven't already released errata for, like the Runelord.

Adding special metals to acids is rad as fuck. I was concurrently performing heavy metals (acid) testing while listening to this 😂 Aqua Regis was traditionally used to melt silver and gold in the high mideval times

For the vials: this is amazing, this means that after each encounter, the alchemist can just use whatever leftover vials they have to give everyone some soothing tonics or elixirs of life. Really ups your recovery time.

These seem like great changes! If I'm understanding everything correctly, it makes it a lot easier to have those niche consumables made in combat for when they'll be useful. And making quick vials in a fight is super cool!

From what I read on the text, when it says "you use a vial for X", there seems to be no need to Quick alchemy the vial, I believe they would have mentioned that if it was necessary. It seems a mutagenist can just drink vials with no Quick alchemy. The fantasy of this seems like if you think that vials are not always acid and can be reagents for other things even when not using Quick alchemy.

Really love what they did with the alchemist! There's so many cool classes now that it's hard to choose which one to play!

Hope pazio can do another book like this down the line with the other classes. Some of them need some rework love to bring them up to current class standard. Can't wait to use godbreaker.

Your quick alchemy being vials of stuff rather than reagents helps with the flavor of that vials recharge. Instead of gathering components even when that might not make any sense you are instead getting mixtures ready. Sort of how spell prep is flavored in some systems as casting the spell up until the final activation incantation you are prepping some of the mixes so you can throw crap together quickly.

YES! This is nothing like what I thought new alchemist would be, yet it's somehow everything I want it to be. Less anxious choices, more spontaneity, reliable contributions- it's so good! Also as I read it combine elixir just straight up costs no more components than two separate elixirs do- that's insane. Incredible action economy on elixirs and it makes healing with elixirs rival cleric heals, but with a reduced range.

For the toxicologist greater field discovery it does mention that the attacker can choose to forgo the effect.

Thanks for the info. It kinda murders how i was using the Alchemist archetype on my Summoner, to have some cool extras around for the party to use and throw.

Depending on how the multiclass of this works with the investigator class, I may have to remaster a certain Venomtail Kobold of poisonous shenanigans... I do like the multiclass no longer requiring feats to progress adv. alchemy levels. Though having to wait till lv 12 to adjust the class DC's as a multiclass, and not being able to take advantage of the prisoner abilities might make it less than amazing.

I've only gotten to the 3rd change and this is already better than what I expected.

10:21 I see you with that PF1 "Unchained" joke.

As someone who love Alchemist; Yes.

The alchemists are coming after our precious bodily fluids!

Where does it say you need at least one versatile vial in order to create a versatile vial via Quick Alchemy? Quick Alchemy only requires you be wearing or holding your alchemist's toolkit.

Alchemists have always had medium armor proficiency. Maybe you're confusing it with gators? 36:37 That's what Focus Cathartic and Sinew-Shock Serum were for. It's nice to have that as additive though. And the 2 original elixirs still have their uses, all is good :)

I cannot wait to theorycraft weather it's better to build a witch with the cauldron feat and the alchemy dedication or an alchemist with the witch dedication and cauldron feat

So double brew is an action economy boost rather than making your vials go further? As pretty much all your going to use it for are consumables. So if you have quick bomber it's doesn't do anything for you ?

I still think Toxicologist should be able to attack in the same action they apply the injury poison on their weapon. There's archetypes that outshine the Toxicologist in this regard.

If you give the versatile vial adamantine through the advanced vial class feat, it avoids half the hardness of the object it’s striking. That said, it doesn’t tell us if it we should consider it standard or high grade adamantine and if it’s considered a thin item or item. I’d just imagine them as pellets in the vial and they fly out when it’s used.

Was I love the alchemist. Now I love him even more.

Question: Does the familiar Master Ability “Extra Reagents” still exist? If so, does it apply to daily prep items or to the Versatile Vials? Kinda doubting it applies to both Currently in a campaign as a Level 2 Alchemist Bomber. Going to miss the plan of having 30+ bombs. But I don’t think I am going to miss that plan too much. Loving it!

With regard to growing a head, there was an elixir that does that in the howl of the whild book. If the permenant elixir feat is still in two heads permanently is doable, although probably not a great strategy

I think the lowering of the poison damage makes sense for the alchemist. SInce alchemests can really use alot more poison every round if they want to. I guess it also makes poison less lethal when used against players. Characters with a low fortitude save can die pretty easilly by failing or crit failing 1 or 2 saves against poison.

Something I think could make a lot of sense for alchemists wanting to drink/apply their field vial benefit more quickly is to pick up a Retrieval Belt (which most alchemists will definitely want in any case) and use that to free-action draw a versatile vial and use it. They get the benefits of their field vials as a single action, but it uses up their per-encounter vials rather than getting to use the free quick vials from quick alchemy

For the 2-action setup problems with the versatile vials, I think in normal play it would be just the opposite. You're going into a fight with six VVs. If you've got two actions to spare on a turn, you can first use quick alchemy to turn a VV into something stronger and more specific, then use it. However if you're tight on actions you can just use the vial directly without fist converting it with Quick Alchemy. It's going to be weaker than anything you could specifically turn it into, but it makes your action economy a little less strict. Once you're totally out of vials and need to quick alchemy to make one then yeah it's not so good, but that's just to make sure that even when you're out of resources you're not completely scuttled, like a caster having to rely on cantrips.

Wasnt there an Alchemical Crossbow in Fall of Plaguestone? Is there a new one in Player Core 2?

Simplifying Additive trait is the biggest win for me. That turned a handful of feats in to a needless cost/benefit analysis every time.

Never thought about trying Alchemist before but I def want to try bomber after all these changes, also good video man

i think the main benefit of a toxicologist using a versatile vial as an injury poison is you get to inflict it with a blowgun or whatever and a range increment better than a bomb's 20ft, or with a melee weapon so you're not triggering Reactive Strikes, plus you can make infinite of these quick field vials so losing it on a miss is fine (which is already what happened with poisoned ranged weapons) but yeah creating, applying, and Striking with the injury poison as three separate actions feels weird, could use a clarification

if you look at the text at 5:24 and onwards it says that Versatile Vials can be "used for Quick Alchemy *and* your research field can add new ways to use the vials". Wouldn't this mean that the Mutagenist and Toxicologist field vials are not part of the Quick Alchemy feature? That would mean you wouldn't need to spend an action beforehand setting them up, the Quick Alchemy feature just lets you make an extra versatile vial for those features if you run out (at the cost of an obviously worse action economy).

26:00 It has the words "and can choose to forgo this effect" in it, so you don't need to houserule it to add a way to avoid hurting an ally. You can just choose to not spray your ally.

Adamantine as a damage type isnt usually a weakness but it does often overcome resistances, while physical (except adamantine) is somewhat pointless it would be futureproofed against the niche 'all damage (except adamantine) or if something did have adamantine weakness for some reason.

Now i wonder what will it be for the Alchemist-like gunslinger "subclass": Munition Crafter. It gains advanced alchemy only to craft batches of bombs and alchemical ammunititions, and as now he can craft quite a lot of them (10 batches of 2 bombs/munitions at level 10). With the new rules it would become 4 batches of 2 items period, and that is a HUGE nerf, even given the possibility to craft items at your level. And considering that they are reworking a lot of alchemical items i wonder if in the new player core elemental ammunitions will see the activation action cost merged with the reload for firearm/crossbow users: 3 full actions for reload-activate the bullet-strike feels too action intensive, like the drinking of the field vials you mentioned. Obviously is nothing that cannot be homeruled safely, but an errata would make this more official.

"What makes me a good alchemist? If I was a bad alchemist: I wouldn't be here. Discussion it with ye now would i?' References aside. My friend Mike LOVES the new alchemist. Especially since he plays doctor type characters a lot.

Me upon seeing the video title: "ok Dr Strangelove, how good is it?"

the quick vials feel like cantrips, love it

Ooo Hope you'll go over the other classes too! Like the changes to Swashbucklers!

16:30 i think mayberather than triggering weaknesses it is for the purposes of bypassing resistances. there are quite a few creatures that have high for the level resistances with the note "except dawnsilver, except adamantine, except cold iron, etc"

Regarding adamantine, it halves hardness for most objects so this could make your vials better at breaking down doors or hazards

Players: Poisons are fucking terrible, everything and their mom are immune to them, and the tradeoff in costs and ressources to use them doesn't justify the actions to use them. Paizo: Don't worry fam, i got you ! Paizo: **Nerfs poisons** I don't know why they fucking hate poisons so much, but hey, they were useless before, and now we've reached a new level above useless: MEGA USELESS! Edit: Hadn't registered that now it can bypass immunity to poison, so at least there's that now. I rescind my mega useless comment, with the nerfs they're back to just useless.

I loved the changes but I don't get why Mutant Physique gives an Intimidation bonus... I mean Mutagenists need Str, Con, Int and Wis (cuz they suck at Will saves), Dex/Reflex is skippable cuz of Bulwark.. there's no room for Cha there 😵 Same goes for Mutant Innervation (Silvertongue Mutagen specifically).. a ranged Alchie doesn't have room for Charisma 😫

I don't know if it's been pointed out before but I'm confused by what you say about having to spend 2 actions to use field vials abilities. The way I read versatile vials and quick alchemy is: - you can use your versatile vials as bombs/field vials WITHOUT having to use quick alchemy, OR you can use QA to make any alchemical item you know - when using QA, you can either make an alch item OR make a versatile vial out of nothing Since you can draw from alchemist's toolkit as part of the action to use the vial, shouldn't you be able to poison a weapon with toxicologist field vial or drink it as mutagenist as one action only?

WRT the Bomber's Advanced Vial Feature, Adamantine being an option is good because it debuffs Shield and Shield Block effects, although an effective Item Quality callout should have been included for ease of adjudication, much the way Clad in Metal limits the kind and quality of the metal you coat the item with based on the Rank of the Spell. I'd house rule that the quality level should be limited by the level of the Vial in question, thus at 11th, a Bomber's Versatile Vial should halve the Hardness of any object with a Hardness of 14 or less, while at 17th, the Bomb halves Hardness of less than 17.

There are slashing bombs like Junk bomb, (at least pre remaster), so adamantine comes into play against creatures with resistance to all physical damage except adamantine

So, is there any text stating where alchemical items appear when you create them with quick alchemy? You need to have a free hand so one would assume they appear in that hand, but then what happens with Double Brew? If you have two hands free can an item be in each one? What if you don't, where does the second item go? This was text that was missing from the pre-remaster alchemist that i was really hoping they would have clarified.

Awesome guide, Ronald! I'm currently playing a Skeleton Chirurgeon/Toxicolgist Alchemist in Blood Lords (yes, I'm a glutton for punishment) and I'm *SUPER* hype for these changes. One question - Is there an update to the level 8 Alchemist feat, Perpetual Breadth? As a healey/poisoney guy, I'm very curious if any wording has changed.

There are (or at least were pre-remaster) bombs that deal physical damage types (such as the nail bomb), the new level 11 feature would presumably make that damage ignore, say physical weakness with exceptions. This would be for when you use quick alchemy to make these bombs, with its first option, presumably.

With the mutagen, you don’t NEED to spend an action to make it, you have your x/combat vials that you can use. You’d only have to make one of A) you are out of visls B) you don’t want to waste your vials. This is just a confusion created by the entire mechanic of creating a temporary version of an item, and not changing the name, since it functions the same but with a shorter duration.

As a toxicologist I struggle to get into situations where my poisons would affect a target for more than 1 turn. Additionally I found many things Ron listed as new or a buff that already existed within the class before the remaster.

I can see throwing an improved invigorating elixir to a controlled ally, and they drink it because you shout "CHUG, CHUG, CHUG!" xD But seriously! ALCHEMIST, MY LOVE (Class that got me *into* PF2e to start with!) WE MUST DANCE ONCE MORE!

Awesome! Thank you so much for this! A quick question I had was that I didn't see the Debilitating Bomb feats. Were those retained, or were they removed?

You da bomb!

"There's not a lot of foes that resist poison damage." All undead and constructs. Allowing poisoned weapons to deal acid damage instead GREATLY increases the poisoner's versatility in campaigns so that you don't have to worry about making a "useless" character if you end up fighting a lot of undead in an area and didn't have time and knowledge to prepare bombs instead of poisons.

I am getting Final Fantasy Tactics' Chemist vibes from this Chirurgeon.