To be fair, Jounichi, I was perfectly willing to be an adult over the Alchemist subclass. Until the Rising rules came out and rendered one of my favorite characters completely and utterly unplayable, forcing me to scramble to replace her with an ad-hoc spiritual successor that took most of a year and four additional levels to start feeling anywhere close to a valid replacement for my beloved, deceased Ana.
Wizards took one of my favorites, fed her to a wood chipper, and then tried to force-feed me the low-budget vegan version grown from peat moss in an Idaho high school chemistry lab. Wizards can kindly go perform an unmentionable act that would please the Traveler whilst getting my words redacted by a moderator. I was absolutely seeing-red, spitting-rage furious at the irreparable damage to the Rising alchemist, and I will NEVER forgive either the company for doing it or 'The Player Base' for providing the shitty, unfounded 'feedback' that compelled Wizards to do it.
Is it entirely relevant to this thread? Perhaps not. But if people truly hope Tasha's Allspice Soup Pot will "fix" the Alchemist? They can start by GIVING ME BACK MY SWORD, MY HOMUNCULUS, AND MY GOD DAMNED PRIDE AS A SCIENTIST
Once again, you're grossly over-exaggerating the negatives and completely ignoring the positives.
I know how much it sucks when releases break a character that you made with UA content. The eberron races were heavily nerfed on release. That's the risk you take when you use UA content. However, that's no reason to completely shit on a perfectly fine subclass just because it's not the same as UA, especially on a thread that's talking about potential content of an upcoming book.
Heh. To be fair, I was the first response in this thread, in which I was perfectly on topic. People talking about fixing the alchemist is beyond the scope of what they're doing in Tasha's Soup Pot and everybody knows it; Wizards has shown that they'd rather reprint an entire new "replacement" subclass than fix an existing terrible one. See: "Undead" warlock.
So if folks want to talk about how to "fix" the Alchemist? Well, we know how. Restore it to its UA 2019 state. That alchemist was awesome. It didn't need fixing. There was absolutely no need to turn it into a potion-gargling moron who doesn't bother stabilizing its formulae before using them in the field. The "POSHUNZ, NOT PETZ DX" people can go to TravelerCon, carve themselves a lovely Rumblecusp Dick Festival wooden drumdick, then eat it. And Wizards can join them.
Except alchemist are about potions, not pets. If you want pets, play battle master or another class like ranger or wizard. Alchemist doesn't need to be fixed. Randomization is not inherently bad, especially in a game where most meaningful actions are decided with a die.
You're also just aggressively insulting anyone who has a different opinion, as well as the creators of this game, which is simply uncalled for.
Except alchemist are about potions, not pets.*snip*
Just as a side note, Alchemy/Alchemists were as much about potions as Fighters are about bows and arrows; potions were just one aspect of their wheelhouse of traits/skills. You're thinking of a Chemist, sans the 'Al' haha. Alchemists worked minerals, elements, materials, products AND chemicals into new versions of themselves. They were about iron into gold and inorganic into organic more than water into acid, in actual fact (pushes glasses up nose and strokes neck beard) the "pet" or rather homunculus (a creature traditionally created from an alchemical experiment), is more Alchemist than kindersurprise bag of potions.
But thats neither here nor there in relation to TCoE updates to the Artificer (Im just backin up my fellow UA'19 Alchemist fan, Star/Yurei).
Hjalmar Gunderson, Vuman Alchemist Plague Doctor in a HB Campaign, Post Netherese Invasion Cormyr (lvl20 retired) Godfrey, Autognome Butler in Ghosts of Saltmarsh into Spelljammer Grímr Skeggisson, Goliath Rune Knight in Rime of the Frostmaiden DM of two HB campaigns set in the same world.
Except alchemist are about potions, not pets.*snip*
Just as a side note, Alchemy/Alchemists were as much about potions as Fighters are about bows and arrows, they were one aspect of their wheelhouse of traits/skills. You're thinking of a Chemist, sans Al. Alchemists worked minerals, materials, and products AND chemicals into new versions of themselves. They were about iron into gold and inorganic into organic than water into acid, in actual fact (pushes glasses up nose and strokes neck beard) the "pet" or rather homunculus (a creature traditionally created from an alchemical expriemnt), is more Alchemist than kindersurprise potions.
But thats neither here nor there in relation to TCoE updates to the Artificer (Im just backin up my fellow UA'19 Alchemist fan, Star/Yurei).
As you were
That's...part of alchemy. It was as much philosophy as it was protoscience. And in addition to the transmutation of base metals into noble metals, alchemists also studied the creation of elixirs of immortality, the creation of panaceas (a School of Transmutation feature), and the invention of a universal solvent.
Homunculi, as they appear in RSL, are not the homunculi that first appeared in writings in the 16th century. Which is some 1,500 years after alchemy first came into the world. They were miniature people, not constructs. Clearly, the game designers are taking the homunculus in a different direction. As is their purview.
And I think a little randomness can be fun. I wish more people played Wild Magic sorcerers.
A somewhat subtle, yet absolutely key difference between Wild Magic and Shitty Wild Chemistry.
When one casts a spell as a Wild Sorcerer, they always get their spell. Whichever spell they cast always works; they never lose the thing they were actually seeking to do. They just get a flare of extra.
When one rolls on the Wild Chemistry table to see which cockamaimy "Experiment" they bothered to bring with them that day, they cannot ever get what they're actually seeking to obtain outside of blind-ass luck. One has to burn a spell slot, wildly inefficiently at any level above first, to actually get what one wants - and any given sorcerer has double the spell slots of an alchemist.
Yeah, but the alchemist doesn't have to worry about getting polymorphed, rendered unable to cast spells, or accidentally fireballing themselves and their allies (which can easily result in a TPK at low levels).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
As a reminder, Panzer: I've done more than most anybody else here to try and "fix" the Rising Alchemist. I put a month of my life into trying to work with people to create a Revised Alchemist that allowed the potion-garglers their Preshus Poshunz with improved benefits, while also granting those who wanted just a little bit of the actually-useful nature of the 2019 UA Alchemist back to have their way. Figuring out how to get the subclass to function properly in the homebrew editor, figuring out an Expanded Spell List that functioned well enough to slide with nothing but the piss-miserable spell selection in the basic Rules because unlike Wizards, players CANNOT use PHB spells in ESL class features if we want to share the work. I put a great deal of effort and experimentation into working with everybody who'd talk to me into building a Revised Alchemist that was actually playable.
DDB took it down, infracted me, and told me I couldn't use the Revised Alchemist I'd put together to do exactly what y'all are trying to do here, i.e. 'fix' the Alchemist, EVEN IN MY PRIVATE HOMEBREW GAMES because it was "too similar to published options" and I was apparently plagiarizing Wizards' work.
Heh. So call me a child all ye like. DDB made this particular grudge deeply personal. And I have learned via painful personal experience that no one and nothing is allowed to touch the Rising alchemist. It is apparently someone's Precious Baby and it must be used as-is now and forever. I thus reserve the right to call it exactly what it is - an awful hamfisted mess Wizards published because they ran out of time to create something worthwhile after a bunch of idiots with no concept of how D&D, characters, stories, or alchemy work decided that if they couldn't be discount store Emmett Brown they wouldn't buy Rising.
Cool story. But come on it's just a game. In fact, it's just one subclass of one class in the game. The way you carry on, you'd think that WOTC and DDB had broken into your house, shot your dog, and desecrated your wife's remains. People get that you're not happy. People who've never even been to DDB probably get that you're not happy at this point. But the fact that you bring up how mad you are at every opportunity, regardless of whether it's remotely on topic or not is not earning you sympathy points.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
When Eberron was published, and your DM saw you were unhappy with the changes to your subclass, why didn’t they allow you to continue playing your Alchemist the way it already was using the old version?
We were in the preparatory stages of the game, finalizing characters and getting everything squared away when Rising dropped. In point of fact, we'd actually decided to wait just a bit longer to get the 'official' rules for the artificer in the hopes that they'd clean up a few ambiguities from the UA document.
Which, for the most part, they did. Just...y'know, poorly.
My choice was to continue with the UA subclass, missing out entirely on the improvements to the core class made in Rising, or retrofit into the newly released Rising rules and say bubye to my Alchemist unless I could wunderkind a usable Alchemist subclass up in the builder kinda on the spot. The other players wanted to start, we'd already put the brakes on for me to play my special-snowflake thing, and I decided to just run with the battlesmith and cope rather than force people to wait longer whilst I dueled the homebrew builder. By the time I figured out my Revised Alchemist, Star was already committed to Battlesmithery. So...huzzah, I guess.
And all right. Fine, fine fine. It just burns my cookies beyond fiercely when I see all the people who WANTED the stupid Alchemist to be exactly what it turned into - a sad bad potion gargler that can't fight for spit and is worse than most any wizard or cleric at Team Support - start talking about 'fixing' it. I sit here all "...y'all HAD a good, solid, really cool and powerful Alchemist which was good at fighting and also good at Team Support. You told Wizards to go screw themselves and make it a potion gargler instead. Why are you complaining about it now, when you got exactly what you heckin' wanted at the cost of all the people who really liked the older version?"
Oh well. Have actually spent much of last night and a good chunk of this morning working on a new proposal for a homebrew subclass, my first attempt since the Revised Alchemist to make something worthwhile in this chassis. Perhaps that'll work out better for me. provided DDB doesn't infract me again for daring to use their homebrew tools.
Note that going on and on about how off topic something is is ALSO off topic. The quickest way to get people to drop a subject on an online forum is to first drop it yourself.
This is the part where I'd attempt to bring this post itself more on topic but I've already said pretty much everything about potential changes to the Artificer that I had intended to say...
Hmm... wait I know!
Something I'd love to see in Tasha's gumbo is would be the potential for customizations/improvements to the Homunculus Servant. Maybe like taking a long rest to swap out it's 30 foot flying speed with a swimming speed. Or a 15 foot burrow speed. Increase that utility.
I'm not expecting to see that at all, mind... But it'd be nice!
That wouldn't be a bad idea actually, Unclever. I don't remotely expect to see it myself, but even if my opinion of the Rising homunculus has turned around to some extent since the book dropped - not entirely, mind, but enough that my Battlesmith knows the infusion - I could definitely see it working better for a lot of artificers if one could tailor the homunculus to their specific needs. Alter the damage type of its attack, alter its 'extra' movement, perhaps even allow it to change out its Special Action for something else.
Again - not even remotely likely. But it'd be cool.
Odd how this thread made me review the early 2019 UA involving the Artificer, and reminded me of my feedback in the survey. I recall pointing out that the subclass options boiled down to being four flavors of pet classes. I was okay with the subclasses having their own flavor of construct companion, but there was an overwhelming investment in those subclasses identity being defined by the pet. I expressed that concern because it could have affected later subclass development, and that it might have been better to have a default construct that the subclasses could later alter to fit a role. Clearly, only part of that feedback was shared in comments.
Rereading this from start to finish was a Journey. I kept meaning to pop in and see what all the back and forth was about but life happened. So now that alchemist has been thoroughly debated, dissected and the general consensus has come to the conclusion that it is either a pile of hot garbage or perfectly fine as it is. Shall we move on to discussing a different subclass? Armorer perhaps? it's still in UA so there could be some changes there. Artilarist maybe? I personally like it and think its probably my favorite subclass. What about the Battlesmith? It's pretty great on its own.
If shield were to become a baseline spell what would you replace it within each subclass's list? I believe it should be baseline because most subclasses are getting it added to their spell lists. For Armorer: I honestly have no clue what i would add for the armorer, maybe sanctuary. I dont know its such a weird subclass. For Artilarist: I think that magic missile is onpoint for the flavor of this subclass, but considering its on the armorers spell list if I had to choose a backup i would probably go with chaos bolt.
For Battlesmith: Compelled Dual seems like a fitting addition, Its already balanced for a half caster. and not many classes have access to it. Searing smite would also be a nice trade out.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I really doubt that there's anything to be said about the Alchemist that hasn't already been said.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
To be fair, Jounichi, I was perfectly willing to be an adult over the Alchemist subclass. Until the Rising rules came out and rendered one of my favorite characters completely and utterly unplayable, forcing me to scramble to replace her with an ad-hoc spiritual successor that took most of a year and four additional levels to start feeling anywhere close to a valid replacement for my beloved, deceased Ana.
Wizards took one of my favorites, fed her to a wood chipper, and then tried to force-feed me the low-budget vegan version grown from peat moss in an Idaho high school chemistry lab. Wizards can kindly go perform an unmentionable act that would please the Traveler whilst getting my words redacted by a moderator. I was absolutely seeing-red, spitting-rage furious at the irreparable damage to the Rising alchemist, and I will NEVER forgive either the company for doing it or 'The Player Base' for providing the shitty, unfounded 'feedback' that compelled Wizards to do it.
Is it entirely relevant to this thread? Perhaps not. But if people truly hope Tasha's Allspice Soup Pot will "fix" the Alchemist? They can start by GIVING ME BACK MY SWORD, MY HOMUNCULUS, AND MY GOD DAMNED PRIDE AS A SCIENTIST
Please do not contact or message me.
Once again, you're grossly over-exaggerating the negatives and completely ignoring the positives.
I know how much it sucks when releases break a character that you made with UA content. The eberron races were heavily nerfed on release. That's the risk you take when you use UA content. However, that's no reason to completely shit on a perfectly fine subclass just because it's not the same as UA, especially on a thread that's talking about potential content of an upcoming book.
How to add tooltips on dndbeyond
Heh. To be fair, I was the first response in this thread, in which I was perfectly on topic. People talking about fixing the alchemist is beyond the scope of what they're doing in Tasha's Soup Pot and everybody knows it; Wizards has shown that they'd rather reprint an entire new "replacement" subclass than fix an existing terrible one. See: "Undead" warlock.
So if folks want to talk about how to "fix" the Alchemist? Well, we know how. Restore it to its UA 2019 state. That alchemist was awesome. It didn't need fixing. There was absolutely no need to turn it into a potion-gargling moron who doesn't bother stabilizing its formulae before using them in the field. The "POSHUNZ, NOT PETZ DX" people can go to TravelerCon, carve themselves a lovely Rumblecusp Dick Festival wooden drumdick, then eat it. And Wizards can join them.
Please do not contact or message me.
Except alchemist are about potions, not pets. If you want pets, play battle master or another class like ranger or wizard. Alchemist doesn't need to be fixed. Randomization is not inherently bad, especially in a game where most meaningful actions are decided with a die.
You're also just aggressively insulting anyone who has a different opinion, as well as the creators of this game, which is simply uncalled for.
How to add tooltips on dndbeyond
Just as a side note, Alchemy/Alchemists were as much about potions as Fighters are about bows and arrows; potions were just one aspect of their wheelhouse of traits/skills. You're thinking of a Chemist, sans the 'Al' haha. Alchemists worked minerals, elements, materials, products AND chemicals into new versions of themselves. They were about iron into gold and inorganic into organic more than water into acid, in actual fact (pushes glasses up nose and strokes neck beard) the "pet" or rather homunculus (a creature traditionally created from an alchemical experiment), is more Alchemist than kindersurprise bag of potions.
But thats neither here nor there in relation to TCoE updates to the Artificer (Im just backin up my fellow UA'19 Alchemist fan, Star/Yurei).
As you were
Hjalmar Gunderson, Vuman Alchemist Plague Doctor in a HB Campaign, Post Netherese Invasion Cormyr (lvl20 retired)
Godfrey, Autognome Butler in Ghosts of Saltmarsh into Spelljammer
Grímr Skeggisson, Goliath Rune Knight in Rime of the Frostmaiden
DM of two HB campaigns set in the same world.
That's...part of alchemy. It was as much philosophy as it was protoscience. And in addition to the transmutation of base metals into noble metals, alchemists also studied the creation of elixirs of immortality, the creation of panaceas (a School of Transmutation feature), and the invention of a universal solvent.
Homunculi, as they appear in RSL, are not the homunculi that first appeared in writings in the 16th century. Which is some 1,500 years after alchemy first came into the world. They were miniature people, not constructs. Clearly, the game designers are taking the homunculus in a different direction. As is their purview.
And I think a little randomness can be fun. I wish more people played Wild Magic sorcerers.
More people would probably be inclined toward Wild Mages if their class features were more useful and less detrimental.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A somewhat subtle, yet absolutely key difference between Wild Magic and Shitty Wild Chemistry.
When one casts a spell as a Wild Sorcerer, they always get their spell. Whichever spell they cast always works; they never lose the thing they were actually seeking to do. They just get a flare of extra.
When one rolls on the Wild Chemistry table to see which cockamaimy "Experiment" they bothered to bring with them that day, they cannot ever get what they're actually seeking to obtain outside of blind-ass luck. One has to burn a spell slot, wildly inefficiently at any level above first, to actually get what one wants - and any given sorcerer has double the spell slots of an alchemist.
Please do not contact or message me.
Yeah, but the alchemist doesn't have to worry about getting polymorphed, rendered unable to cast spells, or accidentally fireballing themselves and their allies (which can easily result in a TPK at low levels).
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
As a reminder, Panzer: I've done more than most anybody else here to try and "fix" the Rising Alchemist. I put a month of my life into trying to work with people to create a Revised Alchemist that allowed the potion-garglers their Preshus Poshunz with improved benefits, while also granting those who wanted just a little bit of the actually-useful nature of the 2019 UA Alchemist back to have their way. Figuring out how to get the subclass to function properly in the homebrew editor, figuring out an Expanded Spell List that functioned well enough to slide with nothing but the piss-miserable spell selection in the basic Rules because unlike Wizards, players CANNOT use PHB spells in ESL class features if we want to share the work. I put a great deal of effort and experimentation into working with everybody who'd talk to me into building a Revised Alchemist that was actually playable.
DDB took it down, infracted me, and told me I couldn't use the Revised Alchemist I'd put together to do exactly what y'all are trying to do here, i.e. 'fix' the Alchemist, EVEN IN MY PRIVATE HOMEBREW GAMES because it was "too similar to published options" and I was apparently plagiarizing Wizards' work.
Heh. So call me a child all ye like. DDB made this particular grudge deeply personal. And I have learned via painful personal experience that no one and nothing is allowed to touch the Rising alchemist. It is apparently someone's Precious Baby and it must be used as-is now and forever. I thus reserve the right to call it exactly what it is - an awful hamfisted mess Wizards published because they ran out of time to create something worthwhile after a bunch of idiots with no concept of how D&D, characters, stories, or alchemy work decided that if they couldn't be discount store Emmett Brown they wouldn't buy Rising.
Please do not contact or message me.
Cool story. But come on it's just a game. In fact, it's just one subclass of one class in the game. The way you carry on, you'd think that WOTC and DDB had broken into your house, shot your dog, and desecrated your wife's remains. People get that you're not happy. People who've never even been to DDB probably get that you're not happy at this point. But the fact that you bring up how mad you are at every opportunity, regardless of whether it's remotely on topic or not is not earning you sympathy points.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yurei,
When Eberron was published, and your DM saw you were unhappy with the changes to your subclass, why didn’t they allow you to continue playing your Alchemist the way it already was using the old version?
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
We were in the preparatory stages of the game, finalizing characters and getting everything squared away when Rising dropped. In point of fact, we'd actually decided to wait just a bit longer to get the 'official' rules for the artificer in the hopes that they'd clean up a few ambiguities from the UA document.
Which, for the most part, they did. Just...y'know, poorly.
My choice was to continue with the UA subclass, missing out entirely on the improvements to the core class made in Rising, or retrofit into the newly released Rising rules and say bubye to my Alchemist unless I could wunderkind a usable Alchemist subclass up in the builder kinda on the spot. The other players wanted to start, we'd already put the brakes on for me to play my special-snowflake thing, and I decided to just run with the battlesmith and cope rather than force people to wait longer whilst I dueled the homebrew builder. By the time I figured out my Revised Alchemist, Star was already committed to Battlesmithery. So...huzzah, I guess.
And all right. Fine, fine fine. It just burns my cookies beyond fiercely when I see all the people who WANTED the stupid Alchemist to be exactly what it turned into - a sad bad potion gargler that can't fight for spit and is worse than most any wizard or cleric at Team Support - start talking about 'fixing' it. I sit here all "...y'all HAD a good, solid, really cool and powerful Alchemist which was good at fighting and also good at Team Support. You told Wizards to go screw themselves and make it a potion gargler instead. Why are you complaining about it now, when you got exactly what you heckin' wanted at the cost of all the people who really liked the older version?"
Oh well. Have actually spent much of last night and a good chunk of this morning working on a new proposal for a homebrew subclass, my first attempt since the Revised Alchemist to make something worthwhile in this chassis. Perhaps that'll work out better for me. provided DDB doesn't infract me again for daring to use their homebrew tools.
Please do not contact or message me.
Note that going on and on about how off topic something is is ALSO off topic.
The quickest way to get people to drop a subject on an online forum is to first drop it yourself.
This is the part where I'd attempt to bring this post itself more on topic but I've already said pretty much everything about potential changes to the Artificer that I had intended to say...
Hmm... wait I know!
Something I'd love to see in Tasha's gumbo is would be the potential for customizations/improvements to the Homunculus Servant.
Maybe like taking a long rest to swap out it's 30 foot flying speed with a swimming speed. Or a 15 foot burrow speed. Increase that utility.
I'm not expecting to see that at all, mind... But it'd be nice!
That wouldn't be a bad idea actually, Unclever. I don't remotely expect to see it myself, but even if my opinion of the Rising homunculus has turned around to some extent since the book dropped - not entirely, mind, but enough that my Battlesmith knows the infusion - I could definitely see it working better for a lot of artificers if one could tailor the homunculus to their specific needs. Alter the damage type of its attack, alter its 'extra' movement, perhaps even allow it to change out its Special Action for something else.
Again - not even remotely likely. But it'd be cool.
Please do not contact or message me.
It would be cool.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Odd how this thread made me review the early 2019 UA involving the Artificer, and reminded me of my feedback in the survey. I recall pointing out that the subclass options boiled down to being four flavors of pet classes. I was okay with the subclasses having their own flavor of construct companion, but there was an overwhelming investment in those subclasses identity being defined by the pet. I expressed that concern because it could have affected later subclass development, and that it might have been better to have a default construct that the subclasses could later alter to fit a role. Clearly, only part of that feedback was shared in comments.
Rereading this from start to finish was a Journey.
I kept meaning to pop in and see what all the back and forth was about but life happened.
So now that alchemist has been thoroughly debated, dissected and the general consensus has come to the conclusion that it is either a pile of hot garbage or perfectly fine as it is.
Shall we move on to discussing a different subclass?
Armorer perhaps? it's still in UA so there could be some changes there.
Artilarist maybe? I personally like it and think its probably my favorite subclass.
What about the Battlesmith? It's pretty great on its own.
If shield were to become a baseline spell what would you replace it within each subclass's list? I believe it should be baseline because most subclasses are getting it added to their spell lists.
For Armorer: I honestly have no clue what i would add for the armorer, maybe sanctuary. I dont know its such a weird subclass.
For Artilarist: I think that magic missile is onpoint for the flavor of this subclass, but considering its on the armorers spell list if I had to choose a backup i would probably go with chaos bolt.
For Battlesmith: Compelled Dual seems like a fitting addition, Its already balanced for a half caster. and not many classes have access to it. Searing smite would also be a nice trade out.