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View Full Version : [D&D 4e] Alchemist: Making it Worthwhile



Townopolis
2009-05-11, 01:13 AM
The simplest way to make the Alchemist feat worthwhile, it seems, is to reduce the component cost of making items with it. The question, then, is by how much?

How much would you reduce the cost of making items with the alchemist feat in order to make it a worthwhile investment of a feat slot and money for the characters using it? The items are so darn expensive, they're not even worth using if you could buy them at cost without the feat.

Considering that a clearwater tablet costs 20gp to make, and the purify water ritual costs only 10gp (and purifies a lot more water so long as your arcana check doesn't suck), I'd venture a 50% reduction in the cost to create alchemical items might be appropriate, but there are people on this board much better at this sort of thing than I.

Heck, some of you might have already playtested an alchemy fix.

Kurald Galain
2009-05-11, 08:59 AM
The simplest way to make the Alchemist feat worthwhile, it seems, is to reduce the component cost of making items with it. The question, then, is by how much?
I'm afraid that's not really the issue. Almost without exception, alchemy items are also severely underpowered. This is intentional, because they aren't intended to be better than actual Character Powers; but as a result, they aren't very usable.

I would say that the 4E approach to alchemy is to build a regular wizard (for instance) and pretend that instead of casting spells, he is throwing alchemical concoctions around.

Ozreth
2010-01-27, 01:48 PM
Just found out about alchemy, seems like it could be awesome, minus the problems mentioned above. Has this been changed in any of the errata?