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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8968238" data-attributes="member: 7635">You're creating the Alchemist problem, so named after the Pathfinder class. The alchemist class has built around creating potions (that could mimic spell effects) and bombs, which were their major attack action. In theory, there should be nothing stopping the alchemist from stockpiling both in their free time, giving them to party members, and using them freely until stock is gone. Spend a week and make 100 bombs, each doing 5d6 damage, and give them to every PC and npc henchman you can find? That's game breaking. It would be the Batman Wizard problem on crack. So Paizo mumbled something about using alchemy on the fly and universal reagents and alchemical magic to justify limiting bombs per day and only being usable by the alchemist (and being a dud in other's hands) and mixing potions on the fly but them having a shelf-life of hours (or until you make a different potion). Essentially, replace bombs with "arcane bolt" and potions with spells and you see the alchemist was just casting magic under a different name and paint color. There was fundamentally no difference in the "non-spellcasting" alchemist and the wizard as far as functional abilities and limits. Magic under a different name.All the "nonmagical" rangers I've seen fall under the same problem, more or less. The poultices would essentially be cure wounds spells (or other medical effects) under a different name. A ranger couldn't spend a week making hundreds of the things and using them or selling them. You'd have to start placing limits on how many they can make per day and how long they last and how many they can carry and who is allowed to use or benefit from them. You know, the limitations of spellcasting. This time wrapped in kingsfoil and mint. (There is also the question of why only rangers know this secret to poultices, and why a druid or witch isn't familiar enough with herbcraft to do the same. Of course, the alchemist answered that by saying alchemy tapped into latent magic in the alchemist, so the ranger could use the same excuse. Poultices are ranger magic. So much for nonmagical). At the end of the day, the fight over the ranger ends up dividing between three camps: completely nonmagical (effectively being a fighter/rogue hybrid with survival skills), a spellcasting ranger (the ranger more or less since 3e) and a "magical" ranger that does magical things, but doesn't use spells but some system that acts like spells but isn't called that so it's cool.</blockquote>

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