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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8064032" data-attributes="member: 75787">Ranged shooters definitely are penalized for being a safe distance from the action -- I'm the cleric in our team, and I rarely need to pay attention to her. So she doesn't cost me actions for her damage, unlike the front-line fighters who need constant attention!For DPS, the auto-splash damage and ability to flat-foot the opposition for everyone, combined with often being able to focus on vulnerabilities, is where they need to focus. If there are 3+ enemies in a medium sized room, the alchemist will do as much damage as our optimized barbarian, especially when hasted. It's also more dependable damage.The big thing about the alchemist is that they don't need gear. Our barbarian, the main hitter, is the only one in our group to get the +3 prof rune. He was the first to get the keen rune and, actually, pretty much the first to grab all the good melee runes. The alchemist is effective with pretty much nothing, so another benefit to having them in the party is that they are very cheap to optimize! The bad part is that they are pretty boring, as there's not much equipment they need. On the other hand, choice of 12+ items to throw is a lot, and the ability to do 60' ranged heals as one action is EXCELLENT!Our alchemist is not interested in the various mutagens that allow all sorts of more odd effects, like empowering some stats at the cost of others, but I think that if you were interested in them, you might get a lot of flexibility from them.In terms of excelling, the alchemist is an all-rounder mostly. They will be your go-to character for INT-based knowledge skills, pretty much nailing them alway, but I think they should basically appeal to someone who wants an all-rounder who is never in a lot of danger and always helpful.Plus being the best DPS character in a fight against a half-dozen invisible high-AC dark dwarves ("hey guy-with-see-invisible -- where do I throw this extended-splash fire bomb? I can get four in that square square? OK, I do splash four times and do 40 damage to each of them") where the barbarian struggled ("I make four attacks. The first would have hit but I failed the 50-50 roll, the second hits and 3 and 4 are whiffs. I hit once for 70")</blockquote>

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