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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8498954" data-attributes="member: 907">I agree that balancing alchemists can be an issue, because they can use all their daily resources to make their most powerful items, unlike casters who get a small number of spells at each level up to their highest, and because of the way they can hold some resources back for Quick Alchemy. But the way they have tried to balance this is by basically not giving alchemists any fun toys at mid-to-high-level. They just get upgrades to the things they already do. So for example, you have the lesser cheetah's elixir at 1st level that gives you +5 foot speed for 1 minute, moderate at 5th that gives you +10 for 10 minutes, and greater at 9th that gives you +10 for 1 hour. Meanwhile, casters have longstrider that gives them +10 foot speed for 1 hour as a 1st level spell, or for 8 hours as a 2nd level spell. If you look at the transportation options a caster gets at 9th level, we see things like tree stride or shadow walk. Casters can give their whole party water breathing for an hour as a 2nd level spell, while alchemists don't get to provide water breathing until 12th level (as an improvement on the elixir that gives you a Swim speed).The core problem with alchemists is, well, alchemy. In PF1, alchemists were basically casters on par with bards (maxing out at 6th level spells), with bombs and mutagens as resources on top of their regular elixirs. This meant that their abilities could be balanced as spells, and in many cases were just spells in elixir form. But in PF2, alchemy is just stuff anyone can buy, and alchemists just get to make some of it for free instead of going through the normal crafting rules.</blockquote>

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