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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6047523" data-attributes="member: 1165">Wild Shape is still broken, although only in one aspect, namely AC. (Otherwise it's confusing and takes lots of system mastery.) Your AC will suck, unless you get wild shaped armor, which is a +3 armor bonus.I'm playing an 8th-level druid, who due to an alternate path can turn into a Huge bear. His AC is probably too high due to the wild armor (spent something like 90% of character wealth on that, because casters are less item-dependent than other classes), but without it would have an AC score rivaling that of a 1st-level monk. (Beast Form III, if turning into a Huge animal, gives -4 Dex and a -2 size penalty to AC. It gives back +6 natural armor, basically matching out, but you can't wear armor. Or, I suppose, you could buy expensive non-enhanced barding that you somehow need to transport in (demi)human form and then have someone else spend minutes putting it on whenever you wildshape.)Even worse might be the barbarian armored hulk alternate path, taking away a barbarian's only real weakness, their low AC.Or maybe worse is the alchemist. It's not core, thank Gozreh, and I'm finding I have a real distaste for it. You can drink a mutagen to boost Strength (a new or untyped bonus) for a long period of time. This stacks with the Bull's Strength potion you can make (but only for yourself, I guess alchemists are supposed to be selfish), you can use another potion to enlarge yourself (+2 Strength, significant non-ability-score based combat bonuses like reach), and of course you can take the Feral Mutagen feat that gives you three natural attacks. All of this stacks with rage, and isn't particularly level-based, so you can just dip the alchemist. Paizo even has a "ragechemist" path, so obviously they saw this coming.Having run 4e before my current Kingmaker campaign (I'm still running 4e and am playing in Kingmaker) my distaste only grew. The class seems like a "striker" but even then the powers cover too big an area. In addition to everything I mentioned above you also get bombs. And maybe poisons. I'm not sure; at one point three PCs were multiclassed alchemists and all had different paths, so each had to give up some alchemist abilities in exchange for other ones. The vivisectionist, for instance, gave up bombs in order to gain sneak attack, which works real well when you're 10 feet tall and have a spear that now has 15 feet of reach.</blockquote>

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