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The NEW Alchemist Class 🐸💣 for D&D 5e by Taron "Indestructoboy" Pounds - Review and How to Play
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Sep 27, 2022
We finally have a proper Alchemist for D&D 5e that doesn't hand-wave the alchemy with spellcasting! This martial blaster class is sure to delight any player who wants to use item crafting in clever ways. 💥Preview and buy the Alchemist class on the DMs Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/401361/The-Alchemist-Class?affiliate_id=3063449 ⏰Time Stamps: 00:00 What is the Alchemist class? 02:14 How to play an Alchemist 03:46 Tier-1 Alchemist gameplay 07:46 Tier-2 Alchemist gameplay 08:58 High-level Alchemist gameplay 11:31 Animator homunculus subclass 15:05 Apothecary healer subclass 17:15 Fulminate bomber subclass 19:28 Salbenist oiled blade subclass 21:13 Toxicologist poisoner subclass 23:39 New items, 5e item rules, and supplements 26:24 My favorite NEW ITEMS 30:25 List of material components 30:59 Alchemist NPC statblocks 31:19 Support expert 3rd-party content
View Video Transcript
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Hey everybody, today I'm taking a look at a brand new class for D&D 5th edition
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It's the Alchemist by Terran Indestructo Boy Pounds, a fellow YouTuber. I've really become a fan of Terran's work because I've noticed a lot of third-party content
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focuses on quantity over quality, but Terran is definitely a pro designer
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He is a quality kind of designer. This is not his first DM's Guild new class design, but it's the first one that I've really
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engaged with. Full disclosure, I've listened to his live streams when he was designing it. I was part of
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the playtest and feedback phase on his Discord. So I'm credited with helping with the playtesting and the
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line editing. It's very nice of him to credit me. I did so out of the interest of my heart and not
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because he paid me. And so even though this might seem like a sponsored review, it is not. It's just
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me wanting to review it and go over it. I figured I put in the time to learn it when I was going through it
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with playtesting and everything. I might as well share it with all of you so that you know how cool this
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class is. Now, first of all, I want to point out that this alchemist is supposed to be not
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magical. It's supposed to be a counterpoint to the artificer that fell short with a lot of
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players' fantasy of wanting to play someone who got ingredients and made potions and concoctions
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and it was, and using those items and not just casting spells flavored to be artifice
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The artificer itself has an alchemist subclass that doesn't really feel like an alchemist
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I'm on record saying that the thief rogue feels more like an alchemist than the alchemist
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artificer. But Terran's alchemist class here feels like what I want in an alchemist. It's got that
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rustic RPG feel. It uses existing 5E mechanics and doesn't try to ignore them or
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circumvent them. He really did his homework and this PDF includes a lot of content to go over
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the rules as they are and kind of summarize them from different books so that you're not just going
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in blind. I'm very impressed with his thoroughness and the end result of this class. So let's take a look at it
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This class is available on the Dungeon Masters Guild. I'll provide an affiliate link down below, so if you do buy it, it's $999 currently
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I would get a small cut of that sale, which is always nice
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So the more you want to support our channel and the more you want to support Taryn for his class
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and you want to support quality third-party creation, definitely go check it out and give it a buy
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So here he goes into the general vibe of this alchemist, what it generally looks like to play this kind of alchemist
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The actions and bonus actions you'll probably be using in combat. Notice the action is use an object, not attack
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Bonus action is a special ability called Catalyze. You're going to probably be something of a midliner
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because your range isn't super high for these sorts of potions and concoctions
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but you're not a melee user, though one of the subclasses does use melee, so we'll get to that
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So let's go through here. Creating an alchemist, there's a general notes. It's a D8 class, so not quite wizard-sour-level
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more like a warlock, rogue, monk sort of feel. You got five ASIs, so they're pretty standard
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It's an intelligence-based character that isn't a wizard, so that's always good to see. Light armor, simple weapons, plus blow guns
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because that just kind of feels like you can do some fun with blow guns with your poisons, perhaps
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because there is a poison subclasses here. Saving throw proficiencies are constitution and intelligence
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There's multi-classing rules here where you have to have at least a 13 in intelligence. So I like that Taryn doesn't just ignore the fact that multi-classing is a thing
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Sometimes I see classes designed where they take no account for multi-classing and how you can do some
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pretty crazy combinations. But I've seen Taryn actively change his designs based
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on realizing certain synergies with certain multi-classes that he didn't want to be possible
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So he's very mindful like that. So going through here, I've highlighted things in yellow that are kind of mechanical clarifications
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how many times you can use it, how it works with the rules. And the blue is very much like this is the sort of mechanic that is going to define the way you
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play the class. I'm not going to read all of these verbatim. You can go check out the preview if you want to do that
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But I will sum up what makes them cool. So experimentalist adept makes it so that you can provide five gold worth of raw material
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to craft any alchemical item you know the formula for that is worth 50 gold or less
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So part of this class is kind of like a wizard learning spells. You learn alchemical item formulas and you can craft them much cheaper than they would normally be
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because many of them are like 25, 50 gold if you were to buy them with the quoted prices in the
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player's handbook or whatever book they come from. You can craft them for five gold and you can craft them during long rest
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There's a certain amount that you can do based on your intelligence modifier and your alchemist level
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here and you basically have expertise in alchemist supplies. So going over here, you know a few basic
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formulas, which are acid, alchemist fire, antitoxin, basic oil, perfume, soap, and then two more of
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your choice, and each time you get a level, you'll learn another formula. You can also find
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potions and alchemical items to learn their formulas, so very much like wizards can find scrolls
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or other wizards spellbooks and learn from those things, the spells. You can learn alchemical
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items by finding them. And then catalyze here gives you a bonus action for your actionum
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economy that allows you to quickly create an alchemical item that has a very short shelf life of
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one minute, basically only to be used in combat. And I highlight red here so that you can see
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what is the limitation on the ability. So you have crafting of alchemical items, and you also have
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the ability to very quickly craft them in combat as a bonus action, though you will not be able
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to use them after one minute. They become benign. And then we're going to enhance our alchemist
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abilities with potency. But it's kind of like how a crossbow expert makes it so you don't have disadvantage on people being next to you making those range attacks. You will not have
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disadvantage on your alchemical items when people are right next to you. And you can throw them
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double as far. So even though you're kind of designed to be a midliner, some of your items that
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normally say that you could only throw them like 20 feet, for example, you can do 40 feet so you can
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get a little bit more of a distance bump. And then right here, you can use your intelligence modifier for making those attack roles with alchemical items. So you don't have to be a mad class with
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multiple ability score dependency. You can make intelligence your attacking modifier because you are
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smart, you're placing things right, you're timing it right, and you're very skilled at using your alchemical items. Additionally, if there's an item that has a DC, and often alchemical items have a
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set DC that doesn't scale throughout the game, it's like 10, and it never becomes anything but 10 or 12 or 14
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or whatever, but this allows you to use your alchemy save DC with your proficiency and intelligence
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modifier for those items instead of just using their flat DC that is in their item description
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And then at third level, you get Eureka, which is another important one for how this plays. You enhance
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catalyze the bonus action you can use to also create a potion with a rarity of common that you know
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the formula for and you will actually be able to make more rare potions as you level up. So alchemical
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items are the core of the class and then you get the supplement of potions and being able to craft
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potions along the way. Really, you've always been able to craft potions with the crafting rules of
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5E, which are not the best. So I highly recommend checking out my wife Opel's video and article
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about crafting magic items. It's very helpful for having all that information in one place
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that when you use your Rika, it is also including catalyzed because you're using the same bonus
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action as catalyzed. So you have the same limitations of raw materials and everything. And it still does
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last one minute. So the potions, you can't just churn out potions all day. You have to use it quickly within
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one minute, which later will be raised to 10 minutes, but for now one minute. Also at level three
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Taryn realized that the thief rogue has an ability to use an object as a bonus action
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which is a big deal for using alchemical items because the thief rogue condition out as a bonus action
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and then still use an action. So to enable this class to do the similar thing
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this class has methodical efficiency to use a bonus action for the use-an-object action
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So you could potentially throw an alchemical item as your action and as your bonus action at level three
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Which is a bigger damage bump than a lot of people realize. If you look at my Thief Rogue DPR
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that's one of the kings of third level because of how good it is to just get a bonus action attack reliably
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as long as you have an item at level three without any feats or anything. Moving down here
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I think the next big one that you get is a level five that catalyze goes to 10 minutes like I mentioned, and then a level 7 mix
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makes it so if you have two alchemical items or potions in hand and they're not the same
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you can use your bonus action of catalyze, again utilizing the same limitations of
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catalyze to safely combine them. So you can take alchemist's fire that does damage over time
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of fire as it burns someone, combine it with a vial of acid so that when they get hit
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they take the acid damage the 2D6 from basic acid plus your intelligence modifier from the impact so 2d6 plus let say four at this level And then they burning with 1D4 fire damage every turn until they put out the Alchemist fire
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Keep in mind, these do lose their potency at this level after 10 minutes as normal
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You could just use your action and your bonus action to throw both of them separately
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You don't have to combine them. You basically get the same effect or you even might do less damage this way
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But if you have a moment in combat, mixing them is a good way to keep your actioning
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Economy efficient if you're not making an attack on a certain turn with your alchemical items
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And some of them will have greater potential when combined together as opposed to a part
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So just keep that in mind. You really want to make things in the right moments so that you can prepare for when you can do a big blast
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with mixing certain alchemical items. All right, moving down here, yeah, your volatile potency
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This is basically you being able to keep up with damage output at higher levels by giving you some more damage dice
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When you're using a potion for healing or you're rolling damage for an alchemical item, you're going to be adding more dice of whatever dice you're using
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and then that will grow again at level 17. So there is a damage scaling mechanic to this
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Beyond just third level when you gained a bonus action to use an object, you also get scaling dice to keep your DPR increasing
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And then going down here, you can see some more fantastic art. I really like this, and you get a philosopher's stone
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You create it over the course of seven days, and you can use it to replace any material components for any spell
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So you're not spell casting yourself, but you can help an ally cast a spell by
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making your philosopher's stone negate that you even need a material component
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Now, for some spells, you're going to have to figure out what that means, like magic jar. It says the jar is part of casting the spell, but also the spell's description and how it functions after casting it
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Requires a jar or some kind of vessel. So similar to the wish spell, your DM will still need to figure out what a spell does when you negate the need to have material components
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Doing this does consume the philosopher stone, and then you have to take another seven days to create it
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So keep in mind, this can be used to help your allies raise someone from the dead by negating the need for diamonds
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Simmons, force-cage someone without needing rubies. So you can save your party a lot of hassle and
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gold by using your philosopher's stone instead for those sorts of things. It also makes you immune
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a disease while you're within a mile of your philosopher's stone. You can't be aged naturally or
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magically. So it's cool that you can stop aging essentially. And you can also summon some alchemical
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item that costs 50 gold or less once per long rest. So you can summon up an alchemical item that
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you need in a moment and then when you long rest again, you can do it again. So you can
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poof things into existence. So some of these start to feel a little. little bit magical, let's say, but you're still not like spell casting. Alchemy inherently has
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some magic to it, right? And so as you get really good at it, kind of like full metal alchemist
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which I'm wearing a shirt for, a Mestris military, if you didn't know, and that sort of stuff
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So it's magic, but it's not spellcasting, Vancey and magic. Then at level 18, you can create
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a potion with your Eureka feature that is very rare, which has some very cool options for you
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You can make people super strong, for example. Then at level 20, Big Bang, basically when you roll
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initiative before anyone actually gets a turn, you can use an object to toss an item at somebody
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So it's kind of like the Thief Rogue where you get a free turn in the first round of combat, but instead of it being an extra turn, you get to use an object when initiative is rolled
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No action required. You just quickly toss something out when initiative is rolled before anyone gets a turn
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I hope you can see how Terran has accounted for the way the game works currently
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Let's check out the subclasses that this class has. The first one is the animator
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This sort of alchemist utilizes primordial alchemy to create little constructs that are alive
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And let's go down here and look at the picture. You can see that they obey your telepathic commands, no action acquired by you
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And this basically works like the artificer's homunculus infusion that they can do
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It's a tiny construct with a little bit of flight, immune to poison damage and the poison condition
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immune to exhaustion, so it can go around all day and all night without getting tired
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It can keep watch for you, all that sort of stuff. It has an evasion mechanic, and you can infuse it with material components worth five gold to enhance it
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You can give it acid spit. Eagle vision for perception, fur of the bat, for blind sight
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And keep in mind, if you are a small alchemist, if your size is small, like if you're a herringon that chose to be small instead of a medium size
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this homunculus is tiny, so it can technically grapple you and lift you up into the air with its flight
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It's like you have a really slow flying speed because it's going to be moving at half speed 15 feet
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as it carries you around. You might wonder how encumbrance works, but technically the rules of 5E
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say that grappling is based on size, not encumbrance and strength level. So you're a little
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homunculus with its flight, as long as you are within one size larger of it, so small or tiny
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it can lift you up into the air by grappling you and just moving at half speed per the pulling and
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pushing while grappling moves. So you can cast the animate dead spell. We're going to think of it as
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alchemy and not a spell because you're not really using spell slots and you're not raising a dead
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creature you can actually only cast this as a ritual which is a perk you don't have to rely on spell slots
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the way it works is you just need a drop of blood a piece of flesh and a pinch of bone dust as raw
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materials and you use that in the ritual to create a skeleton or zombie so you don't have to raise
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an actual body up you just need like components of a body you treat it as a construct not undead
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you give it a HP boost based on your alchemist level and you have telepathy with it and you can only do
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this one so you can't have a whole army of ritually casted animated constructs. You can only have
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one at a time. So you can have your homunculus at level two and your animated little buddy at level six
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So you can have two little buddies. At level 10, you get Life Stitcher, which enhances the abilities
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you got earlier to enhance your homunculus. So more damage to the acid spit, perception, expertise
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and basically a fly-by effect. It won't provoke opportunity attacks as it flies by
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You can give it the leech attack too if you want to fly by, bite somebody, and leach some life from them
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This is my favorite part right here, level 14, contemptible chimera. You take your animate dead construct buddy and your homunculus buddy, and you mash them into one creature
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And what do you get? You get a souped up flesh golem. That's right
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You get a golem. And I say it's souped up because everything that your homunculus could do, it can do
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It has the fly speed, telepathic bond, and anything you gave it through your zoetic theory ability
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So your flesh golem can have acid breath, eagle vision, fly by
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or if you don't want it to fly, you can give it the climbing speed. I think this is pretty rad. Having a flesh golem on your side that you don't have to use your action economy to command
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you just telepathically tell it what to do, and it can fly up above and spass it at people
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It's very durable, and the flesh column itself comes with some downsides. If it gets hurt with fire, it can go berserk and stuff like that
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But it's a very tough monster to have on your side. And then you soup it up even better because you're an animator
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and it's pretty amazing what you can do. This is one of my favorite design choices in the whole document, is this contemptible chimera
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It really makes me want to play an animator specifically. Moving on down here, we have the apothecary, the healer, the medicinal herbs
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You can take five gold worth of components to enhance the alchemical item or potion you make that restores hit points, so you heal better
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These two are my favorite that I marked in blue, powdered silver. The next time the consumer makes a saving throw within the next minute, they can roll a D4 and add the number to the same
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And then troll's blood. You can give someone a regeneration of one hit point per turn for one minute
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So for five gold, you're essentially making your healing potion heal for a flat 10 hit points more
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outside of combat or 10 over time in combat, but it stops working if you take astor fire damage
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just like a troll. So troll's blood makes sense. Level 6, you get sweet sucker. When a creature consumes an alchemical item or potion, you administer
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or create that restores hit points, the first healing role of the item gains a bonus equal to your
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intelligence modifier. You also get advantage on medicine checks to stabilize creatures
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All right, level 10, panacea. So the level two features you got, they're going to be
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improved now. So now I like the powder gems feature because it makes it so. If someone is
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inflicted by any condition, not just poison or disease, that a successful saving throw at end
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when you administer your potion to heal them, they get to attempt that saving throw immediately
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So you could potentially stop them from being paralyzed and they don't have to lose a turn
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because you heal them and you get them to shake it off sooner from your healing
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Powdered silver goes from 1D4 on the next sitting throw within a minute to 2D4 and Troll blood goes to two hit points at the start of their turns for one minute and it can restore severed body parts I like to do lingering injuries and I been known to have player characters lose limbs and they often need to learn regenerate or find someone who knows that
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spell. But now, at level 10, you can restore those limbs. At level 14, you get the ability to make a
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potion that is basically a revivify, but the rivify can have been anytime in the last hour
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instead of last minute, and you can save someone a spell slot, and if you die, your allies can
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take it out of your bag to revive you. So like when the cleric dies, then, and your party freaks out
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and says, oh no, who's going to revivify the cleric? They were the person who cast Revivify
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You actually don't have that problem because you just need the item on you and anyone can administer
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it to raise someone from the dead. Next subclass is the Fulminare. This is your bomber. And I love this art of this frog. I love
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all the art in this, but this frog, I've just heard so many people love this. Everyone, when they see
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Maxwell's art that was commissioned for Terran's. PDF here. Just love this bomber frog. So again, you can do five gold to make your items stronger
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You can add quartz. When a creature takes damage from an item, it becomes dazed until the end of the
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turn, the current turn. Keep that in mind. While dazed, the creature must succeed on a constitution's
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saving throw before it makes an attack or the attack misses. On a success, the target is no longer dazed
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So normally you would use this on your turn, and only during your turn is that creature dazed
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This will be improved later, but this can be usable for avoiding opportunity attacks
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Or you could use the ready action to throw a bomb at someone at the start of their turn
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so then when they're about to attack someone, they have to make a Constitution saving throw to attack
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Constitution isn't the best one, because often Constitution is strong for those who are making attacks
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But yeah, that's quartz. And then Salt Peter, Salt Petter. It basically takes a single target item and makes it an area of effect item
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the 10-foot radius, essentially, and a dexterity saving throw. So you can make alchemist fire be an actual bomb that hits a bunch of creatures in an area
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and lights them all on fire until they put out the fire. Again, definitely check out the PDF and find all the options here
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I'm just highlighting my favorites. And hit the deck is kind of like rogue evasion
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but instead of just avoiding damage, you use your reaction to move your speed
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and potentially get out of the area of danger. And if you do, you avoid the effect
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So it's kind of like what rogues probably should have been, where they make deck saves and they just can take no damage or take half damage
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This is you use your reaction to potentially get out of the range of the area of effect you're trying to save against
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Then chemical warfare here, nutshells, the area of effect increases to 15 feet instead of 10
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and it deals double damage to objects and structures. You can really blow up some buildings now. The dazed effect that you have with quartz ends until the end of your next turn
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So for the full round, unless they save on the con save, they will be dazed
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If they save on the con save, it ends like right then. Salt Peter makes a single target into an area effect that goes from 10 to 15 feet
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So yeah, and then it blows things up better. a mad bomber type of character
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You know, very fun. And then last, I think this is pronounced
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Salbinist. You basically are like a blade singer and that you have a blade
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but you're not magical and you don't dance. You apply oil to your metal blades and the oil like sinks
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in giving it a sort of magical effect and you can easily combust it into fire and different effects
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because there's a few different oils that were created for this subclass. Again, we're going to get into some of the items later
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some of my favorites. So this is the melee build. You gain proficiency with medium, armor, and martial
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weapons that lack the heavier two-handed properties. You have anointed blade. When you attack
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with the anointed weapon, you can use intelligence for attack and damage. When you equip the
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anointed weapon, you can will the oil absorbed into it to coat it, so you can kind of summon
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the oil out of it that you coated in earlier. There's this empowered oil within the blade
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that you can choose to have kind of sweat out of the blade and give you more potent effects
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in battle. Level 60 to get extra attack. We're all pretty used to that. At level 10, all-consuming flame, I think this is so cool
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When you take damage of the same type dealt by the oil, anointing your weapon, so if you have a fire oil and you take fire damage, you can use a reaction to reduce the damage to zero
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And when you do, you regain a number of hit points equal to total damage reduced
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So you take a fireball that was going to hit you, you absorb it to take no damage, and you say, that's going to heal me instead
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And keep in mind, you could use this synergistically with allies, where they could drop a fireball on you and your enemies, so you take zero damage, and they heal you with fireball
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And if you're at your max hit points where you don't need to be healed, you can convert them and set it from healing into temporary hit points
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So you're giving yourself a buffer. This is a really cool ability. And you can use that number times equal to your proficiency bonus
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So it's not just a one-off. At this level, I think that's four times you can use it
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So you're going to be able to use this multiple times in an adventuring day. That's fantastic
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The last subclass is the toxicologist. You can do desecrated water. Any damage dealt by the item becomes dechrotic
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Taron is very conscious of how bad poison damage is in 5E
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so he gives you the options which are kind of inspired by other designs and from the UA that was
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originally for Strick's Haven to have a subclass that could do poison but also necrotic damage
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he's kind of feeding into that very smart I believe I have newt while the target is poisoned you make
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it so they take one D6 poison damage once per turn when they get hit with an attack the more your
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allies are using attacks you're adding one D6 potentially to all of your allies first attacks
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in a round. So it's giving you that tick over time poison damage what's triggered by your
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allies attacks or any attacks. Very cool. Powdered lead and a flask. The poison becomes a toxic
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powder or gas that is based on being inhaled. So you can basically turn these poisons into very
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small area of effects in a five foot area. And then you get Valerian root while the target is poisoned
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Whenever the creature makes a concentration saving throw, it must subtract a D4 from the number
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rolled for the check. So you're poisoning a creature and making it more difficult for the
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to concentrate while they're poisoned. This is brilliant. I think that's such a smart, cool idea
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that really helps against spellcasters. At level six, you gain some abilities to gain
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resistance to acid, necrotic, poison, even immune to poison, depending on if you already
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had resistance to it. And you have advantage on saving throws to avoid the poison condition
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I think this is really smart design because it's like if you already have poison resistance and then you get to this feature, it would be redundant. No one likes redundant abilities
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because you don't gain anything. This basically says if you already had poison resistance, you now become poison immune
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So if you're a U-on-T that used to have poison immunity, you can get it back by having your now poison resistance
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be enhanced to immunity at level 6 with Mithridotism. Level 10, your poisonous enhancements to your poisons become better
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The necrotic damage option ignores resistance to necrotic. The I have new to deal 1D6 poison damage every time they get hit with an attack
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It becomes 2D6 because you add another D6. The area of effect inhaled poison effect
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it goes to 10 feet instead of 5 feet, and then the concentration debuff becomes 2D4 instead of 1D4
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So good luck with those concentration saves at this point. Poisons you create ignore resistance to poison damage
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The creature that's immune to poison damage takes half damage from the item instead of none
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And your poisons ignore immunity to the poisoned condition, instead just allowing them to have
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saving throw advantage on against those poisoned conditions. Now let's get into some of the supplements so you can see what has been included here
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Summaries of downtime with Xanathar's Guide to Everything, crafting, dungeon master's guide summaries
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To make it very clear what you can do with your downtime, because that is also very important to this class
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It's part of the fantasy that people envision with an alchemist, so we're not ignoring downtime activities
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And then going down here, we see there's explanation of magic item formulas from the DMG
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which, again, Opel made a great video about, about how to make those formulas. It's very fun
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Some summaries of crafting based on rarity of magic items, potions specifically, plus your crafting cost as an alchemist
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since it's halved. Here are the downtime rules for foraging and raw materials to help you
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if you and your DM want to explore ability to forage and find materials and make that
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a fun part of the game. Getting down here to equipment, there are some new adventuring gear items, some new packs
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and whatnot. Most of these are summaries of items that are in the game already, but they're being classified
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as alchemical items. You may have noticed I've been saying alchemical items as if 5E has a classification
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of alchemical items, which it does not. So part of this supplement is to classify a bunch of items in the game plus add new ones that are classified as alchemical items that go with the alchemist abilities A bunch of this adventuring gear is just to give you more of an idea of what an alchemist might be carrying you know
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They might have a bellows, a brazier, coffee grounds, a crucible, glass cutter, hammock, heat mat, heat suit
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You know, these sorts of things are great for alchemists to be using and for you to know
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oh, this is something I might have on me as an alchemist, and I can describe myself using them when I'm crafting or gathering supplies, foraging
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Going down here even more, more items like magnets, mortar and pestle tongs, new equipment packs
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you know, like demolitionist detective, astronomer containers here of whether you're using flasks
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and caldrons and everything. More about the herbalism kits. And again, these are pretty much
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existing mechanics, but just adding in some more items that nothing's going to break the game
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just to make it more flavorful and make it more clear. In one place, in this PDF, so you don't have
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to go to your player's handbook and go look for all the different items. It's all going to be here
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for you. Now let's look at the alchemical items, the big ones. You can see a lot of lot of familiar faces here from the player's handbook, but then we've also got a lot of items that
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existed in past editions of D&D that Taryn ported over with 5E rules. I think he did a really good
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job, by the way. Not everyone does a good job with that, even though it's a common practice
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And I like that Taryn's been open, that it wasn't just something he invented out of nowhere
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but he looked him up somewhere or someone in his Discord brought it up from a past edition and
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said, hey, this item might be cool. I don't doubt that some of these items are unique
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I'm not sure if he thought of the anointing oils for blades on his own, or if that came from something else too
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But yeah, a lot of these are existing elsewhere or have existed before bringing them into 5y
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Let's go through the ones that I liked the most. Acid as an oxidizing agent, basically you throw it on someone and you give them the rust monster treatment
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and start to corrode their armor or their weapon or their shield
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Going down here, we've got a dwarf blindstone. It interferes with dark vision
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So enemy creatures that are relying on dark vision to see you don't have a light source or anything
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you can mess up their dark vision with this item. Fridazot, it's kind of like throwing acid at someone because it does a, because it does 2D6
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and you can add your intelligence modifier as damage to that, by the way, and you can have their speed until the end of the next turn
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So kind of like a good old ray of frost, grave bane. You can scare away enemy undead, kind of like a cleric turning away undead
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you kind of make this white liquid smoke that they're repulsed by. Very cool
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Going down here, we've got green slime. You can throw it on someone to do 1D10 acid damage
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They get covered in it until they scrape it off. And so they're going to take 1D10 acid damage
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At the start of each of their turns, kind of like Alchemist Fire. Pretty cool. It's a gallon in a pot
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Wow. Healing drop, the apothecary is really going to need this because it allows you to heal someone
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but it also utilizes their hit dice to regain those hit points. So there's still a resource being burned
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when you use a healing draught, and that's in the form of hit dice. But this makes it so you can heal a lot more with it
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without it being as lame as a healing potion that's, like, what, 2D4 plus 2
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You could roll, like, four hit points healed with that, maximum 10. But with this, you can roll lots of hit dice up to a maximum number
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equal to the creature's constitution modifier minimum 1. Instant wall, you can just toss this out, and it's kind of like expanding foam
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You just make a wall all of a sudden. You can push creatures aside as it forms and deals
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some bludging damage, but you can give yourself some cover and a little tanky wall where people
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have to break through it, perhaps. You can set up a bunch of these in a hallway and give yourself
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quite the stalling tactic, someone has to try to break through each instant wall. Going down here
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we've got moat light, which disrupts magic and makes it so it's harder to concentrate. So it's
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again, another alchemical item that you can use against spellcasters to try to break their concentration
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Then we've got all the oils, which oil of anointing, blade fire oil, Crohn's Eye, or Dragon
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wound, far flame, ghost flame, very cool names and very cool effects. Some are more expensive than
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others. Shriek paste, which is kind of this paste you put on a wall and when someone gets near
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it starts to form into a crystal and it makes a very shrieky noise, so it's like an alarm
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This is one of my favorites. It's splash catalyst. It allows you to take an alchemical item or
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potion and make it go from a single target creature to an area of effect. So for example
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you could take the healing draught that allows people to heal based on their hit dice
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make a splash catalyst combined with that to make your healing drought an area of effect
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and all of a sudden you have a healing bomb you can throw out in combat. Sparkstone is a 1D6 deny a reaction
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Smokestick is like a fog cloud, and it doesn't seem like it can really be blown away very well
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This might be a pretty busted import into 5E, I think, because it's the tanglefoot bag
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You make a range attack, which is more reliable than forcing a saving throw
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And if you hit, the target becomes grappled by the goo. which involves being restrained
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So it's an attack that you can use to grapple, restrain someone to get it off
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requires beating the DC, which would be a 10, but it's enhanced by you as an alchemist
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so you get to make it your alchemy DC. So this could be pretty nuts, being able to restrain creatures like that
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and you can make it an area of effect, like we mentioned earlier, because of this up here
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the splash catalyst. So yeah, pretty dangerous. And then we've got a beast repellent torch
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You can make beast stay away. That does include mosquitoes technically. And then a sentry torch
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It reveals invisible creatures in its bright light. That is super handy
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So yeah, that's all the alchemical items. Now we get some poisons, which there's the poison that's basic
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I'd like to see more poisons in here, but there are the poisons in the dungeon master's guide already, so make sure you know those
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And then there's a truth serum here added. And then going down here, we've got a material components list
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So these are what material components are used for spells that gives you something to go off of
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for you and your DM working. with what sort of materials do you need to gather for you to use your alchemical supplies
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So these are usually for spells, but now you can flavor them as you as an alchemist are looking for
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these kinds of items. It gives you something specific to look for, and you can look at it and be like, oh, I'm in a forest
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and I really need a caterpillar cocoon so that I can make my tanglefoot bag
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just like a caterpillar when it weaves its own cocoon. And then there's also these creature statistics if you want to use alchemist subclasses
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as NPC monsters, whatever. Here's some stat blocks for them, what they would look like
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And I thought this was such a cool touch. And I don't know if this is common on the DMs Guild
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but to me, this is so smart to take a class or subclass you design and say
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and here's what it looks like as an NPC. So that's the Alchemist. Did I get you excited to play it
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Or are you not really into third-party content? I'm personally getting more into third-party content
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and I'd like to see more of it because the more we embrace third-party content
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the more we put Wizards of the Coast on their heels to create
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better content for 5E. A lot of their choices in the last like two years, especially, have been, I think, pretty lazy
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5E already had a lot of problems when it came out, but it's been passable
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But they are starting to let little problems creep in here and there, and I question some of
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their design choices recently. So let's embrace some third-party stuff. And I think the alchemist is a great one to start with
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If you're looking for something that isn't just an artificer, but you like the alchemist archetype
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This is 100% what I would recommend to you. I'm not kidding when I say I'm excited to play this sort of class
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I would like to, in my next campaign, try it out. I'd also appreciate it if you let me know if there's anything in this sort of review
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that's more thorough looking at a specific PDF of a class or supplement material
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If there's something you'd like to see from me to make this content more valuable for you because I want to do a good job and not waste my time and yours, so let me know if I can do better
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So I've got affiliate links down below to the DM's Guild so you can pick up your copy of The Alchemist
32:31
Let me know if you're going to pick it up because I'd like to hear that I made a difference promoting Terran's work here
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And go check out Terran's YouTube channel. He does a lot of live streaming for his design process and he just likes to hang out and he goes off on a lot of tangents
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And he's probably one of my favorite streams to just go hang out with
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Check out my video here about the Thief Rogue, which was my previous favorite way to play in Alchemist
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But now the Alchemist has replaced it. But still, the Thief Rogue has a lot of cool stuff going for it
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Check out my video on that for a deep dive. Have a great adventure this weekend and I'll see you in the next video
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Bye
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