So after hearing the woes of Alchemist’s attack bonuses, I did some number crunching of the Alchemist's attack bonuses compared to Martials and Spellcasters.

I found that Alchemists with a Bestial/Quicksilver mutagen stay relatively competitive with Martials (even having better scaling at levels 7-9!) until Martials get Master proficiency at level 13 after which Alchemists permanently fall behind. I looked at the level 13 feats of the Alchemist to see if there was anything that made up for this dip in relative power, and didn’t really find anything that justified it.

It seemed strange to me that the game designers would allow the class to be gimped after 13, because unlike spellcasters the Alchemist don’t have the luxury of targeting anything other than AC so they are more reliant on their accuracy (poisons don’t count, injury poisons still need to pass AC to be applied).

I thought to myself, is guaranteed splash damage really enough to justify this loss in accuracy? Are Alchemists just relegated to being item-bots for their martial party members at this point? But then I realized that with the release of Treasure Vaults, Alchemists actually can target saves. For those who don't know, in Treasure Vault they added a new category of consumables called Bottled Monstrosities. They are single-use utility or AOE effects that target saves. At lower levels, these have some minor utility effects, but starting at level 10, they start doing damage. This is around the level that Alchemists start falling behind in their accuracy.

I can’t speak on behalf of the designers, but to me it seems like Bottled Monstrosities fill the gap in later levels and transition Alchemists into being pseudo-spellcasters who target the weakest save of monsters. Honestly I’m not really a fan of this approach if this is the case because it doesn’t really fulfill the fantasies of some of the subclasses, plus the selection of monstrosities is quite tiny right now.

Are there any experienced Alchemist players here who have played them at 13 and would like to share their experience? What is their playstyle like after the accuracy dip (not just item-bot I’m hoping)? Is the accuracy dip not as big of a deal as it seems?

Side note, but now that I have looked at the numbers I am considering giving Alchemists the same scaling as martials in my home games. It gives them a few more levels where they have a leg up on martials (5-6 and 17-19) but since this is already the case for levels 7-9, I can’t see how it would break the game.