A Guide to Playing as an Alchemist in Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur's Gate 3 includes an Alchemy system that gives you access to special consumables like potions poisons and grenades any character can get value from these items but can we build a whole character concept to use them effectively can we play as an alchemist now I don't mean a character that crafts potions and poisons I mean a character whose main combat strategy revolves around using them the way I see it if we want to build an effective Alchemy specialist we have to work around three constraints constraint number one using most alchemical items takes a bonus action this includes both drinking potions and applying weapon coatings constraint number two most alchemical items can also be thrown to apply their effect in a small AOE in constraint number three alchemical items are single-use consumables so if we want to build around them we need a reliable way to replenish our supply throughout the course of the game so let's go through these one by one and see how we can play as an alchemist in Baldur's Gate 3. I use historian for this build but it works with just about any character you can even do it on your main character if you want if you want to know the location of any of the items that I mentioned in this video check out the video description I've included links to the wiki pages for all those items all right constraint number one we have to spend our bonus action in order to use most alchemical items at all this constraint is actually the easiest one to build around we're just going to play as a thief the extra bonus action granted by the thief's fast hands ability adds a ton to the action economy of an alchemist character right from level three with two bonus actions you can drink a potion and poison your weapon in the same turn or drink a potion and disengage or even poison your weapon throw a potion and then make an offhand attack with your newly poisoned weapon and we definitely do want to be making offhand attacks as an alchemist since weapon Coatings get applied to both your weapons if you're dual wielding so dual wailing allows us to double dip on our poisons literally many poisons have devastating debuffs that we'd love to have more opportunities to apply one of the most infamous ones is crawler mucus which can paralyze any enemy on a hit but I've even been really impressed by The Humble more common drow poison which puts enemies to sleep if they fail a dc-13 constitution save admittedly a dc13 save isn't very high especially in the late game but you can improve its reliability by throwing some bleed into your build the bleeding condition gives enemies disadvantage on Constitution saves the simplest way to do this is to just wield the slicing short sword sold by land and moonrise Towers but I also carry a few spiked bulbs just in case they're sold by omulum in the micanid Colony after you complete his quest and remember even if the safety C is low poisons are very action efficient once you apply it with a bonus action you have a chance to apply it with every swing this action efficiency is one of the biggest strengths of poisons and in Act 2 you get access to some gloves that take this action efficiency to the next level the poisoners gloves now any poison damage you deal has a chance to apply the poison condition you already wanted to be dealing poison damage so in terms of action economy this is just a straight up free benefit you can add poison damage to your weapon with basic poisons but there's actually a more consistent way just use the amulet broodmother's Revenge this amulet applies poison damage to all your equipped weapons whenever you're healed what this means is that as long as you're not at full health you can just chug a basic potion of healing to poison your weapon you can get this amulet by murdering a certain uh druidic in act one note that the amulet's effect is just equivalent to dipping your weapon in Poison so you can't have it and another poison active at the same time if you apply a second poison while the amulet's already active you'll just overwrite the poison from the amulet I sort of see the poison for the amulet as your Baseline poison it's what you keep on your weapons when you don't have anything better to put on them the extra bonus action from Thief allows us to use potions and poisons more efficiently when we're using them by ourselves but our Alchemist is a team player so we want to be able to apply them to allies efficiently too that gets us to constraint number two alchemical items can be thrown to apply their effect in a small AOE throwing an item counts as an attack action which means that any Alchemist worth their salt needs to have extra attack worth their salt get it with extra attack we can now throw two potions or throw one potion and save our other attack for a regular main hand attack just like with fast hands this is just a straight up bump to our alchemical action economy unfortunately we can't get that from Rogue so we'll have to multi-class personally I went into fighter both for the two weapon fighting fighting style and because we can become a Battle Master for some Maneuvers that synergize really well with poisons for example sweeping attack allows us to apply the effect of our weapon poisons to every enemy that we hit with the cleave this is really good with the debuffing poisons like drow poison malice and even the oil of Bane extra attack helps us with the action economy of throwing potions but we can also pick up a couple of items that synergize really well with Throne potions in particular with throwing healing potions the first of these items is the ring Whispering promise which applies two turns of bless to anyone that you heal including yourself the second of these is Hell writer's Pride a set of gauntlets that applies blade War to allies that you heal this one does not include yourself of course you'll have to pick between these gauntlets and the poisoner's gloves it's a bit of a build decision do you want to focus more on poisons and debuffs or healing potions and Buffs remember throwing healing potions applies their effect in an AOE if you can get the positioning right though admittedly it could be pretty finicky remember to aim the potion for the ground between the characters you're targeting not for the characters themselves you want to hit them with the splash damage but if you can land the healing AOE consistently then you can turn your throne healing potions into multi-character Buffs in particular the bless effect helps free up your cleric to concentrate on other spells I'm sure shadowheart will be pleased to get promoted to something more interesting than party blessbot and if you're already going to be throwing a lot of healing potions I recommend that one of your other frontliners wears the periactive wound closure this amulet maximizes any healing received with that and the blade World effect you can make one character very tanky just by having your Alchemists throw potions at them I think it's pretty easy to underestimate just how strong Throne healing potions can be when you have this full setup a single potion of superior healing heals for 28 hit points on average or 40 maximum that means that we just have to hit two party members as long as one's wearing the periapt in order to heal an average of 68 hit points total that's competitive with the heal spell which is the best healing spell in the game and we didn't even have to spend a whole action to do it we can still use the other half of extra attack for something else of course healing potions aren't actually like the heal spell because we can't just hit the snooze button in order to refresh our uses of them which brings us to our final constraint alchemical items are single-use consumables unlike our lazy spell casting companions our Alchemist has to actually go out into the world and acquire their potions themselves the good news is that's actually incredibly easy to do as long as you know where to look there are two main sources of alchemical items in this game merchants and the crafting system the first of these options is deeply exploitable many of the merchants in this game sell potions in alchemical supplies that refresh every time you rest and every time you level up some of their supplies are guaranteed and some are random consider a few of the standouts just from act one Roa Moonglow and the shattered sanctum has a chance to sell potions of speed the crash Merchant whose name I won't try to pronounce has a chance to sell potions of both Superior and supreme healing or my personal favorite dareth in the underdark who always has a ton of different potions ingredients and even rare poisons like purple worm toxin buying all the potions and ingredients from all these Merchants every time you long rest would of course be very expensive but don't worry we're not going to actually pay for any of this as a thief we already have high dexterity and we can get expertise in sleight of hand then we just need to buy the gloves of thievery from brem and The zentarum Hideout to get advantage on our sleight of hand checks most potions in alchemical supplies have comparatively low DC's to steal so with this setup I find that I can steal most consumables with impunity Pro tip the sleight of hand interface displays the number you need to roll not the DC very misleading so why exactly is this exploitable well it's because both of the merchant restock triggers long rests and level ups are actually Limitless you can long rest basically whenever you want as long as you have the food and the thing is some of the merchants you're already robbing also have food that you can steal while you're at it but even more exploitable is the fact that Merchant stock refreshes anytime any of your characters levels up and this includes the level UPS you get from respecting so technically there's nothing stopping you from respecting one character over and over again to trigger an arbitrary number of merchant refreshes and then just Rob them each time of course I don't actually recommend that you do this it's tedious on fun and game-breakingly Powerful in my own Alchemist run I've settled on a compromise where I only Rob Merchants when I'm visiting them anyways even this minor level of thievery has been more than enough to keep up my Supply besides theft you can also just craft potions yourself you can get extra mileage from the ingredients you pick up in the world by adding a transmuter wizard to your party they get a level two ability that allows them to craft two potions instead of one anytime they craft so long as they can succeed in a dc-15 medicine check the most power gaming way to take advantage of this is to just hire a companion from Withers min max them for medicine checks and then leave them in Camp when they aren't crafting but honestly that's not even really necessary it's more than enough to just respect Gail so that he has transmutation subclass a decent wisdom score Proficiency in medicine and then a single level in Rogue for expertise then when he is crafting you can just cast guidance on him for plus 1d4 to the check and finally cast the owl's wisdom variation of enhanceability on him so that he gets advantage on the check as well that setup will be enough that he'll succeed on the substantial majority of those medicine checks he will be an optimal to just Supply you with powerful potions and poisons what is my purpose you brew potions oh my God with all that in place you should easily be able to keep up your supply of alchemical items throughout the entire game so get out there steal some potions and get poisoning the biggest adjustment that you'll have to make if you start playing Alchemist character is you'll have to resist your natural inclination to save your consumables for a harder fight I know the feeling I can't use that potion now what if I need it later just use the damn potion trust me on this one you don't need it later because when later comes you probably won't even remember that you have it wait how long have I had these

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Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2023