How do the Master Alchemist feat and the Instant Alchemy special ability interact?

Question

Master Alchemist:

Benefit: You receive a +2 bonus on Craft (alchemy) checks, and you may create mundane alchemical items much more quickly than normal. When making poisons, you can create a number of doses equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1) at one time. These additional doses do not increase the time required, but they do increase the raw material cost.

In addition, whenever you make alchemical items or poisons using Craft (alchemy), use the item’s gp value as its sp value when determining your progress (do not multiply the item’s gp cost by 10 to determine its sp cost).

Instant Alchemy:

At 18th level, an alchemist can create alchemical items with almost supernatural speed. He can create any alchemical item as a full-round action if he succeeds at the Craft (alchemy) check and has the appropriate resources at hand to fund the creation. He can apply poison to a weapon as an immediate action.

My understanding is that Instant Alchemy would probably take over the Master Alchemist's second ability in terms of how long it takes (full-round action), but was wondering if anything happens with the second ability from Master Alchemist to make up for this loss in Feat power? Or does it just turn into a worse skill focus at Alchemist level 18?

Answer 1

Nothing changes about Master Alchemist, but it still has several advantages:

1) You can still craft your Int mod in poisons whenever you craft poisons, instead of a single dose. That means that as a full round action you can craft your Int mod in poisons instead of one, which is a pretty significant modifier if it ever comes up. Usually, though, 1/full round is more than enough, since you can just craft out of combat.

2) Sometimes crafting is faster than a full round action. If your craft skill is truly astronomical, you may actually craft items in less than 6 seconds. You need a craft skill of 318 before that's true for even 1 gp items, though, even with Master Alchemist. With a full set of magic items you can reduce that by 8 times, IIRC, but it's still a +30 bonus to alchemy and a feat and a full set of gear just to be able to juice a lemon in 12 seconds or so. Still, some very cheap items are extremely useful situationally in combat, such as oil and sunrods, and when you can juice a lemon in a full round (a +70 bonus), you could instead coat your enemies in 20 doses of lamp oil and light it on fire.

Answer 2

Well, let's look at the two things together.

• You get a +2 on Craft(alchemy)
• When creating poisons, you create intmod doses at a time
• sp value cut to 1/10th for alchemical items when determining creation time.

and

• Craft any alchemical item as a full-round action (regardless of sp value).
• apply poison as an immediate action

so, yes. In combination, Instant alchemy causes your now-much-reduced sp total to be completed in a single full-round action, invalidating a notable chunk of Master Alchemist. Admittedly, it does allow you to make intmod doses of poison in a full-round action, but that's of arguably marginal utility.

Essentially, Instant Alchemy is so completely overpowered as far as speeding up the process goes that anything you might add to it is kind of meaningless. The appropriate response would probably be to retrain the feat