The New Alchemist

 The Alchemist is, I'd argue, the easiest Artificer subclass to work into any D&D setting, because it's the only one where none of its aesthetic has any gears, steam-engines, or what-have-you.

It is also the subclass that I think has always been the weakest of the Artificer options, with an ambiguous role in the party. Are they meant to be the healer? Well, they don't really have the tools they'd need to be that. Are they meant to be a magic damage-dealer? They don't really hold a candle to the Artillerist in that regard.

On a cursory glance, I will say that I'm not optimistic that this update makes them better - it might even make them worse. But let's go into further detail.

Alchemist Spells:

1st: Healing Word, Ray of Sickness

2nd: Flaming Sphere, Melf's Acid Arrow

3rd: Gaseous Form, Mass Healing Word

4th: Death Ward, Vitriolic Sphere

5th: Cloudkill, Raise Dead

    These are very thematic spells. Tragically, Mass Healing Word, being a bonus action, can't be put in a Spell Storing Item. Obviously, being a half-caster, your damage spells are not going to come online as early as you might like, though I think Melf's Acid Arrow, for example, will still be decent through tier 2.

Level 3:

Tools of the Trade:

You gain proficiency with Alchemist's Supplies and the Herbalism Kit. If you already have one of these proficiencies, you gain proficiency with another type of Artisan's Tools of your choice (or two if you already had both).

    Good - always best not to punish you for picking thematic options prior to getting your subclass.

Potion Crafting: When you brew potions using the rules in the DMG, the time you need to take to craft them is halved.

    We're going to see this as a theme in subclasses going forward. Potions, because they're consumables, are already cheaper and quicker to make than permanent magic items, so halving them again makes it far more likely you can actually have the time to make any. The time does go up steeply as you get to higher rarities, though.

Experimental Elxir:

When you finish a long rest and have Alchemist's Supplies, you can use them to magically produce two elixirs. For each, you roll on the Experimental Elixir table to determine the effect when drunk. The elixir vanishes after being drunk or poured out, or until you finish a long rest.

A creature can drink an elixir as a bonus action, or give it to another creature within 5 feet of them.

You can also create additional elixirs as a magic action using Alchemist's Supplies and expending a spell slot. When you do so this way, you choose the type of elixir rather than rolling.

At levels 5, 9, and 15, you generate an additional random elixir at the end of a long rest.

The elixirs are:

Healing: The drinker regains HP equal to 2d8+your Intelligence modifier. This goes up to 3d8 at level 9 and 4d8 at level 15.

    So, right off the bat, this is essentially Cure Wounds in a bottle. You can thus essentially pre-cast the spell and hand it over to people to cast as a bonus action. The scaling isn't quite as good at higher levels, though.

Swiftness: The drinker's speed increases by 10 feet for 1 hour. The bonus increases to 15 feet at level 9 and 20 feet at level 15.

    This, likewise, is basically Longstrider, though rather than hitting multiple targets at higher levels, you get a bigger bonus. Honestly not bad.

Resilience: The drinker gets a +1 bonus to AC for 10 minutes. The duration increases to 1 hour at level 9 and 8 hours at level 15.

    Not an enormous bonus, and the fact that the duration goes up rather than the value means it never becomes a bigger bonus. That said, AC is always good to have.

Boldness: The drinker can add 1d4 to each attack roll and saving throw it makes for the next minute. The duration increases to 10 minutes at level 9 and 1 hour at level 15.

    So, this is a worse version of Bless at base level (because it only affects one person). The upgraded duration is, I think, only sometimes going to mean having it up longer.

Flight: The drinker gains a Fly Speed of 10 feet for 10 minutes. At level 9, it becomes 20 feet, and at level 15, it becomes 30 feet.

    The speed is very slow until high levels, but for a bit of utility outside of combat, when speed is less of a factor, this can be a much cheaper option than Fly.

(Finally, rolling a 6 lets you just choose the effect).

    I don't have the old table in front of me, but I think that these results might have been buffed a little, which is nice. I do think the key to using this right (which I don't often see) is to make ample use of the ability to use spell slots to pick specific options that are useful in your current situation. The randomness of the free ones makes them trickier to use.

Level 5:

Alchemical Savant:

When you cast a spell using Alchemist's Supplies as the spellcasting focus, you gain a bonus to the roll of a spell that either restores HP or deals Acid, Fire, or Poison damage. The bonus is your Intelligence modifier.

    As a half-caster, you're going to be relying on cantrips a lot. While this isn't going to give you martial-like single target damage output with a cantrip, it will help a fair amount. (True Strike with a Light Crossbow at this level and +4 to Int would mean a total of 1d8+1d6+8, or around 16 damage.)

    This, of course, also buffs non-cantrip spells as well. Not an enormous boost, but it's something.

Level 9:

Restorative Reagents:

You can cast Lesser Restoration for free usign Alchemist's Supplies a number of times equal to your Intelligence Modifier per long rest.

    This is nice, but as your sole 9th level subclass feature, it feels a bit light. Notably it doesn't make the spell always prepared, so if you want to use it more, you do need to prepare it. At this level, we've had this spell available to us for four levels.

Level 15:

Chemical Mastery:

You gain the following:

Alchemical Eruption: When you cast an artificer spell that deals Acid, Fire, or Poison damage to a target, you can also deal 2d8 Force damage to that target. You can use this once per turn.

    Ok, this is interesting. Let's say we just hit them with an Acid Splash, which by this level is doing 3d6 damage. From Alchemical Savant, we're dealing an additional (probably) 5 damage, and then we're adding 2d8 on top of that, for a total of 24.5 damage with a cantrip. If we're casting Vitriolic Sphere, which normally does 25 damage on one turn and then 12.5 damage at the end of the target's next turn, you could up this to 34 and then 21.5 (though only for one target).

Chemical Resistance: You gain resistance to Acid and Poison damage, and you have immunity to the poisoned condition.

    Depending on the kind of things you're fighting, this can be pretty good. Likewise, a lot of monsters have effects that key off of your being poisoned, so this shuts those down.

Conjured Cauldron: You can cast Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron once per long rest without expending a spell slot (which is good, as you won't have a 6th level spell slot) using Alchemist's Supplies as the focus.

    This is thematic, for sure, though I think it's a spell that is dubiously powerful - the limitations on the rarity of the potions means that there aren't a ton of really powerful options.

    Honestly, the thing that I dislike most about this feature is what it doesn't do. The old version allowed you to cast Heal and Greater Restoration - two spells that I think are what make a party's "true healer," and allowed the Alchemist to at least gesture toward that role.

Overall Thoughts:

I'm a bit disappointed: I think there was an opportunity to really enhance the Alchemist and let it truly serve the role it seems meant to, but the changes here were more iterative than inspired, and at least the last feature is arguably a nerf to a subclass that was already pretty weak. Also, the old version buffed necrotic damage along with acid, fire, and poison. Why did they drop that? Necrotic is one of the most reliable damage types, and I think it fits perfectly well with the themes of the subclass.

The Alchemist, more than any other subclass (though we'll see with the Cartographer) feels like it wants to be a full spellcaster, and while that would have been hard to do with a mere subclass, I wish they'd done more to really hone its healing capabilities.