Introduction
One of Tian Xia’s new archetypes, the Wandering Chef archetype offers a unique way to approach the game. Much like the Alchemist archetype, it offers a way for non-Alchemists to dip their toe into some crafting while offering its own unique flavor (pun intended).
As a Wandering Chef you’ll be spending most of your time in the kitchen, chopping up the results of your adventuring exploits into sumptuous meals for you and your party. While not the most powerful archetype you could choose, the Wandering Chef’s unique features allow for an intriguing approach to crafting that focuses on the often underutilized alchemical foods.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks.
- : Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
- : OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
- : Good options. Useful often.
- : Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.
Wandering Chef Feats
- 1: The entry point for the archetype and it gives you some pretty neat features. Obviously proficiency in Crafting will be useful for the class, or a free other skill if you already have it. Subsistence checks don’t come up a lot in most games, but where they matter, this will be helpful to have. The big feature you get is the Alchemist’s Quick Alchemy feature, but you can only use it to craft alchemical food. You start with 4 Versatile Vials similar to the ones you get in the remastered Alchemist, though these are described as parcels of foraged food you have. The Quick Alchemy Benefits give you the Alchemical Crafting feat, which gives you a formula book with four formulas in it for alchemical food, but your choices can either be of 1st or 2nd level, while typically you only get to choose 1st level items. I would make the argument to be able to include Magical Morsels to that list, but make sure to check with your GM on that. Regardless, you can still learn formulas and craft magical morsels on your own using the normal crafting rules. As for good foods to take, Mender’s Soup and Cooperative Waffles will most likely be your go-to for non-combat situations, while the new Iron Wine will be the staple buff for characters relying on unarmed attacks . Just be careful not to drink it too much if you plan on fighting anything with fire attacks that day. Missive Mint can also be a helpful replacement for Message if you need to be really subtle or want to mess with an NPC. Be sure to also refer to our Practical Guide to Alchemical Foods article for more information.
- 4: If you plan on going deeper into this archetype, this feat is absolutely a must have. Not only is it a prerequisite for other, better feats down the line, but it gives you the Alchemist’s Advanced Alchemy feature. This allows you to automatically make up to 5 dishes during your daily preparations. This frees up your Quick Alchemy to focus solely on foods related to combat while prepping out of combat or longer-lasting foods for the morning or passing items to your allies so that they can use them without your intervention.
- 6: You need to be an Expert in crafting or have the Cooking Lore to take this feat, but it gives you more uses of your Quick Alchemy feature as you level up. While definitely helpful, the foods available to Wandering Chef make uses of Quick Alchemy a bit more niche, and, if you don’t plan on investing heavily into this archetype, you’re better off taking Food Preservation if you’re forced to make a choice.
- 6: A really great feat that allows you to bank one of your daily foods to not expire after 24 hours. This is essentially a free extra prepped food per day as it doesn’t count against the number of dishes you can make in your daily preparations. It’s also useful for saving food that ultimately didn’t see use during a day like during downtime. Even better, you get to save more dishes for preservation as your skill in Crafting increases.
- 10: Fortifying Brew is an excellent Ritual that gives some crazy benefits on a Critical Success. The fact that you can perform the ritual by yourself using your Crafting or Cooking Lore skill means that you can assist yourself and make it more likely that you get bonuses on the roll instead of penalties. That said, in comparison to getting a Critical Success on the Ritual, normal Success is just decent and the consequences for Critical Failure are no joke. So only take this if you have a high proficiency in whatever skill you’re using or delay taking this until you’re a higher level.
- 12: This feat is crazy and is worth dipping into Wandering Chef purely for this feat, especially if you plan on crafting any Alchemical Food or Magical Morsels. One of the biggest downsides to such consumables is that the effects they create have a set DC which typically isn’t very high and some foods will have their usefulness drop off completely at higher levels. This allows you to completely negate that. Any alchemical foods or magical morsels you make that have a DC will always use your class DC instead, regardless of whoever eats them! Grab a bunch of chickens, feed them Numbing Spice Exhalation and let them do their thing. The Temporary Hit Points are similarly fantastic. With a 1-hour duration, you can use a Versatile Vial to feed allies any piece of Alchemical Food that you like in order to get them THP, then quickly recover your Versatile Vials outside of combat, effectively giving your entire party a constant, no-cost source of Temporary Hit Points.
- 14: Truesight is good and the ability to use Crafting for the Counteract check is nice, but you get this later than most and there are just better, easier ways to get it that don’t require a feat. Also, it’s competing with Regional Specialty for the level 14 slot, which is just a much better feat all around.
- 14: This is a fun feat and gives your Morning Side Dishes a lot of versatility and the ability to give some powerful save bonuses and cleanse effects. The only thing keeping it from being blue is since you can’t use it on Quick Alchemy items you need to have a bit of foresight on what conditions you’ll be dealing with and that item bonuses don’t stack. By this level you probably have at least one or two items or runes that grant you bonuses to saves. But if the bonus your food gives is higher, they will still be useful.
Who Should Use This?
Really anyone can benefit from taking one or two feats from this Archetype as it doesn’t require a lot of skill and there are foods beneficial to pretty much anyone. That said, some classes feel more synergistic with Wandering Chef than others.
- : On the surface this Archetype feels like it was made to be a subclass of Alchemist, but a lot of the features it gives you, especially the early ones, are redundant with the Alchemist’s base features. Getting access to Fortifying Brew and the ability to give your foods your own class DC almost make this worth it, but there are better Archetypes that offer you features you can use earlier on. Remember that Fast Alchemy and Advanced Alchemy from multiple sources doesn’t increase your number of vials.
- : While there are some great foods, like Fury Cocktail, that will give some benefits to Barbarians, your Intelligence is usually not a priority as a Barbarian, so you’re unlikely to invest in Crafting. You’re probably better off having someone else make these items for you. You also will probably be using your Actions in combat to do more important things than Quick Alchemy. Though there’s something to be said about living out your Monster Hunter fantasy by playing a Barbarian Chef.
- : Fighters have the same issue as Barbarians, but there are some Fighter builds that use Intelligence, just don’t expect to get much benefit out of things like Feast Planner, which rely on a high amount of intelligence/crafting skill.
- : You’re already inventing things, why not try your hand at Crafting in the kitchen? There’s a lot of food here that helps with the Inventor’s playstyle with Mender’s Soup alone being an extremely useful early game food which you will get a lot of mileage out of. You also have more than enough Intelligence to make this work.
- : As a high-intelligence skill-monkey who focuses a lot of their effort on skill checks, you will find a lot of food you can craft with this Archetype will be very useful as you investigate. Make sure you take Insight Coffee at level 6 for the boost to your Strategic Strike.
- : Like with Fighter, you have enough Intelligence to make this work and there are some decent food options, just don’t plan on going too deep into this Archetype.
- : Monks feel like they were made for this Archetype. Yes, your lack of Intelligence will be a hindrance, but there are a lot of great foods that suit the Monk’s playstyle beautifully, such as Iron Wine and Rainbow Vinegar which you can get pretty early on. Later on you also get access to even better foods like Dragon Pearls. It’s also a hugely thematic build.
- : Rangers will definitely appreciate being able to have other ways to subsist, and some foods, like Tracker’s Stew, can be useful for them.
- : Instead of poisoning food all the time, why not try making edible food for once? That you can also poison. Rogues will appreciate things like Firefoot Popcorn or Delve Scale for the extra mobility and jumping. Phantom Roll will also be a staple food item for you.
- : Swashbucklers will appreciate the added bonuses to their Diplomacy checks or Bon Mot with foods like Diplomat’s Charcuterie and Sprite Apple (Golden).
- : Your high intelligence will allow you to go far in this Archetype, and some of the foods are basically like free spells you don’t have to use spell slots to make.