[Lysanderz]

To the OP

See that post above me? Just focus on the "Creativity" part.

[Csjarrat]

To the OP-

Alchemy is something that has uses, but its something you do in addition to your spell casting, not instead of it.  Alchemy lets you build magical traps, have spells go off when the mage is somewhere else, have spells go off on a timer even if the mage is there, and generally cause chaos.  To be effective it requires planning and creativity.  Its next to worthless if you get caught in a random bar fight or have to kill a devil rat in an alley.  Is not something I would stress heavily at character creation, but you certainly could invest some points there as you advance.

nailed it.
alchemy is a toolbox rather than a weapon. sure your toolbox hurts if you hit someone with it, but its not it's primary use.
it is much like ritual magic in that sense; a clever and creative mage can get a lot of mileage out of both skills, but they won't be their number 1 most used skills

[jim1701]

To the OP-

Alchemy is something that has uses, but its something you do in addition to your spell casting, not instead of it.  Alchemy lets you build magical traps, have spells go off when the mage is somewhere else, have spells go off on a timer even if the mage is there, and generally cause chaos.  To be effective it requires planning and creativity.  Its next to worthless if you get caught in a random bar fight or have to kill a devil rat in an alley.  Is not something I would stress heavily at character creation, but you certainly could invest some points there as you advance.

nailed it.
alchemy is a toolbox rather than a weapon. sure your toolbox hurts if you hit someone with it, but its not it's primary use.
it is much like ritual magic in that sense; a clever and creative mage can get a lot of mileage out of both skills, but they won't be their number 1 most used skills

The primary issue there is that Ritual Magic is a subset of Sorcery.  Alchemy is supposed to be one of the three primary schools (or areas depending on how you want to describe it) of magic.  Alchemy as it stands is a useful secondary skill but really does not stand up at all to the primary skills of sorcery and summoning for the other two areas of magic.  In fact a house rule just occurred to me:

Sorcery (combine Spellcasting, Summoning and Alchemy) No skillgroup

Ritual Magic skill group
Ritual Spellcasting
Binding
Artificing

Counter Magic skill group
Counterspelling
Disenchantment
Banishing

Aspected mages would need to be tweaked a little since there would no longer be a single skill group to take but I think it would work.