[Japo]

Firstly, from my experience with heavy laden characters and from what the manual itself says, the disadvantages of being so are negligible on their own (since Agility is worthless), and of course compared to the dire disadvantages of not being fully armoured. I did complete the game with four guys in full plate, and of course one of them was an alchemist, another one a cleric, and the other a non-academic "PR" representative, and none of them could be improve further in these fields since long before ending the game. No doubt they couldn't have as much Str and End as the other warrior guy when created, but enough to be no more than heavy laden if in full plate and even somewhat injured. It's not hard to find this spot during character creation. It's only that for an alchemist for instance, in my opinion Str and End are still more important than any other attribute except Int; at least that will make an able warrior of him, without making him any less of an alchemist.

Secondly, when a character is so heavily wounded that he goes from heavily laden to more grievous penalties, even though I don't use magic that much, then of course he's reached the point where healing potions or saints are called for. (Besides if I recall correctly potions heal more points the lower Str and End are, so it's better to wait until characters have serious wounds to heal them.) That's how I see it, combat potions are too expensive when compared with the far more effective approach of four ironclad axe-throwing men, but on the other hand Essence O'Grace and healing saints sure are useful (indispensable in dungeons). And if magic weren't available for some reason then it's of course time to rest.

And as for Alchemy, once you have money it can be improved in no time (same as other skills), and before you have money you won't be able to buy lots of ingredients after all, and you can pray to a saint that increases Alch big time (who were for me some of the most useful saints until the later stages of the game). As I said in my long post, my alchemist had exactly 20 at the start of the game (if I remember right), since that's apparently the minimum rating that you need to even find an alchemist in town to exchange formulas for free. Once you have Alch 20, for a would-be alchemist Speak Common is actually more important, since it can't be raised through study unlike Alch, and it gives a bonus when dealing with town alchemists. When creating a future alchemist it's of course more important the Int attribute than the Alch skill, since the latter can be increased until 99 if you have the money, but the former is immovable. If you add 20 to the bonus that the best alchemist saints provide, you have a decent rating until you can pay for Alch lessons.

The same applies to weapon skills of course, you don't need very high initial values in any of your starting characters, since they will go up relatively fast--and for free, unlike Alch.