These mods are fantastic, and they inspired this one, but they fail to get to the core of the issue (mostly because of scripting limitations).
There are a few mods available that attempt to change things: Shanjaq's Alchemical Warfare and Scruggs' Alchemist's Arsenal come to mind. For this reason, your 'alchemist' options are restricted to a spell-casting mage who dabbles in alchemy, a thoroughbred warrior who picks wild flowers, or a stealthy rogue who keeps a stash of Invisibility potions on hand. The issue is that you cannot really play an alchemist in the vanilla game however good you may be at brewing potions, you need to invest time and effort into a weapon or school of magic to deal any damage.
As modders, I feel that we've been skirting around the issue of Morrowind's alchemy for some time now.
