Players guide to the Apothecary
So, you want to play an an Apothecary - or perhaps you’ve rolled one up and now you want some advice. This guide will suggest some ways of getting the most out of your character mechanically, as well as suggesting some roleplaying opportunities.
With the Apothechary career, you are set up to be a very useful support character for your party. Apart from the Courtier, Scholar and High Elves, you are the only one who can start out with Anatomy Lore, which is crucial to avoid festering wounds - and you are likely to have the stats to use it as well. You can also brew drugs and various alchemical compounds, and brew potions.
Lets look at the choices you have during character creation.
The Apothecary career is available to all the origins, so you can safely roll a random origin to get that sweet XP, or choose whichever one appeals to you the most. They all have their up- and downsides.
If your origin lets you choose any skills, consider Shooting (as your career will give you a ranged weapon), Athletics (generally very useful and can be used to dodge in combat as well), Dexterity (to be a better brewer) and/or Recall (to be a better healer).
It is probably worth rolling characteristics randomly to get that XP, but if you are going to choose I would consider picking Ballistic Skill (because you start with an okay ranged weapon as an Apothecary) and definitely pick Agility (to improve your athletics and therefore ability to dodge in combat) - having at least basic competence in combat is advisable to everyone - and neither of these are favored attributes for you, so they’ll be expensive to increase later. For the third one, Weapon Skill or Fellowship are probably your best bets (again, avoid your favored attributes to get the most bang for the buck), but anything goes really - Reason might be reasonable (ha!) to make sure you start out with a good score in your arguably most important attribute.
Note that rolling the characteristics to get XP might be considered a trap: If you know you want good scores in two or more non-favored attributes, picking them here may save you more XP in the long run than the XP you get for rolling randomly. Of course, you could get lucky and get the ones you want.
You get Strength, Initiative and Reason as your favored attributes, meaning they are cheaper to increase with XP. Initiative helps Dexterity, and Reason helps Recall, both of which are core to what your career can do. Strength seems less useful, but we can keep it in mind for some build options later.
For Skills you get +1 to four out of Defence, Survival, Awareness, Dexterity, Stealth and Recall. Recall is a mandatory pick here, and Dexterity is likely to be good. Survival and/or Awareness are likely to be used more than you think to improvise medical equipment, see Trappings further down. I would avoid Defence unless you somehow got a better weapon skill than agility, the rest are a toss-up.
For Lores you get Concoction, and a choice of either Anatomy, Zoology or an Environment Lore. You are always best served by picking Anatomy here, due to the way it lets you prevent Festering Wounds. Zoology makes you better at treating animals, and Environment lores could let you be better at finding herbs and the like (and traversing difficult terrain), but Anatomy lets you do your job a lot better and seems to be the far superior pick both thematically and mechanically.
For Trappings, you must choose between a Sling or a Shortbow. This is a simple choice, if your Strength is already 4 or higher, the Sling is better. If your Strength is 3 or lower, the Shortbow is better. Apart from that, you get a dagger and the stuff you need to ply your trade except a Physickers kit, a gold trapping that is needed to treat wounds. Unless someone in the party is rich, you are likely to have to improvise finding what you need to heal wounds, which the rules state may require Survival or Awareness tests. Awareness is a much better option for you, as it is based on the same stat as Dexterity - which also happens to be one of your favoured attributes - so hopefully the GM will let you use it.
For Assets, you must choose between Laboratory, Brewery and Shop. As a Brass character, these are all likely to just be your home, probably your kitchen. Read the descriptions and pick the one you like the sound of - though the Laboratory and Brewery are probably better if you plan to make a lot of concoctions.
None of the available contacts seem to be more useful than the others to you, so your career shouldn’t impact your choices here too much.
For your final step, you should increase skills - Athletics for its combat potential should be high on your list of priorities, and Awareness, Survival, Shooting, Reason and Dexterity are also good candidates. Finally, if you have XP, increase an attribute if you can - or save it for when you can.
You could consider a talent for that XP - if you’re not a halfling and are planning on using a Sling (not a bad choice as Strength is a favored attribute for you) and using Athletics to defend yourself, Short Size (2xp) is a fair choice. Otherwise, Touched by the Winds (2xp) could be amusing. Combat Surgeon (3xp, so you only have enough if you were lucky enough to roll apothecary and also got XP from rolling origin and stats) is thematic and lets you be a better healer. Overall though, I think using XP to improve your attributes is a better choice for now.
Here are the things you need to remember as a healer:
If you have Anatomy (if not, why didn’t you pick it?), when testing for Festering Wounds at the end of the day, you can make a Reason/Recall test - for every success, pick a character to automatically avoid festering wounds.
If someone is wounded, use the Recover action to treat their wounds. This can also be used to test to remove other conditions, such as the Critically Injured condition which requiers a Reason/Recall test. Treating wounds as soon as possible is important, as it prevents new wounds from being too serious. Doing so in combat requires a Reason/Recall test unless the person doing it has the Anatomy lore - either way, you’re likely to be the best at it.
You may have to perform surgery in some cases - which is an Initiative/Dexterity check.
As mentioned before, treating wounds and so on will very quickly require you to improvise medical equipment, as a proper physickers kit is very expensive. Make sure you tell your GM how you are prepared, and be ready to roll Awareness or Survival tests to get the equipment together.
To be a good healer then, you should find a rich patron that can buy you a Physickers kit, and keep your Reason/Recall and Initiative/Dexterity high. Until you can find someone to buy you that kit (and after it inevitably gets stolen), Initiative/Awareness and Toughness/Survival are likely to be important as well.
Besides, and perhaps even more than healing, the role of an Apothecary is to create various concoctions. The Concoction trade lore lets you create herbal remedies, poisons and various alchemical compounds that are disinfective, adhesive, volatile, or otherwise reactive. You can also make non-magical Healing Potions and Enhancement Potions.
While you should use your imagination here (keep it fairly realistic though, to avoid quarrels with your GM), rules are available for some things:
Base poisons, when applied to weapons, apply the Drained condition which prevents bonus dice on tests - useful if your enemies like to use the Help or Aim action.
Healing potions and Enhancement Potions require 8 successes to create, and magical ingredients worth a Gold coin - so again you should be looking for a rich sponsor. Such ingredients might also be found during an adventure, so keep your eyes open. However… there are no rules to how these potions work, neither in the Game masters guide or the players guide. There is an off-hand sentence that healing potions can “have the effect of surgery”, but apart from that, nothing.
Craft Trapping requires an Exacting Dexterity or Toil test (probably Dexterity in our case). If you picked laboratory or brewery for your asset, and you do it there, you get +1d to your test. A brass trapping is 2 successes, a silver trapping is 4 successes and a gold trapping is 8 successes.
As a brass tier character, Apothecaries are likely to be creating Brass or Silver items most of the time (a lot of the time, in fact, due to their Personal Recipe career talent, which lets them take this endeavor every night during an adventure. Remember that the expenses to make an item are one tier lower than the actual cost of the item when bought, though each check requires the expense to be paid. Disappointingly, there are no Brass items in the Players Guide or the Game masters guide that seem appropriate to make, and only one silver. The only items with given status tier in the rules that it would make great sense for an apothecary to create equivalents of are these:
Flask of Oil (Silver).
Blasting Charge (Gold).
Enhancement Potion (Gold) - no rules.
Healing Potion (Gold) - no rules except maybe replacing surgery.
Apart from these, “basic poisons” for covering weapons have rules, but no status tier. As applying the Drained condition isn’t a very big thing, I find it very reasonable that creating a dose of poison could be done as a Brass tier concoction. But your GM will have to agree with me.
Apart from that, you must use your imagination and negotiate with your GM. Here are some suggestions - but keep in mind that your Game Master will have to approve them. The status tier given is what I would require to buy the item, so Brass items can be created without expense by the apothecary, silver items can be created with brass expenses and gold items with silver expenses.
Basic Poison (Brass). Applies the Drained condition if ingested or hurt by a weapon smeared in it.
Basic Antitoxin (Brass). If ingested, removes the Drained condition caused by Basic Poison, the poisonous fangs ability of Giant spiders or similar abilities.
Stink Bomb (Brass). Must be thrown using the Throwing skill. Anyone hit by the stink bomb must pass a Hazard 2 test or suffer the Distracted condition until they clean up, which will require taking a bath or removing at least some of their clothing. If opened in an enclosed space, everyone in the room are distracted by the stink bomb while they remain in its vicinity - this also applies to everyone else in the same room as the victim of a stink bomb. Expires after one day.
Healing poultice (Brass). One use, used when treating a wound. Ignore this wound when checking if you have to test to avoid festering wounds - in other words, if all your wounds in a day were treated with healing poultices, you don’t have to test for festering wounds. Expires after one day.
Pomander (Brass). Breathe through this item to avoid infection. Equipped with a pomander, tests to avoid airborne poisons and diseases are Glorious. Expires a week after being produced.
Smelling salts (Brass). Used to restore consciousness in someone who has fainted. If used by someone with an untreated Ears Ringing or a treated Blacking out wound, the injury does not cause them a condition for an hour - after which the salts must be smelled again. Expires a week after being produced. Note that it would also be thematically appropriate for certain weak-willed high-born NPCs to have to test Endurance or Willpower to avoid fainting when faced with especially grizzly scenes.
Snake oil (Brass). Has no real effect, but smells or tastes really impressive. +1d on Leadership and Charm tests to trick someone into thinking it is an effective poison or remedy.
Ointment (Brass). Must be used once a day to work, one dose has 5 uses. Alleviates itches of all kinds, and if applied to a treated Scarring strike wound, the wound does not cause the Staggered condition that day. Expires after one week.
Herbal remedy (Brass). Alleviates the symptoms of a disease hazard of rating 2 or lower for D10 days. Expires after one week.
Medicine (Silver). Alleviates the symptoms of a disease hazard of rating 4 or lower for D10 days. Expires after one month.
Advanced poison (Silver). Applies the Drained condition if ingested, inhaled, touched or hurt by a weapon smeared in it. Furthermore, the victim must pass a Hazard value of 2 or suffer the Internal injury wound.
Advanced antitoxin (Silver). If ingested, ends the effects of any Basic or Advanced poison, or venom- or poison-based attacks.
Flash powder (Silver). If it comes into contact with fire, this powder will create a very bright flash. Anyone within the same zone as it who were not shielding their eyes will be Blinded for one round.
Panacea (Gold). Alleviates the symptoms of any disease for D10 days. Allows the patient taking it to take an Endurance test to be cured of a disease or poison with a hazard rating of 2 or lower. Expires after one month.
Deadly poison (Gold). Applies the Drained condition if ingested, inhaled, touched or hurt by a weapon smeared in it. Furthermore, the victim must pass a Hazard value of 4 or suffer the Internal injury wound. On a success they suffer the Blacking out wound instead, though without risk of losing an eye.
Reman fire (Gold). This liquid will catch fire on contact with water, and will float on water while burning. If set ablaze by contact with reman fire, water cannot be used to end the condition.
A newly created Apothecary should probably use their Shortbow or Sling in combat, when they aren’t treating the wounds of the main fighters of the group. If they wish to become more dangerous in combat, their favored Strength attribute is where they may have an edge - Increasing Strength pairs well with using a Sling for ranged combat, and increases damage with thrown and melee weapons.
A sling is probably going to be better than thrown weapons, but if your GM will let you make oil flasks and the like without too much trouble, throwing may be the better choice for an apotechary.
A sling is one-handed, as are thrown weapons, meaning a Shield is a good idea to improve resilience, if one is found - as a brass tier character buying one might be hard without a sponsor. Now, any melee weapon will do, but knuckledusters are likely to be a good bet here. They allow the character to attack using Brawn, meaning they can focus on improving their strength - and if Athletics is used to defend, there really is no downside to fighting unarmed with the rules as written. Check with your game master though, it would not be unreasonable of him to rule that you could take damage if someone parries your unarmed attacks and you’re only attacking with a knuckle duster. If you do go that route, consider taking the Bash Attack talent to get a free extra attack if you stagger your opponent.
If you plan to go the Strength route, make sure to ask the GM if she will allow you to use Toil to craft concoctions. Toil requires Dexterity or Toil, and while Dexterity seems the “correct” choice to me, your GM might disagree. If Toil is allowed there, and you don’t care about being able to perform surgery, focusing on Strength for an unarmed build is a very viable way for a non-halfling Apothecary to be okay in close combat while focusing their XP on only one attribute.
As an apothecary, you have two roles you can easily take in the party: The healer and the “alchemist”. Beyond that, look to your attributes and preferred playstyle, as well as your contacts, to get ideas for how to roleplay. If you need inspiration, here are some characters and people from history and fiction that you may want to look into. Note that all of these have higher social status than the Brass tier that OWRPG gives to apothecaries, so unless you can persuade the GM to let you be Silver tier (not really unreasonable for an apothecary), some adaption is needed.
Historical Inspiration
Ambroise Paré – Renaissance surgeon who revolutionized battlefield medicine and famously avoided boiling oil for wounds, opting for gentler balms.
Paracelsus – Renaissance physician and alchemist with a flair for strange theories and potions
Hildegard of Bingen – Medieval abbess, herbalist, and mystic who blended medicine with visions and divine inspiration.
Fictional Inspiration
Cadfael (The Cadfael Chronicles) – A Benedictine monk and herbalist who solves murders between tending the infirmary.
Severus Snape (Harry Potter) – A master of potions and poisons, with a prickly bedside manner.
Lucie Wilton (The Apothechary Rose) – A female medieval master apothecary, allowed by the guild to continue her late husband's practice and even take apprentices.
Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow (Batman) – A twisted chemist who uses fear toxins—an example of what happens when “medicine” crosses into malevolence.
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