The study of alchemy is as old as the first kiln, as old as the first society, for mixing volatile things together fills a primal need in humans and other races alike. Not all users of alchemical magic use bombs or mutagens, though; some focus even more on the academic study of alchemy. These apothecaries spend their time learning new and exciting ways to use alchemical magic, making discoveries that transcend the very nature of alchemy. The ability to use metamixes to expand the power and utility of their spells brings them closer to wizards than simple alchemists. Most alchemical magic affects only the drinker directly, but an apothecary can also focus on creating effects deadly to groups of nearby enemies or a single enemy far away, or even learn to harness the spell magic of her mage brethren, distilling scrolls into special potions that can be used by all.
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The Apothecary is something that I picked up because there is a glaring hole in the caster types. Namely that there's no full BAB 4/9 caster or full caster of the alchemy list. This looks like it serves as the latter. Granted it's not exactly necessary and can be troublesome to have a 'more alchemist' but I wanted to take a look.
Off the bat I'm a little irked. Normally when you present a class you get its hit die, class skills, and skill ranks per level before you get to the class features. Well I can guess it's hit die because of it's BAB but I see no Class Skills or skill ranks per level. These can be guessed given patterns from other classes but That is seriously not something to omit. That kind of thing alone gives me reason to throw this into my folder of stuff I'll never use, but for now I'll power on because it is easy to assume that it has a d6 hit die, class skills as the Alchemist, 2+INT skill ranks per level.
In a nutshell the Apothecary gets full casting alchemy including zero level extracts(!?), Discovery-like Concoctions every other level, Brew Potion, and a capstone ability. This is simple and looks like it works okay but there are some minor things that set off alarms in my head. Due to how extracts work I'm curious as to what the heck the Widen and Bounce Ray concoctions do. That just raises too many questions. This also makes some of the choices for the spell list questionable at best and useless at the worst. Beyond that it doesn't give me much to differenciate it from the Alchemist. In fact with the loss of BAB (and presumably Hit Die) the extract list, even extended to 9 levels does not support the class enough to make it survive. It's list is nowhere near the Wizard's list so the BAB is not justified and it does not have enough abilities to support itself.
Overall the class as written doesn't work and even when you extrapolate what information should be there it is weak beyond belief and some of the abilities and the extract list show a painful misunderstanding as to how extracts even work. For me it picks at too many pet peeves for me to find useful so I'm giving it 1 out of 5 stars.
This installment of the CLASSifieds-series clocks in at 9 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 6 pages of content, so let's take a look, shall we?
The apothecary is a new base-class provided herein - it sports 1/2 BAB-progression, good fort- and will-saves, simple weapon and light armor proficiency and Brew Potion as a 1st level bonus feat. The class lacks HD and skill-information, though. This is a glaring oversight, for while the class obviously mutated out of an archetype, it lacks the "X replaces Y"-information that is the standard for archetypes and thus would be considered a class of its own. While I assume the alchemist's default here for both, I can't properly judge whether this is the case or not - as a full caster, there is a good chance the apothecary should have less skill points, a lower HD or a modified skill list -alas, I can't tell since the pdf omits whether this is an archetype or an alternate class, the latter option potentially generating more issues.
The class is pretty much defined by its alchemy class feature - this functions kind of like an alchemist's alchemy, including being based on Intelligence - however, unlike the alchemist, the apothecary's extracts extend to 9th level and the class has its own extract list. Beyond this pretty solid list, the apothecary also receives a list of so-called concoctions, the first of which is gained at first level, +1 every two levels thereafter. So of these are metamix concoctions (including level-increase), which means that metamagic-like effects can be added to the effects. Concoctions also include a limited list of discoveries, the option to grow monsters (summon monster) from bottles (including a solid scaling mechanism) and the option to distill scrolls.
Generally, these concoctions are pretty solid, though I consider Ray Bounce somewhat nasty - missed rays can affect a second target if you manage an attack at -5 to atk...which is not bad for the pure class. Alas, the lack of a minimum level required makes this potentially broken when used in dipping. A minimum level would be appreciated here. On the plus-side, the other concoctions do feature such caps where applicable, solidly situating e.g. the cool contingency extract-option at a level where dipping would not make it viable - kudos!
Beyond these concoctions, apothecaries begin play with tonics, the cantrips of the class. 20th level provides one of 3 capstones, which range from immortality to Int-bonuses to an outsider-apotheosis..
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good, I noticed no glaring glitches apart from the omission of skills and HD. Layout adheres to Fat Goblin Games' two-column full-color standard and the pdf has the nice cover art. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this brevity.
Tyler Beck delivers an intriguing take here - the extract-based full caster. The achievement of this class, thus, imho can be found in the solid, well-rounded and unique extract-list - it's subtle, but the list is pretty nice. The apothecary quite frankly surprised me - it does sport some truly evocative visuals (monsters from bottles? Heck yeah!) and fills a niche not yet covered. Much to my extreme annoyance, the pdf ALSO fails to list the ability-type (I.e. Ex, Su, Sp...) of the respective abilities gained. All of them. This is a blatant oversight that should have been caught.
On the plus-side, the rules-language is more precise than I expected to see and overall, this would be a class I'd rate as good, bordering on the very good, at something along the lines of 4.5 stars - and probably round up....had this no issues. The ray-bouncing could use a minimum level; and then there would be the lack of designation as either archetype or alternate class - and the subsequent ambiguity regarding two basic, crucial components of it. If you consider my harping here over the top, please remember that alternate classes lock themselves out of the ones they're based on, so this may or may not eliminate potential multiclassing issues - as provided, I can't judge it properly. It should be taken as a sign of how nice this one is per se that I still can't bring myself to rate this any lower than 3.5 stars, in spite of these glaring omissions. I do have to round down, though.
Sweet. I'm quite proud of this one... I felt there was a niche that needed filling in the form of a 9th-level extract-based caster. I hope that others will find it unique enough to stand on its own compared to the Wizard and the Alchemist. Please let me know what you think of this class here in the discussion!
EDIT: Oh, and before anyone else points it out, the wording of the class uses "she" and "her" throughout, but the image is that of a male. Sometimes the artist and the author just don't mesh on that stuff, and I apologize. We could always say that the Apothecary is the SECOND transgender "iconic" character to appear on paizo.com. :-D
Because some people were asking questions about the Apothecary on other forums, I thought I'd paste my responses here:
So what I did was make a spell list for the Apothecary that goes up through 9th level that includes all the 7th-9th level spells that you'd expect would be extract-able. The apothecary also gains things called Concoctions that include many alchemist discoveries as well as some new, fun options like Bottled monsters, Contingent extract (which lets you drink an extract but have it lie dormant until you decide to use it with an Immediate action), Distill scroll (which lets you turn a scroll into a potion, and later even distill "potions" using scrolls of higher than level 3), Metamixes (metamatic for extracts), and Tonics (which are alchemical cantrips that can be sipped many times a day to gain their benefits)
Here is a sidebar on how I chose the spells to add to the extract list:
The spells shown here are by no means the only extracts that a GM might allow an apothecary in her or her game to use.
The apothecary drinks her extracts for spell effects, so any spell which goes on the apothecary list should either directly affect ONLY the person who drinks the extract, or should emanate in some way from the drinker. In general, most spells that are on the alchemist’s extract list should be avail- able to the apothecary. In addition, spells which have ray, cone, line or burst effects which originate from the apothecary should be included. Almost all Transmutation spells should be at least considered, and most Divination spells would also fit the apothecary’s concept. Very few Conjuration spells fit the apothecary’s spellcasting con- cept, as drinking an extract doesn’t feel like a reasonable way to summon creatures or items, with the exception of spells like vomit swarm.
Oh definitely! All of the shapeshifting extracts are there, and you can metamix them as well! In fact, I might try to put together a build focused on just such a focus and post it here. :-D
Oh man, I had noticed the lack of HD and Skill information about two weeks ago and was really hoping that we'd get the PDF updated before you did your review. For the reference of those reading, here is the information missing from the PDF:
Alignment: Any
Hit Dice: d6
Starting Wealth: 2d6 x 10 gp (average 70 gp)
Class Skills: The apothecary’s class skills are Appraise (Int), Craft (Int), Disable Device (Dex), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (planes) (Int), Linguistics (Int), Profession (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), and Use Magic Device (Cha).
Skill ranks per level: 4 + Int modifier.
As far as (Su) and (Sp) for concoctions:
Su: Contingent extract, Distill scroll, Distill greater scroll, Expanded distillations
Sp: Bottled monsters
Metamixes don't require Su or Sp, nor do things like Ray Bounce since they just modify existing abilities.
RE: Ray Bounce - I can see what you mean for dipping, so I might have set a minimum of 3rd level for this one if I was to do it again.
Thanks as always for your review, and I'll let you know the second the PDF is updated with the missing info.
Only a short time ago I picked up The Apothecary. Since then I found another product with 4 levels of extracts and full BAB filling in the gap of alchemy branching out. So far my only complaint is that both products don't come with archetypes and other junk so I got to trying to port some third party alchemist stuff to them.
@Malwing: I'm thinking of, in the next few months, putting together a book of archetypes for many of these CLASSifieds classes that I've written, so keep an eye out for that. :)
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