How To Play an Apothecary in D&D 5e with @DnDDeepDive

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Deep dive Colby has joined us up in our studio to give an objective lens on how to play the class that we designed because we figured that we might be a little biased in talking about our own work so we needed someone with the critical eye to help examine and share how everyone can dive into playing our new class for for fifth there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling the Apothecary is a practiced medical expert an occult Arcane magic user they wield their knowledge to both heal and harm combining conventional medical skills with their Strange Magic we were inspired by a lot of our favorite classic horror movies and horror books works such as Frankenstein or Jacqueline Hyde or even something like Dana scly from the xfiles really helped Inspire what we wanted to capture with the idea of an investigative scientist somebody who uses science like magic and something that really Taps into those occult and horror sort of Science Fiction narratives and of course the works of Lovecraft notably Herbert West reanimator were a huge inspiration for for the subass but in doing so we also wanted to introduce an intelligence-based spellcaster that Rift on the packed magic spellcasting of the Warlock so in the Apothecary we have an intelligence-based spellcaster that uses the Warlock framework to explore new ways of engaging with magic and building a very very customizable character so if you're looking for that kind of investigator doctor knowled character who's using their knowledge but has that dark Edge to them and if you really like the way the Warlock is set up you might want to check out the Apothecary I want to pass it over to our guest to ask uh what was your first thoughts on the theme and flavor of the Apothecary I loved it I you know my first impression was like this feels like maybe a cross between like a warlock mostly and an artificer but with maybe even a little more explicit um emphasis on like the sciency aspect I think sometimes the artificer it can be kind of clockwork steampunky but it doesn't have to be right it can be kind of more just Arcane magic driven um but with the Apothecary it felt maybe a little more explicitly like um kind of mad sciency Dr Frankenstein Jackel and Hyde you know kind of thing which I really loved and and is a little bit almost lacking um in the current you know D and d5e uh class availability so yeah I mean getting um to be an intelligence-based Caster um but who gets to benefit from a lot of the similar things that warlocks get um which I'm sure we'll get into uh just felt like kind of cool and unique and fun so why don't we take a look at the uh the class features available for the Apothecary and kind of dig into how they're used and what what we like about them so as an apothecary you're GNA have a d8 hit die pretty standard middle of the road kind of Caster build there you're going to get light armor and medium armor you're going to get simple weapons short swords and hand crossbows and you're also going to get to choose first any tool proficiency but then also your choice of a poisoners kit a herbalist kit or Alchemist supplies for saving throws you get intelligence and wisdom and for skills you get to choose two from Arcana history investigation medicine nature and religion so r off the bat when we have our Apothecary our biggest feature is going to be Apothecary magic which is our spellcasting for the class overall the Apothecary does have a formula book that they consult when they use their spells but they're a prepared Caster that has access to the full Apothecary spell list when they're preparing their spells which are based on intelligence and they're going to prepare a number of spells equal to their int mod plus their Apothecary level very similar to a warlock Al they have a limited number of spell slots they do return on a short rest so you get to you get to take a short rest and get all of your spell casting ability back which I think is pretty awesome now what of the most interesting things that we diverge with with the with the kind of the Warlock chassis in this class is that the Apothecary actually gets more spell slots and a couple more cantrips known compared to the Warlock so with the Apothecary though it's not tied to their proficiency bonus they're going to have a number of spell slots equal to that as long as you're staying single class this is not one of those wordings where if you multiclass out of Apothecary your number of Apothecary spell slots still increase no it doesn't doesn't work that way but kind of the way that we like to equate for people is what's your proficiency bonus that's how many spell slots you got that's what the table says so it does mean that that we're going to get um one spell slot at first level two at second level but that's going to go up to three spell slots at fifth we're gonna have four spell slots at Ninth level we're gonna have five spell slots at 13th and eventually we're going to get six spell slots that come back on a short rest at 17th level I think one of the uh conceits with this though when people compare it to the Warlock is that unlike the Warlock you don't have eldrich blast and all of the abilities to improve eldrich blast so you are more reliant on using your spell slots yeah that was kind of when I was first looking at it was the thing that initially really jumped out at me I mean when I think of warlocks you know you get to level is it nine I think that you get three level 11 level 11 that's right that you finally get three spell slots right and thinking gosh three fifth level spell slots is really great that come back on a short rest and now you know with this character I mean right at level 9 you'd have four fifth level spell slots that come back on short rest at first glance that feels really really strong right but I think when you temper it with that fact that you know unlike the Warlock you don't get a really high damaging cantrip in eldrich blast at least not the invocations that make eldrich blast so good right that you're a lot more reliant on those spell slots for all of your spell casting if you want to I mean do a lot of damage with them anyways right so it felt like that was a way to kind of temper um the power of the character yeah now the Apothecary has a very unique spell list that combines both a bunch of the new spells that we introduced in Sebastian Crow's guide drenim with a smattering of spells that deal deal with poisons disease healing and recuperation so what you're going to see with and that's part of the reason why we had to write so many new spells because there's actually not a lot of spells in the game that deal with these kind of themes so you get a character that has a lot of opportunities to deal poison damage necrotic damage cause diseases work with acid that's another Sub sub theme of that although some of the subclasses build on these themes in various ways and we also have a bunch of class features that we'll get to you that make using poison damage not as bad as it seems because everybody right now is saying poison damage oh Constitution saving throws everybody's immune yeah but uh there's ways around it we we worked on that yeah y um you are a ritual Caster as well um and so any of the spells that you have prepared you can cast it as a ritual and as any character you have an Arcane Focus that you use for casting your spells incidentally one of the other kind of cool features of the Apothecary is baked into the class you can swap out your cantrips when you finish a long rest so you can mix and match those even though you start off with three that you pick and uh get a couple more from from there and we'll talk more about what cantrips we would recommend as we get into uh the the actual spell selection later I want to talk about the theme of them being a prepared Caster their access to spells what you're going to end up with is even though you have limited spell slots you have a lot of spells at your disposal and I actually think helps sell the theme of the Apothecary I imagine them with their doctor's bag of all sorts of like trinkets tonics uh different ingredients and when they're preparing they're mixing their stuff together to prepare the specific few spells that they can but it takes time it takes practice and that's that's why they have so limited amount I I feel like the whole thing kind of feeds into you're a person who knows a lot but you can only prepare a few at a time and I can definitely see like wanting to flavor this I think if I were playing this character I would want to flavor it almost like I'm casting spells yes but it's more like these Elixir that I've created are are doing the thing or you know what I mean this this invention that I've created is is kind of the thing that's actually causing the spell effect exactly that's actually a key point for the flavor of the class as well because apothecaries exist within our world with drenim where Arcane magic is something that is normally the perview of sorcerers and wizards only who both have to be born with that and it is very difficult for other people to use Arcane magic but apothecaries through their occult practice because it is a world of magic magic is built into the science of the world and so it means that someone who has an understanding of how those things work can tap into things but it's a very physical sort of thing it's not like unlike where the traditional image of a wizard where it's like you know the fundamental formulas of of the universe and with your mind you're warping that the Apothecary has a very strong connection to their tools where they are Brewing something up they are utilizing really a lot of that like a lot of the things that really inspired us were were that weird transitionary period where like you see in Middle Ages Medical textbooks where there were all those superstitions around the way the work humor yeah the humor the humors were actually a page that we had open while designing the apothecaries and we were going to work it in but it didn't find a place but it was still heavily inspired by that type of medical practice or like those those ideas that like C certain plants or chemicals or like that you could drain people's blood with leeches to remove sicknesses from them so kind of we wanted to tow that line between those archaic understandings of how medicine has evolved over the over even human history from something that in and in many ways today you know medicine does have a lot of different opinions a lot of science behind it a lot of stuff that works a lot of stuff that doesn't work because the understanding is always evolving and changing and where the line between the mental the physical the spiritual is drawn is something that we kind of want to play with in that in that fantasy of you know where where does it where hases it become about the raw science and where is it about something magical or occult happening it's like um medieval medieval medicine meets 19th century Victorian horror to totally and and and really that's where like I mean that's where the novel comes out of because you look at Frankenstein which is exactly that that the the ape that you know Frankenstein is often considered one of the first works of Science Fiction but there's so much of like the occult and that weird Arcane understanding of how the body works that we really wanted to Channel with with the CL with the class and that's where we get into of course with the Apothecary you'll choose your occult practice which is your subass right away at level one um and we'll get into what those are uh the specifics but you'll be able to choose from the alienist the chemist The Exorcist the mutagen the pathogen or the reanimator as we hit level two we get the other key feature of the apothecaries which is is their esoteric theories these esoteric theories are basically dependent on your practice as a medical professional you might excel in certain things and the esoteric theories there is a lot of them that we designed and you get to choose an amount based on your level as you gain levels you understand and learn more esoteric theories at second level you're going to know two and then you get an extra one at every even level so they they go up pretty high and with the esoteric theories one of the design principles was that we wanted them to kind of allow you to push your uh Apothecary in any sort of play style that you might imagine them so whereas with some other classes there's like a certain subass that says hey here you're a m melee combatant with this one you're more of a blaster with this one you're more of this or that but I find with the esoteric theories you can take any Apothecary subass and steer it and lean it towards a certain Direction which I find very exciting because no two practitioners of a cult doctor magic are ever the same that's a common phrase yeah that's the saying right with the esoteric theories you get a lot of ways to customize your character because you're going to be able to choose up to 11 of these over the course of your progression I think we made 50 something something like that yeah there there's there's a bunch of them and some of them run the range of a very big Power graes to some more cool ribbon features and to build on what Kelly said we didn't want to have the the Apothecary obviously can very naturally fit into the role of the Healer or the kind of damage overtime poison damage based damage dealer so we wanted to have those both supported but with the Apothecary we wanted a character that could potentially specialize into a variety of different roles based on what you wanted to for your character so what you'll see with the Apothecary is there's a APO Aries can do a lot of different things but no one Apothecary is going to be able to do them all because your spell selection and your esoteric theories are going to really determine how much you end up with in the end right what the the first thing that I thought when I first was reading about the esoteric theories is I was like oh these are Elder invocations essentially but um you know we get we get them a little more quickly we gain more of them a little more quickly but then as I started to read them and kind of dive into the different ones I was like oh you know these really give you a lot more variety than Elder gy vocations would to really kind of shape almost the core of your class it almost feels like getting another subass option right like you can really kind of take no matter which subass you take as your Apothecary you can really hone kind of oh I want to be more of a support focused I want to be more kind of a melee damage dealer I want to be like a spell damage dealer I want to be utility Focus like all those things whereas with eldrich inv vocations yeah there's going to be some that kind of you know are going to be musthaves for damage dealing with eldrich Blast for example or you know if you want thirsting blade if you're going to be a melee damage dealer things like that but I feel like the majority of them give you kind of utility some maybe some defensive options right things like that but I feel like these kind of really shape and Define your character even more um and let you specialize in a way that a lot of times you know Elder ocations by comparison don't allow a little B comes from there were actually two subclasses that didn't make it through development that got uh kind of surgically cut up yeah the to to make to complete the metaphor yes we we put two subclasses that did make it on the surgical table Cho them into bits and put those bits into esoteric theories um one of them was the surgeon okay um and the surgeon was going to be the melee class but what we found is when you look at something like the Warlock the hex blade kind of although I love the hex blade it's an unfortunate circumstance that the hex blade says oh you want to do melee play a hex blade if you play any other warlock not going to be as good and so the surge the surgeon was going to be that but then we were like what if any Apothecary could be a melee combatant and we just took the surgeon's ability and popped them into esoteric theories and we did have in development there was like a packed like thing but we ended up being like let's just make the message esic theories and let people pick and choose choose from them which is I find very interesting because the some of the recent One D andd play tests have actually done the same thing where it was like instead of having the packs just make them the the um ELD invocations and we took that Direction with our kind of in many ways the Apothecary is a bit of a hack on the Warlock and um that's the direction that we took with it and we we felt that it it gave you more of that customizable identity of because there's so many types of medical practitioners and they all have different skill sets and many doctors will even be like I cannot tell you anything about that I am not that kind of doctor I do not know anything about the brain I know everything about your heart but I cannot tell you about your brain right or I'm I'm a A toxicologist or you know what I mean a pharmacologist and I can prescribe you medicine to help you with this thing but like I can't go into surgery yeah yeah so beyond beyond these we also give the just talking about the Bas class features most of your features then are going to come in your spells and your esoteric theories and your subclass at higher levels you're also going to have the greater formula feature this is what is basically giving you your sixth seventh eth and Ninth level spells which incidentally also baked into the Apothecary is the ability to retrain what these are and as an extra perk if you take this all the way to level 19 and 20 you actually get an extra sixth and seventh level one at uh level level 19 and 20 similar to Mystic arcum for warlocks don't come with spell slots right um and so you couldn't use them say to upcast one of your other Apothecary Spells at like a sixth or seventh or eighth level you're still capped at fifth level spell slots there our Capstone feature miraculous recovery is basically at 20th level the Apothecary has a long Rest In A Bottle uh they can use this feature to allow all of the characters around them to um restore all their hit points and basically gain all of the benefits of a long rest so if you're playing your campaign all the way to 20th level you get an extra long rest my question is could you use this even in drenim in the areas with the haze where you can't like take a long rest yes oh I was going to say I don't so I thought the design in time is that apothecaries literally are like I'm to go into drenim and I have this this formula that I've created at like they're they're the master at this point I think it's a 20th level feature yeah I would rule that you can yeah if you're still playing in a drenim campaign at 20th level you're probably like you're you're you're good the world of rheim is a much more um high level characters are rare So a 20th level character in the context of the world of draim is one of the most powerful people in the entire world so if you're one of the most powerful people in the entire world I guess I guess get to the rules Legends of the Apothecary who just walks in and out of the haze of drenim without any issue is probably like a story that it's told around the campfires yeah so those are the basic features of the class now this is where I want uh Kobe's opinions on uh some of the features because we could go all day about all of the features that we created and we have a lot of favorite builds but since we're looking at this as how would you build an apothecary we wanted to give it to a third party to see they would build an apothecary and so the main questions I want to talk about the sub classes I want to talk about the Spells and the esoteric theories first of all when we are looking at the subclasses there is a lot of variety there and each subass is meant to imagine a different type of scientist doctor or otherwise um one of the interesting ones that I just want to note off the top before we get into which ones we're choosing a lot of people have asked about the Exorcist and how that fits in with science and doctors and I always want to remind people that in a world where ghosts and spirits are real it would be a scientific study to be an exorcist more so than a religious practice or anything Egon from the Ghostbusters yeah yeah or I mean for us both we were also thinking of the film The Exorcist as well but also kind of that for me it all of these hit like a very clear archetype yeah like for me the the alienist was also that kind of like uh the that Mentalist that mentalism that psychic energy so the alienist kind of brings into that that sort of um that idea that like psychic power is an extension of the body and the mind and so we have a doctor that deals with that it also let us get us a couple Freudian jokes in there like Freud and young and yeah I think the the alienist is our is our like I I had 11 from stranger things in mind uh then with uh the chemist the chemist was our Blaster mhm yeah evocation wizard almost and uh Exorcist of course was our Exorcist what else do we have um my favorite yeah the one that I would play and build around uh first out the gate is the mutagen jackn Hyde yeah yep it's it's it looks so fun I mean you basically you you spend a spell slot and transform into like a big meaty kind of monstrous thing right um You don't get to cast spells while you're transformed is that right correct so I almost see it I mean this is this is this is the gishi version of the Apothecary for me and um I'm okay with not casting spells as long as you know maybe there's some spells that I can put on myself first and then transform right but also I mean the form itself to me um it kind of feels almost like a poor man's tensor's transformation like you're prohibited from casting spells but you're just a lot more powerful in combat right and you're wielding your big meaty fists and pummeling stuff which is super cool and the thing that I love about it too is even though like I might not be able to cast spells while I'm transformed it gives you a variety in your play style where you can legitimately be Jackal sometimes and hide sometimes and sometimes the situation calls for Downing that potion and transforming and just punching stuff and then sometimes you might want to stand back and you know cast some control spells or some damage spells very I mean obviously the character I'm about to mention was inspired by Jacqueline Hyde so Jacqueline Hy is the is the root but also like the fantasy of playing The Incredible Hulk who's like a brilliant scientist when he's Bruce Banner and then turns into a big monster and both characters are incredible I was actually I was rewatching the first Avengers movie recently and there was a beautiful scene where um when they arrive to recruit Bruce Banner and he's like like okay you want the big green guy to go fight and they're actually and then they're like actually we need you to trace gamma radiation to help people and he's like oh like there's this moment I don't think I caught it the first few times I watched it where he's like oh my God you're here for Bruce Banner not the Hulk then that's why he agrees to go and maybe if the Hulk comes out to play when we need him that would be okay too yeah well I mean my favorite part about this is that we actually went there where your strength and intelligence swap right right that's great when when when when you transform so then you don't have to worry about being so multiple abilities schore dependent right the the other just to mention the other subclasses the pathogen is our straightup plague doctor poisoner debuffer debuffer and um then the reanimators our Victor Frankenstein you literally have a meat monster or maybe your Franken ferner or yeah you could you have your buff uh yeah he was like it's like to me when I read the reanim anator I was like oh this is this is what the Necromancer should be this is a necromancer that works right because because you're not potentially summoning dozens of skeletons that now just totally like break the game and bog it down but it's like no you get Frankenstein you get your monster and uh and he's going to get stronger and stronger yeah exactly and it's like oh that's perfect so those are a sub classes if you were building one you've already said you you'd go with the Mist yeah that's that's your style I would and and you know there are so many great um esoteric theories let's go to the theories yeah so talking about the esoteric theories um I have a few builds that I specifically as one of the designers I was excited about build potential and like we definitely made chains yeah there are chains apparent in there and it's fun because certain chains uh Branch out in different ways depending on what you want to do but I want to know what esoteric theories stood out to you the most I mean looking specifically as somebody who loves to play like Melee gishy type characters right combat medic is kind of a no-brainer you get Marshall weapon and shield proficiency now I might not do that on uh the on the um mutagen because their fists are their weapons so you don't need the Marshall weapon proficiency quite so much um but if I were to do another another and and and that's the great thing here is that because of the esoteric theories I could do a chemist or an exorcist is probably actually would be my second choice and make them kind of a gishy Exorcist right um and so now it feels almost clery a little bit where you're getting like armor and weapon proficiency and then you have like some heal and curing spells and some kind of damaging spells especially against Undead um that would be really cool and fun clinical conditioning feels like a no-brainer because it gives you Constitution saving throw proficiency and so if you're concentrating on a spell especially that's great again for a non-mutagen I think especially um the biggest gishy uh option here is anatomical Precision which which lets you attack with your intelligence similar to say a battlesmith artificer or an armor artificer but you could get it potentially at level two instead of level three there and you don't have the restrictions that those classes have of needing to attack with a specific weapon in the Armor's case anyway or a magical weapon in the in the battles Smith's case um and yeah just being able to make like a single ability score dependent uh G FY Caster spell swword that can use their intelligence to attack with with after just level two is like so cool that's that that's a little bit of a dream for me yeah um and you wouldn't even have to multiclass uh to to be effective here as a little bit of an aside one thing I want to say just as a designer note um naming the Spells and esoteric theories was probably one of my favorite things in in any written work that I've ever created um I I'm sure it was the same for Monty but I had like medical websites open I had like 20 Tes of medical websites and like old school medicine practices and like what were tools and names for like diagnosis and things like that that they would use in Old School medicine and it was just so fun to come up with some of these some of these Concepts so there's a couple other fun combos so if you're building on the melee theme and cuz my whole image here as well with the melee theme and why why it's here is it it's like I wanted that kind of like Jack the Ripper scalpel wielding insane scientist sort of image or someone that's got like a bone saw or like the the spinning surgical blades and things like that and that was kind of the image so this is definitely one one character where you want to reflavor the weapons to fill that image of like wielding Wicked surgical implements as your as your weapons surgical strikes which is going to give you extra attack and uh what I also like as uh Viv section which gives you the 19 to 20 crit range um and then eventually you can build that as far as getting extra poison damage on your attacks venomous instruments yeah now my personal two of my personal favorites that uh don't get a lot of talk but there is a melee build here acquired tolerance it gives you advantage on saving throws against poison and and things like that but but what's more important about it for me is that you can't get damaged by your own spells and then there's another esoteric Theory surgeon's instinct which gives you blind sight so if you pair the ability to not get damaged by your own spells give yourself blind sight and then take some of the other melee focused uh esoteric theories you end up with a character that can drop something like Cloud kill run into it and start slicing and dicing up your enemies and I think that's such a fun play what what's the what's the radius of cloudkill is it 20 yes and it does move move away from you so there's a couple other spells that we have that don't do this that give you this damaging area that the Apothecary can kind of hang out in I mean that's that's Darkness devil sight on steroids because now your darkness is hurting also yeah and that's that's it takes a few esoteric theories and in exchange you don't get all of the melee combat options so you have to pick and choose which ones are going to be most beneficial but I think it's a fun build yeah now there's a couple fun things that we have done we talked about the poison damage and we've added a lot of spells to the game through Sebastian crows to give more options for poison damage spells but the key thing that you're thinking of but what about all the undead that are immune to poison putria is an esoteric theory that ignores Undead creatures abilities uh to resist or be immune to poison and the poison condition as well but you can take it a bit further than this too there is also corrosive compound which causes your poison spells to deal half poison half acid and at higher levels nerve agent which simply transforms your poison damage into psychic damage right so you have a couple options yeah and it's a lot tougher to find psychic damage immunity and resistance than poison in 5e for sure yeah now is that does that work with just Apothecary spells or is it other abilities cuz I would love for example to take venomous instruments that lets you add poison damage to your weapon attacks and then have a way to you know ignore the the resistance or immunity to poison damage this this was something that came out in play testing actually because also the pathogen does a lot with uh poison damage and things of that nature people were talking like well if I take these other esoteric theories if I pick this subass then I I still can't use it against Undead right and so we did change it so that it affects all of your spells and abilities so that basically if you are an apothecary and you using any Apothecary feature or anything that you've taken as your Apothecary does poison damage you can do poison damage to Undead if you take it that esoteric awesome um and of course you do have other options within that but we did really we had a play test scenario that was apothecaries versus the undead so that we could actually go go through these because yes it is you've got options there and we felt that the characters that were incentivized to build around poison damage would go that way um it's amazing how a lot fewer Undead than you anticipate actually have resistance or immunity to to necrotic damage which is which is actually quite one of the quite surprising things that came out of play testing is how rare it is that they are flat like there's very few that are flat out immune to necrotic damage and there's actually not that many Undead that are even resistant to it yeah surprising right by the same token I guess there aren't a lot that have um vulnerability to radiant damage a lot fewer than you would antip wish not the yeah right you can also build the fullon Healer build um and so we do have some kind of fun things like diagnosis which lets you do the help action as a bonus action on your turn got your Mastermind Rogue there yes um another one being um uh pharmacology which adds your intelligence modifier to your your healing spells uh double dose if you're doing if you're casting a spell that heals a single Target you can instead Target Two that are within range my one of my favorites is actually adrenaline surge which if you heal someone that is at zero hit points um they gain resistance to all damage and have advantage on saving throws until the end of their next turn and then they gain advantage on the first attack R they make so if you're bringing someone back into the battle it's you've got your your P your paddles what and and they're charged up and have maybe the the chance of surviving a little bit more I also picture I mean great scene in Pulp fiction but it's the adrenaline to the heart shot in the heart um but but yeah it's definitely what what I love about this is we've just clearly identifi that yeah there's some great melee builds but if you're like can I play a Healer the answer is yes and you can actually play a pretty decent healer yeah are there any other ones that were big highlights for you one downside about spells a lot of times is there's not often a lot of ways to add extra damage on a spell but critical condition to me it looks like it's like a a spell crit for saving spells right cuz we can always like if you roll a 20 on a Firebolt double damage awesome if they fail their save against disintegrate then they failed their save against disintegrate and they're going to take but there's no way to do anything more but with critical condition if they rolled a one on their saving throw right so it's essentially the same thing as getting a 20 on a plus to hit they roll a one on their save you do double damage yes uh on your spell it and that's that's awesome I love that yeah we we um we really enjoy that especially combined with um um CTIC formula that is also the kind of smite with spells right right that's another thing that's like you don't see that a lot of times but yeah being able to add an extra 2 D4 damage plus 2 D4 more for each level of the spell slot yeah that you spend right you you're spending a spell slot to kind of spell smite a little bit on top of your spell this was one that we actually had to push a couple times in play testing because people were like it's not the feedback was it wasn't strong enough to justify the spell slot cost because it is a bit of a premium for the Apothecary to to drop more more into it so I think that that kind of showcases some of our esoteric theories and how they can be used to build up apothecaries in many different ways but we also created how many 20 40 spells I think we did two at least two spells of every level trying to make sure there was a spell that did Poison damage at every level yeah so a lot of focus was on poison damage again acid damage necrotic damage uh there's a few that are very specifically flavored for certain subclasses although they're open to all apothecaries but um overall um I'm really proud of a lot of the spells that we made the whole the whole through line with these spells was how do we make poison damage feel scary yeah yeah and also a lot of these spells are meant to feel like the Apothecary is laying down some sort of formula or spreading an area of infection or just debilitating a target with like they threw a syringe at you or something um so they gave you a they gave you a horse tranquilizer yeah so with with the spell list that we've created um what are some of the ones that stood out to you as favorites um there were a lot of good ones stream of consumption um you know exhaustion in this game is so punishing that it makes the Berserker Barbarian all but unplayable right in 5e how many times do you get to inflict exhaustion on the enemies not enough right um but this spell lets you um now and and if I'm not mistaken the way it works is it essentially con compounds and every turn you can inflict another level of exhaustion now one level of exhaustion not a big deal two levels of exhaustion fairly painful but manageable but beyond that like it is incredibly debilitating right so when I first read that I was like that's too powerful but then I kind of thought you know most combat encounters don't last all that long so in a long combat encounter yeah you could outright kill somebody um if you exhaust them enough right but more often than not you're not going to get past two three four five levels now granted it's still very debilitating at at especially at three and Beyond even two um so worth using um and really cool and fun and interesting uh but uh yeah that was a favorite I really liked um costic grip it's uh it's it's like a magical grapple that does damage right um melee attack every round for like 44 damage and if they fail their save they're restrained and take another 44 of damage um and then scales you know if you upcast it right uh it's it's super strong and I love the idea a of like essentially being kind of a Grappler uh but like a spellcaster Grappler yeah one one interesting thing that we had to change with that one originally was a range of touch but then people pointed out that your familiar could deliver it and so we changed it to a range of self because it felt unfair the the point the cost of this is that yeah your Apothecary has to get up and close corpse explosion I mean we were playing a lot of diao somebody's been playing Diablo yeah and that's great like so this is a reaction spe uh spell because um it is when someone dies within 120 ft of you you make them blow up at the moment of their death it's not choose a corpse that's on the ground blows up yeah yeah it's uh it's uh definitely for a fourth level slot reaction kind of blowing up with a fireball is a pretty strong spell um especially for but wonderful to get that re get damage out of a reaction right yeah um of course being a gishy being being a Gish lover I love uh feted feted blade FTI feted blade uh gives your weapon an extra 2D four of damage um but then also poisons the enemy if they fail their conve right um I mean this is to me is like a maybe a little bit better Spirit shroud um and it scales 1 D4 per spell slot that you upcast it so you don't have to wait for two levels to upcast it and get the benefit yeah so FedEd blade is kind of the the the the go-to if you want to do that poison damage dealing blade Wheeling you know I'm going to come at you with the non-disinfected surgical surgical implements uh and again you can take an esoteric theory that makes it so that you know you can ignore poison resistance and immunity so because again a lot of people I know are going to say ah poison it's it's worthless one of my personal favorite spells you know being the author of them uh worm is probably one that uh I I think I'm really proud of 46 extra damage it's it's the people have asked if it's too powerful but I've seen it played at the table both by me as a player by somebody else as a player and basically against me as a DM and also against me from the DM Monty used it against me the other day um and in all cases it felt exciting yeah it didn't feel like it broke any combat encounters basically the spell allows you to deal extra damage to a Target and heal the person who's damaging them the bloodworm is basically your leeching yes it's your Lee yeah but it works on a weapon attack right so it's similar say to like a Smite but you can only use it once per turn and they do get to save against it and so it's like maybe a little bit stronger Smite but with the potential of it not working it really depends on because each time the the target takes this necrotic damage they get to make the save to end the so it one of the things that we wanted to push with a lot of the Apothecary spells is where does the saving throw happen so there's no save to resist the initial blood worm got it um it but they get the saving throw to end it every time they take the damage from it so you're always going to get a little bit out of it but it's definitely one of those spells that feels great when it lasts a while um but it it's like everything is if they make the save it's kind of there it goes yeah although the Apothecary doesn't have its Elish blast it does have some bread butter so one of the bread and butter spells that we made for the Apothecary is bacterial barrage it's your cantrip it does it's a range spell attack and it does 1d8 necrotic damage but if the target is suffering from the poison condition or a disease it goes up to 1 D12 M and so so this is where we combine it with um we have two first level spells uh that are inv Venom and infect um which so you can choose do you want to poison someone or do you want to inflict a disease on them um in venom is just simple choose a Target within range and they take 2 D4 poison damage must make a con save on a failed they're poisoned and so this repeats every turn so it is basically just poison them every turn they're going to take a little bit of damage might get um might get the poison condition put on them as as well uh and you can upcast this to affect multiple targets so as a bread and butter for the Apothecary you can just go in venom with um bacterial barrage or po uh poison needle um and acid burn which are kind of giving you an acid cantrip a poison cantrip and a necrotic disease sort of cantrip so you get all those options within there so that's kind of like that core low-l combination that you can do and so if you want if you like that like classic packed magic Caster style of like put down the important concentration spell and then fall back on cantrips you can do that although I do think that the Apothecary kind of drives you towards put down the really flashy spell keep some things in reserve and start going in with the surgical instruments I I I like that play sound myself too now question in your guys play testing you know I I am seeing a lot of the spells that are allowing for a constitution save for enemies in your guys play testing did you see that being like really detrimental cuz people complain about that a lot right where it's like oh con saves like you know monsters in 5 especially I'll have like really great con saves um what what was your take on that in play testing I think that a lot of our spells are quite debilitating and uh a lot of people were worried about the power level of some of our spells and I actually found that it kind of evens out that like big meaty monsters can get out of them but you're still dealing some damage or debilitating them L and honestly at the table I have found a lot of these spells are still like really exciting to use and at no point did they feel like they weren't performing there were a few that maybe were like oh darn but it happened as much as any other spell it is also where we push the limits because we felt that with con saves one of the things that you see with the poison damage spells that are in the SRD is I personally feel that the PO poison damage spells should probably be dealing the most damage because they're often going to be succeeded on saving throws and there are so many resistances to them and even though you can take class options to get around that that's part of the strength of the build yeah so infect which is also a a kind of conve spell infect does D12 necrotic damage on a failed saving throw half as much on a success and that's the one that happens at the start of each of his turns but it has to make three saves to get out of the infection so we we pushed it in a few directions there to to account for the fact that yes it is very likely that the monster is going to make its conve because it is the stronger right yeah but still you might you at the very minimum you're going to be getting three rounds of half damage yeah right on something which is not bad especially for a first level spell yeah and I really love I think there's a build here maybe around like a Melee character that that's using one of these spells because there is the esoteric theory that says if you hit them with a weapon attack then they're going to going to have disadvantage on their next saving throw against your spell and so you could kind of help ensure that even if it's a con saave like their likelihood of of failing it is greatly increased that's cool con saves are pretty brutal uh I think the hardest actual play test that we threw at the Apothecary were the Green dragons because the Green dragons they have immunity to poison they have a really good con saave they have really good AC and they putria doesn't work on a green so that was one of the ones where like what is the most miserable experience and that's where we tried to make sure that ultimately there's still the classic spell list and the Apothecary does have some really good not spells made by Kelly and Monti that have really good effects as well the flip side of this is don't put all your eggs in one basket right with with an apothecary make sure that you're bringing a couple different spells that give you that diversity of damage because at the end of the day this is still a character that can bring um healing word is on the spell list um there's weird things like we've got hideous laughter on there because of laughing gas um we we do have the other spells like enhance ability and enlarge reduce Aid is also on the spell list haste is also on the spell list um revivify and slow are on the spell list as well so um there are other it is that kind of it's the same deal of like what do you do with the character that specs into all the fire damage dealing spells when they go up against a fire resistant monster yeah yeah yeah and I mean there's nothing wrong with like having balance there right and finding counters as long as I think as a DM you don't constantly approach the game from trying to actively counter your characters maybe you throw something in there once in a while that's going to make it tough for them um but you don't just fill the encounter with green dragons every combat yeah and and we did the we did take take it to the extreme with some of the play tests like I think you remember that play test Adventure that we we ran a bunch of times the the green dragon won or yeah there was the I I ran a green dragon one that definitely tested my players you ran an undead one and I played an exorcist and I loved that um one spell that we didn't talk about was last rights which is uh possibly pretty brutal if you're in an undead campaign um Monty thought he was cool throwing like a a skeleton lord at us or something and I just last red him a bunch of times and used all my spell slots on last rights which if uh last rights is a spell that does a decent amount of damage but if the target is Undead then they have disadvantage on their saving throw and it does maximum damage yeah um it's like a tempest cleric uh using their Channel Divinity on a lightning spell and the idea was like although it's it's not it doesn't say this last Rights was designed with the Exorcist in mind to be like their sort of get get rid of Undead cuz that's their job sort of spell I think you what we found with with play testing is that while it was possible for for players to really spec their character and over specialize in into all those things that was also kind of The Balancing Act of the overall class was that you were still incentivized because you going into the Constitution savings through spells because you're going into the poison necrotic these ones that do run up against resistances it does mean that if you take all the things that completely specialize you you can get a bit of an over speci specialized Apothecary and that's the trade-off yeah is that it if you're going to be very powerful when it all works but it does mean that sometimes you'll run into the encounters where um maybe you should have and at the end of the day because the Apothecary is a prepared Caster unlike a class where you choose your spells where you level up if you're in a scenario where it's like okay we are going into the green dragon layer that has a army you do have the ability to in your long rest CH swap out the spell selection and maybe bring in your offs speec spells maybe you didn't take all the esoteric theories but you're still able to contribute in a meaningful way because you weren't locked into your Spell choices right so as a final note Colby um what were your thoughts overall of the Apothic car it it looks like a lot of fun to me my go-to is generally to kind of have a little bit of a separation between my science fiction and my fantasy but when it's this kind of Science Fiction like I can get behind it when it's when it's like 19th century science fiction or or maybe earlier do you know what I mean yeah then I'm a fan um and I love the idea of kind of having like these really powerful spells that are coming back to me on a short rest and I'm getting more of them um and having lots of cool options to really specialize my character not just through subclasses but through those uh esoteric um theories theories yeah those those esoteric theories um I I I of course would would play a Gish right out the gate but my second choice yeah would be to build kind of more of a tanky kind of still melee combatant but who could take a punch and like support their allies and heal and even maybe do some Battlefield control um there's just a lot of options with a single class and and that is really cool yeah a lot of one of I think our favorite play tests stress tests was doing the all Apothecary party and it's amazing how it all of the characters feel like they all have their own role to play their own set of skills and abilities and I really really was proud of that element of the class that you can take it in the direction that you want to with it whether it is building the mutagen Bruce Banner inspired yeah we in in the play test we had an alienist a chemist and a mutagen and the fact that they filled very specific roles in the party and you got a well-rounded party all playing the same class was just perfect where I tend to go right out the gate is how would I multiclass this character right um and so some things start to come to mind even just early on like oh I mean two levels of fighter is good on anything cuz Fighters are the bacon of D and D as I once heard somebody say um especially if you're going to be gishy right yeah um but like I mean a sorcerer right uh you could get the transmuted spell um metamagic and that works on poison damage spells so you could always if you were running up against you know that poison immunity for example you could you could transmute it it's not limited to sorcery spells only it's any spell right if it deals acid cold fire lightning poison or thunder you could change it to one of those a different type um scribe wizard but I think that has to be the wizard spell that there's some funkiness there where like um it has to be a wizard spell of the level anyway I I'm sure that there's there's something there if you you know if you were super worried and you didn't want to take um one of your esoteric theories to force you know the overcoming the poison resistance or immunity um yeah I mean there's there's a lot of fun that I could have I think with the multiclassing that I haven't even scratched the surface yet but I'd love to I think we've seen a few people talk about you know where could you do the artificer Apothecary that's a really cool potential combination which you know that that is like going the super scientist right like that almost feels like the biological engineer right um like uh and warlock Apothecary now you're getting a lot of spell slots coming back on a short rest yes but they're not and this is one of the the things that we we ultimately had to make the decision on they don't snack right right so um we tried to find a way to word it that if you multiclassed the Warlock and the Apothecary they would stack together um and you get the higher level slots but because they have a different progression for the the slots that was kind of where we we had to we aired on the side of if we wanted to make that work we would have had to reduce the apothecaries natural slots so that they would would progress on on the same way so we ultimately decided not to make them stack but but you could still say have like two warlock spell slots and three Apothecary spell slots all coming back on a short rest right I mean I'm thinking also like gosh Arcane trickster Rogue that like a good intelligence or like a s Warrior fighter that like high intelligence eldrich Knight there's a lot of cool potential uh I think for for multiclassing although we also wanted to build a class that felt like you wanted to stick with it yeah I I think a lot of the ones that we've also seen the the muten in particular um from from play testing we saw a fair number of people that combined the Barbarian with the mutagen or the the monk with the mutagen so even in play testing we had to be very careful with how we worded the mutagen features because there was one play test build where someone was like you realize that if you combine and I actually think at one point someone had come up with a mutagen build in the play testing that was unkillable like it couldn't die um and that and that was we obviously had to correct that yeah we had to correct someing to make sure that they could uh they could die I mean but yeah you're right like if you if you can't cast spells you might as well be raging yeah you know why not so with all of that in mind I think that we've taken a good look at the Apothecary and I do want to thank again our guest uh Kobe pson from D4 D and deep dive if you have not checked out his channel you definitely should he does indepth build guides to Crazy characters many of them inspired by these two so yeah I mean it's always fun to see what you come up with on your channel and I think we'll be looking forward to you uh looking at one of the other sub classes from the book right uh yeah we're going to do a full build on my channel next week for one of the sub classes from this book it's not uh an apothecary um I'll give you a little hint it's my favorite class uh to in game so um yeah next week on my channel uh go check that out and uh we'll be with these two kind of getting some feedback live while I uh while I build the character in front of them and meanwhile we'll go into all of our build guides for each of the Apothecary sub classes as well so this has just been a taste of what you can expect from how to play an apothecary in fifth edition um of course the videos on our channel are made possible with the incredible generosity of all of our patreon supporters and all of the kickstarter backers that made Sebastian Crow guide to drenim possible in the first place so if you enjoy our Channel and like the work we do follow the links down below to get on our patreon there will also be links to the ghostfire gaming store where you can get a PDF copy or pre-order the physical copies of Sebastian CR guy to draim so you can get your hands on the Apothecary class yourself and if you want to see us playing a test game where we ran all apothecaries you can check that out right up over here and if you're interested in more of our build guides and other content check it out right up over there please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 65,268

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: RustgbUXlZw

Length: 59min 41sec (3581 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023