My Solo RPG Journey: Combat Apothecary. Overview and Character Creation.

Potion seller. I am going into battle. And I need your STRONGEST POTIONS.

Check out Combat Apothecary here!

Greetings on faithful, gentle, imaginary readers! Today we are looking at what is commonly called a “Pamphlet Game” apparently, or what I think of as a micro game, called Combat Apothecary, created by substacks very own

Kerova

! In this game, you play a, well, Combat Apothecary, completing guild missions to increase your status. Its pretty simple, designed for quick games from what I can tell and fits in a single sheet of paper, front and back, that you fold into a pamphlet.

Before we get started I want to mention that this game is Pay what you Want on Itch at the link above. I dropped $5 on it, because I am a firm believer in supporting indie devs when I can, and given that I have my own skirmish miniatures wargame on Itch I know how it can feel to see that someone paid something for your game.

The very first thing I need to mention though is the formatting. The PDF you get is designed to be printed and folded and that makes someone like me, who has no intention of doing that, a bit confused. Like the cover is on the right hand column of the first page, and it's hard for me to figure out the order I should read each section. If I had any suggestion for someone doing these kinds of RPGs? Make 2 PDFs. One for printing, and one that reads more like a traditional game. Or, another option, put page numbers on each panel to kind of indicate reading order.

That's not going to stop me from figuring out what I am doing here however.

Since I have to figure out the order I read things in I am going to save the character stuff for when I get to the end.

Let’s start with Concoctions. This is all about building your “Potions” and it's a lot of d6 rolling. You need to have 2 ingredients and then you choose a mode, which appears to be its application (mist, liquid, etc). This will produce a single use concoction, so keep that in mind. You basically gotta harvest while you play, and build your weapons as you go. What I notice, however, as I read, is that most of this stuff is flavor. Whether your concoction is mist or glue, doesnt really matter outside of narrative flavor. What matters is its purpose (injure, defend, restore.) which is basically how you use it.

Like you would use Injure concoctions specifically for attack rolls of course, but Defend ones for Mitigation rolls on incoming damage. And of course Restore ones are used outside of combat. Now every one of the 4 “classes” will start with some concoctions that refill before each mission so you always have something. Plus they all get a stabby knife…which is not used in combat rolls. I guess it's just for narrative, as a lot of stuff is. Which is fine actually, we dont NEED complex here.

Next let's talk combat. Attacking is rolling a d6 dice pool equal to the relevant stat plus the concoction you are using. You then take the highest result and consult an Outcome table to see what happens (encounter sticks around or is overcome, and if you take damage or not). Each “danger overcome” result removes a stage off an opponent, which is based on their CR. CR is dictated by your Guild Level plus the type of enemy they are. To see how much damage you take, its again rolling a number of d6 equal to the number of enemies, and the highest die is how much you take. So 3 dudes equals 3d6 take the highest, for instance. You mitigate this by rolling Stat + Concoction.

And here is where I have a bit of confusion. What is the value of a concoction exactly, numerically? Like there are 3 stats (We will get there) and those have numeric values of course, but what about my concoctions? Do they count as 1? 0? This vagueness actually bothers me a bit. And it does make things confusing for me. I can only assume it counts as 1? There is no level or value listed for concoctions actually so I assume it basically boils down to “Stat Value + 1 if you have a concoction.” I am going to have to assume that.

No, wait. For healing it says “Heal 1 vigor per 1 level of concoction.” That means there is a concoction level? But how do I figure that out? Nothing in the creation section details that. So hell do I find the level of the concoction then? I think we might be missing something here in the actual rules. Hopefully Kerova can let me in on the secret. I am tagging them for this post of course, so lets hope. Moving on!

Exploration rules make use of the “Usage Die” mechanic that I am learning is a big thing in the Indie TTRPG world and I approve. You basically start at a d8, every time you move to an area you roll it, on a 1 or 2 it drops. If you get down to a d4 and roll a 1 or 2, you find your mission target, which is always a thing you gotta smite down for the Guild. The exploration procedure is pretty simple: you roll the usage die, then describe the area you are in (I assume you use the Lands table plus the Environ Table to get an idea of where you are) and then roll a d3 for Exits. Then you roll for an encounter type (trap, enemy, boon, or NPC), and then after dealing with that, you can Scavenge and move on.

Easy enough.

It’s at this point I feel the need to mention LORE. Everywhere on this PDF you will see a mention of LORE, as if it were a stat. In essence, lore is what you make of it. Its your narrative flavor for a thing. Sure, I made a Poison Mist that Restores Concoction, but what is it called? What is its “lore”? This is something both interesting and might be a bit rough for me at times. I have said before I like things to be a bit clear cut and mechanically driven, and this is 100% narrative. I am game to try though. But yea, things like Traps, Enemies, Boons, its all gonna involve the LORE!

The next thing I want to cover is the Apothecary Guild mechanic. This is basically how you level up. You earn “Service Medallions” after each mission, and you spend those to level up the Guild, which in turn makes your Apothecary stronger. Each time you rank up you get another +1 to a stat value. You can reach a max of Rank 5, and then you get 1 last mission. To hunt a high priority target. Complete that, and you can retire with distinction (and ride off into the sunset or train the next batch of apothecaries). It's very simple and easy. As a note the guild actually starts at 0. That is important as enemy strength (aka CR) scales up with Guild level.

And finally, there is one more mechanic: Cordyceps Infection. This is basically a lives system. It starts at 1, and when you lose all 10 of your vigor it goes up by a point, and revives you. If it hits 8, you become a fungal zombie and die. The guild can remove a point for 1 service medallion, so you gotta make the choice of leveling up the guild or keeping yourself from being too fungal.

Finally lets get to Character Creation. It’s time to bust out my Google Sheets for this, and it should be very fast! First, we are gonna determine our class. There are 4: Sapper, Assassin, Plague Doc, and Perfumer. Each one has a weapon, a Knack (which they can use to dictate what they find in the field via the Scavenge check), a talent, and their Starting Concoctions that they always being a field mission with. You can choose or roll a d4. I am gonna roll and I get 4 which is the last in the list, a Perfumer. That gives me a Tempered Glass Mist Dispenser (which needs a Concoction to use as fuel), the knack of Injury and Incendiary, and the talent of Blast which says if I use an Incendiary strike in combat, I get +1 to my next attack, once per combat. I start with 4 Incendiary Flame Cartridges, which expel as a fine mist cloud.

There are 3 stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. Each one starts at 1, and I get +1 to one of my choice. Gonna go with the following spread: 1 STR, 1 DEX, 2 INT. So I have a better chance to use my dispenser since that sounds like an Int based attack to me since I am just spreading mist.

And that is..literally it. This is my character sheet for Hork the Flame Rider.

Next time we will try to complete a mission for the guild and see how the game plays. Assuming I can get an answer as to how to determine a concoctions level so I can understand how the hell that works cause without that information I am going to have a problem I think.

Till next time!