This book describes the skills revolving around alchemy and herbalism and the uses these skills can be put to. It describes each skill as a profession and a calling in life, inspiring itself from the real world practice of alchemists and herbalists. The book describes the way that such characters as Expert NPCs or "dabbling" PCs can practice each skill or profession. These skills are also more deeply developed through prestige classes available to character classes and new item creation feats available mostly to spellcasters.
Alchemists seek to understand the world and the matter from which it is constructed. The section on alchemy describes some of the equipment used in the practice of that skill, such as alembics and different forms of glassware, as well as the fundamental processes of alchemy, such as absorption, calcination, distillation and sublimation. Professional alchemists are described, as is their work, which includes the creation of spell components and the creation of such substances as acids, alcohol, glues, dyes, paints and inks. Some new substances that can be created by the use of the alchemy skill are included, as well as items that can only be created in conjunction with new item creation feats. A big college of alchemy set up in a five-tower fortress is described. The process of learning alchemy and the courses given at the college are detailed.
This book proposes three different branches of alchemy, black, white and red, and a prestige class represents each kind. Black alchemists seek to master the material world and the purification of matter to gold. They get feats that permit the creation of alchemical items and become better at transmutation magic. White alchemists focus on the purification of living matter. Their understanding of life enables them to create healing or damaging alchemical substances, such as medicinals, unguents and toxins. They get feats to create such substances. Red alchemists are a mixture of the other two and gain some item creation feats from both lists. To enter one of the alchemist prestige classes, a character must be a spellcaster; the alchemist continues his or her spell progression as per the previous class.
The book also describes herbalism and the practices of herbalists. The distinctions between herbalists, apothecaries, botanists and healers are discussed. The process of gathering and harvesting plants is described in depth, and so are the methods used to use and preserve plants (drying, infusions, macerations, and decoctions). While not as useful on its own as alchemy, the skills of a herbalist can be used to locate special plants and can be used in conjunctions with item creation feats to create some new items. A big herbal describes almost sixty different plants such as agrimony, belladonna, coriander, echinacea, hops and mandrake. Most of the plants are illustrated, their medicinal uses are discussed and their uses in game terms are described. For example, mandrake is a poison (DC 17; unconsciousness & sleep 1d8 hours/1d2 Con), acacia provides +1 to will save for an hour if its incense smoke is inhaled, vervain heightens turning checks, etc.
The book also includes the description of a school of herbalism and the process of learning the herbalist's profession. A herbalist prestige class is available to druids and grants the item creation feats that let the character create some of the new items described in the book. The herbalist prestige class is less versatile than the alchemist classes and only gains spells at every other level. A five level prestige class, the Tarastan Apothecary, can make interesting NPCs.
A host of new items that can be created either with the alchemy skill or a mixture of non-magical item creation feats and alchemy or herbalist skills fill the biggest section of this book. Creating these non-magical items require an appropriate skill check on top of the typical prerequisites for item creation. Each type of item necessitates the expenditure of a variable fraction of the gp cost in XP points. For example, unguents require the expenditure of 1/50th of the cost in XPs, while the more powerful items require the expenditure of 1/10th of the gp price in XP points. Each new type of item has a different formula to come up with a base price. The new item creation feats are Brew Ingestibles, Craft Chymicals, Craft Herbal Restoratives, Craft Powders & Dusts, Craft Toxins, Craft Unguents, Create Alchana, Create Erlcana, Create Greater Alchana, Grow Swathe and Perfect Materials. Many representatives of each type of items are presented, from acids, poisons and darkvision dust, to the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher's Stone.
The fact that alchemist and herbalist special items are not magic, yet still require the expenditure of XP points is an unaesthetic rule development to me. This system even suggests expending XPs when creating poisons. Also, these non-magical items have CL; it's like having a CL for alchemist's fire or a tanglefoot bag. In fact, this book suggests that all the special items from the core rulebooks should have a CL 1. The most likely reason I can think of why CLs were used is to provide a variable when determining the base price of these items. In a few instances, it could indicate how an alchemical substance reacts to a magic substance. Still, this terminology can be confusing and seems inappropriate to me.
On the whole, this finely written book will be more useful to DMs than to players. The characters portrayed through the prestige classes are mostly researchers in laboratories, but any gaming group who wants to emphasize their herbalist and alchemy skills will find noteworthy resources here. If you don't mind the lack of homogeneity between the item creation rules in this book and the core rulebooks, the new items can be interesting additions.
Weaknesses: Some of the prerequisites for the prestige classes are strange. For example, the Tarastan Herbalist prestige class requires a +2 Fortitude save as well as the Nature Sense druid special ability. Since druids get +2 to their fort save at first level, this is superfluous. The alchemist prestige classes require a +3 fort save; wizards don't get that before seventh level. Since everything else in the requirements points to fifth level, and a 5th level wizard is used in the example, this can easily be assumed to be a mistake rather than an incentive to multiclass before taking the alchemist prestige classes.
About the non-magical herbal and alchemical potions: the book states on p.57 that there is no way to differentiate them from standard potions. What about detect magic?
The new monsters in the appendix contain errors in their stats, the Alchemunculus
has errors in its HD entry, its AC is miscalculated, so is its BAB. The Erlmantle
creature has similar mistakes in its stats (wrong number of bonus hp, dex
bonus to AC not calculated).
There is a little layout blunder on the top of page 54, but all the information is there, simply in the wrong column.
