When a player's blood splatters on the pitch, everyone in the stadium cheers. Fans, players, and coaches alike eagerly anticipate the echoing crunch of a good armor break, looking forward to an easier game for their team (or an excuse for bloodthirsty vengeance). The apothecaries at the sidelines get excited as well, but their joy is more about the gold falling into their pockets than the game.
Single-Player Healthcare
Apothecaries can fix the most grievous wounds or even bring the dead back to life, but other times they'll nearly kill a man when tending to his sprained ankle. Basically, these guys have no idea what they're doing; bring an injured player over to them and they'll go at him arbitrarily with saws and bandages until something happens. Despite their unreliability, apothecaries are tremendously useful. At a one-time cost of 50,000 gold, they pay for themselves (and then some) the first time they save a player's career, and it's likely they'll do that half a dozen times in a season.
An apothecary can only be used once each game, and performs one of the following functions.
Rerolling a Casualty
An apothecary can let you reroll a casualty roll and then select either result. This can let you turn a serious injury or even a death into something less permanent, which is obviously extremely valuable. Nobody likes losing a level 4 player with two stat gains, and the apothecary keeps that from happening (sometimes). It gets even better, though: selecting a Badly Hurt result when using an apothecary will result in your player not being injured at all. He still gets pulled off the field, but he'll be available again at the start of the next drive. You can even use your apothecary to reroll a Badly Hurt just so you can select it to keep your player in the game.
Preventing a KO
When one of your players gets KOed, the apothecary can change the result to a stun instead. This may seem weak, indeed almost wasteful, compared to the apothecary's other function, but we've all had players get KOed and then stubbornly refuse to get up. Preventing that guy from going to the KO box in the first place gives you an extra player all game, which works out the same as saving him from an injury (or better, if the drive lasts longer than his stun).
Primum Non Nocere
Apothecaries are very powerful and an extraordinary value, so every team should have one. However, you don't necessarily need one right away. Buying an extra discounted reroll instead of an apothecary during team creation will probably serve you better in both the short and long term. Also, when your team is just starting out and you haven't been able to afford all your positionals yet, you may get more value out of devoting your gold to picking up players. As soon as your blitzers and scorers start developing, though, an apothecary is the only thing that will keep your heart from stopping for a second every time an opponent rolls a pow.
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