Wanting to play an alchemist-surgeon type character.

[EccentricCircle]

Thinking about character concepts for an upcoming game I've got the idea of playing a sort of Healer-Alchemist type character. He'd be an old peddler and desert wonderer, who travels from place to place lending a hand as a barber, surgeon and alchemist whereever he goes as well as selling old curiosities he's found along the way.
I could easily build such a character in 2e, 3.5 or pathfinder, But I don't know the 4e system very well, so suggestions would be appreciated.
My first thought was some sort of bard, or Bard/ wizard using the hybrid rules in PHB3. Can the Sha'ir build from Heroes of the Elemental Chaos be added to a hybrid wizard, as that would thematically fit, even if it doesn't actually give me the ability to brew up alchemical concoctions.
How does crafting work in 4e in general? Are there specific classes that are more suited to that kind of thing than others?
also are there feats that can boost the number of trained skills to create more of a dilletante type character?

[Sol]

95% of your concept is pure fluff.

4e intentionally offers fewer, but more balanced mechanical options than 3.5, and encourages you to describe your mechanics any way you want to.

Crafting in 4e basically consists of a handful of rituals (which clerics, wizards, invokers, artificers, shamans, and bards get free access to and anyone else can obtain for a feat), namely the Create Magic Item and the Brew Potion rituals. The cost for crafting items is identical in all ways to buying the item from a merchant.

There is a theme (Alchemist), which gives you multiple free consumables per day.

An Artificer with the Alchemist theme is very much what you seem to be looking for. The stock fluff is more arcane in nature than surgical, but you can hybrid it with cleric if you must, not that religious fluff has any more to do with modern medicine.

Artificers do hybrid with wizards fairly well, but a hybrid leader often does not provide enough healing for a group, so thats something to keep in mind.

A bard would work fine mechanically, but it's stock fluff is even further away from your concept. I have no idea what you like about the sha'ir. it's neither anything alchemy nor surgical related, it's a high-arcane elemental caster. It's not bad, I just don't see anything in it that would match the mechanics your fluff is looking for.

[VeliciaL]

When reading this description my mind immediately jumps to Artificer. Maybe Int/Wis focused, for the heal skill. The Alchemist theme would also round it out nicely.

[EccentricCircle]

Thanks folks,
It sounds like the actual rituals should be easy enough to access whichever way I go, and the Alchemist theme sounds good.
I'll have a look at the full range of classes that have access to the rituals and see what I like the look of first, the Sha'ir one jumped out as I was looking through the books to see what desert based stuff they had, and the idea of the Djinni familier would work quite well with the concept I have in mind, although as you say the spell selection might not to the same extent.

[Gavran]

It's worth nothing that an Artificer can swap his Ritual Caster feat(ure) for the ability to create Alchemical items (consumables with a variety of effects, including offensive ones you couldn't get with the Brew Potion ritual.) In addition, you can take the Arcane Familiar feat later on to get a familiar. You may be able to get a djinn familiar, and you can certainly get a familiar and refluff it as one.

[Arkhosia]

When reading this description my mind immediately jumps to Artificer. Maybe Int/Wis focused, for the heal skill. The Alchemist theme would also round it out nicely.

Agreed. A helpful feat to take would be combat medic from ph2 or ph3(?), and an artificer can train in heal as well.

[EccentricCircle]

Ok, that all sounds quite good, thankyou all