Herbalism Kit (Improved)

Herbalism Kit

The following text replaces the text found on pg. 82 of Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

An herbalism kit includes pouches to store herbs, clippers and leather gloves for collecting plants, a mortar and pestle, and several glass jars and vials.

Proficiency with this kit allows you to add your proficiency bonus to any Herbalism Kit checks, and allows you to create any recipes you know.

Foraging and Crafting

In order to create your recipes, you must spend time to forage for the proper ingredients. Before heading off looking for ingredients, you must first choose which recipe you wish to create, and then over the course of an hour, you can forage through whatever terrain you are in, in the search of rare flowers, moss or whatever else the recipe calls for.

At the end of an hour, you then must roll a Herbalism Kit check using your Wisdom modifier, plus your Proficiency bonus, to craft the item. This check determines if you were able to locate any of the herbs you were looking for and the potency of the herbs. There are three potencies when creating your recipes: Minor, Moderate, and Masterwork.

Once you create a Recipe, it will lose its potency after 24 hours and reduces in potency. I.e. If you craft a Masterwork item, in 24 hours, and it has not been used, it will reduce in potency to Moderate. A Minor item that reduces in potency after 24 hours is no longer potent enough to work.

Recipes

By knowing recipes, you know which ingredients are required to craft an Herbal Recipe, where you can find the ingredients and how to substitute items based on what is in the area.

Each recipe features the environment where you can find the correct ingredients, and per the DMs discretion you may be able to find the required ingredients in a different. This may add disadvantage on your Herbalism Kit check.

Each recipe also features different DCs required to craft Minor, Moderate and Masterwork potent items. Certain recipes may call for highly specialized ingredients that you can not find in the usual manner, this may be something you must go on a quest for or spend weeks, even years, tracking down the ingredients.

Recipes Known

Characters with proficiency in the Herbalism Kit know 3 recipes and may be able to learn new recipes if they can find other herbalist, find herbalist notes or by experimenting with different plants in their environment.

Analyzing Items

If you find a Herbal Recipe, you can use your Herbalism Kit to analyze the item. It takes one hour of work to analyze the item and the item is destroyed in the process. At the end of the hour, roll a Herbalism Kit Check, Wisdom modifier and your Proficiency Bonus. If you meet or exceed the DC required to craft the item at Masterwork potency, you learn the recipe. Otherwise the item is destroyed and you learn nothing.

Purchasing Items

You are able to purchase Herbal Recipes and their items from Herbalists. The cost listed with each Herbal Recipe is the cost to buy an item from a Herbalist. This cost may be more than what is listed depending on a variety of factors, dependent on the GM's discretion. All purchased Herbal Items still expire within 24 hours of purchasing them.

Example of Herbal Recipes

Inspiration

This system is heavily inspired by The Angry GM's post on building a herbalism system.

Variant Rules

24 Hours Only

Instead of the items losing some of their potency after 24 hours, they instead lose all potencies after 24 hours. This means that items last only 24 hours before they are no longer useful.

Alternate Environments

Some ingredients can be found in other environments, but they appear in different plants or vegetation. A herbalist can select a recipe even if they are in an environment not called for, when they do so they have disadvantage on the check.

Inspiration

Based on Dump Stat Adventures ideas.