A thought on goodberries with regard to survival campaigns...
Goodberries provide the nutrition for players to not starve - but that doesn't automatically mean they are a healthy long-term diet. They are like super-vitamins, but would not necessarily have the calorie content that an active adventurer needs. I need a lot fewer calories to sustain myself for one day sitting at a desk vs running a marathon or doing a 20 mile hike carrying a lot of gear - which is the equivalent of what a lot of adventurers do daily while traveling. I would think a person living on goodberries only while doing significant exercise would lose a LOT of weight over time, and become rather emaciated, or even become weak or exhausted with serious exertion. And a single berry isn't very filling, so I assume that if all I had was my super-magic-gummy-vitamin, I would ALWAYS be hungry.
Higher level spells, such as "create food and water" (3rd level) could sustain people in a healthier manner. That's the advantage of a 3rd level spell vs a 1st level spell...
The RAW don't specify, beyond that the person won't starve to death. But that doesn't mean that you can't still run a survival campaign when there is a druid in the party.
This could also be used with a character who was anorexic... ate a goodberry each day, so had basic nutrition and wouldn't starve, but was extremely thin. But not exactly a healthy thing to do either.
RAW a berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day. Depending on the definition you looking at for the word nourishment, it can mean enought be healthy enough. What i'd be more concerned is that RAW doesn't give guidance is what happen when a creature eat multiple berries in a minute for healing purposes as it basically over-nourrish it ☺
Nourishment, noun
the food or other substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition.
My players, without any prompting from me, said "That is dumb." They then created their own house rule that if you had eaten nothing but Goodberries for 3 days straight, issues like diarrhea would kick in, and that would lead to dehydration, exhaustion, and death over the coming days.
Why would it cause diarrhea and dehydration? Constipation is a much more likely result.
That said, the berries still don't satisfy the need for water so there's still that.
The default rules aren't for survival style campaigns. If your players want to spend a spell slot to do what a skill check or background feature does in an hour of downtime in a normal campaign, I say let them.
I'm all for custom rules for custom games, but there is really nothing wrong with the default rule for 99% of games.
My players, without any prompting from me, said "That is dumb." They then created their own house rule that if you had eaten nothing but Goodberries for 3 days straight, issues like diarrhea would kick in, and that would lead to dehydration, exhaustion, and death over the coming days.
Why would it cause diarrhea and dehydration? Constipation is a much more likely result.
That said, the berries still don't satisfy the need for water so there's still that.
I actually just watched a video about diarrhea just yesterday (thanks food theory). Summarizing, it is caused by things that either cause your body to use more water while digesting, dissolve in water to be harder to reabsorb, or that speeds up the flow so to speak. So sugars, oils, spices, and caffeine basically (+anything you might have an allergy to or poisons).
Of these, I can really only see sugar (fructose: fruit sugar) being a problem (unless your berry is a pepper), and you would need a lot of it. More than you would find in a single apple, for example.
My players, without any prompting from me, said "That is dumb." They then created their own house rule that if you had eaten nothing but Goodberries for 3 days straight, issues like diarrhea would kick in, and that would lead to dehydration, exhaustion, and death over the coming days.
Why would it cause diarrhea and dehydration? Constipation is a much more likely result.
That said, the berries still don't satisfy the need for water so there's still that.
This. 👆 With such little mass being digested it would almost shut down the digestive system. Pretty soon you would end up with an an aneurism trying to pass a nugget the size of a rabbit turd and die on the hopper like Elvis did. No bueno.
The default rules aren't for survival style campaigns. If your players want to spend a spell slot to do what a skill check or background feature does in an hour of downtime in a normal campaign, I say let them.
I'm all for custom rules for custom games, but there is really nothing wrong with the default rule for 99% of games.
My players, without any prompting from me, said "That is dumb." They then created their own house rule that if you had eaten nothing but Goodberries for 3 days straight, issues like diarrhea would kick in, and that would lead to dehydration, exhaustion, and death over the coming days.
Why would it cause diarrhea and dehydration? Constipation is a much more likely result.
That said, the berries still don't satisfy the need for water so there's still that.
I actually just watched a video about diarrhea just yesterday (thanks food theory). Summarizing, it is caused by things that either cause your body to use more water while digesting, dissolve in water to be harder to reabsorb, or that speeds up the flow so to speak. So sugars, oils, spices, and caffeine basically (+anything you might have an allergy to or poisons).
Of these, I can really only see sugar (fructose: fruit sugar) being a problem (unless your berry is a pepper), and you would need a lot of it. More than you would find in a single apple, for example.
It would take consuming several entire castings worth of goodberries in a single sitting to trigger any sort of severe enough fructose intolerance to result in significant diarrhea. (As someone who has lived with INS and varying degrees of lactose & fructose intolerance my whole life, trust me.)
Oh my goodness. It's a Good Berry. It's good for you, and berries generally taste sweet. It provides a full days worth of nutrition. It's a magical version of Lembas bread. When the Halflings in LotR ate a bunch of Lembas, all that happened was some rude noises created by accident, and they felt a bit too full.
I know of a setting where the darned things grow on bushes.
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A thought on goodberries with regard to survival campaigns...
Goodberries provide the nutrition for players to not starve - but that doesn't automatically mean they are a healthy long-term diet. They are like super-vitamins, but would not necessarily have the calorie content that an active adventurer needs. I need a lot fewer calories to sustain myself for one day sitting at a desk vs running a marathon or doing a 20 mile hike carrying a lot of gear - which is the equivalent of what a lot of adventurers do daily while traveling. I would think a person living on goodberries only while doing significant exercise would lose a LOT of weight over time, and become rather emaciated, or even become weak or exhausted with serious exertion. And a single berry isn't very filling, so I assume that if all I had was my super-magic-gummy-vitamin, I would ALWAYS be hungry.
Higher level spells, such as "create food and water" (3rd level) could sustain people in a healthier manner. That's the advantage of a 3rd level spell vs a 1st level spell...
The RAW don't specify, beyond that the person won't starve to death. But that doesn't mean that you can't still run a survival campaign when there is a druid in the party.
This could also be used with a character who was anorexic... ate a goodberry each day, so had basic nutrition and wouldn't starve, but was extremely thin. But not exactly a healthy thing to do either.
RAW a berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day. Depending on the definition you looking at for the word nourishment, it can mean enought be healthy enough. What i'd be more concerned is that RAW doesn't give guidance is what happen when a creature eat multiple berries in a minute for healing purposes as it basically over-nourrish it ☺
It's also not meant to circumvent water cumsuption according to the Dev;
@mirandajboyd Does Goodberry provide water as part of the nourishment or just food? I say water too because it's part of nutrition.
@JeremyECrawford The nourishment provided by goodberry is meant to be like food, not water, but a DM can say otherwise.
Why would it cause diarrhea and dehydration? Constipation is a much more likely result.
That said, the berries still don't satisfy the need for water so there's still that.
The default rules aren't for survival style campaigns. If your players want to spend a spell slot to do what a skill check or background feature does in an hour of downtime in a normal campaign, I say let them.
I'm all for custom rules for custom games, but there is really nothing wrong with the default rule for 99% of games.
I actually just watched a video about diarrhea just yesterday (thanks food theory). Summarizing, it is caused by things that either cause your body to use more water while digesting, dissolve in water to be harder to reabsorb, or that speeds up the flow so to speak. So sugars, oils, spices, and caffeine basically (+anything you might have an allergy to or poisons).
Of these, I can really only see sugar (fructose: fruit sugar) being a problem (unless your berry is a pepper), and you would need a lot of it. More than you would find in a single apple, for example.
This. 👆 With such little mass being digested it would almost shut down the digestive system. Pretty soon you would end up with an an aneurism trying to pass a nugget the size of a rabbit turd and die on the hopper like Elvis did. No bueno.
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It would take consuming several entire castings worth of goodberries in a single sitting to trigger any sort of severe enough fructose intolerance to result in significant diarrhea. (As someone who has lived with INS and varying degrees of lactose & fructose intolerance my whole life, trust me.)
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Oh my goodness. It's a Good Berry. It's good for you, and berries generally taste sweet. It provides a full days worth of nutrition. It's a magical version of Lembas bread. When the Halflings in LotR ate a bunch of Lembas, all that happened was some rude noises created by accident, and they felt a bit too full.
I know of a setting where the darned things grow on bushes.
<Insert clever signature here>