Naturalist

As a Naturalist, you are a hardy ranger who has learned to survive, and even thrive, on the edges of civilization due to your mastery of herblore.  While many see nature as cruel, to you it is a bounty, the forests and jungles a source of live-giving magic that can rival any deity.  Many villagers and smallholders owe their lives to the expertise of these forest medics, often the only sources of medicine in the borderlands.  

Natural Magic

Starting at 3rd level, you learn an additional spell when you reach certain levels in this class, as shown in the Naturalist Spells table. The spell counts as a ranger spell for you, but it doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know.

 

Ranger LEVEL	SPELLS
3rd	purify food and drink
5th	aid
9th	mass healing word
13th	death ward
17th	greater restoration

 

Hardy Healer

At 3rd level, you gain the Healer feat.  If you already have the Healer feat, you may gain the Durable, Resilient, or Tough feat instead.

Durable

Gain the Durable feat.

Healer

Gain the Healer feat.

Resilient

Gain the Resilient feat.

Tough

Gain the Tough feat.

Herblore

At 3rd level, you become an expert in both foraging for and using medicinal herbs.  You gain proficiency with the Medicine skill and the Herbalism Kit, and may use it as a focus for casting ranger spells.  You gain a free Healer's Kit.  Each day you spend at least 8 hours in natural terrain, you may make a DC 15 Survival check to refill the Healer's Kit.  If you succeed, add 1d4 charges to the kit, up to its maximum of 10.  If you are in favored terrain, you only need to spend 1 hour in natural terrain, and may add 2d4 charges on a success.  Your DM may allow you to gather more quickly if you are dedicating the time specifically to gathering, rather than doing so alongside other activities.

Natural Toxins

Wild herbs can be used to harm as well as heal.  At 7th level, you gain proficiency with the Poisoner's Kit, and the Herbalism kit counts as a Poisoner's Kit for you.  You may, as a bonus action, use one charge of your Healer's Kit to add natural toxins to one weapon or 20 pieces of ammunition.  For 1 minute, that weapon or ammunition does an extra 1d4 poison damage to one attack each round.  After 1 minute, the poison dries harmlessly.  At lvl 15, the extra damage increases to 2d4.  You may use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1). You gain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.

Herbal Expertise

At 11th level, you have developed unique uses for the medicinal herbs you gather.  Double your proficiency bonus for Medicine and Survival skill checks.  Using a Healer's kit, either to stabilize a dying creature or heal a creature, is now a bonus action for you.  Your Healer's Kit may now hold a maximum of 20 charges.  If you use Herblore to refill your Healer's kit and beat the DC by 10 or more, you may add your Wis modifier to the number of charges gained.  Whenever you use an action to cast a spell that restores hit points or grants temporary hit points, you may simultaneously use a bonus action to use up to one charge of your Healer's Kit per target of the spell.  Doing so allows you to restore an extra 1d6+4 hit points to that target.  

Toxic Adaptability

At lvl 11, you gain the ability to alter your natural toxin based on the terrain you are traveling through.  Whenever you use your Natural Toxins ability, you may choose one type of natural terrain that you have used your Herblore ability in within the last week.  This changes the damage type of the Natural Toxin based on the following table.

natural terrain	damage type
desert, grassland	radiant
arctic, mountain	cold
swamp, forest	acid
coast, underdark	necrotic

 

Additionally, you gain advantage on saving throws against poison, and resistance against poison damage.  If you already have resistance, gain immunity to poison damage instead.

Magical Extraction

At 15th level, your research into herblore has given you unique insight to the basis of natural magic.  After intense study, you have discovered how to distill medicinal herbs into their magical essence, and add that essence to your personal spellcasting reserves.  Once each day, you may spend 1 hour distilling up to 10 charges from your Healer's Kit into essence.  You then gain up to 5 spell slots with a total level equal to the number of charges expended, of a level which you are able to cast.  For example, you could spend 8 charges to gain one 4th level slot, one 2nd level slot, and two 1st level slots.  Any of these spell slots not used before the end of your next long rest are lost.