Herbalism

Herbalism Tools

• RAW Cost: 5gp
• RAW Weight: 3lbs
• Example Items: Clippers, mortar and pestle, pouches, and vials
• Crafting Restrictions: Need access to area to mix concoctions.
• Mundane Item Crafting: Antidotes, antivenom, poison.
• Magic Item Crafting: Healing potion.
• Artwork Creation: None.
• QA Artwork Bonus: None.
• Structure Building: N/A.
• Adventuring Utility: Able to craft antidotes in the wild or identify poison plants.

Herbalist’s Limited Alchemy: While herbalism is primarily used for gathering herbs, a creature with proficiency with herbalism kits has a limited proficiency in creating potions in addition to gathering herbs. You can use proficiency with an herbalism kit in place of alchemist’s supplies when creating potions of healing, antidotes, antitoxins, and vials of poison.

When crafting in this way, you use an herbalism kit and proficiency with it in place of alchemist’s supplies. This crafting otherwise works the same as using alchemist’s supplies. You can add additional ingredient modifiers when crafting in this way.

For anything more sophisticated, the Herbalist must either find a formula or research and develop a specific recipe.

Default Recipes

• Common Antidotes
• Common Antivenom
• Basic Poison
• Basic Healing Potion

You also start off with one of these common concoctions:

• Chamomile Tea
• Lemon Verbena Fumes
• Liquid Dwarven Might
• Pepper Balm
• Pink Medicine
• Traveler’s Comfort
• Unholy Mixture

Skill Usage

• Arcana: Your knowledge of the nature and uses of herbs can add insight to your magical studies that deal with plants and your attempts to identify poisons.
• Investigation: When you inspect an area overgrown with plants, your proficiency can help you pick out details and clues that others might miss.
• Medicine: Your mastery of herbalism improves your ability to treat illnesses and wounds by augmenting your methods of care with medicinal plants.
• Nature and Survival: When you travel in the wild, your skill in herbalism makes it easier to identify plants and spot sources of food that others might overlook.
• Identify Plants: You can identify most plants with a quick inspection of their appearance and smell.

Herbalism Kit Basic Use Difficulty Table

Herbal Items

Herbal items include non-magical medicines, salves, poultices, and concoctions made from plants, roots, berries, and other naturally occurring ingredients using special instruments and processes. Generally, the higher the quality, the more potent the herbal item. Herbal items also tend to lose their potency if not used within a certain period of being made. Herbal items may be purchased from herbalists during play who will quickly concoct the desired item. However, because herbal items lose their potency, they cannot be purchased between game sessions. Characters who have proficiency with the herbalism kit can craft herbal items if they know the appropriate recipe by gathering the ingredients during their adventures.

Gathering Ingredients

To gather the ingredients, you must spend at least one hour wandering the local area, searching for appropriate ingredients. During this time, you cannot perform any other tasks, nor can you travel too far in any specific direction and this period does not grant you the benefits for a short rest. Alternatively, you can gather ingredients as a travel activity. This is like foraging except, instead of gathering food and water during a day of travel, you gather the ingredients required to craft an herbal item.

At the end of the gathering period, day of travel, or other period as specified by the DM, make a Wisdom check, and add your proficiency bonus for your use of the herbalism kit.  

You can make one DC 15 Wisdom (Survival / Herbalism Kit) per day to determine if you can find anything that can be harvested. Compare the result to the Harvest Table to determine the maximum number of Harvest Checks you can make. Each harvest takes 1 hour, and you do not need to use the full harvest count.

The base DC is 15, however this can be adjusted, or even impossible, according to the environment. For example, if you’re traveling through Rocky Mountains plant life might be sparser, or non-existent in a stone basement. If you are proficient with an herbalism kit but not Nature, add your proficiency bonus to the check. If you are proficient in Nature and the herbalism kit you gain advantage on this check.

Druids and Rangers roll with advantage on their herbalism check for results.

Harvest Table

Crafting Herbal Items

To craft an herbal item, you must have proficiency in the use of the herbalism kit, and you must know the recipe for the item you wish to craft. After choosing the item you wish to craft, you must gather the required ingredients and then craft the item.

Concoction Types

The harvested plant materials can be transformed into herbal preparations.  Note that none of these concoctions can be used in combat unless specifically mentioned. There are three types of herbal preparations you can choose from:

Salves: These pastes are usually produced by grinding plant material and mixing them with some poultices.  Using a salve takes one action and has a range of touch.  Their effects are instantaneous and affect targeted creatures.

Infusions: These drinks are usually produced by drying, grinding, and boiling plant material to make some sort of tea.  Drinking an infusion takes on action and their effects can last from one to eight hours.

Inhalations: These products require a heat source to produce fumes and enough time for people to breathe it slowly.  You can use inhalation only during a long rest.  Their effects usually last for the current long rest or until the end of the next long rest.

Formula Research Point Cost

The base cost is just that, a starting point.  If the researcher is taking an existing uncommon potion and only slightly improving or changing it and does not warrant a full rarity change, then the cost would be somewhere between the two rarity levels.  All the costs are suggested values for existing potions and their rarities. There is not a straight formula since potions are graded by rarity instead of spell levels, but the end cost does follow the same progression.

Example:

A standard Healing Potion is a Common rarity and heals 2d4+2.  The herbalist wants to create a potion that heals 3d4+3, which is better than the Common one, but not as good as the Uncommon Greater Healing potion.  The Research Point cost should be split between the rarity which would give it a cost of 75 Research Points.

Formula Creation Research Point Cost Table

Research Point Reductions

Only one of the two existing formula reductions may be used for any specific formula creation.

Existing Salve/Infusion/Inhalation: If the researcher has on hand another object that is very similar and it can be used as an exemplar starting point, then a reduction up to 25% of the total Research Points needed can be applied to the cost. The object that is used for this is also consumed during the process.

Existing Formula: If the Herbalist has a full formula created by someone else, there is a 50% reduction of the total research points required to create the spell.  While it might be a formula, it most likely will not be accurate missing or brewing idiosyncrasies of the herbalist that created that formula, therefore requiring the formula to be validated through additional research.

Facility: If there is a dedicated facility for the research and creation of herbalist formulas, then up to 25% of the cost can be reduced by expending facility points to replace the research points.  See the facilities rules for more details.

Formula Creation Completion

Once the herbalist has collected enough Research Points it is time to put together the formula and test it.  There is no benefit in expending more Research Points or gold pieces once the minimum has been met, these would just go to waste since they will not impact the final DC. The Research Points that will be used for completing the project are spent and lost and are not recoverable. The creator will make an Herbalist Kit skill roll. No other modifiers or advantage chances can be applied to this roll.  It can only be a straight roll. 

Once again, if the product being created is a slightly improved version of an existing potion, but not sufficiently to increase the rarity, the DC will increase as the average of the two rarity DCs as selected by the DM.

Example:

A standard Healing Potion is a Common rarity and heals 2d4+2.  The herbalist wants to create a potion that heals 3d4+3, which is better than the Common one, but not as good as the Uncommon Greater Healing potion.  The DC would be (8 + 14 = 22 / 2 = 11) 11.

If the roll is equal to or greater than the listed DC, the potion formula has been created and can be considered entered into the Herbalist formula book. Failure means that the formula was not created, and the herbalist must start again, but in their next attempt the amount of Research Points required is reduced by 50%.

Formula Creation Success Table

Herbalist Creation

Now that the herbalist has created a formula, now it is time to start mixing some up. For each single dose of the concoction to be created will require a certain amount of ingredients as well as a difficulty check. The listed required ingredients are only the minimum and should include additional ingredients depending on the type of potion being created.

The amount of time to make any concoction is shown in the following table:

Concoction Creation Time Table

Concoction Benefits

While any number of concoctions can be used at any moment, only the first one is in effect.  A second one will not be in effect until it is applied after the first one’s duration has ended.

Concoction Creation Failure

If at any time the herbalist rolls a natural one on any of the material creation processes, it blows up in their face.  Roll on the following table to find the results.

Concoction Creation Failure Table

Concoction Creation Table

Depending on what is being made, sometimes more specific types of ingredients might be required by the DM.  The guidelines suggested are as follows.  Details on ingredients, where they can be found as well as what types there are all listed in the Material section.

Type of Concoction Ingredient Table

There will be other specific requirements as per the DM looking over the required recipe.

Recipe Rarities and Benefits Table

Common Formulas

Chamomile Tea (Infusion): Calms nervous humanoids and giants for one hour.

Honey Wax (Salve): Mainly used for hair removal.

Lemon Verbena Fumes (Inhalation): Repels mosquitos for this long rest.

Liquid Dwarven Might (Infusion): Advantage on Constitution saves versus alcohol for one hour.

Pepper Balm (Salve): The affected creature must make a DC13 Constitution save or instantly sneeze.

Pink Medicine (Infusion): Advantage on Constitution saves against food and drink.

Traveler’s Comfort (Infusion): Allows the drinker to ignore the effects of motion sickness for eight hours.

Unholy Mixture (Salve): The affected creature must make a DC13 Constitution save or instantly vomits.

Uncommon Formulas

Balm of Bravery (Salve): Allows an attempt to save versus the Fear effect and be applied after Fear has been applied.

Bellow (Infusion): All words are shouted for one hour.

Blood Moss Tincture (Salve): Allows an affected creature to attempt to save versus poison once and be applied after poisoning has occurred.

Blood Rose Extract: Morning-after pill effect.

Burnsoothe Ointment, Basic (Salve): This paste, composed primarily of roots and plant oils, reduces pain, and speeds the recovery of burns. If applied to a creature’s wounds within 10 minutes of their taking fire damage from any source or if applied within 10 minutes at the end of an encounter during which they took fire damage from any source, the creature heals 1d6.

Climbing Chalk (Salve): Gain advantage on any climbing checks made for the next hour.

Cold Refreshing Tea (infusion): Ignore the next Constitution check versus extreme heat due to weather.

Drunk Legs, Basic (Infusion): These pine needles are blended with a mixture of algae and muck to create a tonic that will leave muscles twitching. Mixing this with a drink creates a vile tasting concoction that when ingested causes muscles to weaken and to not respond to commands from the body. When ingested, the target must succeed on a DC13 Constitution saving throw or have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws and ability checks for one hour. To force feed someone this mixture, they must be grappled, restrained, or incapacitated in some way. It then requires an action and a successful grapple check to force feed them the concoction.

Floral Perfume (Salve): Adds the crafter’s Proficiency Bonus to Persuasion checks for one hour.

Fortifying Tea (Infusion): Advantage against exhaustion saves for the next eight hours.

Goblin Loincloth Soap (Salve): For the next eight hours an odor so strong that the first attack of any creature is at disadvantage.  Any creature has an automatic Perception check success when relying on smell.  Tracking is at an advantage against the user.

Healing Balm (Salve): Allows the immediate healing of one hit die if one is available.

Hunter’s Veil (Salve): Hides the hunter’s scent, gives disadvantage on any perception against the recipient that relies on the sense of smell.

Lucky Charms (inhalation): You can use the equivalent of the spell Guidance once in the next 24-hours.

Natural Glue (Salve): The equivalent of the Mending spell to repair an object.

Phantom Bane (Salve): Allows equivalent application of the spell Spare the Dying.

Pink Speak (Infusion): Pink bubbles come out instead of words when speaking for one hour, DC13 Constitution save to prevent.

Rare Formulas

Burnsoothe Ointment, Intermediate (Salve): This paste, composed primarily of roots and plant oils, reduces pain, and speeds the recovery of burns. If applied to a creature’s wounds within 10 minutes of their taking fire damage from any source or if applied within 10 minutes at the end of an encounter during which they took fire damage from any source, the creature heals 1d8+2.

Drunk Legs, Intermediate (Infusion): These pine needles are blended with a mixture of algae and muck to create a tonic that will leave muscles twitching. Mixing this with a drink creates a vile tasting concoction that when ingested causes muscles to weaken and to not respond to commands from the body. When ingested, the target must succeed on a DC15 Constitution saving throw or have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws and ability checks for one hour. To force feed someone this mixture, they must be grappled, restrained, or incapacitated in some way. It then requires an action and a successful grapple check to force feed them the concoction.

Fighter’s Fortitude (Infusion): Reroll all ones on damage rolls for the next hour.

Grandma’s Remedy (Inhalation): Cures one minor disease.

Grasshopper Tea (Infusion): For the next hour maximum jump distance is doubled.

Graveyard Mud (Salve): Any construct/undead receives the effects of Lesser Restoration.

Herbal Fortifier (Infusion): Any poison or disease lasts for half their duration for the next eight hours.

Monk’s Habit (Inhalation): Reduces the need for food and drink by 75% for the next 24-hours.

One Eye Open Tea (Infusion): Gain a +5 on Passive Perception while asleep.

Owl’s Essence (Infusion): Adds the Crafter’s Proficiency Bonus to Perception checks for the next eight hours.

Reinvigorating Fumes (Inhalation): Your walking speed increases by five feet for the next 24-hours.

Rosemary Liquid (Infusion): Decreases the time required for reading and writing by 50% for one hour.  Can also affect magical reading and writing.

Troll’s Blood (Infusion): Advantage on hit point recovery via hit dice over a short rest for the next hour.

Valerian Incense (Inhalation): Removes one point of exhaustion after a long rest.

War Tonic (Infusion): Ignore the effects of exhaustion for one hour, but all exhaustion that would have been applied during the hour and applied and the end of the hour.

Willowshade Oil (Salve): A creature can use its action to apply the oil to another creature that has been petrified for less than one minute, causing the petrified condition on that creature to end at the start of what would be that creature’s next turn.

Witch’s Incense (Inhalation): The first concentration check within the next 24-hours succeeds automatically.

Very Rare Formulas

Burnsoothe Ointment, Advanced (Salve): This paste, composed primarily of roots and plant oils, reduces pain, and speeds the recovery of burns. If applied to a creature’s wounds within 10 minutes of their taking fire damage from any source or if applied within 10 minutes at the end of an encounter during which they took fire damage from any source, the creature heals 1d10+4.

Catacomb Mud (Salve):  Any construct/undead receives the effects of Greater Restoration.

Drunk Legs, Advanced (Infusion): These pine needles are blended with a mixture of algae and muck to create a tonic that will leave muscles twitching. Mixing this with a drink creates a vile tasting concoction that when ingested causes muscles to weaken and to not respond to commands from the body. When ingested, the target must succeed on a DC17 Constitution saving throw or have disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws and ability checks for one hour. To force feed someone this mixture, they must be grappled, restrained, or incapacitated in some way. It then requires an action and a successful grapple check to force feed them the concoction.

Fairy Eyes (Salve): For one hour you can see invisible creatures and can see through Blur and Mirror Image.

Final Breath (Infusion): Pouring this over a corpse with a mouth imbues it with necromantic energy. It must answer one question to the best of its knowledge. Remains disintegrate after.

Sentry’s Rest (Infusion): Long rests take 50% of the normal time.  One point of exhaustion is applied 24-hours after that long rest.

Toadstool Salve (Salve):  For the next hour you have advantage on all death saves.

Vampire’s Blood (Salve):  You are under the effects of the spell Gaseous Form without concentration for the next ten minutes.

Legendary Formulas

Heavenly Salve (Salve):  For the next hour your critical success on death saves has the range of 15-20.

Common Recipe Table

Uncommon Recipe Rarities and Benefits Table

Rare Recipe Table

Very Rare Recipe Table

Legendary Recipe Table