"B" is for Botanical remedies and poisons (aka Herbalism)

The herbalism non-weapon proficiency, found in the 2e PHB, is terse and to the point. You can read it in the following screenshot.

                                     

 There is a problem though. It suggests the existence of a system, in which a player can do all the listed things. But apart from the bonus to healing per day of bedrest, there are almost no mechanical guidelines or even examples of preparation, that players could use to create their own herbalistic concoctions. The question “Oh mighty Gamemaster, what can I, a player lost in the sauce, actually do with this proficiency” has been asked countless times over the 28 sessions the campaign underwent so far.

To remedy this situation, I wrote the following set of rules. It contains guidelines for the creation of new recipes, a few examples for common and useful remedies and poisons, rules for the gathering of ingredients and the crafting process as well as a list of herbs commonly found in my homebrew world.

Page one covers the basic system, as well as recipes for beneficial remedies:

Page two covers poisons as well as the common herbs I mentioned before: 

My group has used these rules for 15+ sessions and they work quite well, both as an asset to the party as well as a money-sink. For example: The herbal bandages get used frequently, anti-poison is always in demand as soon as someone gets bitten by a poisonous monster and some player created recipes have started to appear. Most notably is the following (somewhat juvenile) concoction by the parties Bard:

Faeces-Flasks: Basic, Batch of 3, CC 5 SP. Clay-flasks filled with distilled faeces and other caustic/stinking materials. Each flask needs about 1lbs of raw faeces to be distilled. When thrown they shatter and splash enemies in a 3ft radius. If affectable by foul stench, they need to succeed on a save vs poison or be off-balance (+2 to be hit) for 1d2 rounds.

Overall, I am quite happy with these rules. They fit nicely in the frequent and required downtime that results from wounded party members, and they help exchange the large amount of wealth the party pulls out of the dungeon, into something with high utility.

One criticism that could be levied is, that some aspects of these rules encroach on the realm of alchemy. For example, if a player character with an animal lore proficiency harvests a spider’s poison sack and wants to craft blade venom, I would allow that, even though it is not strictly “herbalism” anymore. But that is a trade-off I am quite comfortable with at the moment.

 

I hope you, the reader, enjoyed both the rules and the reading of this post.

Next article: “C” is for Campaign recaps and statistics. 

"A" is for Alignment

“I am chaotic neutral” the players say while stabbing the orphan and throwing Molotov’s at innocent goblins .

Even when I was gamemastering D&D 5e alignment, and its role was a thing that rubbed me the wrong way almost every time it came up in a session. It feels like a (roleplaying) prescription that most players do not really gel with overall. I mean there is a reason most of them end up choosing some flavour of “chaotic neutral”, the alignment equivalent to writing “I can do what I want” on a piece of paper.

Even in my chosen edition of D&D, which happens to be AD&D 2e with a heaping spoon of house rules (which we will explore in more detail in later articles), the nine point alignment chart, while more integrated into the games systems, felt off. It could be the fact that most players treat is as a guide for their characters personality.  Or that in the early stages of a dungeon-crawly game, alignment does not matter that much. Not getting stabbed by goblins, paralyzed and eaten by ghouls or falling into a pit trap filled with poison covered punji sticks (most likely dug by the goblins), seems to be the highest priority.

I want the alignment system in my game, to directly interface with both the implied arc of old-school dungeons and dragons (which would in my opinion be characterized as a progression from dungeon crawl to wilderness exploration to the domain-game) and with the factions of the settings major conflict: Law (represented by civilisation) vs Chaos (represented by the wilderness). I also want some sort of descriptive moral component (I have chosen good/evil). To enable my players to choose appropriate alignments for their characters, I provided the following document: 

Next planned article: "B" is for botanical remedies and poisons (aka Herbalism)