Tell me about herbalism and poisons in your game!

[Gregor]

Hey everyone,

I am soliciting input from this wonderful community on how you (either as a player or DM) have used or described herbalism in your game.

Specifically, suppose you have a player who wants their character to utilize poisons, but also wants to have herbalism / survival skills to find, assess and utilize rare herbs, mushrooms and other natural ingredients for use in poison making.

What I am curious in is how to describe certain natural plants / materials, where to find them, etc. Moreover, how do you describe some of the "fantasy" materials, such as id moss? For example, does Nightshade only grow on shady hills and in between rocks? Does id moss only grow on the stones of cairns that house the dead bodies of evil beings?

Tell me about your game and tell me about your descriptions. Ideas? Suggestions? I'd love to hear them all!

Thanks!

 

[Megatron]

i wrote a new system (20 pages of houserules for d20 really) and it has Herbalism as it's own skill. a few characters have taken it, which is good since my settng is full of plants. I have about 100 fictional herbs and flowers plus realworld ones. good stuff.

 

[Gregor]

Nobody else has any creative descriptions of herbs or materials found in the wilds of your fantasy worlds?

 

[Sound of Azure]

Well, I don't have any. But I'll be watching this thread closely. Thanks for posting it up.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I have used a combination of material from Alchemy & Herbalists (by Bastion Press), a netbook (laboriously converted by me to the d20 system), a few books, common sense etc.

It's something I like to detail in worlds where that might be relevant. It hasn't (so far) been a *major* focus of any campaign, I guess, but who knows. And I love that kind of 'flavour' anyhow, so it's worth it.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

We actually have a Druid interested in Herbalism in our campaign.

There's an amazing amount of information available on the net from a simple search, plus I have and use the old MERP supplement "Hands of the Healer", which lists an amazing amount of herbs and their properties, (all very flavorful) and it wasn't really that hard to 'port them to the D+D system.

Here's a (brief) summary.

 

[Gregor]

Wow Shadow, thats a really comprehensive list, its really useful.

Have you given any thought to the survival DCs for a character to locate these herbs while in the wild?

 

[ShadowDenizen]

We did, but it's not on the list.
You can guesstimate it based on seasonal availablilty and comon sense.

And I don't get all the credit; again, the herb names are taken from "Hands of the Healer" and a few other supplements, and the Druid Player and I collaborated on the translations. (I'm the DM, but I'm certianly fallible!!)

We're working on a list of poisons, too, though I'll confess I'm not a huge fan of the poison rules under 3.x.

wrote a new system (20 pages of houserules for d20 really) and it has Herbalism as it's own skill. a few characters have taken it, which is good since my settng is full of plants. I have about 100 fictional herbs and flowers plus realworld ones. good stuff.

I'd be interesed in checking that out, Megatron, if you don't mind.

 

[Rozanne]

I'm really giddy about this. I'm still learning a lot and just starting to read more (kids older and going to back school the day after GenCon!). The cleric that I created for our new campaign has a history with herbal remedies for healing and when I saw this I got so excited! I just mentioned in her history about the herbal remedies that I personally use because it never occurred to me to look at Druid info. Thanks so much for this, Shadow!

 

[ShadowDenizen]

Glad to be of help!