Herbalism and Alchemy

Selling Herbalism Items

Herbs and common Plants are often sold in cities, towns, and even sometimes villages. This can be done either during Downtime or in session, and operates the same regardless. However, depending on how the economy of the world you're in is about, the prices and quantities of said items could be at any end of the spectrum.

Don’t expect to walk into the town of Willsbury, which recently was ransacked by Orcs, and hope to sell your ingredients at full price, or even at all! Sometimes you can get lucky and unload all your unwanted ingredients in a capital city in need of fresh herbs, and other times you’ll be holding onto stuff for awhile.

Under normal everyday circumstances, a player can expect to sell a handful or two of common ingredients to a merchant in a city or town. However, the amount of money for those herbs will still vary vastly. Rare ingredients are very hard to sell at full price, and even harder to find a buyer for.

Just like selling Magic Items, the player will need to perform a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check to find potential buyers of their products. Another player in the party can assist in this venture by offering their services, granting the original player advantage on this roll.

On a failure, no buyer can be found until the player performs a long rest and attempts again. On a success, the player is able to find a buyer in a nearby area to them immediately. If this was done during downtime, it takes a number of days equal to the rarity of the ingredient. Also, the rarity of the ingredient you are trying to sell might affect the chance that the price will not be near full price for that particular ingredient. Consult the tables below for both the prices offered by a potential buyer, as well as the amount of days it would take during downtime to find one.

Selling Herbalism Ingredients and Concoctions (Alchemy Items and Poisons)

You can sell herbal ingredients using the item rarity and referencing the Selling Magic Items and Poisons table.

Crafting Herbal and Alchemical Items

Alchemy with the correct herbal and mineral components required by the recipe does not require knowledge of the spell as when you craft normal magic items. For example, you can craft a Potion of Gaseous Form using the item crafting rules that requires you to be able to cast the spell Gaseous Form. You can also craft it using your supply of Blue Toadshade without knowledge of the spell at all. Both require the use of Alchemist's Supplies to craft the potion.

The details for crafting any herbal or alchemical concoction are in the Crafting Magic Items chapter. It is important to note a few differences here.

When a player would like to craft a potion or poison, they would announce it to their DM. Players can perform Alchemy Attempts, which are the equivalent to Rituals. This process takes an hour or longer to complete and results in a single vial of paste, powder, or liquid.

To start a basic Alchemy Attempt, you would select a base ingredient to work with. Base ingredients have the term Effect in front of the description. When crafting, you can only have one of these base ingredients unless an ingredient says otherwise, such as Bloodgrass.

Once you have your base ingredient, you can add other ingredients that have the Potion Modifier, Toxin Modifier or Special term in front of the description. You can only have one Effect ingredient and up to three Modifier ingredients in a single concoction. Secondly, there are Enchantment ingredients. These require Elemental Water as their base ingredient, which then you would select the Enchantment ingredient for the Alchemy Attempt. Now that you have selected your ingredients, you’d find the total difficulty number and roll an Alchemy Attempt DC check.

To successfully craft an infusion, enchantment, or poison:

Wisdom(Toolkit) or Intelligence(Toolkit) VS. DC 10 + all difficulty Modifiers

On a successful Alchemy Attempt roll, you create the vial of paste, powder, or liquid.

On a failure, the vial’s contents don’t look exactly like they should. A failure by less than 5 indicates that the concoction may work as intended but with less potency. Or that there are side or after effects. There can even be a wild surge. A failure by more than 5 indicates that the potion at the very least is ineffective.

A critical success or failure may have additional effects. This is up to the DM

Crafting Infusions and Potions

The two different types of potions are infusions and enchantments. A simple infusion potion a healing or enhancing effect, while enchantments produce a spell-like effect that is new. For example, Wisp Stalks give the effect of making the consumer of the potion to turn invisible for 1 hour. It is much more dangerous to modify enchantments as their recipes are a delicate dance.

An example of an Infusion that you can create using Herbalism Tools:

Potion of Delayed Potent Healing. Starting with Wild Sageroot, combine it with Milkweed Seeds and a touch of Gengko Brush. This potion has an Alchemy Attempt DC of 14. The resulting mixture should give off a bluish-green glow in the water, with the remnants of the brown Gengko Brush swirling around. When ingested, this potion provides (1/class level of target + d8) healing over the course of two rounds.

Crafting Poisons

One of the main tools in an assassin, Drow, or evil being’s repertoire of ways to kill someone. Poisons. Most of the time these are beautiful, and all of the time they are deadly. There is only one type of poison (Effect) when it comes to this supplement, and that’s all that is needed.

Poisons are very versatile in how one can create them. They can target the target’s core and disrupt their body heat overtime to freeze them from the inside-out, or even decide to boil their flesh off using acidic properties. They can knock-out targets as well as make targets unaware they are even poisoned. When an alchemist creates a poison, they decide whether the poison needs to be inhaled, ingested, dealt with an injury, or just making contact with skin.

Luckily, for all those wanting to master the art of poisons, all they need to start is a very common ingredient called Wyrmtongue Petals. These grow in almost every terrain, and are the base ingredient for all poisons. Additionally, all poisons can be altered by Toxin Modifier ingredients to customize them to their user’s liking.

Modifying Poisons & Combat Rules

Some ingredients like the Arctic Creeper change the damage type from poison to another. However, although the final poison’s damage has changed, for purposes of Toxin Modifier ingredients, it is still considered poison damage during crafting. Also, a single vial of poison can be applied up to 1 weapon or 3 pieces of ammunition. Additionally, poisons used with this supplement instill the poisoned condition on their target if they fail a CON saving throw.

Poison DC = 8 + Alchemy Modifier

Drug Addiction

At the DM’s discretion, they can introduce addiction to certain substances. These plants and ingredients that offer major boosts to a character’s body tend to have traces of themselves cling to the user for an extended period of time. They can even be found amongst the stomach lining or lungs days or weeks after simple usage. Characters that use these ingredients often should be wary of the consequences that come with them.

A few examples of poisons that you can create using Alchemy are be below:

Death’s Bite (injury). Start with Wyrmtongue Petals like all poisons, and grind in the root part of some Arctic Creeper. Then add some Spineflower Berries and Quicksilver Lichen. This poison has a Alchemy Attempt DC of 18. The resulting mixture should look like a translucent light grey liquid with lines of silverflakes from the lichen. When used appropriately, the target it is used on becomes poisoned for 30 seconds, and takes 2d6 + Alchemy Modifier necrotic damage per round.

Widow Venom (contact). Start with Wyrmtongue Petals like all poisons, and mix in some Amanita Cap with a little bit of Cactus Juice. After that, add some Spineflower Berries. This poison has a Alchemy Attempt DC of 17. The resulting mixture should be a slime-like red substance that has fuzzy bits of the Amanita Cap exposed. When used appropriately, the target it is used on becomes poisoned for 1 minute, takes 1d6 + Alchemy Modifier poison damage per round, and doesn’t notice the e ects until 30 seconds pass. Additionally, the poison will only knock the target unconscious, not kill them.

Ingredient Expiration

This variant of Herbalism affects how long an ingredient can go when not used in an Alchemy item or preserved in another way. If the ingredient is in an Alchemy item, it is no longer considered an ingredient for purposes of expiration. Most ingredients can only last about a week in game time before losing their full potential. If used past this week time period, the concoction can have slightly altered ffects, or not work at all. However, the rare and very rare ingredients can last almost a month in game time due to their hostile environment situations.

A good way to preserve ingredients from expiring too early is to use an Ingredient Pouch (25 gp, 1 lb). Every pouch operates differently, but costs the same. Some of these pouches keep the ingredients dry, while others merely remove oxygen from the container. Any style of these pouches extends the ingredient life of ingredients by double.

Potion Sickness

Drinking too many potions can have variable consequences if not carefully monitored. If you feel that your players are making and using too many potions, this variant ruling might be for you.

Some good examples would be to have a simple consequence where the character gets sick to their stomach and gains a level of Exhaustion, while on the other end of the spectrum, a consequence could be that the magic in the potions created a Wild Surge within the character.