Herblore

Herblore is the knowledge of plants and of how to preserve and prepare them. In settled realms an apothecaries’ guild regulates the keeping, compounding and sale of herbs; apothecaries sometimes gather their own, but usually buy wholesale from unguilded foragers — hunters, trappers, cottagers. Outside that arrangement, tribal and rural herbalists do both halves of the work themselves.

Foraging. Gathering in the wild is resolved as part of overland travel. The forager declares what they are looking for and, on success, comes back with a number of doses. Each dose has a potency — the rarity of the plant, the quality of what was actually found, and plain luck:

The GM may instead make a single roll to set the potency of a whole gathering of the same herb.

Mundane concoctions use herbs as ingredients in another craft’s recipes — brewing, cookery, embalming, perfumery. The game does not track species for these; a dose is simply “brewing herbs” or “cookery herbs” and behaves accordingly.

An apothecary preserves and stores herbs in a dry, dark workshop with a Herblore Success Value test. A dose then loses one level of potency every 30 + (SV × 10) days. When such herbs are sold on to a crafter, the herbalist’s Herblore Mastery Level serves as a Secondary Modifier to the buyer’s own Success Value test — the proxy case, where one character’s competence lifts another’s work — and a Strong dose grants a further +1 SV, a Great dose +2 SV.

Exotic concoctions are potions: herbs prepared to produce a specific effect. Foragers seek them by category rather than by species, since each general category is some particular local plant.

Time — about ten minutes’ preparation, which may be heating, boiling or grinding to a paste. No workshop is needed; a potion can be made in the field. Up to half the herbalist’s Herblore Index doses of the same herb and potency may be prepared together.

Test — a Herblore Success Value test.

Result — the effect depends on the potion type and the herb’s potency, and is almost always stated as a bonus or penalty equal to the Success Value, doubled for a Strong herb and quadrupled for a Great one.

Duration — once prepared but not yet used, a potion keeps for d6 + the maker’s Herblore Index days. An unpreserved foraged herb, meanwhile, loses a potency level every 2d6 days, and is useless for potions once it falls below Mild.

Application — most are ingested, some smoked; some are poultices applied as part of a treatment. A paste adhered to a blade or broadhead takes effect only when that weapon’s edge or point actually causes an injury worse than a glancing blow.

Prices, per dose, according to potency:

Wholesale is what a forager charges a herbalist; where the herbalist gathered it themselves, there is no such cost. Retail is what a herbalist charges a professional buying ingredients. The potion price is what a customer pays, and randomises as four times the ingredient dice.

Herblore is one of the trades that develops a nose, and a character distracted or unfocused tests their best olfactory skill to register a smell at all.