Do you wish that alchemy in your game had a little more “oomph?” Have you ever been disappointed that no matter what it is that you’re trying to craft, all it takes is gold, time, and a skill check, with no concern as to what ingredients you’re using or how they’re prepared? Have you ever GM’d for a player who always seemed to want to wander off into the woods (or the merchant district) in search of rare and exotic reagents and compounds for his next magical experiment, and struggled to come up with an exciting and suitably fantastic material for him to find?
Then this is the book for you. A Necromancer’s Grimoire: The Secret of Herbs introduces a new approach to the sorts of low-cost special substances that can be created with the Craft (Alchemy) skill. Presented herein are ten new herbs with very special properties.
Take dead man's head, a bulbous, highly volatile tuber that is prone to exploding if not harvested correctly. It can be used to make all kinds of things, from the nonlethal but debilitating firebelly poison to the dangerous arsonist's friend, a substance that can be applied to objects to make them more flammable.
Or perhaps you prefer polysap, made from the sap of a quasi-magical tree that can change its appearance, this versatile stuff can be used to toughen your skin if made into barkflesh, or to alter your appearance, if made into second skin, or even to close wounds and stimulate healing, if mixed into the substance known as troll's blood.
Other highlights include spellbane poison, a substance that makes it almost impossible for the victim to cast spells, and is perfect for keeping a powerful wizard imprisoned, or maiden's tears, which have the ability to stop bleeding, but, if prepared incorrectly, will come out as widow's tears poison, and likely cause the recipient to bleed out, instead.
By themselves, each herb can be specially prepared into a handful of different special substances with a successful check, and further information outlines additional special substances and poisons that can be created by mixing two of these herbs together, for a total of over 50 new special substances and poisons.
Also included are guidelines for foraging and preparing these herbs, as well as optional rules for cultivating herbs deliberately and identifying the properties of unknown herbs, and many of the herbs in this book have special properties even without any special preparation. Whether you want to make the best alchemist (or witch, or hedgewizard, or even druid or ranger) ever, and display your superior knowledge of special plants, or just want to make sure that your players never look at a flower stand the same way ever again, don’t pass this book up.
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Well that sucked! Not the content, the content was great but why isn't it bigger?
we're introduced with dozens of herbs, each with one or more alchemical concoctions that can be crafted with them. There are also rules for foraging for them. A simple concept that allows many characters to perform alchemy and use herbs without having to have a class dedicated to it and makes mixing herbs and chemicals a bit more lore and flavor by having specific plants to gather for effects.
Its a great book and I'm giving it 5 stars but I almost feel like I should take it down to 4 stars for just not being that much. I need more herbs that do more things. This is the thing that adventures are made of. How classic is it that a hermit needs to make some potions but the herbs are off in some dangerous place full of monsters. I need legendary herbs and more dangerous herbs. It gives mundane characters something to find and craft without needing a caster around. That level of independence is priceless and flavorful but I fear that this doesn't go far enough. It just introduced new cool items and concepts and just stopped. I know there are more in Herbs of the Jungle but this concept needs to be broadened.
This is a real delight, an attempt to make the art of herbalism come to life within your game. Being a botanist I have sometimes introduced real-world herbs into a game, or even made a few up, but here is a whole bunch of herbs to add spice to the activities of witches and alchemists and even healers.
There's a short story about gathering and using herbs, notes on foraging and on what you might find given the sort of area in which you are searching, and then on to an herb list that's full of delights. For each herb there is copious information ranging from what it looks like (and tastes like) to various concoctions for which it is a vital ingredient and even its market value should you wish to sell.
There is even information on growing your own herbs - so if your character fancies having a herb garden at home, now he can. Just remember that gardening is a leisurely way of acquiring the plants you need for your next potion or poison and that those herbs need attention while they are growing... perhaps not tasks suited to the average adventurer. The matter of knowledge is also discussed: giving options to roll to recognise a plant, to know its uses or to know how to make the concoction you want to - or you may prefer to assume that it is something already known to the character given his background and training.
Other discussions cover the market in herbs, and the things that can go wrong when making herbal concoctions. As quite a few of the ones here are poisons, it's clear that you need to take care when messing around with plants. (Equally true in the real world, of course!)
This is an excellent supplement if you are minded to use herbs at all within your game.
4.5 stars - can I have a 200-page book like that? Please?
This pdf is 29 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 24 pages of content, so let’s check this out!
Kicking off with a rather grisly, yet aptly-written piece of prose we are introduced to the matter at hand on page 6, before we get to the content – killing 4 further pages in the process and making this pdf rather short, but onwards to the new plants introduced here:
Since the herbs here can be found in specific climates and need a survival-check to be found that is further modified if the character has ranks in Profession (Herbalist), Craft (Alchemy) or similar skills – beyond that, foraging of course also provides nice adventure-hooks: After all, what if the needed plant only grows in the graveyard of dragons or those haunted burial cairns?
Each entry of the respective plants comes thus with a foraging DC, a sample price for one batch and both a description of the physical form of the respective herb as well as multiple items that can be crafted from it as well as the required DCs. Growing your own herbs is also covered in an extensive one-page sidebar that provides concise rules. But what can these plants do?
The bulbous and insect-eating Balor’s Maw can be fashioned into an acidic splash weapon that sticks to targets and continues to burn, scent bombs to throw off e.g. hounds or other smell-based trackers or suregrip, which makes losing one’s hold, be it on ledges or weapons, less likely. Corpseroot can be used to make an incense that repels mindless undead, preserve a corpse for 24 hours with a certain balm, stagger or even paralyze foes with a mild poison or act as a concoction that hides the user from mindless undead. Death Man’s Head mushrooms can be made into a fire-accelerating paste or even a dried, albeit slightly unreliable volatile shroom-bomb or an interesting poison: Working only when ingested (and best concealed in spicy foods), the poison deals fire damage from inside to the victims.
Dragon’s Tongue, blood-red, serrated ferns can be made into a tonic, that, as long as it’s ingested for at least a week, provides a +1 bonus to fort-saves, but only as long as daily consumption is maintained. It coan also be used to create red smoke or a disgusting tar, which, while sickening and nauseating, helps afflicted to throw off infections by providing a substantial bonus to the next fort-save versus a disease. The plant can also be quite profitable, as a delicacy beer can be brewed from it as well! Golden-yellow flowers called Mother’s Kiss can be made into an incense that, when inhaled, deadens pain and helps to save versus pain-spells. The flowers can also be substituted as balm for using a healer’s kit and have yet another cool application: When mixed with mare’s milk, they may hasten natural healing of both hp and ability score damage, but also weaken the character while under the effect., reducing str and dex by 6 points for 48 hours or 1d8 hours after having fully healed. Finally, the dried flowers may act as a plaguefinder: When diseased people breathe on them, the flowers turn blue! From Nightroot, one may extract a non-flammable bioluminescent paste that works as superb illumination in e.g. gas-filled tunnels or work-environments with a lot of black powder. It can also be used to enhance sight, but this particular application is risky: While enhanced vision in shadows and darkness is neat, a botched dose means that the characters suffers from hallucinations that may see him/her jump at shadows and suffer from the shaken condition. It can also be turned into poison and blind others.
Polysap is harvested from chameleon trees, which look like the most dominant form of tree in a given forest to the untrained eye. The sap can be made into a balm that slightly hardens the wearer’s skin (+1 natural AC), used as a clay-substitute or as a kind of make-up to create masks and help infiltrators or actors with their professions and tasks. Finally, it can be used to stop bleeding or to enhance fast healing/regeneration, if available.
Sage’s Cap is a potentially dangerous, lethal mushroom, but one that can be made into weapon versus the incorporeal and it’s regularly already interesting poison can be refined into a different type of poison that induces horrid nightmares. Finally, the fungus can be made into a certain incense helping versus emotion-based effects, but also making the user sluggish.
The vine-growing weeping maiden can end bleed damage, be made into a draught that results in a particular deep slumber, grant a bonus to dying creatures to regain consciousness, or be made into a poison that increases bleed damage. Thin, red, extremely sharp grasses called Wizard’s Beard can be made into an incense that allows prepared spellcasters to unprepared spells, freeing the unused spell-slots for other spells, but it is taxing and also imposes minor penalties. One can also create a deadly poison that hinders spellcasting. On the risky side, the plant can be made into eye-drops that, while sickening, do allow the user to detect magic. If the herbalist botched, though, the users can see false auras, making the usage unreliable.
After all these glorious new plants, we are also introduced to 5 pages covering special materials that can be created by combining multiple doses of different herbs. Mxing these materials as well as DCs and market prices are also provided.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch this time around, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to NNW’s 2-column standard with its parchment-like background and the artwork consists mostly of stock-art at the lower end of the spectrum. The pdf comes fully bookmarked.
It’s been years since 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming has announced the Apothecary’s Handbook, one of my most anticipated PFRPG-books right now and I’m still hoping it will be a milestone of quality similar to their equipment book. In the meanwhile, the necromancers Alex Riggs and Joshua Zaback have stepped up and created this. And honestly, after being disappointed by some of their releases, I did not expect too much from this one. I was oh so wrong. Tight in focus, extremely useful, oozing flavor and untold options for adventure, this is all but required for low magic or dark fantasy settings and campaigns and even for the others, there is so much goodness in here, the herbs being balanced and all, that these plants are guaranteed to enrich your campaign via the details they provide and the extra sense of believability paired with their wondrousness made this book one of my all-time-favorites of their oeuvre. Multiple uses, foraging and combined substances? Yes, please! In fact, I’d immediately slap 5 stars plus seal of approval on this pdf, were it not for one gripe: This pdf feels too short, with the fluffy introduction out of the way and some very spacious (and ugly) artworks in the text, we not even get 20 pages of content for a topic in which the necromancers obviously managed to shine very bright. This relative brevity means I will go down to 4.5 stars, but still round up to 5 since the ideas and content provided can be considered universally top-notch. I really hope the authors will grace us with a sequel or even a massive almanac/grimoire of more herbs: After all, it’s a niche no other 3pp is exploring at the moment and one the authors quite obviously know how to write for. Why not one for desert plants, arctic plants, jungle vines, aquatic plants etc.? Ahhh, one may dream…
I want to think I am being extra blind here or something, since I don't see anywhere anybody complaining about this, but... ehm... If someone could point me out WHERE is the table specifying the DCs of Wizard's Beard Craft DCs I would be most thankfull because I can't really find it anywhere on the PDF...
Wizard's beard does not have a craft DC. Its an ingredient not a product, you have to go around looking for it, buy it or grow it. As for the substances it creates, the craft DCs are missing, I presume because it requires simple actions like "light it on fire" that anyone could do. It would be like needing a craft alchemy check to make macaroni and cheese.
