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What rules currently exist to support the creation of foods, both non-magical and magical.
I am aware of Elves of Golarion but that seems to simply be potions in food form, preventing anyone without the prerequisite caster levels of using them. I nevertheless like the presentation used.
I'd nevertheless prefer a method which could provide small benefits, emulating certain spells but that could be created by non-casters and also providing a way to not require the wasting of potions outside of combat. Food would most of the time be consumed when adventurers would rest for example.
The only other alternative I've currently found is from the D&D Wiki for 3.5: link but I feel this lacks both flavor and content.
Are there any other alternatives or do you have any ideas?
Master Craftsman should be able to do this. I'm not sure how practical that would be though.
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Master Craftsman should be able to do this. I'm not sure how practical that would be though.
I overlooked this feat completely. Yes, it would be acceptable I'd reason to allow them to craft the magical fare from Elves of Golarion with this.
I'd like to throw a few ideas right here, let me know what you think:
- I'd design a collection of pre-made "recipes" that the players can learn, find, etc.
- The requirements for making the recipe would include specific resources, Dragon Meat for example. This would allow me to use those as a flavor for the item creation costs and allow me to reduce certain monster treasure hordes. I mean, perhaps that displacer beast didn't have the obligatory pile of treasure, but his meat can either be used or sold.
- These recipes would create meals that can be eaten hors combat to heal health, remove ability score damage, and provide some spell effects. Example: Devilish Valejun Dragon Steak, provides the ability to use a fire breath attack once in the next hour.
I think this is a really really awesome idea, and I am going to have to immediately incorporate it into my own campaign.
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You should also check out a show called Three Delivery if you can. The central MacGuffin is a magic recipe book whose recipes have been scattered. Trouble crops up when some random person finds and cooks a recipe.
On a more crunchy note, Master Craftsman can replicate the effects of Craft Wondrous Item, which can make almost anything as a one-use item (though I image many GMs would rule out stuff that simply duplicated potions, which Master Craftsman can't duplicate, IIRC).
Personally, I think a recipe should allow you to recreate that specific item without the feat, since otherwise there wouldn't be much point otherwise. A Master Craftsman (Cook) should be able to write recipes, but I might charge something similar to writing a scroll.
- The requirements for making the recipe would include specific resources
Yes, this isn't so much about feats as it is about your ability to cook the kinds of foods that have beneficial properties.
Profession (Cook) is key here, and access to recipes which bring out the beneficial qualities of the foods.
Example:
Snake Head Stew (Serves 4)
Components
Consumables: Head of a Venomous Snake, Bushel of Fayleaf (20gp)
Other: Cooking Utensils (Offer Masterwork for a +2), fire, 30 minutes
Effect: Recovers 1d4 con damage. This effect can only occur once every 24 hours.
Adventurer's Armory is your friend for herbs etc.
The recipes should be VERY regional, including resources that are attainable (difficulty shouldn't matter as that will change with level, it's just a question of whether or not they can go out and get the mats). Giving them a recipe for Shadow Dragon Jerky would be utterly useless. even if they fought and killed one, who would have such a recipe?
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@Kybryn: How would you recommend assigning Profession (Cook) DC's and actual ingredient values though?
Example
Mobat Wing Ragoût (Serves 2)
Difficulty: 25 (Essentially a lv3 recipe and assuming a 3rd level character has 3 ranks and a +3 in Wisdom, that already gives him a nice +9 bonus. With masterwork cooking tools (55 gp), that's another +2 bonus, giving him 11. A 25 isn't an unreasonable DC)
Components: Mobat Wing (2), Fire, Cooking Kit
Effect: Once, within one hour after consuming this recipe, you may screech loudly, emulating the effects of a sonic burst spell. (Caster Level 3).
Value: 300 gp (Assuming that a single use, use activated item casting sonic burst would cost 150 gp to create, and that this serves two creatures. Therefore, each Mobat Wing would be worth 150 gp. As my campaign uses the slow experience table, a typical Mobat would have 550 gp worth of treasure. With this, I'd only need to fill 250 gp of treasure, its wings worth the rest. Of course, the players are free to sell the wings as well, so the loot is not wasted if no characters use the cooking system.)
As well, I believe I'd have to create my own herbs and other ingredients as the Adventurer's Armory only presents some black market items. It shouldn't be too complicated to make a list of items that can be found in the region that are worth money. In fact, they can also be used as rewards as they could technically also be sold, once again reducing the "Every monster has to have a treasure horde of random magic items from dead adventurers. I mean seriously, that dire wolf is NOT carrying a masterwork bastard sword. No, he has a nice lean cut of dire wolf meat you can have instead.
hhmmm, somewhere I have a few pages of material I put together on Golarion Herbs+Spices (partly as a way to make Herbalism interesting... I hate that most of the Profession skills do nothing but make a couple gold)
It would be a good place to start for some things...
I am thinking you can get meat/etc from creatures you kill, Profession: Herbalism or possibly Survival if you want to find herbs/spices/edible plants in the wild, and then Profession: cook to put things together...
Sort of related: Came up with some fun medicinal herbs and things too, one of my favourite concepts was a type of mushroom called Obelcap (anagram of Placebo) that could be used to create a special 'healing tonic' that only worked on people who didn't know anything about it.
When you drank it you had to make a Knowledge: Nature or Profession: Herbalism check, and if you passed it it had no effect, but if you failed it (i.e. didn't understamd) then it would remove Sickness/Fatigue...
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Sort of related: Came up with some fun medicinal herbs and things too, one of my favourite concepts was a type of mushroom called Obelcap (anagram of Placebo) that could be used to create a special 'healing tonic' that only worked on people who didn't know anything about it.
When you drank it you had to make a Knowledge: Nature or Profession: Herbalism check, and if you passed it it had no effect, but if you failed it (i.e. didn't understamd) then it would remove Sickness/Fatigue...
That mushroom is hilarious, the naming included. And yes, I too hate how Profession does nothing but net gold pieces.
I'd probably allow the following:
Gathering Herbs/Plant type Resources: farmer, gardener, herbalist
Gathering Meat type Resources: fisherman, trapper
Preparing Food: baker, brewer, butcher, cook
Certain ingredients can be grown by the use of farmer and gardener while others need to be found in the wild with herbalist. Fisherman and trapper could find certain simple fish and meats.
So, this would mean that using the Profession formula for making gold, we assume that a 1st level Professional can already make 10 gp/week (1 rank, +3 trained, +3 stat bonus, +2 tool with a roll of 10, averaging to a total of 20). Therefore, the player would instead have found 10 gp worth of ingredients, which the GM would choose from a table, which could range anywhere from simple ingredients worth cp to rare and valuable spices and fish worth up to 25 to 50 gp each.
Certain recipes (breads, alcohols and meats) would be easier for those using baker, brewer or butcher for example, while cook is a general use skill.
Anyone else have any ideas, opinions?
Some plant items:
Roots (and tubers and rhizomes)
Stems
Seeds
Leaves
Flowers
Stigma (see saffron, very little per plant)
Fruit (including the skin and juice)
Bark (young bark and old bark are different)
Smoke (wood is inedible, but smoke is great flavor)
Secretions (sap, etc.)
Mushrooms (not technically plants)
Some animal items:
Meat
Organs (very few aren't eaten)
Skin
Teeth (either ground or cooked with but not eaten)
Bones (can be boiled for gelatin or if small enough baked until crunchy and eaten)
Feet (and other appendages)
Eyes
Tongue
Glands (especially magical ones)
Secretions (tears for example)
Minerals:
Salt is the only commonly eaten mineral on Earth.
Gold is edible (typically applied as a foil for purely decorative purposes)
Many other metals are poisonous (silver does weird things to your skin)
Preparation methods (requiring various amounts of time and tools):
Dice
Slice
Mash
Grind
Juice
Bake
Boil
Steam
Stew
Roast
Distill
Ferment
Pickle
Other thoughts:
Though cliche, the law of sympathetic magic suggests that if the creature has a prominent feature, that feature should be used in the recipe. (You'd want the beholder's eye if you wanted something like its gaze attack.)
Some preparation methods (fermentation and pickling) need a lot of time and attention (several weeks or a couple months).
Some preparation methods need materials that may not be common in the area ("boil in a full cauldron" would be tough in the desert).
Some ingredients need to be handled carefully or they become poisonous (or usually fail to lose their poison). Acorns are poisonous unless you boil them three or four times, changing the water each time (IIRC, don't try this at home). It takes years of training to safely serve puffer fish.
Mixing up the required skills is a good idea, but you might want to include some chance of using other skills at a penalty. (A beer recipe can be done with Profession (Cook) at a -5.)
Recipe idea (BTW, I'm terrible with names):
Fiery Ginger Beer (makes 32 pints) - Drinking a pint of this bright red beer gives the consumer a one-use fire breath power as per the Fire Breath spell. If they don't use this within 5 rounds, they take 2d6 fire damage.
Made from Conflagrant Ginger, which only grows in hot desert oases, and Pale Horse Peppers, which grows in jungles. (There is a mountain range that has one on one side and one on the other, where this recipe originated.)
The recipe needs 2 lbs of ginger (at 3700 gp per pound), 12 peppers (at 50 gp per pepper), other common ingredients and one month to ferment.
Requires a DC 20 Profession (Brewer) check or a DC 25 Profession (Cook, Chef or Baker) check.
Trying to make a smaller batch throws off the fermentation, adding +5 to the DC for each halving.
(That really needs a spell-like template.)
Edit: BTW, the ginger would presumably be about 1 ounce per root (230 gp), and would probably require some questing to get.
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Wow, MagiMaster, amazing post and I will definitely take this to heart. I agree with the cliche part. Certain things need to be linked between the food and the creature: The Mobat's screech is represented in the Mobat Wing Ragout for example.
I'll try and keep ingredient prices relatively in the low end, as I feel that 3K for a pound of plant is overkill. I'm guessing the high price comes from the 32 pints of the stuff so I'd instead make it require more of the ingredient, but costs much less each. I'd make it require 64 of the plant, with 115 gp per plant, just to avoid the massive cost so I can mix and match the resources when discovered.
I was also indeed going to use certain "dangerous foods" such as poisonous foods, undead flesh, etc.
My own campaign takes place in a jungle-esque region at the heart, with Caribbean islands around it, so there's plenty of different resources that can be found. (Much like the Mwangi Expanse, Shackles, Sodden Lands, Sargava type areas)
My final design will look like this for the moment:
- A selection of recipes separated by style. Recipes can be purchased. (Southsea Cooking, Colonial Cuisine, etc)
- Ingredients are separated by type and region (your list helps enormously MagiMaster) and listed in order of value.
- A simple three-level prestige class that focuses on making unique recipes and prolonging and enhancing food effects.
- I'll include a new small selection of feats related to cooking these new foods.
Any other possible ideas?
EDIT: How should we use time to prepare, quantity, rarity, etc to modify the cost of preparing the recipe and the effects?
Those lists are mostly off the top of my head. There's plenty of room for additions. And yeah, the price is for a level 2 (CL 5) potion times 32. It could probably be brought down a bit since the end result isn't quite as nice as the actual spell. And I agree that each ginger root should be in the 50-200 gp range. You just need a lot of them for this recipe (or take a DC hit and try making a smaller batch).
Assuming that having a recipe lets you bypass the need for Master Craftsman (and that having Master Craftsman lets you write new recipes), then a recipe basically lets you create a specific one-use item:
The material price should obviously be based on the one-use item price (caster level * spell level * 25 gp to make it yourself). Based on other portions of the magic item section, unlimited uses is worth between 5 and 50 times the limited use price, so a recipe should be worth about 5-50 servings of the food it makes. So that comes out to around caster level * spell level * 500 gp (between 125 and 1250).
If you need both the recipe and Master Craftsman to make the food (and research or something to make recipes) then each recipe should be worth quite a bit less, IMO.
Taking longer than usual to prepare should have some effect on the price, but I don't know where to start here. The existing item creation rules don't offer much help. I'd suggest reducing the recipe price, but leaving the material costs as is. So maybe something like -20% for each doubling over the magic item times (1000 gp per day). For recipes that make more than one serving, you'd have to average the time over each serving.
So at 30 days, 8000 gp and 32 servings, the Fiery Ginger Beer is about 1 day and 250 gp per serving. A 250 gp potion should be 2 hours, so this is about 4 times the usual time (I think), so it should be reduced by about 40%, which would give 2 * 5 * 500 * 0.6 = 3000 gp. I don't know whether or not that'd be worth it.
Actually, it probably wouldn't be since you still need to spend the 8000 gp on materials for the beer itself. So maybe reduce that *500 gp to *250 gp or so.
You could probably come up with similar reductions for other things. Be careful that the reductions don't get to -100%. :) Also, remember that bonuses should be more expensive than penalties. (So a -20% for a time increase should become a +50% for a time decrease, for example.)
Edit:
I forgot salting, smoking and drying (plus sun-drying) in the preparation methods. Preservation methods are historically important.
One last thing to add to that: most preserved food (including jerky) is used as an ingredient instead of being eaten directly. :)
One last thing to add to that: most preserved food (including jerky) is used as an ingredient instead of being eaten directly. :)
I cannot remember the last time I chopped up jerky and put it in a stew (but it doesn't sound like a bad idea.
But in all seriousness this is some good stuff. Sorry I wasn't able to get back sooner Matt. I'm not personally a fan of the obscure, spell-like abilities that you could get. That to me is just unrealistic.
Who (in golarion) came up with the idea for stuffed beholder eyes? Who actually goes out hunting beholders in order to make an hors d'oeuvre? This to me sounds like a very advanced and expensive science which one would dedicate a lifetime to develop. Also, this kind of knowledge would not be shared so easily. The life's work of an alchemist would be expensive, unless of course YOU were the reagent hunter, and you aided him in his quest for knowledge, in which case I could see this working a little more.
I revert back to what I was saying earlier. IMO, most recipes should be based on very common, regional animals that can offer you a very simple effect. The kinds of things that a brave hunters wife could figure out after years of cooking.
Wolf Tongue
Reagents: Tongue of a dire wolf, cooking tools, (too lazy to think of whatever else)
Effect: Grants you the scent ability, and a +4 to survival checks to track for 1d3 hours.
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@Kybryn: I understand why you'd call this unrealistic but it's a key part of my campaign that the region the players find themselves in is not only unexplored but also rather savage. There's not much "normal food" out there, so people had no choice but to use what they could get. This in turn led to the realization that certain monsters and other ingredients could preserve some of the powers and reproduce them to a certain extent.
I do like that Wolf Tongue though.
EDIT: And also, as I mentioned above, it's a way to reduce those random treasure hordes that every random monster seemingly needs to maintain a fair WBL. Now they have the option of turning the monsters into single-use items or selling the remains for cash at the settlements.
One last thing to add to that: most preserved food (including jerky) is used as an ingredient instead of being eaten directly. :)I cannot remember the last time I chopped up jerky and put it in a stew (but it doesn't sound like a bad idea.
Actually, I meant to say was, as it seems more common in modern times to just eat the preserved stuff directly. BTW, Alton Brow talked beef jerky stew in his jerky episode.
Actually, I meant to say was, as it seems more common in modern times to just eat the preserved stuff directly. BTW, Alton Brow talked beef jerky stew in his jerky episode.One last thing to add to that: most preserved food (including jerky) is used as an ingredient instead of being eaten directly. :)I cannot remember the last time I chopped up jerky and put it in a stew (but it doesn't sound like a bad idea.
I'm actually starting to get a bit interested in that concept.
Matt, thanks for bringing this up! I think I've formed a lot of good campaign ideas for my own games.
Also, in support of your ideas, I think it's easy to make enough of the right assumptions about your world that make what your looking to do realistic. It self balances, as the power of the effects scales with the CR of the monsters.
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Something like this possibly?