Harvestable Formula

[Jix Rissi]

Hey there! I'm about to start DMing for a new group of players and one wants to be a potion maker that havests monster parts to make potions. The idea sounded cool but I found that the existing rules didn't tickle my fancy so I spent a bit of time cranking out a new formula. Let me know what you guys think!

Harvest requires appropriate Knowledge check per tier then Heal or Survival check to harvest.

Value = Rarity x Tier x CR x (% Over/Under Base Weight for Tier 1 and 2)

Rarity
------
Ultra Common = 1 = Human/Common Animals
Very Common = 2 = Elves/Half-Orcs/Wild Animals
Common = 3 = Goblins/Kobolds/Gnoll/Drow/Common Undead/Rare Animals
Somewhat Common = 4 = Dire Animal/Dinosaurs
Somewhat Uncommon = 5 = Imp/Quasit/Owlbear
Uncommon = 6 = Basic Outsider/Dryad/Wight
Very Uncommon = 7 = Drake/Wyvern/Shambling Mound
Somewhat Rare = 8 = Young Dragon
Rare = 9 Adult Dragon/Purple Worm/Unicorn
Very Rare = 10 = Tarrasque/ Ancient Dragon

Base Weight
-----------
157.5

CR
--
Base CR

Tier
----
1 = 1 Gold = Check DC 5 + CR
2 = 5 Gold = Check DC 10 + CR
3 = 25 Gold = Check DC 15 + CR
4 = 125 Gold = Check DC 20 + CR
5 = 250 Gold = Check DC 25 + CR

Example
-------

Human
-----
Hair - Wig - 3 Silver (SoL if Bald. . . x2 if long)
Bones - Crafting - 2 Gold
Blood - Cure Light Wounds - 8 Gold
Heart - Enemy's Heart - 42 Gold
Brain - Human Potential - 83 Gold

I know the human thing is gross but I had to do it because it's the most basic of basic monster types.

I figure first two tiers will always be non magical (ie Hide, Meat, Bones) and that they will be multiplied by the creature's weight relative to that of an average human 157.5 lbs. according to pathfinder. This is so farmers can actually make a profit off their cows without having to resort to witchcraft!

Tier 3 will always be blood and will always be used for the component cost of cure related items such as potions of cure light woulds or a wand of cure light wounds. Every 5 CR the level of cure spell would go up. CR 1 monster is cure light wounds while CR 6 is moderate ect ect. This is so healing items are the most commonly constructed items as they serve the most use imo.

Tier 4 and 5 will always be for magical purposes and would serve as a replacement for the component cost of any magical item matching the spell listed beside the they could be used for aka Human Brain could be used for a potion of Human Potential but not for a potion of heroism.

Tiers 3-5 would be able to be used as substitutes for the component cost or correlating magic items equal to double their listed value here.

So what do you guys think? I'm hoping for some valuable feedback here.

Also hoping for some help with monster rarity. Does my list look good? Anything you would move around? Any other monster you would add? Let me know!

[Mark Hoover 330]

This seems... complex. Not that that's good or bad, it just is.

Do you LIKE it to be so complex? Will your player? If so I'm sure it works fine.

As to the Rarity, couldn't that be situational? For example if you're in the middle of the ocean, a human might fall into Rare while a merfolk might be common, based on your setting anyway. As such, couldn't this part of the formula end up being subjective?

Finally, why wouldn't Blood be tied to the spell Boiling Blood, or maybe one of the Polymorph spells that give you a form of the creature you took the blood from? Heck, I could even see blood from specific Animals or stat-exemplifying creatures being used in the Bull's Strength/Cat's Grace... and so on spells.

This is why I use the Trophy optional rule for the Investigator/wizard in my game. It's a standard 15+CR on the Knowledge check appropriate to the monster to ID any usable components; a Survival check to harvest outer components (fur, wings, claws) or Heal check to harvest internal stuff (tongue, blood, sweat glands) of the same DC. The identification process takes 1 minute per monster inspected; the harvest requires 10 minutes/monster.

Once you have the component it's viable for 24 hours unless you use a Craft skill to make it more permanent. There's no time limit on this function and I didn't want to default to the time it takes in the Craft skill; a CR 1 component worth 50 GP would require a DC 16 Craft check but you'd need to add +10 and then hit a DC 26 with Craft: Leather skill to preserve the wing of a Darkmantle in a little over 3.5 days!

For that reason I decided it takes a flat 1 hour's work to preserve an item using the appropriate Craft skill. It does, however, consume 1/3 the value of the final Trophy you're crafting. Still, my clever PC has negotiated a way to reduce that cost to himself using the Downtime system.

I guess my final question is: how thorough do you anticipate/want your player to be? Scalping a humanoid to obtain the hair for a wig later on down the road likely doesn't take that long; skinning and butchering a Large sized animal (deboning and all) can take 1-4 hours depending on the size and toughness of the creature; extracting a single Fire Beetle gland might take a similar amount of time depending on how precise the cuts need to be to extract the thing w/out damaging it.

Imagine if the PC encountered a full on True Dragon. You'd want the wings, skin, blood, internal organs, claws and head for Trophies, the eyes for draconic senses spells, and so on. It'd be a one-stop potion-making shop! However even if the creature was just Large sized this might require hours of work, then days afterwards to clean and preserve some of these, taxidermy some parts, and so on.