Goodberry - can berries come from Leshy, leshy familiar, or leshy 'animal' companion?


Rules Discussion


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

There's probably a rule against this that I haven't found yet.

But I'll ask for thoughts on it anyway.

If you're a leaf druid can you get your fresh berries from a leshy character (yourself or another), your leshy familiar, someone else's leshy familiar, or a leshy "animal" companion belonging to yourself and/or someone else?

Or is it pretty much find a berry bush or bust?

If there's not 'RAW' comment on this, then I guess it's a question for your GM.


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

It's absolutely not something that has specific rules like that.


I don't see anything in the Order rules about whether it's provided or not, and I don't see anything in the spell specifying where you can get this as a valid target, so it's basically GM territory.

Maybe some Survival checks or a Spell Component Pouch might be enough to provide this sort of thing for the spell to work; I'd hate for a Druid to have to keep track of valid berries they can target with the spell, it seems unnecessarily bookkeep-y for a game designed to make things simple(r).

I do also find it odd that it doesn't have Berries in general as a material component to the spell, since there is no such thing as a Ripe Berry item that exists, since if it was considered a material component, a Spell Component Pouch would be enough to keep you covered in terms of being able to target this stuff.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

So we're in the land of GM fiat on this one.

As for component pouches. I believe it says fresh berries and that's where I could see a GM saying "nope, you picked that berry 5 minutes ago, it's not fresh anymore," and a GM making that call because that seemed the right call to make.


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The spell calls for a "ripe berry" as a target, not a "fresh berry." Plenty of ripe fruit that isn't freshly picked, and quite frankly, berries don't lose ripeness in a matter of minutes. Hours, maybe. Likely in days. And that's not factoring in preservatives (which I am pretty sure spells can handle). But minutes is just the GM being a jerk.


Much like Telekinetic Projectile, the spell would be better if it conjured its physical manifestation rather than transmuted it.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
The spell calls for a "ripe berry" as a target, not a "fresh berry."

I wondered how I got that wrong.

Checked my PDF, Archives of Nethys, and Foundry and the all say Ripe Berry.

Checked my first printing of PF2E and it says "Freshly Picked Berry". Checked my second printing (during the pandemic I somehow ended up buying the book twice off of Amazon and not seeing it for another year as the first copy was in a shelf behind boxes) and it says "Ripe Berry".

Somehow I recalled the reading from that first printing.

That's a notable change. If ripe berries work, you could go out and pick a bunch of them, then sun dry them for long term storage.

Basically use berry raisins.


My Leshy plant order druid is a Cranberry Cottoneaster, whose berries are poisonous normally.

As a GM I generally believe that the berry is like a "material component" where you handwave whether the bat guano is still good enough for fireballs unless the GM has a compelling reason why it wouldn't be.


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arcady wrote:
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
The spell calls for a "ripe berry" as a target, not a "fresh berry."

I wondered how I got that wrong.

Checked my PDF, Archives of Nethys, and Foundry and the all say Ripe Berry.

Checked my first printing of PF2E and it says "Freshly Picked Berry". Checked my second printing (during the pandemic I somehow ended up buying the book twice off of Amazon and not seeing it for another year as the first copy was in a shelf behind boxes) and it says "Ripe Berry".

Somehow I recalled the reading from that first printing.

That's a notable change. If ripe berries work, you could go out and pick a bunch of them, then sun dry them for long term storage.

Basically use berry raisins.

Edition Confusion. PF1 Goodberry requires freshly picked berries.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I've always thought that producing berries would be a nice familiar ability to have available for a leshy. But that'd be a homebrew ability and fall under GM approval.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
breithauptclan wrote:
arcady wrote:
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
The spell calls for a "ripe berry" as a target, not a "fresh berry."
Edition Confusion. PF1 Goodberry requires freshly picked berries.

I never played PF1E. I own some books for it but never really read them. But that does explain why the first printing of PF2E also required "Freshy Picked Berries."

It got fixed fast though, as by second printing we had the current rule.

Still, I hadn't opened my first printing in a long time. I'm wondering if there's a wiki page somewhere that has the 1E rule on it that I might have seen recently.

No matter though - good to know that is NOT the rule because freshly picked would be extremely limiting and I could see that leading to a lot of 'side eyeing' the GM at a table.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Dragorine wrote:
I've always thought that producing berries would be a nice familiar ability to have available for a leshy. But that'd be a homebrew ability and fall under GM approval.

Yeah. This is the real question.

If you're a Leshy strawberry bush, or elderberry leshy or something - why can't you pick your own berries? But if you can - then that's a bit of an advantage over any other druid.

I just looked in my Ancestry Guide and if you're a Fruit Leshy an effect similar to goodberry comes with your heritage...

That leads me to suspect that picking berries off a leshy familiar or leshy companion should be a thing if it's not already. If nothing else it should be something you could dedicate a familiar ability or train a companion for. Kind of odd that it's missing from the rules given that it is on the Leshy ancestry.

Leshy PCs can produce healing fruit once a day without even being druids. So you'd think a Druid Leshy PC ought to be able to do even more. But yeah - no callout that I know of in the rules for that.


For Leshy ancestry there is Fruit Leshy.

And for familiars you could flavor Restorative Familiar to be producing a berry.


I think the important question is - how pedantic is your GM? Do I want to dedicate table time to the druid having to find berries? Is it "cool" for them to be able to have their familiar make berries they can enchant?

For me, it's not something I want to give table time to. If it's logical and doesn't contradict the rules I'd be fine with it.

Liberty's Edge

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Fruit Leshy running a small traveling medic business out of a cart made from the vines and wood of the bush they were animated from:

Welcome to Goodberry, home of the Goodberry, can I take your order?


breithauptclan wrote:
arcady wrote:
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
The spell calls for a "ripe berry" as a target, not a "fresh berry."

I wondered how I got that wrong.

Checked my PDF, Archives of Nethys, and Foundry and the all say Ripe Berry.

Checked my first printing of PF2E and it says "Freshly Picked Berry". Checked my second printing (during the pandemic I somehow ended up buying the book twice off of Amazon and not seeing it for another year as the first copy was in a shelf behind boxes) and it says "Ripe Berry".

Somehow I recalled the reading from that first printing.

That's a notable change. If ripe berries work, you could go out and pick a bunch of them, then sun dry them for long term storage.

Basically use berry raisins.

Edition Confusion. PF1 Goodberry requires freshly picked berries.

It wasn't edition confusion. Arcady is correct that the first printing of the PF2 CRB targeted "1 freshly picked berry." It was changed to "1 ripe berry" in the second printing.


arcady wrote:

That's a notable change. If ripe berries work, you could go out and pick a bunch of them, then sun dry them for long term storage.

Basically use berry raisins.

Yep. Our GM ruled that simple rations always contain raisin or other dried berries - and the spell was saved.

I was very disappointed and even a bit disgusted reading the spell for the first time, as they made such iconic and core druid spell useless. Well, it can be salvaged at least.
It also seems devs have (had?) a problem with plant spells: while some spells can grow permanent real trees and flowers from nothing (Protector Tree and Soothing Blossoms), Entangle still demands real pre-existing vegetation (or fungi), ruining the spell. And all permissive spells are newer, from Secrets of Magic, so I hope it means a change in attitude in the remaster.

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