The Herbalist Base Class

Have you ever killed a man with a handful of grass? She has.

While some individuals, the druids and rangers of the world, learn to coexist and be one with nature, other individuals, the alchemists of the world, learn to harness nature and force it to do their bidding. The herbalists of the world take a path between these two extremes. Herbalists see the natural world as a tool to be revered, a cornucopia of plenty that needs to be properly exercised to extract full benefit from it. From the smallest shelf mushroom to the greatest of flora, the herbalist knows the inner secrets of all things that grow upon this earth.

Designed to play as an assassin / rogue / chaos druid, the herbalist uses the plants around her as a substitute for spells per day. As such, she is dependent upon her surroundings as a means of power acquisition. That is to say, if she is in the forest, the plants she can acquire are vastly different from those in the desert. Each biome (desert, forest, grasslands, mountains, tundra, underground, and wetlands) has been carefully balanced to provide healing, support, offensive, and defensive capabilities regardless of where the herbalist is.

Now, the idea of randomly generating "plants per day" may seem a bit daunting. Fear not! All the complexity has been boiled down to a few rolls on one of a set of simple tables. What's more, each biome has been summarized on a single sheet, including the functions of each herb in that biome, and each summary sheet contains a handy column for recording just how many of that herb the herbalist has.

"Alright, but what about moving from biome to biome? Won't I lose access to the plants I like?"

Well, yes and no. Though an herbalist will lose access to going out and picking a biome's herbs if not in that biome, she always has the option to plant her favorite plants in terra cotta pots that she hauls around, thus letting her always be sure that certain tactical options will ALWAYS be available, no matter how strange her daily plants pool may be. Further, an herbalist can carry over a small subset of her plants per day to the next day, allowing her to benefit from a glut of an herb she particularly enjoys and giving her the ability to survive the lack of an herb she leans upon heavily.

"Fine, but isn't the idea of having everything an entire biome can do small enough to fit on a page rather limiting?"

Again, no! The herbalist can cook down her herbs using recipes to create new and exciting concoctions, some of which are wildly different from what they started out as!

"What if I end up somewhere that isn't one of your biomes? What if there are no plants at all?"

The notion of an area with no plants is addressed within the class mechanics. If a new and exciting biome comes along, the very system used to create the standard biomes in the first place is presented in its entirety at the back of the document, including the raw, editable tables used to make the tables within the supplement in the first place! It shouldn't be too hard to mix the herbs up and make it yourself with that kind of support.

This product includes:

• The Herbalist base class
• The Conservationist archetype
• The Flowerchild archetype
• Eight pages of biome find herbs tables
• The Herb Log, containing 69 herbs with physical descriptions and, for many, art
• The Recipe Book, containing 22 recipes.
• Eight pages of biome summary tables
• Complete rules and formulae for creating your own biomes, including the unitless point values used to assign relative power levels to the herbs in the seven standard biomes
• Raw .png files for all of the biome summary tables, as well as a blank biome summary table and blank biome find herbs table.
• The blank Microsoft Publisher 2003 tables so you can make your own biomes look as good as possible.