Topic: Skill used to gather herbs

[Bilo]

Hi all

Skill herb lore is to identify such herbs where they are from and what they do, but how do you collect them.

with skills like foraging and horticulture waters get muddied

appreciate your insight

[jdale]

RMSS/RMFRP? Horticulture covers growing plants, Foraging would cover finding them. I don't see anywhere that says this explicitly, but Gamemaster Law page 101 refers to the "foraging roll" for finding herbs, so that's implied.

In RMU, you would use Survival. A complementary skills bonus from Herbalism would be appropriate too. The skills are a bit more broad here.

[Spectre771]

For RM2, we use Foraging and I'll sometimes add a bonus if they have Region Lore too.  If others without Foraging want to help we let them use General Perception with a decent penalty (at least -50) since they don't know what they are looking for and are hoping to stumble upon the desired herb.

We also use Herb Lore for the identification and knowledge of the herbs after they've been found.

[Aspire2Hope]

Depends on how complicated you want the process to get. In terms of domains of knowledge there is

Herb Lore - knowing what it looks like, where it grows, what to use it for and some of the names.
Foraging - Finding things in the wilderness which is much more about reading the environment (well in my book)
Horticulture - How to optimise conditions for growing things.

I am always inclined to let all three play their part either in concert or as individual rolls; making a separate "wealth" roll for how much is harvested.

After all if you know the name of a plant and where it is most likely to be found eg by a river then you are going to look there - foraging skill or not. Foraging on it's own is trickier because unless it is something common to your cultural understanding (we all know what mint looks like) then you are less likely to gain anything as they all look green and plant like. Horticultural is all about recreating and improving conditions so knowing that a riverbank with a south facing aspect is better than any of the others means the plant in question is more likely to grow there.

Hopefully, you can see that Herb Lore takes primacy in my game and the rest support. Context is key for the character.

[Bilo]

thx guys for your feedback it made things clearer now.

[Grinnen Baeritt]

Precise skill approach... If you have a character that is looking specifically for a herb, then Herb Lore first, then Foraging (with a GM modifier based on exactly how appropriate the terrain is and other factors)

Shotgun skill approach: Foraging with no real idea what there might be available, but just happy to blunder around finding useful stuff... like food and water etc but possibly stumbling across something "Herby":  Foraging, then Survival, then Fauna & Flora Lore, then Herb Lore. 

[Bilo]

i don't like the shotgun aproach

I like the idea of using herb lore to know what to look for where and how tough it is to find then foraging to actually find said herb.

thanks for all the feedback folks much appreciated!!!

[Ginger McMurray]

I just use herb lore for it all. KISS. It means they spend fewer skill points to be able to find herbs but that's fine to me.

[MisterK]

I would say it depends on your campaign focus. If the focus is on alchemy and material preparation, then having multiple skills makes sense (and you would likely have several skills for animal and mineral ingredients as well). This emphasises the focus, fosters specialisation, and details what needs to be detailed in the context.
However, if herbalism/apothecary is a secondary concern in your game, I would advise using a single skill (herb lore would sound good), with survival only being useful for herbs that are of immediate use in the wild - nourishment mostly, and perhaps avoidance of some poisonous plants (but no knowledge on how to actually gather and prepare them). Of course, herb lore is the main factor in herb gathering, preparation and use, but it does not help anyone actually *survive* in the areas where the herbs grow.

But I'm all for having a compact skill list, and furthermore, a skill list that is relevant to the specific campaign, not a generic, one-size-fits-all skill list.

[markc]

1) Depending on your version RM2 vs RMSS you have vastly different amount of DP to spend on skills but basically the same number of skills.


2) IIRC, find herb is the only find (thing) in the game, I do not remember Find (ore), Find (lost car keys), etc. So IMHO the Find Herb skill grew out of the game idea that using perception to find herbs was too powerful and the need to have a separate skill to balance everything.


How I do it:
I generally use survival, perception and herb lore in my RMSS game.


Low Number of Skills:
I generally have a very tough time with games that had reduced skills as you can get very strange issues. I will use another game out there as examples:
1) To fire a vehicle weapon you use pilot, all piloting/driving is one skill, thus if you can pilot a sea do then you can fire a starship laser weapon.
2) Same system, to disarm traps you use engineering which also means you know how to work on anti matter engines and other such things.
3) Generally in such systems broad descriptions can mean things fall into more then one category.
4) I have also seen the reasoning for small skill sets is that is what works on the PC sheet vs what is right for the game.


MDC     

[Ecthelion]

Just like Ginger above we like to keep it simple. So for gathering a specific herb it would be Foraging in our group, modified by the herb's difficulty rating. Horticulture we'd only use for growing a herb. And Herb Lore we'd use for identifying a unknown herb.

[Bilo]

Just like Ginger above we like to keep it simple. So for gathering a specific herb it would be Foraging in our group, modified by the herb's difficulty rating. Horticulture we'd only use for growing a herb. And Herb Lore we'd use for identifying a unknown herb.

yes i like that approach thanks i i will use it since my campaign is not heavily focused on alchemy and such.