I agree that Herbs/Poisons/Intoxicants are a fantastic aspect of the game for many, many players! There is an xls of all the plants somewhere, I created and imported it all into a SQL database for my game! Unfortunately, I cannot post the xls in this forum.
How do you handle these aspects of herbs in your game?
1) Finding the herbs (do you use foraging or Herbalism?) What is the chance to find them?
2) If found, what is the number assigned for how many doses?
3) What is the difficulty you use to "use/remove" them - basically to retrieve and store them?
4) What is the difficulty to "Prepare" them for use?
Here is what I do and help me if you think this could be better.
Many of my players have Herbalism/Poison Lore (used the same way) to find herbs.
1) They say they want to go search an area, and the time it takes is 4 hours out in the wild. The exact time it takes for a random encounter. I cross index all the herbs/poisons in an area with the Climate/Locale. This list is where I start. Then I randomly pick one of the plants.
2) I use the difficulty assigned to the herbs to apply against their roll. If the herb/poison is marked as say, Hard, a -10 is applied to the Herbalism/Poison Lore roll.
3) They can find the plants based on difficulty of the Class level. So, if they have 1-2 ranks in Herbalism/Poison Lore, they can find Difficulty class 1 herbs, if they have 3-4 ranks, they can find Class 1 and Class 2 herbs (this goes all the way to class 9 - the most absurd and powerful herbs/poisons)
4) So, they hit "111" on the skill roll and find something! I then make a secret roll based on how powerful the herb/poison is and the description (if any) of the plant. It could be just 1 dose in the case of very powerful herbs and say, 1d10, in the case of finding a Mirenna Berry bush
5) Now they have to remove it, I use the same difficulty skill check as with the finding of the herb (this is NOT idea since players are hit with a double positive or double negative to find it and then retrieve it). If they get over 111, yup, they successfully "removed" a dose. They then roll for each dose to successfully retrieve them.
6) Finally, to "prepare" them when they actually use them. You guessed it, same difficulty.
WHEW! Herbs are a "get rich quick" scheme in my games. One herb can set the party for magic items and anything they ever need at 1st or 2nd level in one lucky roll. It gets TENSE sometimes as they could get #193 Shumaran, #653 Tyr-fira or even 921 Ul-acaana in 4 hours of a random search.
Let me know how ya'll handle these rolls and any formulas you use? I would love to redo the way I have been doing this while still using:
1) Herbalism/Poison Lore to "find"
2) Prepare Herb/Prepare Poison to "obtain and store"
3) Use/Remove Herb/Poison to "use" according to the method (ingest, boil, apply)