You make a forage check vs the location-specific DC.
(For those who are using the optional skill rules that some editions have, use survival. In our group we just use a plain wisdom check.)
Anyone who isn’t doing anything else that day can try.
One roll for both food and water.
If you succeed, you make two separate 1d6+wis rolls to see how much you find. Pounds of food & gallons of water, respectively.
Those 1d6+wis you used to find pounds of food? Let’s for the sake of explaining this call those “forage points”. One “forage point” equals one pound of food.
You can search for other things as well:
| Name | Use | Finding | Environment | Storing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blood viola (tiny red flower) | Part of a potion of healing | 3 forage points | Forests, meadows and swamps | Tiny item, but soft so 50 of them can fit into empty bottles |
| Moss or fireflies | One use of Light spell | 3 forage points | Forests, meadows and swamps | Up to six uses fit into a small item |
| Phosphorus, wychwood or glowworm | Six uses of Dancing Lights | 1 forage point | Deep forests | Six tiny items |
| Dry balsa wood | One use of Produce Flame | 1 forage point | Forests on dry days | Up to six uses fit into a small item |
| Mistletoe Sprig | One use of Goodberry | 6 forage points | Temperate leafy forests | Small item |
| Sammarcass root + Bee’s wax + Bepuga seeds | One 20-application batch of bug salve | All forage points for a day | Chultan Jungle | Small item |
| Deathtoads | 10 doses of Deathtoad Toxin | 5 forage points | Tree tops | The toad is a small item, the vial of toxin will be a tiny item |
| Ichor | 10 doses of Chuul Ichor poison | All forage point for a day | Harvest from vampires, ghûls, zombies, similar | Tiny item |
| Murk leaves | 10 doses of Wooziness Tonic | 4 forage points | Leafy trees any climate | Tiny item |
| Precious Tear (little white flower) | Part of basic poison | 3 forage points | Rainy days far from the madding crowd | Tiny item |
| Sticks, fibers and fat | Torches | 3 forage points | A place with trees | Each is a small item |
| Wisteria petals, clover leaves, bark | ⅓ Find Familiar Components | 5 forage points | Tight groves, dense vegetation | 3×⅓ of components together fit as one small item |
| Mud and straw | Making houses | 3 forage points | Warm, bright and muddy | 1 medium bag of bricks |
But there is a ginormous brutal catch.
That’s right.
You have to announce before you make the initial forage check what you are looking for and how many you want to find. Any leftover forage points you find as food. (Water is and remains its own untouchable 1d6+wis roll.)
For example, you are looking for two blood violas and you make the forage check and then you roll 8 forage points. You find the two blood violas for three points each and then you find two pounds of food for the two leftover points.
Another example: you are looking for one mistletoe sprig and you make the forage check and then you roll 8 forage points. You don’t get enough to find the mistletoe sprig. And you don’t get any food either. It’s only the excess points after you found everything you asked for that become food.
For “all forage points for a day” items like bug salve ingredients or ichor, you don’t even need to roll the 1d6+wis for food, just for water.
| Tool&Proficiency Needed | Ingredients | Time | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Herbalism kit | (Up to) 25 batches bug salve ingredients | One full day | (Up to) 25 batches of 20-application salves |
| Herbalism kit | 25 blood violas + 1 flask | One full day | One potion (one drink) of healing |
| Herbalism kit | 100 blood violas + 1 flask | 1 workweek | One potion (one drink) of greater healing |
| Herbalism kit | 1000 blood violas + 1 flask | 3 workweeks | One potion (one drink) of superior healing |
| Herbalism kit | 10000 blood violas + 1 flask | 4 workweeks | One potion (one drink) of supreme healing |
| Herbalism kit | 3×⅓ Find Familiar components | One full day | One use of Find familiar components |
| Poisoner’s kit | Deathtoads + vial | Short rest | 10 doses of Deathtoad Toxin |
| Poisoner’s kit | Ichor + vial | Short rest | 10 doses of Chuul Ichor poison |
| Poisoner’s kit | Murk leaves + vial | Short rest | 10 doses of Wooziness Tonic |
| Poisoner’s kit | 50 Precious Tears + vial | Two full days | 1 application of basic poison |
| Cook’s Utensils | 4 (or 2d4) pounds of fresh food + lucky die roll | Short rest | 2 (or 1d4) rations |
| Spellbook class feature | Gems | 1 day/25gp | Magic ink for twice the gems’ value |
| Mason’s Tools | 300 bags of bricks | One workweek | A small house with earthen floor |
For the bugsalve, you are using the wax as emulsifier for the fat in the seeds and you store it in the root. It takes a full day for it all to dry out properly but you can make 25 batches in that day.
For creating rations, you need to make a DC 20 check with your cook’s tool proficiency. If you succeed you also get the benefits 1 hour of rest. If you get 11 or lower, the ingredients are destroyed and you don’t get the rest either. But on a 12-19, you can choose between
It’s your choice to go for 4 to 2, or roll both sides (2d4 to 1d4). You could end up paying 2 for 4, but you could also end up paying 8 for 1.
For magic ink out of gems, if you put in less than 25 dinars worth of gems, they are lost and the ink doesn’t work. But, as long as you put in at least 25, you don’t have to make perfect divisions of 25, for example if you put in 35 dinars worth of gems, that’s gonna take two full days of work and you get 70 gp worth of magic ink. You have to work consecutive days or the gems are lost.
This means that if you don’t know the gems’ value, it’s a push-your-luck game. Put in too few gems, and you risk getting under 25 and losing them. Put in too many, and you risk not having enough downtime days available to finish the batch before it crustifies and is destroyed.
It goes day by day: you say what gems you put in, DM maths out (by dividing by 25 and rounding up) how many days it takes, notes that (along with the value of the ink, by doubling the value of the gems) secretly, and then you go day by day “is it finished yet?” until it is, and the DM tells you how much the value is.
(Deathtoad Toxin, Chuul Ichor and Wooziness Tonic are from a book called “Beyond Damage Dice” #nospons A lot of the other stuff I came up with on my own. Thanks for having patience with that…)