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My players love Grom's Guides. As a DM, they provide easy to learn potions and foraging frameworks to add to my games. It's also easy to add extra reagents into the Grom system
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This guide provides simple mechanics for locating and harvesting plants and potion making, adding a bit more narative substance to Xanathar's formula of "Time + Gold Cost = Potion." While potion brewing itself is still more of a downtime activity, gathering can easiliy be incorporated as an activity for players to engage in during adventures. A creative DM could even design adventures around the gathering of exotic ingredients. Definitely worth picking up if your players are looking for additional ways to interact with the world.
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I LOVE adding in extra bits and bobs to flesh out the world more. I added some more plants/animal parts and a couple postions to just protain more to the scenarios I run but this was an AMAZING start! Awesome work keep it up!
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Pretty good base to work from. Made my own modifications to fit what I like. Recomended
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This was really nice to have. I was able to combine this with some rules from another book. It has seriously helped.
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Great guide, my players now regulary "hunt" for flowers :)
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Creator Reply: |
That is awesome!!! Thank you for the feedback!!! Happy "hunting"! |
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Page count: 6. 1 cover page, 5 content
The Good: A nice and quick alchemy set of rules. A list of 20 potions/oils with the single inredient plant that are used as to make the potion.
The Bad: It takes 7 or more harvestings to make 1 potion. Even if there are multiple harvests per patch of herbs found growing together, its a lot of rolling.
But hey. Its FREE and one of the better free products here.
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Creator Reply: |
Brad B.
Thanks for the great review. I'd like to respond to your last note about how many harvests it takes to make a potion. The main reason for that was to not break the game by letting the players over brew potions and offset the DM's rewards. Too many potions can break the game. This is mainly to give the players something to do during short/long rests and feel like they get to do some harvesting. It also gives them a source of revenue/trade good or a feeling of power over their own destiny. If you want your players to make more potions then give them some of the boost items at the end of the guide so they can find or harvest more herbs. I hope that clarifies things. If not thanks for downloading anyway and I hope you and your players enjoy it.
- Zac |
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It's nicely done, pretty, well-designed, well-written. And it would have done so much better as a document using entirely original work. It takes the names of the herbs and some (but not all) of its details from Shaun Hately's Guide to Herbs, a document for AD&D back from circa 1997. I noticed that the end of the pdf links to Hately's original guide, but many of the named herbs recycled/repurposed here are not Hately's original work, and come from other sources - ICE's Middle Earth roleplaying and Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series primarily - that aren't credited here. And the details changed make the identical names nonsensical anyway - the "laumspur" here bears absolutely no resemblance to Joe Dever's laumspur, for example - so why on earth use the names?
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Creator Reply: |
Thanks for the review Sarah. I didn't create everything original because I wanted some things to sound familiar to D&D nerds everywhere. I cited using Hately's work because it was fantastic and had great names. I have never played the ICE's Middle Earth or read the Lone Wolf series. I didn't mean to unknowingly take any work from them. Seeing how this is for the D&D community and is given away for free I am not stealing any IP. It's mainly to help augment the current 5e rule set where it lacks a potion brewing system. The system was mainly to give players a way to harvest materials as they travel and then supplement their own potions. After extensive play testing I need to do some tweaking to the system, but for the most part it works seamlessly with the 5e system and is a lot of fun. I've received a lot of great feedback too. I'm sorry if you are frustrated with not having 100% original content, that wasn't my intention. I just wanted a great potion brewing system that anyone could pick up and play without being clunky and without breaking a DM's story by giving too many potions to the players. |
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Thoroughly enjoyed this. Lots of depth and definitely hope there is another one coming to add to this!
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Easy to read. Greate combination. My player loves it.
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Very to the point, and easy to read. A good resource for alchemists.
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@symatt
An elegant little tome. Worth every word. If someone has gone to this much effort, the least you can do if download and give it a jolly good read.
Intend on getting it's elements into my games
A liitle plant art would be nice .
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We did a review of this (awesome product) on the Pocket Mimic D&D 5e Podcast, you can check it out here (30 minutes in), https://goo.gl/sknhej
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I love the simplicity of this system! It's a great add-on that will help any DM and player have more flexibility and options in the way they craft helpful items. It's a nice supliment that could change the tide of a battle, or just give players and DMs more options when on the move, or in town. Not too difficult to pick up, but adds plenty of flavor. Highly recommended!
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The party goes for a short rest in a forest area. You got a herbalist kit, and tell your DM '' I look around for herbs for alchemy'' and then the DM kinda blanks.
Fret no more ! Grom's Guide to Potion Brewing lists dozens of different herbs along with their region and properties, and throws in a few new potions and oil in there, such as the the flame arrow oil that can cover up to 20 arrows.
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