Herbs and Similar

[PencilBoy99]

Other than the Lake Town guide, I'm not aware of anything which details interesting herbs with strange properties to find. Can anyone point me to a resource, fan or otherwise, for more herbs or more herbs for more locations. I found viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4611 (this) discussion link but the drop box link doesn't work.

[Otaku-sempai]

Don't forget to include pipe-weed in your list. This subject has in the past been much discussed in the House Rules forum. A search there might be helpful.

The Adventures in Middle-earth Player's Guide includes the following (with costs):
- Athelas: 30 silver
- Hagweed: 40 silver
- Kingscup: 30 silver
- Reedmace: 20 silver
- Shadow-thorn*: 25 silver
- Water lily (red): 3 gold
- Water lily (white): 20 silver

* "Shadow-thorn is a dark black lichen that grows in small clumps on trees within the depths of Mirkwood and Fangorn Forest. Despite its somewhat sinister appearance, shadow-thorn is a beneficial plant that helps draw off toxins. Once ground into a fine powder, shadow-thorn can be used to make a potion capable of neutralizing many poisons." Shadow-thorn is listed in AiMe's Player's Guide but I'm not sure it has appeared (as yet) in any TOR resource.

Iron Crown's old Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP) game offered many different plants and herbs: medicinal, poisonous, recreational, etc. that could be adapted to TOR.

[SirGalrim]

Check out viewtopic.php?f=56&t=4659 and viewtopic.php?f=56&t=5010. I'll PM you the newest version of my document. It' still work in progress though.

[Rich H]

Check out my resources thread. There's a herbs and healing document in it that provides more info, including expanded herbs lists.

[Kurt]

Hi All,

My Herbs and Healing document needs the dropbox link updated. I can't do it at the moment as I am in China teaching a subject for students at Nankai University and my Dropbox isn't working. I'll update the link when I get back to Australia in the middle of June.

Although it doesn't contain a list of herbs (I am yet to do this), it still contains some useful roleplaying information and is an interesting read

Cheers,
Kurt

[Hannibal_pjv]

Those supplements mentioned above are nice!
They are somewhat powerful compared to official material but nice in anyway. IMHO
I still hope that one day Cubicle7 will publish a guide book of healing in the Middle earth.
"Hands of healer" or something similar that would handle herbs and healing, damage and illness in big way.
There could even be healing based adventures in that supplement!

[Glorelendil]

The special undertaking in Laketown aside, my strong inclination when dealing with herbs (and similar) in TOR is to avoid detailing any mechanical benefits. And by "mechanical" I mean converting properties into rules. E.g. "Athelas helps healing" is a property. "Athelas restores 1 Success die of Endurance" is a mechanic.

There are two reasons for this:
1) First, if you give Herb-lore a mechanical benefit, suddenly it becomes a more desirable speciality than any other Speciality. So what then? Start giving every Specialty a mechanical benefit, and hope they're equally appealing?
2) Second, I believe the "proper" way to implement herbs in TOR is to give information players can use to aid in their narration, rather than more rules to optimize. Players shouldn't be making a Search roll to find Athelas so that they can get 1d6 Endurance; they should making a Healing roll and if it's successful invoking their Herb-lore trait to describe how they did it. Or even, without Herb-lore, just using knowledge of M-e herbs to tell a better story.

To support #2 above, a guide to herbs in Middle-earth (by region and season) could help players with richer, more detailed narration. "I use my Herb-lore" becomes "I search beneath the rowan trees for Athelas, but because it's fall all I find are some withered leaves. I grind those up, however, and it makes a fragrant broth..." etc.

(Dear O-S and Tolwen: Regarding the above, I have no idea where Athelas is found or in what season or whether it's a tree or a bush or a vine or decorative ground-cover.)

[Rich H]

The special undertaking in Laketown aside, my strong inclination when dealing with herbs (and similar) in TOR is to avoid detailing any mechanical benefits. And by "mechanical" I mean converting properties into rules. E.g. "Athelas helps healing" is a property. "Athelas restores 1 Success die of Endurance" is a mechanic.

Like you say there is precedent within the RAW for herbs providing mechanical benefits. I think it's okay to continue this as long as LMs set the same requirements as in the Laketown supplement for gathering such herbs - ie, requiring an Undertaking etc. Rivendell does the same for Athelas as well so there's opportunity to use Undertakings to target the foraging of a specific herb *or* from a list of herbs.

The latter is what I've done where I've expanded the lists in Laketown in the following: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oky0ym02jsxyf ... g.pdf?dl=0 (page 10 onwards). If an LM wanted to, they could take those and produce 'region specific' lists for more realism; I didn't want to go that far, though.

Like you, I wouldn't allow herbs to provide mechanical benefit if gathered during an Adventuring Phase; properties make great fodder for adventure goals and the like, though, so that's how I'd use them too.

[Glorelendil]

I don't have Laketown handy...does it allow anybody to gather herbs, or just those with Herb-lore?

I remember when we had this discussion after Kurt posted his document; my suggestion was that Herb-lore allow for an advantage when rolling on the table (such as roll twice, pick favorite) rather than making it exclusive.

[Rich H]

I don't have Laketown handy...does it allow anybody to gather herbs, or just those with Herb-lore?

Anybody can but someone with Herb-lore it lets them pick any herb except Red Water-lily. I've used the same rule in my tables. Kurt didn't create these tables though, so I'm not sure what discussion you're referring to.