In which we harvest

 

A few months ago I stumbled across this website and began incorporating it in my sessions. Was kinda neat but needed soe work to be fully actualized and then I found out the guy had a book. Actually THREE books.

So I read the books and I did some tinkering and here's how I'm going to complete the integration …. and how you can too!

Step 1. Appraising. What can the party do with that carcass before it? Somebody makes a a check against 8 + the critters CR. The skill used is determined by the type of creature. Success means the character has knowledge of what they can get and how hard it will be, along with risks and how long it will maintain efficacy.

Step 2. Harvest. Make a DEX check with the same skill used above. The higher the roll the more items may be harvested. It will take the DC/5 minutes to harvest.

Step 3: Buying and selling. And out comes the spreadsheet. Long version. Using my economics spreadsheet I give every city, based on its infrastructure, its appropriate terrain. This provides supply/demand prices for critters. Spreadsheet has a drop down for terrains and pulls cities valuation based on that. Also a field for DC of production. Dropdown based on occurrence, based on this site. Then a bunch of math based on that and I get how much an apothecary would would charge for the item and how much the party can get for selling it.

If an item isn't listed and the party wants to harvest it anyway, use the following table:

Material	DC
Blood and fluids	5
Soft Tissue (tongues, ears, genitals, etc.)	5
Hard Tissue (claws, teeth, spikes, horns)	5
Bones	10
Eyes	10
Internal Organs (heart, stomach)	10
Limb (leg, arm, tail)	15
Hide (fur, plating, scales)	15
Complicated lim (wing, tentacle)	20
Brain	20

In which we try to figure out what a hit point is

 Had a situation last session.  Character fell 60' and took enough damage for death.  Prior to "expiration" cleric wanted to know why he couldn't just "Cure Light Wounds" until he was back above 0 HP.  I had no answer, but it didn't FEEL right.  Didn't even feel right to the party.  But in the intervening time I've done some thinking.

The DM’s Guide defines hit points as “The number of points of damage a creature can sustain before death (or optionally, coma), reflecting the character’s physical endurance, fighting experience, skill or luck.”  But that causes all KINDS of problems. My conclusion? Hit points are an indication of how near a being is to death. Magical/spiritual …. even sexual …. healing only increases the distance between life and death. Once a character has gone below 0 HP only  application of medical skill or a successful Spare the Dying can help. Revivify can return a “dead” character to 1 HP whereupon healing can then be used to “increase the distance between the character and death.” Damage, injury, effects resulting from the damage taking the character below 0 still exists, but life has been restored.