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View Full Version : Farming and Gardening, what do you think?



qazzquimby
2014-04-28, 10:20 PM
This stemmed from an initiative to make base resources attainable without buying them from a store, or the DM just saying "you find some," but the farming aspect especially may hold some potential.

Basic crops merely act as food, and can be grown easily in any fair climate, but far more interesting plants exist.
Most, if not all potions come from some prepared vegetation, so inherently magical plants can be found or grown, and consumed unprepared for reduced effects, or crafted into potions without the gp cost. Same goes for most poisons.
Plant creatures could be bred and farmed, for anyone who might benefit from it.
New plants made be the rest of the playground to fill any effect that isn't covered by potions, or that seems especially flavourful.

Plants grow over the course of weeks, by default at least, so farming will not fit all campaigns.

One obvious hurdle is characters farming there way to riches by growing expensive potion plants to sell, for which the hazards of growing the plant must be high enough to justify the plant's cost.
Making the plant only grow in extreme conditions, on another plane, in a wandering-monsterful area, with a chance of spoilage, or other hazards should do this, but is not going to be fool proof against a party of intelligent PCs.

Sailbulbs emulate fly after 6 weeks of growth. They grow best at extremely high altitudes, or in the elemental plane of air, and require a temperate climate to grow. After two weeks of growth, the sailbulbs extend into the air, as bulb inflates with lighter than air gas, and hangs from it's stem. From this point on the bulbs are extremely fragile, and we burst if they take any damage. After approximiately six weeks, bulbs with spontaneously mature, and detach from their stems, rising suddenly. Only bulbs harvested after detaching produce the effects of fly.

That's probably much too difficult for a third level spell. Is there a higher level spell that would be appropriate?

A greatly accelerated PC class rapidly growing plant monsters and ensnaring vines during combat would be interesting.

Does anyone have advice or input?

Milo v3
2014-04-29, 01:47 AM
Would the cost of the plant be equal to that of a potion for the spell?

Hanuman
2014-04-29, 03:52 AM
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Masters_of_the_Wild


A new type of magic item -- the infusion.

You could make a plant naturally grow as an infusion.

erikun
2014-04-29, 10:42 AM
So are you thinking of creating some kind of farming mechanic, or creating a bunch of magical plants that can be turned into potions?

Because if the former, then you'll probably want the plants to be rather mundane, although maybe with lengthy or rare harvest times. If the latter, then you don't really need specific rules for farming or harvesting - and characters won't really be doing "farming" as much as doing the specific tasks for making a specific plant grow.

JeminiZero
2014-04-29, 07:52 PM
Because if the former, then you'll probably want the plants to be rather mundane, although maybe with lengthy or rare harvest times.
To elaborate, let us take the current rules for profession (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/profession.htm) and crafting (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm) (which are by no means perfect, but are widely used nonetheless).

Lets say a PC has 4 ranks in Profession farmer, and +2 Wis bonus for a total modifier of +6. On an average week, he has a check of 16, and he earns half of that in gp, so 8 gp a week. Or in essence, he produces 8 gp worth of plant products per week (assuming he has suitable land, and barring things like bad weather). So if say a Sailbulb cost 80 gp, it means he produces 1/10 a sailbulb per week, or it takes 10 weeks to produce 1 Sailbulb.

Similiarly for Crafting, lets say a PC has 4 ranks in Craft-Alchemy, and +2 Int bonus for a total modifier of +6. He decides to use that to craft a 50 gp / DC 15 Alchemical item. He must first buy the raw materials with 1/3 the cost (16.66 gp) and then process them into the final product.

Assuming he takes 10 for total check of 16, that meets the DC 15. For a total check of 16 x 15 = 240 sp. And it takes him slightly over 2 weeks (~15 days) to produce the item.

Assuming he does this every week, that means each week, he basically produces ~24 gp of goods from 1/3 cost or ~8 gp of raw material. For a net profit of 16 gp per week.

Now we can reasonably decide that the 8 gp of plant material produced by profession is usable as raw material for crafting. So to produce a 50 gp item, a PC must first farm for 15 days to produce the 16.66 gp worth of raw material (remember this requires dedicated work, so he cannot be crafting while this is going on). He then brews this into an alchemical item, requiring another 15 days. In total, it takes about a month of dedicated work to produce a 50 gp item.

(Note that 2 PCs can work in parallel, one producing 8 gp of raw material a week, and the other using it to craft, so that this could be shortened to ~15 days).

qazzquimby
2014-04-29, 10:29 PM
Would the cost of the plant be equal to that of a potion for the spell?
Yes, as they're either mechanically identical or too similar for it to be worth adjusting.


You could make a plant naturally grow as an infusion.
Reading up on it, I think that's essentially what I'm describing.


So are you thinking of creating some kind of farming mechanic, or creating a bunch of magical plants that can be turned into potions?
The idea is to do both. A farming mechanic isn't very exciting unless there are interesting things to farm.

General response to everything after

In brainstorming, I was attempting to avoid putting too much emphasis on skills, since I usually find the system to be unthematic and easily exploited, and was instead trying to give the crops a CR. Adding a DC to meet would probably be a good idea, but it's not one I'm excited about if we can avoid it.

For money per week calculations, note that it's very easy to plant many of a crop, as opposed to crafting and ect. This is probably a problem. If a seed is 1/10th the price of a finished crop, and you can gain 5 seeds from a used crop, people will get very rich, very fast, if they can find a valuable plant they can grow reliably.
If valuable plants are difficult, and easy plants are cheap, the system should only be a small monthly diversion for PCs.

Using dreaded skill checks again, a profession farmer check, with negative modifiers based on bad weather, climate, or little care going towards tending to the plants, could indicate the percentage of spoilage.

Any ideas on what plants can be used for between food and potions? I can imagine exploding poisonous mushrooms, difficult terrain plants, and maybe something that could be used for building, but my ideas are pretty thin.

Milo v3
2014-04-29, 10:54 PM
Reading up on it, I think that's essentially what I'm describing.


Really? Infusions are putting magic into an existing plant isn't it. Like you enchant some cherries to increase peoples strength. How does that work with farming when it's after the thing's already grown?

qazzquimby
2014-04-30, 01:08 AM
He was suggesting have them grow already infused, which is pretty much what we're doing.

Hanuman
2014-04-30, 06:38 PM
Infusions generally imply the magic goes into a plant somehow, but it's better if you grow it yourself.

Large-scale magical infusion agriculture is the topic.