Herbalism (Spheres in Review)

[SangoProduction]

Preamble: After being made aware that Navigation had a complimentary effect for a terrain manipulation kobold build, I... was not going to do it that night, but looked through it. And... Alright, I definitely see why people are hating on Guile so much. It was just a truly disappointing sphere. And although the Vocation sphere was fundamental to any Guile character, by requirement, it was basically "class skills with neat fluff bonus." So not really a high priority on my list. But Herbalism was fun. It's one of the things I really wanted in the game, and often gave as rewards to alchemist or naturalist style player characters. So, here we are. I hope it doesn't disappoint.
(Also, thank you Castilonium for giving me the boot in the backside to actually get started on these reviews.)

Post-Review Analysis: I almost feel like I am more impressed by the Heal skill-related talents than the actual mixtures. I mean, sure, some are decent, if for their situations, but they really just don't get the juices flowing, you know?
Overall, despite the decent performance, I feel underwhelmed, and have no real intention of making use of the sphere.

Flex Talents: Jellybone Mixture (about to be imprisoned)
Inkeye Elixir (go to a dark place)
Remedial Curative (have ability drain)

Flex Herbs: Bitter Herb (your ally has taken ability damage)

Oh, and here's my herb generator, in case you want to give names to your insubstantial herbs.
I have unironically been using it in loot.

Spoiler: Ratings

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(1) Superb: You always want this if it's relevant to you. And it probably is.
(1.5) Really Good: Particularly useful bits of kit, but aren't quite must-haves. (Kept it decimal, because spreading out Good so far from Superb felt unrepresentative. But I needed a step between)
(2) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds. Among your first picks.
(3) Usable: Doesn't hurt to have. Wouldn't go out of your way for it.

(4) No: It technically has a use, but the cost to take simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
(5) Never: There’s no non-trivial reason to pick it up, from its mechanics.
(6+) Harmful: Taking/using this is actively detrimental to your character.

<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
[Square brackets] indicate a reliance on the group (players or DM) or campaign you’re playing in, and how well it does in those select groups.

Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(?) Unrated: I choose not to rate it. Often because it is just so far out of my wheelhouse, or it’s far too ambiguous.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
(D) D***bag: Used for when your character wants to be a D***bag.

Spoiler: Base sphere

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Associated skill: Profession (herbalist). Meh.

Herbal Lore: Pick 2 of the 6 herbs (in their own section). And collect a batch in an hour's time. Collect up to [operative ability modifier] batches each day. That second part doesn't seem particularly notable... until you realize that you now have a mechanical benefit for not needing so sleep a full 8 hours while others do. (Outside of standing guard.) So that's neat. It also kinda enforces a -be an elf- requirement to get the most out of the sphere unless you start at a level where you have a Ring of Sustenance, which is admittedly pretty low. It is a strange design decision though.

A batch has ranks+OAM herbs, and you can collect OAM batches. So an elf with +5 OAM at level one an collect 30 herbs. This probably explains the suppressed power level of each individual herb.

Spoiler: Herbs

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Sweet Herb (1): Fast healing 1 for OAM rounds. So, unlike Bland Herb, this is reactive, rather than proactive, and comes in over time. But you also only use it when you know you need the healing, rather than waste the herbs preparing for potential danger. This is an entire life sphere talent here, at a trivial cost. It is still "only" fast healing 1, with no scaling. But that's probably all you really need for its actual purpose.

Dry Herbs (1): A free reroll on their next save, although it eats their swift action. Pretty decent for exploration, especially for a trap finder. An effective +5 to the next [any] save is probably worth the swift actions, if you have a reason to expect to need saves, like some monstrous spider's poison, mummy rot, or dragon's breath. It also helps one to get over an ongoing effect (like poison). Overall very unexpectedly helpful for an herb.
Ironically, it's going to be the mages that get the most use out of this, as SoP has many, many fewer uses for swift actions than the other two spheres.

Bitter Herb <2>: Restore a singular point of ability damage after 10 minutes. It's at least some alleviation. Hardly the most relevant thing, most of the time, but it does basically negate almost all diseases and poisons, even if you're unable to fight it off.

Cool Herb (3): +2 competence to any mental skill/ability check. I mean, yeah. Just have your designated [mental stat archetype] character chew it before making a roll, or going into a scene where they will need the check, and then they just get a bonus. Competence is unfortunately a fairly common bonus type.
Spicy Herb (3): See cool herb, but for physical.

Bland Herb (4): Basically gives temporary HP = OAM. So take that elf from before. If they were just 30 bland herbs, that's 150 (weapon or bleed) damage prevented. Potentially. If you have 30 standard actions to take. Still, that does demonstrate just how little cost there is in having this be prepared by your entire party for just a tiny blip of hp.
(Oh. It actually only lasts a couple rounds. That makes it much less easily usable. Dropped it down to 4 for that.)

So, a lot of herbs that that definitely have role play consequences, without tending to be too helpful mid-combat. Neat. And they are used as a resource for actually useful concoctions.

Naturalist’s Eye: A bit of gardener fluff, and a tiny bonus to knowledge nature and survival. Oh, and identifying plants lets you regain skill leverage.

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Concoctions: Tincture or tonic talents allow you to turn your herbs into concoctions. Usable as a standard action, or applied to adjacent creature as a full round action. Takes 15 minutes to make 1 + 1/4 levels. So this is a pretty time-heavy sphere. But I guess if you give up 1 batch of herbs, you have the time to make 4 concoctions.
They each have their own individual costs to create, either with the preferred herb(s), or a larger number of "any" herbs.

They come as either tinctures, with short term benefits, or tonics, which last for 30 minutes / rank (min 1 hour), and you may only benefit from 1 (+1/4 level) at a time.

Twists: Spend additional herbs to activate a twist. Can have multiple twists, but not a single one multiple times.

Spoiler: General talents

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Planned Concoction (1+): If you're using this sphere, you are wanting to have concoctions. Normally the amount you have at once is very limited. But you can plan for an hour while picking batches (because doing that is explicitly allowed). Reveal the plan to gain [1+plan talents] concoctions, then repeat until you're done with your batches, and still have [1+plan talents] concoctions ready to go, flexible, and available in any allocation.
Would this be necessary or recommended if you could just make a reasonable number of concoctions in a reasonable amount of time? No. In fact, this would be deemed rather cheesy, because it is.
Regardless, even if you choose to go for the excess prep cheese, just having a bunch of options for concoctions ready to go at any time is very useful.

Large Batch (2): 2 more herbs, and an additional OAM herbs per batch. Expands your options, and gets another (OAM) squared herbs per day. Not worth a second time, as you only have the herbs you don't care about left, and you don't get additional herbs per day.

Physician's Efficacy (3): I was thrown off by the first two paragraphs. This actually lets you spend a skill leverage to Treat Deadly Wounds in one full round action, an additional time per day per creature, for as long as you maintain the approach. So, that's a pretty quick pick-me-up of (2xlevel) + (4xOAM) for your entire party for 1 skill leverage, in probably less than a minute. That's not actually bad.
Don't get me wrong, it's not incredible, omegabusted, 0 to 100. And there are plenty of other options in Spheres of Might and Power which do that better, with *much* less limitation on times per day. Even ignoring the Scholar. But it is, strictly speaking, not bad.
(Man. I don't know why I am so sour on healing recent. Might be because I keep doing too well with it in spheres, and getting it nerfed. I really like healing.)

Nebulous Twist (4): I mean, hypothetically getting to add a twist to a concoction as an immediate action use neat and useful, and it does increase your plot "slots". But this seems like such an incredibly minor effect that you'd never actually use it.

Double Dose (4): Doesn't do much, unless you really want to boost that skill check, or are in a rush for your healing.

Battlefield Medic (4): Makes the Heal skill in combat more usable. But not really useful one way or the other (I mean maybe the caltrops thing). I do have to admit that the part about healing a dying creature, and making them conscious does now allow them to eat a sweet herb. But you have smelling salts, right? 25 gold for "dozens of uses" is not a high price to pay compared to a talent.

Physician's Efficacy (4): I was thrown off by the first two paragraphs. This actually lets you spend a skill leverage to Treat Deadly Wounds in one full round action, an additional time per day per creature, for as long as you maintain the approach. So, that's a pretty quick pick-me-up of (2xlevel) + (4xOAM) for your entire party for 1 skill leverage. That's not actually bad. bad.

Ounce Of Prevention (?): Benefit from one (+1/10 lvls) additional tonic at once. Need to see the tonics available first.

These are the less combatively-inclined, aka utility, talents, and should be rated as such.

Spoiler: Utility Talents

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Apothecary's Appraisal [1.5] Identify potions and poisons at a really easy DC, super quickly, and on identifying a poison, create a specialized antitoxin for +5 (+1/5 lvl) bonus to save against the poison. Not super useful for many campaigns. But I do definitely see a lot of reddit stories about DMs who require you to identify potions manually, and sometimes they are misidentified. Also I've had a few DMs who did that sort of thing as well.

Efficient Healer (2): Use sweet herbs as free healer's kits, or a plus 2 bonus to heal checks. Ironically, this is best put to use for a Scholar with the Doctor archetype, as they burn through healer's kits real quick, when they want to. And they get real advantages from doing so. But outside of that, this is just a pretty fun utility talent.


Remedial Curative (4): -1 herb. A cool utility idea, but it competes with Physician's Efficacy, and Healing Poultice. The only thing this does uniquely is a) be a utility talent, and b) restore ability drain. You'd definitely prefer a different way to handle ability drain (as that's only 2 points of healing for a full day's rest), but when you need it, you need it.

Metalmind Solution (4): Some small bonuses. I couldn't care.

Medical Know-How (5): Honestly, who cares.

I'm separating Tonic and Tincture talents, because it's more readable and useful that way.
Remember, if you don't have the specified herbs, you can just spend 1 additional herb, and have them be of any type.

Spoiler: Tonic talents

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Fortifying Mixture (1): -2 dry herbs. +1 (+1/5) resistance to all saves. Each herb type can be used for an additional +1(+1/3 lvl) alchemy bonus to a good number of conditions, each. And "esoteric herb" (from exceptional talent) for spell resistance that scales 1:1 with your level. I like it, because the less useful the herb, the better the conditions it protects from.
Sure, they are common bonus, but this lasts for hours, and comes at a relatively trivial cost, for your entire team. (Especially if you cheese the preparation.)
Although, you have to admit: It's probably going to be kinda annoying to keep track of what conditions you do and do not have the extra bonus for. My mind may be as a steel trap, but some people may have to keep referencing their notes every time they have to make a save.

Vitiating Unguent (1): -2 herbs. Provides 3-4x level effective HP to one or two elements. Does not specify that you must declare the element on preparation, so it's actually rather flexible, and really good if you know what enemy to expect.

Speakeasy Special (3): -3 herbs. Improves face skills, but as a competence bonus. The exact same as the cool herb. But if you use a cool herb twist to have attitude adjustment improved by 1 step. Which is cool, especially if you rollplay more than roleplay.

Crimson Coagulant (4): -1 bland herb. Auto stabilize, and fast healing 1 while under 0 hp. Nothing particularly noteworthy.

Inkeye Elixir (?): -1 herb. The largest cost here is to have the talent at all. But gaining darkvision is useful when it's useful. And bonus to stealth, and advantage to perception in dim light/darkness. Not sure how to rate it.

Spoiler: Tincture Talents

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Energizer (?+): -1 bitter herb. Super Coffee, with explicit allowance for ignoring sleep. Lets everyone stay on watch while you bugger off and look for plants. Spicy herb for +1 (+1/6) initiative.
Might allow you to start as a non-elf if you take it, depending on DM's interpretation of whether picking flowers is as strenuous as fighting or traveling.

Healing Poultice (2): -2 sweet herbs. Fast healing 1 (+1/3 lvls) for 1 (+1/10 lvls) minute(s). Does what it says on the tin. Obviously, it's not useful until at least level 3.

Jellybone Mixture (4): This is very situational to need to quickly escape from bonds.

Soothing Draught (4): Reduces the effect of fear, disorientation, and anger by 1 step. With esoteric herb, they instead become immunities for the duration. All good. The problem(s)? The duration is 1 round per level. Not too bad, once you have some levels. But it also must be applied, both when it is applied, and when it matters. Which means in combat. Which means as a standard action (or full round action on a different person). This makes it feel really bad to use.

Serum Of Ireful Ardor (5): Bonus to strength checks... for a couple rounds. It at least stacks with spicy herbs

Spoiler: Variants

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Herbology Expert: Lose Naturalist's Eye to gain Double Dose. A strict upgrade.

Refined Practices: Lose Herbs (and thus mixtures) to instead gain a heal skill talent.

Unconventional Concoctions. Lets you use a different professions. More explicit chefs in the kitchen is always fun.

[Castilonium]

(Also, thank you Castilonium for giving me the boot in the backside to actually get started on these reviews.)

You're welcome Just to give you a heads up, the SoG authors are currently writing a heavy amount of errata for talents, so you might need to redo this review later. They're greatly aware of how weak Herbalism is.

[SangoProduction]

You're welcome Just to give you a heads up, the SoG authors are currently writing a heavy amount of errata for talents, so you might need to redo this review later. They're greatly aware of how weak Herbalism is.

Oh no. It's going to take me months to do this again. lol.