From skinning a creature recently killed to mining rare gems from deep in the earth harvesting materials is an invaluable skill for any adventuring party. The following rules explain how you should go about harvesting a material, the difficulty in doing so and the amount of material you receive with a successful check.
Harvesting: There are various skills for harvesting, however every material in the world can be attempted to be harvested with the Survival skill. All the DC’s listed in this section are based on using the Survival skill, if you are using a specific harvesting skill the DC of the skill check is 5 lower.
Harvesting Skills: The harvesting skills for all major materials are as follows. Essence, Miner, Mason, Herbalist, Lumberjack, Render.
- Essence: The ability to harvest magical power from locations, objects, and creatures to be stored and used later.
- Herbalist: The ability to harvest Herbs, Plants, and some alchemical items.
- Lumberjack: The ability to harvest various types of Wood and Trees.
- Miner: The ability to harvest Metals, Ores, and Gemstones.
- Render: The ability to harvest parts from animals and monsters (Hide, Claws, Bones, Meat)
- Stone Cutter: The ability to harvest various types of stone.
In special circumstances, some skills may be substituted for harvesting skills, such as the Alchemy skill for alchemy-based monster parts instead of Render or Survival. When attempting to harvest a material or group of materials you must make a successful skill check with a set DC based on the rarity of the material. Succeeding on the skill check counts as one success with each additional increment of the skill check being another success.
- For example, if the base DC is 10+2 for a 12 and you get a 19 on the check that would count as 4 successes. Every success on a harvest check gives you one stock of whatever increment the material is counted in be it 1lb., 1 dose, or 1 bushel.
Depending on the material you may only get one chance to harvest the material, such as herbs or monster parts. Any leftover materials are considered destroyed. While other more durable materials just require another set of skill checks and the time spent to continue harvesting, such as ore.
If you fail a harvesting check, it destroys 1 stock of material +1 for every increment below the DC. If any material is left after a failure, you may try again.
Harvesting DC’s: The DC of harvesting materials is 10 + difficulty modifier per stock, or 5 + difficulty modifier per stock if using a specialty skill.
Difficulty Modifiers
- Common: 1-2 per stock
- Basic: 3-4 per stock
- Moderate: 5-6 per stock
- Hard: 7-8 per stock
- Very Hard: 9-10 per stock
Harvesting Time: The amount of time it takes to harvest a material depends on the difficulty modifier of the material and the amount of material harvested. If you have more successes than material available, you may reduce the time by 1 stock worth per extra success, this cannot lower the time below 1 stock worth of time.
Time Taken
- Common: 1 minute per stock
- Basic: 10 minutes per stock
- Moderate: 30 minutes per stock
- Hard: 45 minutes per stock
- Very Hard: 60 minutes per stock
Assisting and Other Modifiers: When harvesting materials, you may have others assist you in the process, however you may only have 2 assistants for any single check. When someone attempts to assist, your assistant must make their own skill check and must achieve one success to give their Aid Another bonus on the check. If an assistant fails their assist check it removes one success from the number of successes you can achieve, and they provide no bonus to your check.
Temporary Bonuses: If you have any temporary bonuses to a harvesting check such as from a magic buff or other such ability, one instance of the effect must last for the duration of the harvesting for you to gain the benefit.
Complex Harvesting: Some materials may fall under the category of complex harvesting such as harvesting a gargantuan creatures’ bones or carefully removing a brain from a monster intact. When harvesting these types of materials, the harvesting check is broken up over multiple skill checks, usually a limit based on the material or creature, and requires a set number of successes to be achieved by the end to gather the material.