Midnight Owl Games is a small TTRPG YouTuber who put together an alternative herbalism kit after finding the official one in D&D a little lacklustre.
The presenter, Kamil Smigowski, then had the idea of wrapping up the video as a PDF for DriveThruRPG, and so did just that. It’s entirely free.
The original video is called “My improved herbalism kit for 5e” but 5e doesn’t really get a look in. The whole herbalism kit may have been inspired by the lack of detail in the official 5e suggestion, but the result is completely system-neutral. There are no rules, just practical ideas.
On DriveThruRPG, the download drops any mention of 5e and is known as Improved herbalism kit. The exception is the cover, which mentions 5e.
It comes in two versions; one for on-screen and one for printing. There are also two parts; one is to hand to your players.
I’m not sure players will be impressed. I think they’ll be thankful.
The Improved herbalism kit feels well researched; it feels realistic; it feels like it’s from a DM who’s done their homework and thinking about the needs of the character in question.
However, I don’t think many players will say, “bottles of different sizes! So clever!”
The download, which has only been available for a few days and is therefore in its first iteration, weighs in at 7 pages. That’s a good indicator of attention to detail. Once again, I don’t think players will be impressed; they’ll just accept this as good planning. There’s a symbol for each item in the kit and an accompanying blurb.
Frankly, I think there should be more downloads like the Improved herbalism kit.
I’m reminded of Dscryb.com, a site that might have the description of the thing you want and might give that to you for free. People play, I think, for Dscryb, and that tells me there’s a need to bring D&D’s standard items to life in more detail than the core rules do.
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