Looking for Stuff Outdoors

You make a forage check vs the location-specific DC.
(For those who are using the optional skill rules that some editions have, use survival. In our group we just use a plain wisdom check.)
Anyone who isn’t doing anything else that day can try.
One roll for both food and water.
If you succeed, you make two separate 1d6+wis rolls to see how much you find. Pounds of food & gallons of water, respectively.

Those 1d6+wis you used to find pounds of food? Let’s for the sake of explaining this call those “forage points”. One “forage point” equals one pound of food.

You can search for other things as well:

Name	Use	Finding	Environment	Storing
Blood viola (tiny red flower)	Part of a potion of healing	3 forage points	Forests, meadows and swamps	Tiny item, but soft so 50 of them can fit into empty bottles
Moss or fireflies	One use of Light spell	3 forage points	Forests, meadows and swamps	Up to six uses fit into a small item
Phosphorus, wychwood or glowworm	Six uses of Dancing Lights	1 forage point	Deep forests	Small item
Dry balsa wood	One use of Produce Flame	1 forage point	Forests on dry days	Small item
Mistletoe Sprig	One use of Goodberry	10 forage points	Temperate leafy forests	Small item
Sammarcass root + Bee’s wax + Bepuga seeds	One 20-application batch of bug salve	All forage points for a day	Chultan Jungle	Small item
Deathtoads	10 doses of Deathtoad Toxin	5 forage points	Tree tops	The toad is a small item, the vial of toxin will be a tiny item
Ichor	10 doses of Chuul Ichor poison	All forage point for a day	Harvest from vampires, ghûls, zombies, similar	Tiny item
Murk leaves	10 doses of Wooziness Tonic	4 forage points	Leafy trees any climate	Tiny item
Precious Tear (little white flower)	Part of basic poison	3 forage points	Rainy days far from the madding crowd	Tiny item
Sticks, fibers and fat	Torches	3 forage points	A place with trees	Each is a small item
Wisteria petals, clover leaves, bark	⅓ Find Familiar Components	5 forage points	Tight groves, dense vegetation	3×⅓ of components together fit as one small item
Mud and straw	Making houses	3 forage points	Warm, bright and muddy	1 medium bag of bricks

But there is a ginormous brutal catch.
That’s right.
You have to announce before you make the initial forage check what you are looking for and how many you want to find. Any leftover forage points you find as food. (Water is and remains its own untouchable 1d6+wis roll.)

For example, you are looking for two blood violas and you make the forage check and then you roll 8 forage points. You find the two blood violas for three points each and then you find two pounds of food for the two leftover points.

Another example: you are looking for one mistletoe sprig and you make the forage check and then you roll 8 forage points. You don’t get enough to find the mistletoe sprig. And you don’t get any food either. It’s only the excess points after you found everything you asked for that become food.

For “all forage points for a day” items like bug salve ingredients or ichor, you don’t even need to roll the 1d6+wis for food, just for water.

Tool&Proficiency Needed	Ingredients	Time	Result
Herbalism kit	(Up to) 25 batches bug salve ingredients	One full day	(Up to) 25 batches of 20-application salves
Herbalism kit	25 blood violas + 1 flask	One full day	One potion (one drink) of healing
Herbalism kit	100 blood violas + 1 flask	1 workweek	One potion (one drink) of greater healing
Herbalism kit	1000 blood violas + 1 flask	3 workweeks	One potion (one drink) of superior healing
Herbalism kit	10000 blood violas + 1 flask	4 workweeks	One potion (one drink) of supreme healing
Herbalism kit	3×⅓ Find Familiar components	One full day	One use of Find familiar components
Poisoner’s kit	Deathtoads + vial	Short rest	10 doses of Deathtoad Toxin
Poisoner’s kit	Ichor + vial	Short rest	10 doses of Chuul Ichor poison
Poisoner’s kit	Murk leaves + vial	Short rest	10 doses of Wooziness Tonic
Poisoner’s kit	50 Precious Tears + vial	Two full days	1 application of basic poison
Cook’s Utensils	4 (or 2d4) pounds of fresh food + lucky die roll	Short rest	2 (or 1d4) rations
Spellbook class feature	Gems	1 day/25gp	Magic ink for twice the gems' value
Mason's Tools	150 bags of bricks	One workweek	A small house with earthen floor

For the bugsalve, you are using the wax as emulsifier for the fat in the seeds and you store it in the root. It takes a full day for it all to dry out properly but you can make 25 batches in that day.

For creating rations, you need to make a DC 20 check with your cook’s tool proficiency. If you succeed you also get the benefits 1 hour of rest. If you get 11 or lower, the ingredients are destroyed and you don’t get the rest either. But on a 12-19, you can choose between

getting the rest but losing the food
losing the rest but keeping the food fresh for one more day

It’s your choice to go for 4 to 2, or roll both sides (2d4 to 1d4). You could end up paying 2 for 4, but you could also end up paying 8 for 1.

For magic ink out of gems, if you put in less than 25 dinars worth of gems, they are lost and the ink doesn't work. But, as long as you put in at least 25, you don't have to make perfect divisions of 25, for example if you put in 35 dinars worth of gems, that's gonna take two full days of work and you get 70 gp worth of magic ink. You have to work consecutive days or the gems are lost.

This means that if you don't know the gems' value, it's a push-your-luck game. Put in too few gems, and you risk getting under 25 and losing them. Put in too many, and you risk not having enough downtime days available to finish the batch before it crustifies and is destroyed.

It goes day by day: you say what gems you put in, DM maths out (by dividing by 25 and rounding up) how many days it takes, notes that (along with the value of the ink, by doubling the value of the gems) secretly, and then you go day by day "is it finished yet?" until it is, and the DM tells you how much the value is.

Table of Contents

Food & Water

Other Stuff

Making the Stuff with the Stuff