A Necromancer’s Grimoire: The Secret of Herbs by Alex Riggs and Joshua Zaback is a role playing game supplement published by Necromancers of the Northwest for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts of it are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a 29 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $4.99 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the colour covers, one page is the front matter, one page is an ad for other supplements and one page is the Open Game License.
Three pages are a short story, which has the protagonist collecting a variety of herbs (which are covered in the supplement) to make a deal with a witch. One he shouldn’t have made; this is a pretty grim story.
The single page Introduction discusses alchemy in the Pathfinder game. Summary: It’s boring and useless. The stated aim of this supplement is to make alchemy more interesting, and actually capable of having useful items after 2nd level (Krazy Kragnar’s Alchemical Surplus Shop also aimed to fix this in a different way, by introducing new alchemical items).
Harvesting Herbs briefly covers how characters can find herbs, and how long it takes, together with a sidebar on how players who are not interested in such could always buy the herbs in. There is also a table of Herbs by Terrain, which lists the various terrains, using the Bestiary environments, and what herbs can be found in these.
Next there are ten new herbs. These have their Forage DC, Environment, Price and Weight per dose, as well as a description of each herb’s appearance, and potential difficulties in harvesting, and what it is like to eat. Each herb then has different uses it can be put to, three or four per herb. There are some new poisons introduced here as well.
Not only can each herb be used by itself, it can also be combined with others to make brand new concoctions, another fifteen in total, all with new effects. This makes over 50 new creations that can come from these herbs.
There are three more sidebars, on characters growing their own herbs, what to do if a GM doesn’t want every character to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of herbs and how these new creations fit into the economy.
A Necromancer’s Grimoire: The Secret of Herbs in Review
The PDF is extremely well bookmarked. Not only is everything linked – sidebars, major sections, herbs, individual concoctions – but there is also a second list of bookmarks that organises all the herbal concoctions in alphabetical order. Even though there is no table of contents, navigation is excellent.
The text maintains a two column format and no errors were noticed. There are some pieces of thematically appropriate stock art, up to just under half a page in size. These are colour but are also computer created, so may not to be to everyone’s taste. Presentation is okay.
Okay, alchemy in Pathfinder – and most D&D-based games – is boring and unimpressive, especially for any player who has a vision of their character creating concoctions from interesting ingredients. This doesn’t happen. the Craft (alchemy) skill has a list of basic and boring items, the Brew Potion feat takes all the interest out of making potions and the Pathfinder Alchemist class is really just another type of spelluser.
This supplement greatly helps with that. Players whose interest lies that way can go on adventures to find specific ingredients, the range of what can be created with just ten herbs is quite impressive (the list of herbs is further expanded in Herbs of the Jungle and Herbs of the Desert; sadly each supplement only appears to use herbs from each individual supplement) and overall this is a vastly more interesting way of handling alchemy – even if it’s technically herbalism – than normal.
A Necromancer’s Grimoire: The Secret of Herbs is a great and interesting supplement for anyone who wants to add some interesting alchemy to their game, and it can be found by clicking here.
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