Weekly Wonders – Mountain 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’s covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a ten page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $1.49 but was purchased at the reduced price of $1.12 during a sale. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the front matter and one the Open Game License.
This is one in a series of supplements, which started with The Secret of Herbs, that is intended to make alchemy in Pathfinder more interesting. This is done by having herbs – with a non-culinary definition of such – that can be harvested from different plants and then used with Craft (alchemy) to make preparations that can do different things, as well as combinations of such herbs.
The first page is a fairly standard Introduction, similar to the one found in other supplements in the series, that covers harvesting herbs, how the herbs are laid out and what preparations are.
There are four new herbs, which have their name, a description, where it can be found, a Forage DC and a value. The herbs can have an effect, even without use of alchemy, and then each has three preparations; different substances that can be created from the herb. The herbs are Grey Moss, High Spruce, River Shoots and Sky Flowers. The preparations range in value and use, with effects such as water walking, surviving without air and acid missiles.
Finally, there are six compounds, each of which requires multiple doses of two or more herbs for new results.
There are three sidebars, which are standard for the series, on foraging, growing your own herbs and the herbal economy. These take up about two pages.
Weekly Wonders – Mountain Herbs in Review
The PDF is bookmarked but they only cover the major sections, not the sidebars or individual preparations or compounds. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
Alchemy in Pathfinder (in fact, in most D&D derived games) is pretty boring, and has little relationship to the idea of an alchemist finding unique substances and creating new compounds with them. This is where this supplement series helps, as that is exactly what is done here. A player who enjoys their character doing such can go looking for herbs, or grow their own if allowed, and then create interesting substances with a wide variety of uses for them.
This latest entry has only four new herbs (but 18 different substances to create from them), all of which would be found in mountainous regions. There is quite a bit of duplicated content – all the sidebars and the first page – although this means the supplement stands by itself; there is no need to own others in the series in order to use it. Weekly Wonders – Mountain Herbs is another good entry in this series that does make alchemy far more interesting and it can be found by clicking here.
Leave a Reply