Harvesting is a holistic art. It is not simply the physical act of cutting and slicing through a carcass, it is the tools you use, the rules you live by and the skills you have; in short it is an entire lifestyle! Once you have assumed the life of a harvester, you will see the world in a different way, and find the new possibilities and options open to you. However, in the case that you haven’t, I’ve listed them down here for you anyway.” - Hamund
This guide introduces a few new concepts into the base game of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, and as part of that, a few slight alterations and/or additions need to be made to existing concepts and features in the game to accommodate them. While some of these changes are not strictly necessary for this guide to be used, they are advised in order to get the maximum value out of this book.
A few new pieces of adventuring gear have been added in this book to accommodate the act of harvesting. Their functions are described below:
The following are a few balance changes to accommodate the harvesting and crafting rules in this guide, as well as a background and feat to incorporate harvesting into your game.
This guide adds in the new tool: the harvesting kit. Players may have proficiency in this like any other tool, and it is highly advised for them to have it as it provides a valuable bonus when making the checks outlined in this book. In order to accommodate this additional tool, the following classes and backgrounds have been slightly altered to give them the option to gain proficiency in the Harvesting Kit.
Like a miner in their cave or a farmer in their field, you too make your living through reaping the riches of the natural world. Your resources, however, are the monsters and creatures that populate the multiverse. Although there are some who would scoff and call you a mere butcher, you understand the subtle complexities in the fantastical anatomies you find in your adventures, and only you are qualified enough to harvest them
Skill Proficiencies: Nature, Survival
Tool Proficiencies: Harvesting Kit
Languages: One of your choice
Equipment: A set of traveler’s clothes, a hunting trap, harvesting kit, a cloak made from a creature you harvested, and a belt pouch containing 5 gp
You have been harvesting creatures for a long time and as part of that, you have become deeply acquainted with the large industry of crafters and merchants that rely on the wares you bring. Whenever you enter a place of civilization, you have no trouble finding merchants willing to buy your materials or crafters that can work with your wares. You are also savvy in the bargaining techniques used when haggling over prices and are not easily tricked during negotiations. You often find yourself able to secure a good price, or even a discount on services relating to harvested materials.
Harvesters are an odd bunch; half outdoorsman, half entrepreneur. As someone who spends most of their time in the hunting and being elbow deep in dead bodies, you probably have a different worldview compared to most.
| d8 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I am often covered in blood and viscera, which other people find off-putting. |
| 2 | I see no moral issue about harvesting any once-living creature, even if they were clearly sentient. "Waste not, want not", after all. |
| 3 | I often unnerve people with my discussions of the more disgusting aspects of creature anatomy |
| 4 | I am obsessed with self-sufficiency; anything I wear must have come from something I harvested. |
| 5 | I say a small prayer before harvesting a fresh kill, thanking it for its sacrifice. |
| 6 | The hunt is what excites me more than anything. Harvesting is just how I keep mementos of my prey |
| 7 | I insist on using every little bit of what I kill, it would be an insult to that creature's life otherwise. |
| 8 | I have a myriad of harvested trophies from rare game which I show off whenever possible. |
| d6 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | Life. Harvested meat will feed the hungry, harvested furs will warm the cold. Through death, comes life. (Good) |
| 2 | Honor. I refuse to use something harvested from a creature that I did not kill with my own hands. (Lawful) |
| 3 | Necessity. Creatures kill and harvest other creatures to survive. You may not like it, but it's just the way things are. (Neutral) |
| 4 | Opportunity. If something is already dead, what's the point of letting its corpse go to waste? (Chaotic) |
| 5 | Dominance. Nothing shows off your strength like having your own Owlbear-head trophy. (Evil) |
| 6 | Money. People always want hides, pelts, and skins; I may as well be the one to profit off it. (Any) |
| d6 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | My clan won't respect me unless I bring back the head of a rare and dangerous creature |
| 2 | Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of wearing a unicorn fur cloak. If you have a better way of getting one, I'd like to hear it. |
| 3 | Hunting and harvesting creatures is the only way I know how to make money and feed my family. |
| 4 | Visions of a monstrously large creature haunt my dreams. They won’t stop until I find it and claim its pelt for my cloak. |
| 5 | I am interested in studying the anatomy of rare and magical creatures and I need samples to continue my research. |
| 6 | Harvesting creatures has been my family's profession for generations; I'm just continuing this long line of tradition. |
| d6 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | Once I decide that a creature will become my next trophy, nothing will stop me from getting it. |
| 2 | Some would say I get a little too much pleasure in slicing corpses open and tearing out their fresh organs. |
| 3 | I'm always looking for the next big hunt, something that will probably get me killed. |
| 4 | I tend to exaggerate the quality of my harvested wares to inflate their price. |
| 5 | Once I kill something, I will drop everything to take a trophy from it before moving on. |
| 6 | I see other living creatures as just organs in a skin bag, waiting to be sold. |
You’ve always hated leaving anything to waste and have always made sure you get the most out of any situation.
“Throughout my travels I have met many spectacular individuals. Among them are master crafters, each peculiar in their own ways, but all of them capable of weaving miracles from materials. I know not where these remarkable people are today, perhaps they have finally settled down somewhere and opened a steady shop. Or they are like me and continue to indulge their wanderlust; roaming freely in this great world of ours while offering their skills to anyone who has the coin and materials. I list their names here in my book, to recommend their services to any of my dear readers. And if you are lucky enough to meet them, simply mention my name and I am sure you will receive first-rate service.” -Hamund
The following are a list of NPC crafters that a DM can easily slot into any campaign or setting. Feel free to use these NPC’s as convenient ways for the party to craft their harvested materials into useful items, vendors to buy spare materials, or even quest givers for certain monster parts.
Name: Lidda Littlelid
Race: Halfling
Hamund’s Notes: I’ve known Lidda since she was born, in fact I was even the one who named her (a fact for which she has never forgiven me). Rambunctious as a youth, Lidda regularly came home with frogspawn, gristleweed, milkgrass, and all matters of ingredients to perform her little experiments. Since then, Lidda has grown into a prestigious alchemist, able to mix even the most esoteric ingredients into some sort of useful brew. Despite being incredibly intelligent, Lidda does have a tendency towards air-headedness. Thus, although she tends to stay in her family home (as most halflings are content to do), Lidda has a tendency to go on walks, become incredibly enthralled by her thoughts and musings, and then find herself hopelessly lost. On these occasions, she can sometimes take upwards of several years before she manages to stumble upon her home again, laden down with new materials to experiment with from her travels.
Name: Shareefah Khalid
Race: Human
Hamund’s Notes: If you look up the word “prodigy,” you will find a picture of Shareefah (either that or a young picture of me). Born to a wealthy family of artificers, the young Shareefah received an education from the finest tutors in the land, and routinely dismissed each one when she promptly accelerated beyond what they could teach. Discontent with simply learning the same tired old lessons, Shareefah left her family and her inheritance behind in order to learn everything that the wide multiverse could offer her. She makes her living offering her services to anyone who has an interesting material for her to work with. Those that have met her can attest to her immense prowess in the artificing craft, exemplified perfectly in the portable workshop she designed: an entire hut she can store inside a large ring on her finger.
Name: Orsik Holderhek
Race: Dwarf
Hamund’s Notes: I will admit that the inclusion of Orsik in this book is the result of biases on my part; he is my cousin after all. Despite that however, Orsik has proven himself to be one of our clan’s foremost blacksmiths (partly due to the steady stream of exotic materials I provide him to experiment with). He is equally as comfortable reforging a broken farm scythe as he is at shaping demon scales into an invincible suit of armour.
Holderheks are restless by nature, so it is common for Orsik to leave his forge in search of interesting new locales, stories, and materials. However, wherever he goes, he always brings with him his favourite smithing hammer, a good supply of high-intensity dragon coal, and his prized shrinking anvil (something of his own creation). With these, he is always ready to smith even the rarest of new materials.
Name: Malakar Uuthrakt
Race: Half-Elf
Hamund’s Notes: Malakar’s story is a familiar one to many half-elves. The stigma of his mixed heritage caught him between two worlds, unable to find a place in neither elvish nor human societies. Crushed between two poor options, Malakar picked a third: the wild.
Living as an outdoorsman, Malakar has proven himself to be a hunter and harvester almost on par with myself. One particular field in which he excels however is tanning and leatherworking. Having killed and skinned almost every creature imaginable, Malakar has taught himself how to take the hides of fantastical beasts and mould them into powerful pieces of armour and equipment.
His vagrant lifestyle naturally causes him to be found just about anywhere, and it is not uncommon to find him having set up a temporary storefront in a town while he considers his next adventure
Name: “Blind” Mardred
Race: Human (?)
Hamund’s Notes: I have known Mardred for a long time, which is saying something considering the longevity of my race, and the relative brevity of hers. Sometimes I do question if she is actually human as she claims, or whether I am simply the mark of a long-running private joke of hers. Even more mysterious than her true age is which divine patron she actually serves. Whenever I have asked her for the identity of her god, she would simply smirk and say, “the only one that matters.”
Despite everything, I still have found her to be a valuable source of advice, leads, and information. This goes doubly so for her skills as a thaumaturge, able to easily summon forth divine blessings from reams of spirit paper, or able to demand servitude from the harvested remains of demons. Mardred tends to wander from town to town, offering her services to any with the coin to pay, her arrival always heralded by the rhythmic tapping of her walking stick.
Name: Jarrod Gerkirk
Race: Gnome
Hamund’s Notes: If you are going to Jarrod for a spot of conversation, you have gone to the wrong place. On the other hand, if you are going to him for tinkering work, then you could not be in better hands. A smarter gnome I have never met, and his inventions are so fantastical that he blurs the line between mechanical and magical.
Although Jarrod tends to keep to himself and wiles away the years performing experiments in his laboratory, there are times when he becomes overwhelmed by unexplainable feelings of wanderlust. When these episodes arise, Jarrod inevitably hits the open road on his customised wagon/workshop, ready to make new inventions with whatever fresh materials he finds