New Feat: Brew Remedy

[DnDChick]

This is a feat for old "witchy women" and non-magical healers. I designed it for my homebrew setting.

It's an expert feat because my homebrew world is fairly low-magic, and I wanted to include some sort of herbalism and folk cures to balance a lack of common healing magic. In a setting where magic is more common, this could easily be a Supernatural feat instead of an expert feat.

Any constructive feedback is appreciated.

BREW REMEDY (EXPERT)
Prerequisite: Heal 6 ranks.
You can use your knowledge of balms, herbs, and poultices to brew special healing remedies.

Pick one environment type. This feat allows you to brew healing remedies from the plants native to that environment. You can take this feat more than once. Each application of this feat applies to remedies brewed from plants of a different environment type.

With a successful DC 20 Heal check, you brew a remedy that affects one specific ailment: disease, injury, or poison. You choose which ailment a healing remedy affects when you brew it. A remedy that aids in healing injury applies to Heal checks to provide care, revive, or stabilize a patient. The remedy must be administered immediately before any required Recovery check to be effective. Brewing a remedy takes 1 hour.

Using a remedy provides a +3 bonus on Heal checks for someone trained in the Heal skill. An untrained hero can make a single Heal check with no bonus when using a remedy.

Buying Remedies and Ingredients: Pre-prepared remedies have a purchase Difficulty of 10. Let the buyer beware, however, for charlatans abound in the healing remedy trade. There is a flat 25% chance (5 or lower on d20) that any pre-prepared healing remedy was either prepared incorrectly or is otherwise a useless concoction. If the roll is a 1, the remedy is actually poisonous. The effects of the poison are up to the Narrator’s discretion. A successful Difficulty 20 Heal check allows one to identify a bad brew. It is far safer to purchase the raw herbs and make one’s own remedies. Purchasing only the raw materials and herbs has a purchase Difficulty of 5.

In the wild, you can forage for your own raw materials. You must succeed on a Difficulty 20 Survival check to find enough materials to brew a remedy. Foraging for materials takes 4 hours, minus 30 minutes per point by which you rolled over the Difficulty (minimum time 30 minutes).

[Spectral Knight]

I like this idea. It would be one way for a character who otherwise had no magical talent to be able to work up something to take the sting out of those painful wounds, and be on his feet a little quicker than another who'd taken the same punishment.

Worth noting is that Monsieur D'Artagnan would have had this feat in The Three Musketeers, to account for his ability to brew the old gypsy remedy for wounds that he learned from his father (and he'd probably only be entitled to the unskilled Heal roll you've mentioned). Potion brewing isn't just for old "witchy women", but that's where you'll find the skill best represented, along with the occasional fair damsel (Pendragon, anyone?).

And, of course, there might be historical doctors who can't even brew good tea! This might be a good feat for worlds where there is no inherent magic, but where there are old remedies that have not died out.