5e House Rules
Home brew or house rules for my 5e games
Harvesting
You can attempt to harvest parts of a non-humanoid non-beast creature that is living or has been dead up to an hour.
To Harvest perform a Wisdom(Medicine) or Intelligence(Medicine) check with a DC of 20+Creature DC.
The part harvested will be determined by your DM giving better rewards for a better roll.
On a failure you ruin the creature for additional harvest attempts and you take damage.
Roll all the Hit Dice for the creature to determine the amount of damage taken.
The part harvested will use a variant of the Recharge mechanic to determine how long it can be of use to you.
Whenever you go to use the part, first roll a single Hit Die from the source creature. On a 1, the part is destroyed and you take 1dHitDie damage.
Otherwise you are able to successfully use the part this time.
discuss more about the different parts. what part of the stat blocks are useful and how to tone them down a bit
Optionally
You may opt to spend 1 hour with the creatures body prior to your check to help improve the odds of success.
Perform a SkillChallenge to determine an additional Harvesting bonus.
The DC for each check in the skill challenge is 10+Creature CR. Skills may not be repeated.
You may make as many skill checks during the Challenge as the Creatures CR and may stop at any time.
When a skill check in the challenge is failed you roll 1dHitDie for damage taken.
The total number of success in the skill challenge may be added as a bonus to your Harvesting roll.
You can choose whichever Ability(Skill) check you and your DM feels is appropriate for the scenario. Some specific skill successes offer additional boons.
| Ability(Skill) | Boon |
|---|---|
| WIS(Medicine) | Able to target specific creature ability |
| INT(Investigation) | Able to get advantage on next skill check in challenge |
| CONSTITUTION | Resistance to further damage in the skill challenge and Harvest check |
Consider Strength(Athletics) for removing a tooth, Dexterity(Sleight of Hand) for a careful removal of an eye, Constitution for removing a venom sack. A DM could allow any check like Charisma(Persuasion) vs a living Dragon for a scale.
This is a great opportunity for the players to help direct and narrate the story.