Monster Harvesting

Monster Harvesting

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Interpretation

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Monster Harvesting

A slain monster is a mobile treasury of crafting materials. A steady hand and the right tools can turn scale, gland, fang, ichor, and bone into arms, armor, alchemy, and arcana.

This system was unveiled in full at the table in Session 51, and reworked to the carcass-first manifest rules below in September 2026.

The carcass comes first

Every creature's components exist on the body before anyone rolls. When a new kind of creature is slain, its manifest is generated first — the full list of what the carcass holds — and only then are harvest checks matched against it.

A manifest is built like this:

• The creature's CR sets the rarity ceiling (table below). The manifest holds components at the ceiling rarity and every rarity below it, so there is always a spread — the low-end materials the party will keep needing are always present.
• The number of components at each rarity is fixed by the slot table below. The counts are cumulative: a Very Rare-ceiling carcass holds 3 Very Rare, 4 Rare, 5 Uncommon, and 6 Common components (18 in all).
• One component at the ceiling rarity is the signature — the creature's most evocative part, the single greatest prize on the body.
• The same material can appear at several grades as separate entries (loose Scale Shards at Common, a full Scale Coat at the top — see the Dragon Turtle's shell).

Rarity	Components at this rarity
Artifact	1
Legendary	2
Very Rare	3
Rare	4
Uncommon	5
Common	6

Example: a Rare-ceiling creature (CR 5–9) holds 4 Rare + 5 Uncommon + 6 Common = 15 components. A Legendary-ceiling creature (CR 15–19) holds 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 20. An Artifact-ceiling creature (CR 20+) holds all 21.

Rarity ceiling by CR

CR sets only what the body can hold, never the DC.

CR	Rarity ceiling	Total components
0–½	Common	6
1–4	Uncommon	11
5–9	Rare	15
10–14	Very Rare	18
15–19	Legendary	20
20+	Artifact	21

Harvesting a carcass

After a fight, each character may make one harvest check: pick a single tool you are proficient with, roll d20 + that tool's bonus, and find the highest rarity on the ladder your total meets. You claim everything in that tool's column at that rarity and every rarity below it. Proficiency in a fitting knowledge or handling skill (Nature or Arcana to know the beast, Medicine or Survival to work the body — the DM's call) grants Advantage.

A tool only produces if the carcass's manifest actually holds materials in that column — Calligrapher's Supplies pull nothing from a dumb beast. Choose the tool that fits the body in front of you, not just your highest bonus.

Where two harvesters share a column, the higher roll takes the signature or the best single piece; plentiful parts (blood, bile, meat, scale salvage) duplicate freely, signatures do not.

Scraps are automatic. Even a failed or low roll yields the base salvage — meat, fat, blood, hide-scrap — at no DC. Nobody walks away empty-handed.

Beyond the ceiling. Two ways to pull a component one rarity level above the creature's ceiling — something in the body that, by rights, should not be there:

• Natural 20 (rule added in Session 53; first invoked on Karma's nat 20 over a CR 3 wyrmling, pulling a Rare from an Uncommon-capped carcass).
• Beating the ceiling DC by 10 or more (rule added September 2026) — a total of ceiling DC + 10 finds the same kind of impossible prize.

Either way it is one above-ceiling component per qualifying check, flavored to the harvester's tool column. Above-ceiling components are not part of the manifest's slot counts.

Boosting the check. (Rulings from Session 54.) Guidance may be cast once per group harvest — including by the caster on their own check. Tempered Soul may be spent on a harvest check like any other d20 test; in S54, with a long rest imminent, the whole party was allowed to spend on the same carcass.

The harvest ladder

Rarity sets the difficulty; the monster's CR sets only what is available to find.

Rarity	Harvest DC	Craft Value (CV)
Scraps	0	1
Common	5	2
Uncommon	10	4
Rare	15	8
Very Rare	20	16
Legendary	25	32
Artifact	30	64

Tools and what they collect

The tool decides the category you can extract and what it feeds into. This is why a lower bonus in the right tool beats a higher bonus in the wrong one — the wrong column simply has nothing to give.

Tool	Collects	Feeds into
Alchemist's Supplies	Glands, blood, bile, ichor, organs, essences	Potions, oils, acids, bombs
Herbalism Kit	Spores, saps, antitoxin glands, medicinal organs	Healing draughts, antitoxins, salves
Poisoner's Kit	Venom sacs, stingers, toxic glands	Poisons, paralytics, contact toxins
Smith's Tools	Scales, plates, horn, claws, fangs, chitin, hard bone	Weapons, shields, heavy & medium armor
Leatherworker's Tools	Hide, membrane, pelt, sinew	Light armor, cloaks, straps, tents
Woodcarver's Tools	Bone, ivory, antler, beak (fine work)	Hafts, foci, wands, ammunition
Calligrapher's Supplies	Ink sacs, chromatophore fluid, sigil-blood, psychic residue	Magical inks, scrolls, glyph & sigil reagents
Navigator's Tools	Eyes & lenses, weather organs, swim bladders, lateral lines, wing-tendons	Optics, weather & travel instruments, sea & sky gear
Jeweler's Tools	Gemlike eyes, crystalline growths, gizzard pearls	Gem-foci, ornaments, luckstones
Cook's Utensils	Flesh, fat, marrow, organs	Rations, tallow, exotic cuisine
Tinker's Tools	Cores, gears, animating crystals	Construct & clockwork parts
Thieves' Tools	Generalist fine work — pick from the small-Smith's, Calligrapher's, Jeweler's, or Tinker's columns for that check	As the chosen column
None (Scavenge)	Swallowed loot, gizzard contents	Coins, gear, oddments — anyone may attempt

Niche defaults: Weaver's → silk & web cordage; Glassblower's → crystalline organs & lenses; Painter's → pigment glands; Brewer's → fermentable organs; Mason's or Potter's → shell & calcified plating; Cartographer's overlaps Navigator's. (Thieves' Tools as a generalist column: DM ruling sketched at the table in S53, exercised again in S54 — treat as standing.)

Crafting with what you harvest

Harvested parts are spent as Craft Value against item thresholds — see the component crafting economy for how a primary component sets an item's effect and rarity cap, and how secondary parts are added to reach a tier. The party's banked components, their effects, and what each can build are tracked on the Harvested Materials ledger.

The September 2026 retro pass

When the carcass-first manifest rules were adopted, every previously harvested creature's manifest was regenerated to the new slot counts and all past rolls were re-adjudicated additively — nothing already harvested was removed; rolls that would have recovered more under the new rules (rarity-and-below sweeps, and the beat-by-10 rule) recovered it retroactively. The gains are recorded per carcass on Harvested Materials and each creature's harvest profile.

Creature harvest profiles

• Arauthator — ancient white dragon, CR 20 (Artifact ceiling)
• Dragon Turtle — CR 17 (Legendary ceiling)
• Yuan-ti Anathema — CR 12 (Very Rare ceiling)
• Hydra — CR 8 (Rare ceiling)
• Blue Dragon Wyrmling — CR 3 (Uncommon ceiling)
• Ice Spider Queen — CR 2 (Uncommon ceiling)