Using Herbs (SNS)

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In addition to his other requirements, the healer must keep a good stock of herbs on hand to use in poultices and medical concoctions. He can purchase these on the open market if he likes, or he can cultivate his own herb garden.
If he decides to purchase the herbs, a healer must spend 10 gp per level each month to maintain his supply. This assumes that he has a steady stream of patients upon whom he uses the herbs. Otherwise, the herbs will keep for 3d4 months before losing their effectiveness.
The price of herbs can skyrocket in certain circumstances. If the healer is in foreign lands, the price will double, as he will have to find local equivalents of the herbs that he uses back home.
==Rare Herbs==
At the DM's discretion, certain diseases may only be treatable with particularly rare herbs. Obtaining these herbs may not be as simple as going down to the market. If these special herbs are down at the market, they cost anywhere from 60-100 gp for a single dose.
In other cases, the herb may only be found in exotic locals. This is cause for an adventure, as either the healer will have to go someplace to find the herb or he'll have to send someone to find it for him. More likely, the healer will hire on a party to locate the herb and accompany them on their quest. After all, it's likely that the heroes wouldn't know how to locate or harvest the herb in question.
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==Herb Gardens==
Many healers maintain an herb garden of their own to save costs and guarantee a steady supply of the proper herbs. Healers who wish to cultivate an herb garden must take the Agriculture proficiency. Alternately, the healer can hire someone to maintain the garden for him, but that gardener would have to have the Agriculture and the Herbalism nonweapon proficiencies to successfully grow the proper herbs.
Maintaining an herb garden costs only 5 gp per level of the healer each month, but this is only if the healer performs the labor himself. Otherwise, it costs 15 gp per level each month to hire on a gardener.
Most healers that have a home base start out keeping their own herb garden. It's cheap, easy, and it helps to pass the time between patients. However, at later levels, the demands on a healer's time become more substantial; most take on at least an assistant gardener to keep the herb garden in tip-top shape. 
==Home-Grown Bonus==
Home grown herbs, those cultivated by the healer himself, add a +1 bonus to any Herbalism proficiency rolls. The bonus is due to the higher amount of control the healer has over the quality of the herbs from his own garden.
==Maintaining an Herb Garden==
In order for the healer to receive the home grown modifier, he must strictly maintain his garden. If the garden stands untended for even a day, the bonus lapses until the garden is brought back up to the healer's demanding standards or quality.
If the garden remains untended for more than a week, any herbs taken from it actually give a -1 penalty to any Herbalism proficiency checks. Each week the herb garden is untended adds a cumulative -1 penalty-up to a maximum of -4.
Restoring the garden merely requires a little hard work. If the garden has been neglected for only a week or less, the healer must spend a half day restoring the garden.
However, it takes one full day to restore the garden for each week of neglect. A garden ignored for four weeks requires four full days of work to restore. The time needed to restore a neglected garden can never take more than a full week of gardening.
Many times, healers band together to share a garden. Sometimes they run it cooperatively, each taking a turn in the garden. More often, they simply hire a gardener to tend the herb garden for them and then split the costs. An herb gardener can only handle so many demands by himself, though.
﻿A gardener can tend enough herbs to satisfy one experience level of his employers' demands for each point of the gardener's Agriculture skill. For example, a gardener with a score of 15 in his Agriculture proficiency could handle the demands of up 15 total experience levels of healers (three 5th-level healers, two 7th-level healers and a 1st-level healer).
Once the healers' levels exceed the abilities of their single herb gardener (as they often do in hospital settings or with other large groups of healers), they must hire on additional herb gardeners to help take up the slack. Each additional herb gardeners demands another 10 gp per month in salary.
Herb gardens that sell their product to any healer are often headed by a single herb gardener and some underlings who possess the Agriculture proficiency. Herbs purchased from these gardens do not give the Herbalism proficiency bonus associated with private gardens. However, the underling gardeners only cost 5 gp per month to hire.
Stingy healers can maintain a garden like this if they like, but they will suffer the loss of the bonus. Many hospitals run a secondary garden with herbs available to outside healers, and in that case, they use this method for the non-personnel herbs.