"Natural" magic items?

[Paul L. Ming]

Hiya.

    Ok, here's a question. How do you guys handle the natural magic items
found in  P&P? By that I mean, what do you do when a player has a character
that has Forest Survival, Healing and Herbalisim (let's call him a
"Ranger"). The party gets in a scrap with some nasty forest beasty; blood
flies, hit points plummet, but in the end, the PC's live. The player of the
"ranger" then turns to the GM (you) and says this:
    "I go out and look for some healing herbs."

    Ok. As GM you think to yourself, 'no problem. There are rules for
searching, right?' You flip through the book to see the chances. 'Hmmmm.',
You think to yourself, 'Ahhh. 1.1131, Successful Searches. That's it....'.
You read. '...A) The referee will set a Base Chance of success, depending on
the size of the item searched for, how well it is hidden and other factors
that he considers to be appropriate.'.  As the Referee, you panic! How big
is the herb? Is it a big bush? A small weed? Heck, just *which* type of herb
is it? Forget that...what herbs in the book are listed as healing anyway?
More panic. The players see all the blood drain from your face as you think
back...you know you remember reading a few natural magic items that were
described as having some sort of healing properties. You grab Book 4 and
flip to the back.  'Oh, here's one...Snake Grape'.  Now you are confronted
with a new problem; where does Snake Grape grow? Does it grow in a forest?
What about season? Summer? Spring? Fall? When is it 'ripe'? How many will be
found that are useful? The book suggests "2d10 ounces". Great. How many
ounces are required for the juice to be effective? Will one grape do it? Or
do you need 10?

    Anyway, I think you get my point. P&P has some very cool rules and
"stuff" in it, but it seems that a lot of the time it misses the obvious
questions. I'm sure that if P&P had survived, we would have seen some
excellent supplements out (like maybe a book of new magic items, spells,
etc.; a book of 'natural magic'; a book for expanded combat --mass
combat/siege, construction, etc.), but it didn't survive and we have to
"fill in the blanks".  So, how do you folks handle it?

^_^

Paul L. Ming