Is there a way to reduce pain without numbing? I don't recall one.
Maybe not in the game! But I guess it partially blocks the pain receptors in the brain. so it's More like it gives you NOPAIN temporarily.
That seems a little strong for anything short of, like, opium. I guess if it was a
really short period... or maybe a short "spikes" of NOPAIN, thus reducing your average pain?
You are missing most forms of tea...
The "hard brewing" mod I have some notes on would include a module specifically for tea farming, with cultivars and different processing steps. It's just a pretty daunting challenge. There's the matter of simulating aging (which will probably require DFHack), the effects of storage at different temperatures & under different conditions, different cooking techniques, how the tea changes when you use each technique at each step of the process... not to mention the problem of balancing the high risk of failure with the reward in such a way that players don't immediately specialize in the first preparation they discover, and use it to crank out so much wealth that they don't care to discover another variety.
Incidentally, I didn't respond in the questions thread, but one major reason I put in chamomile tea is because
You don't need to justify yourself to me, hon. Nothing wrong with tisanes, I'm partial to mint myself. They're just not tea.
If you're including all sorts of new plants with "syndromes", then there are a tremendous number of herbs with effects that are either not present in DF or not represented in-game if they are present.
I'm not including any new plants at present.
I.E. e.g. Meadowsweet (AKA Meadsweet, as it was used as a sweetener in alcohols) is a natural painkiller that is the original source of aspirin. It's traditionally used in herbal teas as a painkiller. For that matter, I have a whole book on herbal remedies, many of which are used as spices in cooking or brewed into teas. The likes of ginseng, ginger, garlic, pepper, turmeric and many other common cooking spices all have medicinal values, from mood to joint pain.
Hm, I'd always heard the original source of aspirin was willow bark.
Unfortunately, syndromes have a limited range of effects available at the moment, and they're primarily geared towards making dwarves' lives as shitty as possible. Reducing pain - short of completely removing the capacity to feel pain - isn't one of them (AFAIK).
The slow buildup of arsenic poisoning after too much cassava and ginkgo seeds? Sure. Euphoria and increased artistic sensitivity from THC? You got it, fam. But dwarves don't suffer from joint pain unless their joints have been locked in combat, in which case they're going to need something stronger. Mood manipulation on a level subtle enough to not be a controlled substance isn't possible with the current syndrome system (I don't think - a lot changed in 0.42, so I may be behind the times on syndrome subtlety). And the only purpose dwarves' digestive systems serve is to spill out their bellies when they're gutted, so laxatives are out.
If you have any suggestions you'd like to make for new uses for plants which already exist in Dwarf Fortress, please consider contributing them in the
Expanded Plants thread. This thread is for flagging down stoners to give input on the syndromes I guessed at for cannabis.