Survival

You are skilled at surviving in the wild and at navigating in the wilderness. You also excel at following trails and tracks left by others.

### Common Uses

#### Avoid Getting Lost/Avoid Natural Hazards

You can use the Survival skill to avoid getting lost or avoid natural hazards and you make a Survival check whenever the situation calls for one.

**Retry?** To avoid getting lost or avoid natural hazards, you make a Survival check whenever the situation calls for one. Retries to avoid getting lost in a specific situation or to avoid a specific natural hazard are not allowed. For finding tracks, you can retry a failed check after 1 hour (outdoors) or 10 minutes (indoors) of searching.

#### Follow Tracks

To find tracks or to follow them for 1 mile requires a successful Survival check. You must make another Survival check every time the tracks become difficult to follow. If you are not trained in this skill, you can make untrained checks to find tracks, but you can follow them only if the DC for the task is 10 or lower. Alternatively, you can use the Perception skill to find a footprint or similar sign of a creature’s passage using the same DCs, but you can’t use Perception to follow tracks, even if someone else has already found them.

You move at half your normal speed while following tracks (or at your normal speed with a –5 penalty on the check, or at up to twice your normal speed with a –20 penalty on the check). The DC depends on the surface and the prevailing conditions, as given on table.

**Action** A Survival check made to find tracks is at least a full-round action, and it may take even longer.

**Retry?** For finding tracks, you can retry a failed check after 1 hour (outdoors) or 10 minutes (indoors) of searching.

### Tracking Modifiers

* **Size and Number of Creatures being Tracked**: See **Table: Modifiers to Survival Checks when Tracking** below.
* **Terrain**:
	+ *Very Soft Ground*: Any surface (fresh snow, thick dust, wet mud) that holds deep, clear impressions of footprints.
	+ *Soft Ground*: Any surface soft enough to yield to pressure, but firmer than wet mud or fresh snow, in which a creature leaves frequent but shallow footprints.
	+ *Firm Ground*: Most normal outdoor surfaces (such as lawns, fields, woods, and the like) or exceptionally soft or dirty indoor surfaces (thick rugs and very dirty or dusty floors). The creature might leave some traces (broken branches or tufts of hair), but it leaves only occasional or partial footprints.
	+ *Hard Ground*: Any surface that doesn’t hold footprints at all, such as bare rock or an indoor floor. Most streambeds fall into this category, since any footprints left behind are obscured or washed away. The creature leaves only traces (scuff marks or displaced pebbles).

1 For a group of mixed sizes, apply only the modifier for the largest size category.

2 Apply only the largest modifier from this category.

#### Survive in the Wilderness

You can keep yourself and others safe and fed in the wild.

**Action** Varies. A single Survival check may represent activity over the course of hours or a full day.

**Retry?** For getting along in the wild or for gaining the Fortitude save bonus noted in **Table: Survival DCs by Task**, you make a Survival check once every 24 hours. The result of that check applies until the next check is made.

##### **Finding Water**

One of the most vital tasks in traveling deserts is locating the next water source. An individual requires roughly a gallon of water a day while traveling in a desert’s heat, or more if she wishes to have enough to bathe or cool off. The temperatures around oases are often cooler due to the presence of water and shade, making them important resources for resting, treating sunburn, and so on. A gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds, meaning that 3 to 4 days’ worth of water constitutes a light load, or half of a Medium load, for an average PC. Create water can only conjure 2 gallons per caster level, which makes *scrolls* or even *wands* of create water limited in their usefulness when multiple people require water.

The Survival skill can help characters find water and survive in the wilds, but in deep deserts off of established trade routes, water and food alike are difficult to come by. In these harsh, remote regions, the DCs of Survival checks to get along in the wild increase to 20, and an adventurer can provide food and water for one other person for every 4 points by which the check result exceeds the DC. At the GM’s discretion, a roll of a natural 20 can indicate the discovery of a small but reliable oasis.

 15
 15
 15

**Navigate**

Check: Make a Survival check when a character is trying to find his or her way to a distant location without directions or other specific guidance. Generally, a character does not need to make a check to find a local street or other common urban site, or to follow an accurate map. However, the character might make a check to wind his or her way through a dense forest or a labyrinth of underground storm drains.

For movement over a great distance, make a survival check. The DC depends on the length of the trip. If the character succeeds, he or she moves via the best reasonable course toward his or her goal. If the character fails, he or she still reaches the goal, but it takes the character twice as long (the character loses time backtracking and correcting his or her path). If the character fails by more than 5, the or she travels the expected time, but only gets halfway to his or her destination, at which point the character becomes lost.

A character may make a second survival check (DC 20) to regain his or her path. If the character succeeds, he or she continues on to his or her destination; the total time for the trip is twice the normal time. If the character fails, he or she loses half a day before the character can try again. The character keeps trying until he or she succeeds, losing half a day for each failure.

 Moderate (a day or two)
 Long (up to a week)
 Extreme (more than a week)

When faced with multiple choices, such as at a branch in a tunnel, a character can make a Survival check (DC 20) to intuit the choice that takes the character toward a known destination. If unsuccessful, the character chooses the wrong path, but at the next juncture, with a successful check, the character realizes his or her mistake.

A character cannot use this function of Navigate to find a path to a site if the character has no idea where the site is located. The GM may choose to make the Navigate check for the character in secret, so he or she doesn’t know from the result whether the character is following the right or wrong path.

A character can use Navigate to determine his or her position on earth without the use of any high-tech equipment by checking the constellations or other natural landmarks. The character must have a clear view of the night sky to make this check. The DC is 15.

**Special:** A character can take 10 when making a Navigate check. A character can take 20 only when determining his or her location, not when traveling.

A character with the Guide feat gets a +2 bonus on all Navigate checks.

Time: A Navigate check is a full-round action.

#### **Survival Unchained**

Characters with the signature skill feat for Survival unlock additional abilities when they attain 5, 10, 15, and 20 ranks in a skill.

With sufficient ranks in Survival, you earn the following.

**5 Ranks**: You reduce all nonlethal damage you take from heat, cold, starvation, or thirst by 1 point for every 5 ranks you possess in Survival.

**10 Ranks**: You can track creatures that leave no tracks, including flying and swimming creatures and creatures using trackless step or pass without trace, taking a –20 penalty on your Survival check.

**15 Ranks**: Once per day, you can spend 1 hour and attempt a DC 30 Survival check. Success grants you cold resistance or fire resistance 5 for 24 hours. You can share this with one ally for every 5 by which you exceeded the check.

**20 Ranks**: You take only a –10 penalty when tracking creatures that leave no tracks.