Survival

[Tovec]

I've been playing DnD for a few years but I still don't get it. Can someone please explain to me what survival is?

It seems to be your ability to track.
It also seems to be your ability to know things. Finding you way for example.
It also seems to be your ability to gather food.

Why aren't these..
Track - spot/listen/search/perception
Know things - Knowledge (nature/georgraphy)
Gather food - you find food .. perhaps if necessary K:n/g or Perform/Profession

I don't get what Survival is supposed to represent.
Is it a "wilderness lore" (and to a more direct extent wilderness movement/survival) check? As per 3.5 there aren't really any other skills that have similar sets of powers, no "city lore" or what have you.

 

[Omegaxicor]

It is Knowledge: Outdoors, not so much Nature because that is animals and plants, it is Knowledge of the wilderness

Survival covers what you typically expect from a Ranger

City Lore would be Knowledge (Local)

 

[kitcik]

It is Knowledge: Outdoors, not so much Nature because that is animals and plants, it is Knowledge of the wilderness

Survival covers what you typically expect from a Ranger

City Lore would be Knowledge (Local)

I almost agree. I would call it:

Ability to Apply Practical Knowledge (Outdoors)

 

[Sekhmet]

Survival checks turn you into Bear Grylls.
Any other questions?

Take a look at the checks it allows.
[sblock=Survival]
10 Get along in the wild. Move up to one-half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10.

15 Gain a +2 bonus on all Fortitude saves against severe weather while moving up to one-half your overland speed, or gain a +4 bonus if you remain stationary. You may grant the same bonus to one other character for every 1 point by which your Survival check result exceeds 15.

15 Keep from getting lost or avoid natural hazards, such as quicksand.

15 Predict the weather up to 24 hours in advance. For every 5 points by which your Survival check result exceeds 15, you can predict the weather for one additional day in advance.

40 Get along in the wild while moving at full speed. The character can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which the check result exceeds 40.

60 Automatically succeed on all Fortitude saves against severe weather. The character can extend this benefit to one other character for every 2 points by which the check result exceeds 60.

60 Ignore overland movement penalties of terrain. The character and his or her mount can move at full overland speed regardless of terrain. The character can extend this benefit to one other character for every 5 points by which the check result exceeds 60.

60 Identify race/kind of creature(s) by tracks. (with the Track feat)[/sblock]

So basically, anything pertaining to surviving in a hostile environment with no outside source of food, shelter, water, or assistance falls under the Survival category.

Tracking is as much about what you know as it is your powers of observation. You can take the most astute scientist into the wilderness and ask him to track a black bear through a forest, and he won't know the first place to start, much less the more subtle hints of a trail.

Knowledge: Nature/Geography is general, scientific or otherwise "book" knowledge about what goes on in those areas, but not any real experience with the skills involved. You'll notice that both Nature/Geography give a +2 to Survival checks as their synergy, though.
An example might be that a scientist will know all of the properties of quicksand - how it forms, it's consistency, possibly even how to get out of it. What they won't be able to do is see the warning signs, notice the slight change in hardness under their feet, or react calmly and rationally if they happen to fall into it.
They might know that a brown bear is ~1,800 pounds and up to 9' tall, or that they eat mostly meat, but they won't know how to lose it in the woods, or how to fashion a trap out of the available materials to snare it.

Gathering food is a dangerous task in the forest. You don't know what is poisonous, you don't know how to skin and prepare a catch, you don't know how to trap or hunt. These are finely honed skills, not general knowledge.

Survivalists are an impressive people. When I lived in North Idaho, I had the pleasure of meeting a few, and the things they know, do, and experience can only be touched upon in books. It is very much a hands-on, learn-by-doing skill.

 

[Tovec]

Survival checks turn you into Bear Grylls.
Any other questions?

Take a look at the checks it allows.
[sblock=Survival]
10 Get along in the wild. Move up to one-half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10.

15 Gain a +2 bonus on all Fortitude saves against severe weather while moving up to one-half your overland speed, or gain a +4 bonus if you remain stationary. You may grant the same bonus to one other character for every 1 point by which your Survival check result exceeds 15.

15 Keep from getting lost or avoid natural hazards, such as quicksand.

15 Predict the weather up to 24 hours in advance. For every 5 points by which your Survival check result exceeds 15, you can predict the weather for one additional day in advance.

40 Get along in the wild while moving at full speed. The character can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which the check result exceeds 40.

60 Automatically succeed on all Fortitude saves against severe weather. The character can extend this benefit to one other character for every 2 points by which the check result exceeds 60.

60 Ignore overland movement penalties of terrain. The character and his or her mount can move at full overland speed regardless of terrain. The character can extend this benefit to one other character for every 5 points by which the check result exceeds 60.

60 Identify race/kind of creature(s) by tracks. (with the Track feat)[/sblock]

I read this before posting, I have been playing many years and I know what the skill does, I don't understand so much what it represents.

So basically, anything pertaining to surviving in a hostile environment with no outside source of food, shelter, water, or assistance falls under the Survival category.

Tracking is as much about what you know as it is your powers of observation. You can take the most astute scientist into the wilderness and ask him to track a black bear through a forest, and he won't know the first place to start, much less the more subtle hints of a trail.

Knowledge: Nature/Geography is general, scientific or otherwise "book" knowledge about what goes on in those areas, but not any real experience with the skills involved. You'll notice that both Nature/Geography give a +2 to Survival checks as their synergy, though.
An example might be that a scientist will know all of the properties of quicksand - how it forms, it's consistency, possibly even how to get out of it. What they won't be able to do is see the warning signs, notice the slight change in hardness under their feet, or react calmly and rationally if they happen to fall into it.
They might know that a brown bear is ~1,800 pounds and up to 9' tall, or that they eat mostly meat, but they won't know how to lose it in the woods, or how to fashion a trap out of the available materials to snare it.

Gathering food is a dangerous task in the forest. You don't know what is poisonous, you don't know how to skin and prepare a catch, you don't know how to trap or hunt. These are finely honed skills, not general knowledge.

Survivalists are an impressive people. When I lived in North Idaho, I had the pleasure of meeting a few, and the things they know, do, and experience can only be touched upon in books. It is very much a hands-on, learn-by-doing skill.

Knowing how to skin an animal isn't really the same skill (or shouldn't be) as picking out which berries are poisonous and which are edible. It is not the same as tracking the animal.

Why not break some of these skills up? Simply saying "it prepares X units of food per day/week" seems like a clumsy addition to the skill that allows you to track and survive in the wilderness.

Wouldn't the skill then be advanced by what you are saying to cover making traps to catch prey Well aren't those (in the reverse) disable device, open lock or escape artist if you wanted to escape?

And, Sekhmet if this exists for wilderness survival why doesn't it exist in the same degree for city survival? It seems to me to be a matter of degrees.

I like your recognizing what to do vs. knowing the warning signs but nothing else operates this way. There is no "monster-lore" check which allows you to know how to avoid dying from dragons or beholders in the same way as when you fight a bear.

 

[Sekhmet]

Yes, you could break the skill up into several different checks.
However, Survival doesn't necessarily make you good at spotting the different between a disguised person and a person without a disguise. It doesn't necessarily help you pick a lock or disable an arrow or magical trap, nor will being able to pick locks or disable traps help you to survive in the wilderness. These skills are absolutely exclusive of one another, which is one of the reasons they are separate.

Another, perhaps the more important reason, is that fi you break up the Survival skill, Barbarians and Rangers (people with no business dealing with city folk or city lifestyle, especially locks, traps, human empathy, and the like) are suddenly replacing Rogues and Thieves. They're also able to seamlessly integrate from Mountain/Forest to City, which is definitely not how mountain men operate.

 

[Li Shenron]

I read this before posting, I have been playing many years and I know what the skill does, I don't understand so much what it represents.

Knowing how to skin an animal isn't really the same skill (or shouldn't be) as picking out which berries are poisonous and which are edible. It is not the same as tracking the animal.

Why not break some of these skills up? Simply saying "it prepares X units of food per day/week" seems like a clumsy addition to the skill that allows you to track and survive in the wilderness.

Wouldn't the skill then be advanced by what you are saying to cover making traps to catch prey Well aren't those (in the reverse) disable device, open lock or escape artist if you wanted to escape?

And, Sekhmet if this exists for wilderness survival why doesn't it exist in the same degree for city survival? It seems to me to be a matter of degrees.

I like your recognizing what to do vs. knowing the warning signs but nothing else operates this way. There is no "monster-lore" check which allows you to know how to avoid dying from dragons or beholders in the same way as when you fight a bear.

I really hope my comment doesn't sound too blunt but... are you sure you know what skills represent?

IMHO you have a very restrictive idea of what a skill should do: one and only thing. That's not true... some skills are like that (the worst offender was probably Read Lips in 3.0) while other skills are versatile (Spellcraft, Stealth and indeed Survival).

There is no hard-coded reason to design a skill to represent one and only type of activity. And there is no hard-coded reasons for skills not to overlap. And there is no hard-coded reasons to think that only the core skills should exist and you are not allowed to come up with more (e.g. an equivalent of Survival for urban environments, although maybe you could just take Knowledge(Local) and extend its capabilities).

Survival / Wilderness Lore is the perfect example of a skill well-designed actually...

When you are thinking about splitting or merging skills, don't wear the pedantic hat of a rationalist who thinks skills should be perfectly logical and perfectly separated. Wear instead the hat of a DM who sees skills in terms of what they can provide to the player, and split/merge (or alternatively add/remove possible uses) based on your practical judgement on whether a skill is too good or too weak (my favourite way to make adjustments to a campaign has always been to keep the skill list as much as possible, and add more uses to the weakest skills to make them used more frequently).

 

[epicbob]

[...]There is no hard-coded reason to design a skill to represent one and only type of activity. And there is no hard-coded reasons for skills not to overlap. And there is no hard-coded reasons to think that only the core skills should exist and you are not allowed to come up with more (e.g. an equivalent of Survival for urban environments, although maybe you could just take Knowledge(Local) and extend its capabilities).[...]

As far as I can tell, Gather Information seems to be a practically-oriented urban skill. It's a good base to start with for improved practical urban skills.

 

[Ashtagon]

As far as I can tell, Gather Information seems to be a practically-oriented urban skill. It's a good base to start with for improved practical urban skills.

Gather Information: Wait, I paid skill points so the GM can keep the plot moving?

 

[epicbob]

To be fair, I'm not quite sure what else an urban-focused version of Survival could do.