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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Calion" data-source="post: 7165618" data-attributes="member: 73976">How about shelter from storms? A somewhat tight protection against the winter cold? Candles or oil lamps? Books? The ability to buy a meal and not prepare it yourself? Multiple changes of clothing? Clothing made of something other than leather and fur, and sewn together with needle and thread, not leather strips? A wide variety of meats and vegetables to eat? You're kidding, right? Someone living off the land is always concerned with where his next meal will come from. His ability to store food is very limited, especially lacking a permanent shelter. Nuts and berries are not always in season. He may eat very well some weeks, and hardly at all in others.  Furs aren't always appropriate, but if you know how to tan hide and make clothing (which I wonder if that isn't a separate skill from Survival), you shouldn't be wearing threadbare clothing, I'll agree.  Well, when you exclude the most important parts, making your point is quite easy. The weather is a huge factor in the wilderness; you never know what your comfort level will be like day to day. You may be wet, cold and unable to sleep, or warm, dry and cozy. Even those in a flophouse have much more protection against the weather. And other conditions are unpredictable too. You may get your food stolen by wild animals while you are away hunting. You may run into bears, or wolves, or wandering monsters (hell, that's likely in a D&D setting). And as should be obvious, your food supply is unpredictable. You can't go buy it, so you have to depend on the bounty of Mother Nature, which varies by day and by season. Sometimes the fish are biting; sometimes they're not.  Well, that depends, doesn't it? I invoke Survivorman again. His first couple of days, especially in an area he's not well familiar with, are miserable (and then he goes home, so we don't get to see him actually thrive, which is why I don't watch the show much anymore). Someone on the move, or just coming into a new area where he hasn't learned where the good hunting grounds are, can indeed have an unpleasant experience. As time goes on and he settles in, starts building a semi-permanent shelter, and gets familiar with the area, and where the foragables and game are, his quality of life improves, to about a Modest level. But he never gets to Comfortable, unless perhaps after he spends many months or years building an actual cabin, carving furniture, making a fireplace, making candles, and carving various tools and utensils. But that length of time in one spot seems to go outside these self-sufficiency rules for what to do between adventures.  There's no noise in the woods? You get used to it after a couple of days, of course, but every wilderness has its disturbing sounds. And cleanliness is just as much of a problem in the wild as in town. When your only bathing spot is a cold mountain stream, you may not bathe too often. Plus, of course, you have to contend with mosquitos, ticks, and possibly other vermin. And your neighbors are bears, wolves and skunks. You can get along, of course, but you have to stay on your guard. ModestRight, exactly. No one does that. They go to the blacksmith or whoever to get the materials they need to maintain their equipment. Not possible in the wilds.  Not at all. The difference in comfort level between someone living in a furnished room, with a chest of drawers, candles, a nice mattress, a table, chairs, curtains in the windows, and possibly a book or two, and someone sleeping on the ground or on a hastily-constructed bed of branches and leaves, under a rock or a lean-to, sounds enormous. Now, as I've repeatedly said, an outdoorsman could very likely lift his standard of living to Modest after a very few weeks. But that's not how he spends his first several nights.  Really? Never? He catches game, or fish, or gathers a large quantity of foragables every day? Even when those foragables are out of season? I think you have a romanticized notion of how easy it is to survive in the wild. Sure, sometimes you eat very well. But sometimes the fish aren't biting, or the game never appears, and all of your snares fail, and now there's no time to gather berries or whatever. Life in the woods is inherently unpredictable. That's part of its charm.  Really? That depends on what you mean by "clean," I guess. What about ants crawling all over you and biting you in the night? Mosquitoes? Ticks? Possibly leeches, depending on where you have to travel? And you do get dirty, you know, working in the woods. It may be easy to take a bath and wash your clothes, and it may not. Again, once you have a chance to build a semi-permanent shelter that protects your supplies from wild animals, destroy all the anthills in the near vicinity, smoke enough meat and fish so that you have food on bad hunting days, and establish a consistent routine, I'd say that you were likely at Modest. But not before that. Comfortable I'm really not sure about this. Wearing the furry hide of an animal doesn't seem to be the same as wearing fur clothing that has been sewn together by a skilled seamstress with a steel needle and thread, neither of which you have. But I'm not really clear as to what constitutes "nicer clothing" in this context. Does that mean linen? Probably. Silk? Probably not, but maybe. But I'm not sure a buckskin suit inexpertly made with a wooden needle and leather straps qualifies as "nicer" in this context.  Note that we're talking about easily maintaining your adventuring equipment, meaning getting the nicks out of your sword, the dents out of your shield, and the rents out of your armor. And to that we have to give a clear No. Your survivalist adventurer has the capacity to do none of these things.  To the sturdiness and weatherproof-ness of a nice cottage in the city? No, certainly not. In a few months, perhaps. In a few weeks you can construct a perfectly serviceable semi-permanent shelter. Not a permanent cottage, not while you're also hunting and gathering and defending yourself from wandering monsters.  Why would such people associate with a woodland hermit? What parties is he getting invited to? Will his clothes fit in when he goes? (No, which is why "nicer clothing" doesn't work.) Etc. No, this doesn't make sense, certainly not as an expected thing. Notes Obviously, everyone above that level has those protections as well. And the outdoorsman has none of it. He has no city guards protecting him from wolves, bears, monsters, or brigands.  Usually if that's the case, people are prohibited from living in the woods, or require permission to do so. Which you can certainly do in-game, but that's hardly guaranteed to be granted. Except in Wretched, and Squalid, and Poor, and Modest. It's assumed that what applies at Modest also applies at higher levels.  Baloney, for the reasons I've described above. Certainly sometimes he may have plentiful food. And at other times—not.</blockquote>

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