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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteelDraco" data-source="post: 5797985" data-attributes="member: 359">As written, the only way to starve to death or die of dehydration if you're wandering in the wilderness by yourself is if you have a Wisdom penalty - otherwise you can make a DC 10 check just by taking 10. I can see that easily for the example of Georgia woods in early autumn - you'd really have to not be aware of your surroundings to not find enough to survive, though some of it may not be too appetizing. And that's even if you've never been taught how to survive in the wild.However, that suggests to me that it's appropriate for a penalty to apply in harsher conditions. If the average man-on-the-street couldn't plausibly survive without training, it suggests a penalty should be applied to the Survival DC. The highest I could see going is maybe a +10 for trying to live without food somewhere like Mordor or Eberron's Mournland - a place that is utterly and completely inhospitable to life. Someone who is pretty good at Survival can  make it, but generally not by enough to feed a large group by themselves. You bring supplies to that kind of area.Remember, this Survival check is just about finding food and water. If you bring that stuff, you don't have to make the check at all. Maybe you make the check daily and just use your rations if you fail or don't manage to scavenge enough for everybody. That makes total sense to me.I'm not sure I'd use people used to surviving in a terrain as examples - I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that they have some facility with Survival if they are native to a harsh area and have to fend for themselves on occasion. I seem to recall that Pathfinder has several traits that make Survival a class skill with "native to X area" as a requirement - a trait like that and one point means you can make a DC 14 Survival check without any trouble. That's going to cover a lot of territory, even with higher base DCs based on terrain.Survival also has the ability to grant bonuses to rolls for exposure in hot and cold environments. That's more relevant to the "finding shelter and making a fire" stuff the OP was asking about; I'd just include that kind of considerations in that. I do usually call for a Survival check if someone asks "Hey, can we find a cave to hide in for the night?" or something like that. The better the roll, the better the shelter they can find, up to what seems appropriate for the terrain.If I was playing in a game that actually had wilderness travel as a part of it - say mapping unexplored territory, or a Dark Sun game where part of the flavor is surviving the environment - I might consider not allowing taking 10 on Survival checks. I'd also consider a natural 1 to reflect some kind of natural hazard - bad food/water, a natural predator or hazard, something like that. It'd serve to inject some flavor into the survival process.</blockquote>

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