Survival

[Empirate]

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

Wait, I paid skill points to find a smuggler who'll get me my restricted alchemical substances? Or to find a buyer for my illegal magic items? Or to find a mage to swap spellbooks with? Or to find out which violation of local customs is really frowned upon? Or to find a cheap, clean hooker?

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

Know who you could turn to if you have to go to ground. Intuit which guards will most likely be crooked, or straight. Find accomodation where you're not likely to be robbed. Understand (and manipulate) social upheavals in a city. Quickly find a place to hide when followed, or follow somebody back to his lair/employer/lover yourself. Track down a specific person in a huge metropolis. Know beforehand whether the alley you're running into will have an exit or not. Find your way through an unfamiliar quarter. Etc.

 

[epicbob]

(I've organized your post to better respond to it)

1.Know who you could turn to if you have to go to ground.

2.Intuit which guards will most likely be crooked, or straight.

3.Find accomodation where you're not likely to be robbed.

4.Understand (and manipulate) social upheavals in a city.

5.Quickly find a place to hide when followed, or follow somebody back to his lair/employer/lover yourself.

6.Track down a specific person in a huge metropolis.

7.Know beforehand whether the alley you're running into will have an exit or not.

8.Find your way through an unfamiliar quarter. Etc.

1.Knowledge (Local) or Gather Information

2.Gather Information or Sense Motive.

3.Gather Information

4.Possibly Knowledge (Local) but this doesn't seem very survival-ish.

5.Knowledge (Local), Hide, Move Silently.

6.Harder to say. Gather Information followed by Tracking. I'd say this is closest to justifying an Urban Tracking feat.

7.Knowledge (Local) or Divination.

8.This seems hard to justify. Maybe Knowledge (Dungeoneering) but "knowing" your way around an area you've never been to sounds like Divination.

 

[Empirate]

Now you sound like the OP, [MENTION=99102]epicbob[/MENTION]. 'Urban Survival' would be a skill that could do a number of things usually reserved for a bunch of other skills. Like, oh, I don't know, Survival?

Skills overlap. That's not a problem. Having 'Urban Survival' would make you good to have around for specific social or knowledge-related problems while in a city - but it wouldn't obviate the need for social or knowledge skills. On the other hand, if you're just looking for the kinds of things I've listed, 'Urban Survival' would be your go-to skill to max, instead of half a dozen other skills. Like Survival is now, only for perception and knowledge skills related to the wilderness.

 

[epicbob]

The way I personally see it, if it can be accomplished with existing methods, why complicate the system further?

There's already so much stuff in all of the 3.5 system and its dozens of splat books that adding even more is just overbloating the system even more.

Heck, in the Unearthed Arcana book, the Urban Ranger variant class pretty much does what I just described in my previous response. The only real ability it adds is Urban Tracking, which is basically the normal skill except it's applied to Gather Information instead of Survival.

Ultimately, something like finding a good inn is hardly deserving of a new skill. You just ask around (Gather Information) and someone is bound to know a great place. It's not like you're asking about Don Patronne the local mob boss.

 

[Water Bob]

Survival is probably the most important skill in my Barbarian based game.

I always look for things in the books I read and so forth to bring a sense of what a Survival check represents. I don't just want to say, "OK, you found tracks. They lead off in this direction."

I'd much rather describe the situation like this, "You find horse droppings. They're not hot, but they're not hard yet, either. Probably six hours old. And you find a partial hoof print, so you can tell direction."

In a recent Conan story I'm reading, Conan, out in the desert, uses his knife to cut off a piece of cactus. He removes the needles, then skins it, eating the wet, mushy interior. It provides food and water.

Next time, in similar terrain, that my players use Survival to live off the land, I'm going to describe them doing as Conan did.

 

[AeroDm]

Speculating here, but part of OPs problem might be that he isn't running the type of adventures/encounters where Survival comes up. If I'm playing a game all about pioneers pushing the boundary of human civilization in an untamed land, I probably will have a hard time understanding the role of Knowledge (nobility) or its ilk. If that's the case, dividing the roles of the skill up as OP suggests is not a bad solution. I wouldn't recommend forcing skill usage into the game if it isn't happening organically.

 

[Water Bob]

I can see that. A GM that just assumes the PCs always have food, so there's no fishing or hunting. No PC has the Track Feat. And, a lot of the adventures happen in towns, the GM just zips the PCs through the wilderness and are at the beginning of the dungeon. Prolly happens a lot in many games.

 

[Tovec]

I can see that. A GM that just assumes the PCs always have food, so there's no fishing or hunting. No PC has the Track Feat. And, a lot of the adventures happen in towns, the GM just zips the PCs through the wilderness and are at the beginning of the dungeon. Prolly happens a lot in many games.

I can't speak to most of this actually happening, especially the fast track between dungeons and cities, or skipping entirely over wilderness.

However, most of my PCs generally carry rations or buy meals from taverns in towns. A lot of campaigns I run have wilderness in the wilderness and civilizations have built roads which they will travel between places. Even when they don't have roads to follow, most of the time they know exactly where they're going or are just stumbling around.

The few times I would have occasion to use a wilderness check the party doesn't have it. Few characters ever actually see a reason to USE the track part of wilderness and even then they ask to roll perception checks (we play PF) or search checks (if 3.5).

Hell, in all my years of DMing the only campaign I've ever run where it is actually useful is my most recent one which is an extremely low magic setting. Here they have hunted to gather food but that is the only time they've used the skill. (They could have just bought rations but they forgot and were traveling for days.)

Either way, I understand better now why it exists. I still not entirely sold on WHY it exists in modern games/editions but I do understand the reasoning for it more than when I first started the thread.

I just think:
A. That it is a fairly limited skill and could easily be split into other things to achieve the same result.
B. There should also be a civilization skill if there is going to be a wilderness check. Maybe a dungeon skill too.
C. That the main reason it exists, the only thing I see being unique to it is Track and that Track could be better used another way.

 

[Empirate]

As [MENTION=92305]Water Bob[/MENTION]'s comments have shown, the need for a Survival skill is directly dependent on the style of campaign you're playing. You describe a setting where the PCs are rarely, if ever, out of touch with civilization for extended periods of time. Water Bob's campaign simply has no civilization. You can't go buy 'rations', because such a thing isn't produced anywhere. The economic model of the society is based on self-sufficient households, not on producing for a marketplace. So the Survival skill is pretty mandatory if you're not staying in one place, tending the fields or herds. Because without it, you starve.

Similarly, the campaign I'm currently DMing takes place in a world of extremely harsh climates. Those Survival checks to gain +4 on checks to not take damage while outside are pretty important (as is the Endurance feat). Predicting bad weather, finding shelter from a storm, maintaining important equipment (tents, weapons, clothing) from materials foraged in the wilds, tracking wild game to hunt, and avoiding scorpion-infested territory come up all the time. Magic isn't a viable solution, since magic items are ultra-rare, this is E6 (no PC above 6th level), and Wizards and Clerics are nonplayable. Survival, alongside Knowledge (Nature), is probably the most important skill in my game at the moment.

 

[Tovec]

As @Water Bob 's comments have shown, the need for a Survival skill is directly dependent on the style of campaign you're playing. You describe a setting where the PCs are rarely, if ever, out of touch with civilization for extended periods of time. Water Bob's campaign simply has no civilization. You can't go buy 'rations', because such a thing isn't produced anywhere. The economic model of the society is based on self-sufficient households, not on producing for a marketplace. So the Survival skill is pretty mandatory if you're not staying in one place, tending the fields or herds. Because without it, you starve.

Similarly, the campaign I'm currently DMing takes place in a world of extremely harsh climates. Those Survival checks to gain +4 on checks to not take damage while outside are pretty important (as is the Endurance feat). Predicting bad weather, finding shelter from a storm, maintaining important equipment (tents, weapons, clothing) from materials foraged in the wilds, tracking wild game to hunt, and avoiding scorpion-infested territory come up all the time. Magic isn't a viable solution, since magic items are ultra-rare, this is E6 (no PC above 6th level), and Wizards and Clerics are nonplayable. Survival, alongside Knowledge (Nature), is probably the most important skill in my game at the moment.

I definitely agree that survival is campaign dependent and I daresay that in the game you describe above if the skill didn't exist that you would be wise to make it up. However I also see that you aren't really playing a standard or stock campaign as far as the books intended you should. If the skill is only valuable when there is little or no magic (or access to magic) or when there is little or no access to any form of settlements then I can certainly see its reasoning. I just think that both of these things are slightly rare in DnD terms. I can understand where a lot of games will take place in dungeons or away from towns but I don't see most games expecting cities NEVER to show up.

As far as my game style, I do enjoy a good urban sprawl but most of my games, or sessions at least, take place outside of civilization. Cities exist to re-equip and restore but I don't ONLY use them. In my setting wilderness exists in the wild where no one patrols. It doesn't exist (much) in between the towns that adventurers are likely to come from. In my games most characters aren't barbarians, rangers and druids. Those classes are played certainly but they aren't the majority. For that reason alone it is good to have cities. In the main area of my world you don't expect to travel along safe roads from one borough to the next. You DO expect there to be LARGE towns, metropolises and small villages scattered throughout the kingdom. I also throw in dungeons, keeps, crypts, and ruins (all in varying state of decay) for monsters to populate as well. (In addition to forests or other areas of "wild".) I just expect that when my players want to gather food they RP it and tell me they are gathering food. They can use a knowledge nature check to ask if a berry is poisonous and they can use an attack roll to kill a wild animal. I don't see where the need for the skill comes in. Yes, I suppose I could have them roll to maintain their tents but beyond a certain level that gets redundant as they easily start to create magical places to rest.

I don't mind maintaining fiddly stuff, but I prefer not to be bogged down with it. Unless something is attacking the tent I figure the party can just patch up any minor holes that appear. Unless they are freshly escaped from a prison or traveling across the desert I can generally assume they either have food or can find food along the way. The roll CAN be useful from time to time but the major effect I see for it is Track, otherwise it seems like ALL the other effects can be rolled into something else. Most importantly I can't figure out a reason why the party should expressly have ranks in the skill when they already have ranks in other skills that do the same job.