Taking 10 With Survival

[StreamOfTheSky]

Gah. I live in an area where there is a HUGE amount of plant life, berries, and edible plants. I am in an area where there is an abundance of sea life (some of the largest concentrations in the world, in fact). Wildlife can be found everywhere, and if you know where to look, you can easily feed yourself.

And I would say that finding food is a bit more complicated than a DC 10 check. Untrained? Good luck.

This is a case where the rules are just plain wrong.

I disagree. Maybe for US, it'd be too tough to accomplish on a regular basis. But people didn't use to have supermarkets. Humans managed to survive just fine as hunter/gatherers. Finding enough food and water to keep yourself alive, unless in extremely harsh conditions, should not be particularly hard.

Being able to take 10 and keep yourself nourished makes perfect sense.

 

[billd91]

Gah. I live in an area where there is a HUGE amount of plant life, berries, and edible plants. I am in an area where there is an abundance of sea life (some of the largest concentrations in the world, in fact). Wildlife can be found everywhere, and if you know where to look, you can easily feed yourself.

And I would say that finding food is a bit more complicated than a DC 10 check. Untrained? Good luck.

This is a case where the rules are just plain wrong.

I'm not so sure of that. It may be pretty hard for people raised in modern society with supermarkets to find food in the wild... successfully. But it should be a lot closer to your typical D&D character's experiences. So the DC really shouldn't be set as high as you would think would be appropriate for people like us.

 

[Water Bob]

I'm OK with it being fairly easy for a trained person to find food and water, but I'd think that person would need at least one rank in Survival.

The problem here is that the Take 10 makes it automatic for just about EVERYBODY to be able find food and water when in the wilderness.

If EVERYBODY can find food and water, then why even have the rule or waste the space under Survival? Why not just say that Everybody can do it and be done with it?

But, instead, it says it's a DC 10 throw.

I'm wondering if RAI is that no Taking 10 is allowed.




Because if you remove the Take 10, the problem goes away. I can see the city person with the WIS 10 having a 50% chance of feeding themselves out in the wilderness.

That makes sense to me. Automatically allowing them to find food and water (remember finding prey is one thing, catching prey is an entirely different matter) doesn't.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Because everybody can't.

You are not looking at this in the full context of what is occuring. First, the character needs a Wisdom score of 10. Using the 4d6 drop the lowest method means that ~ 17.5% of the time a roll will result in a 9 or less; using 3d3 and the chances the roll results in a 9 increases to ~ 37.5%. Assuming characters value their ability scores equally (or ability scores are rolled in order), then we can safely state that somewhere between 17.5% and 37.5% of all characters will have a 9 or less in Wisdom and thus be unable to "take 10" and succeed on a Survival check without having any skill ranks in Survival.

Second, conditions need to be right to forage for food and water. We can easily state that foraging during the winter is unfavorable just as foraging in a desert is; or if a fire recently burned through the area; or if the local water table was contaminated by a Hezrou demon! All these situations increase the DC by 2. Assuming the 4d6 method used above ~ 64.5% of the rolls will result in a 13 or less and thus being unable to "take 10." With 3d6 ~ 83.8% of the population will be unable to "take 10" in unfavorable conditions.

Everybody can succeed on a Survival check by "taking 10?" Not bloody likely.

 

[The Red King]

I'm OK with it being fairly easy for a trained person to find food and water, but I'd think that person would need at least one rank in Survival.

The problem here is that the Take 10 makes it automatic for just about EVERYBODY to be able find food and water when in the wilderness.

If EVERYBODY can find food and water, then why even have the rule or waste the space under Survival? Why not just say that Everybody can do it and be done with it?

But, instead, it says it's a DC 10 throw.

I'm wondering if RAI is that no Taking 10 is allowed.



Because if you remove the Take 10, the problem goes away. I can see the city person with the WIS 10 having a 50% chance of feeding themselves out in the wilderness.

That makes sense to me. Automatically allowing them to find food and water (remember finding prey is one thing, catching prey is an entirely different matter) doesn't.

Living in medieval times before supermarkets is the equivilant of probably 5 ranks in survival.

If you lived in that kind of society, you could track down small game, and find water, make a fire and cook.

Would it be harder for the non-adventurer types? Sure. A deposed prince and his court are screwed in the forrest, but players have been around the block on this topic.

i say taking a 10 is not only fine, but to be expected, unless they are from a cold region and end up in the desert or some other area that is way out of their experiences.

 

[Wik]

I disagree. Maybe for US, it'd be too tough to accomplish on a regular basis. But people didn't use to have supermarkets. Humans managed to survive just fine as hunter/gatherers. Finding enough food and water to keep yourself alive, unless in extremely harsh conditions, should not be particularly hard.

Being able to take 10 and keep yourself nourished makes perfect sense.

And I'm gonna disagree.

I am a pretty avid camper. I know which foods are poisonous and which are edible. I know how to make bannock bread, and while I'm a pretty crappy fisherman, I know how to fish. And I can tell you, if you put me out in the bush and told me to fend for myself, it'd be a hell of a lot harder than a "DC 10" check to fend for myself, WHILE STILL TRAVELLING.

Not to mention that to do that I'd need fishing gear and the like. And, for what it's worth, this was paralleled in medieval times, when travelling was very difficult, simply because of the difficulty in procuring food and water.

Hell, my father used to take weeks off when he was a kid and go out into the bush to live. He'd bring nothing but the clothes on his back and a hatchet, and keep himself going. But it took an entire days' worth of focus to do so. Even that survivorman guy was dedicating all of his time to survival, and very little towards anything else.

 

[orion90000]

To throw in my 2 cents: Who keeps up with rations anyways? We have just always assumed that food is taken care of. Why would you go off on a long journey without making sure that you were prepared to eat. I usually tell the PCs to subtract a few gold to cover little things.

Unless you are making this into an encounter/adventure in itself or you are trying to teach them a lesson... But I would rather smash something and make some money than worry whether I'm eating berries or steak.

 

[Water Bob]

To throw in my 2 cents: Who keeps up with rations anyways?

I do. I'm old school. Back in my 1E AD&D days, the DM that taught me had a rule that if it wasn't on your sheet, then you didn't have it. He didn't assume anything.

I play the same way, right down to PCs having socks and loincloths*.

In fact, we just completed our first story arc, and when the PCs got back to town, I had them all roll to see how well their clothes held up. They may need to spend coin to replace what they've got.

When PCs buy trail rations, I make a note. If they've got a week's worth, and they go 8 days, then they're out of food that one day.





*You're going to comment that it sounds like my game gets bogged down in details, but it doesn't. Typically, on your loincloth, you write that down one time and forget about it. But, you get it there, on your page. In our case, we use index cards. Each piece of equipment gets a card. Stuff that gets traded among players is just swapping of cards. Stuff left behind at the village goes to the GM for safekeeping. It's pretty simple and unobtrusive.

 

[orion90000]

I don't want to swap loincloths...

 

[Dandu]

You need to be more secure in your masculinity.