7.24 Survival (Per)
The Survival skill represents your ability to take care of yourself and others in the wilderness, including the ability to follow tracks.
7.24.1 Common Survival Tasks
Find Sustenance: You can make a Survival check to hunt or forage for food and water. This generally takes a few hours of work to find enough sustenance for you and a small group of allies. The difficulty value and details of what you find depend on the terrain.
Follow Tracks: You can make a Survival check to follow tracks at up to half your normal movement speed. You can move at full speed if you accept a -5 penalty to the check. The difficulty value depends on how easy the tracks are to notice. You must repeat this check whenever the trail changes significantly, such as when it crosses other tracks or passes through a different environment.
Navigate Wilderness: You can make a Survival check while moving overland to avoid natural terrain hazards and getting lost. The difficulty value and consequences of failure depend on the terrain. Overland travel often follows standard roads or paths, which may make this check unnecessary depending on the quality of the road.
Predict Weather: You can make a difficulty value 10 Survival check to predict the local weather for the next day.
7.24.2 Terrain Difficulty Values
These are general guidelines, not exact rules. The GM can tell you more about the specific landscape you are traversing.
| Terrain | Navigation Difficulty Value | Sustenance Difficulty Value |
| Desert | 10 |
20 |
| Forest | 10 | 10 |
| Jungle | 15 | 5 |
| Mountains | 10 | 15 |
| Hills | 5 | 10 |
| Plains | 5 | 10 |
| Swamp | 15 | 15 |
7.24.3 Tracking
One of the key uses for the Survival skill is to follow tracks left by creatures. You can use the Awareness skill to notice signs of passage, but the Survival skill is necessary to follow tracks for any distance. Some suggestions for determining the difficulty of following a trail can be found in Table 7.7: Example Tracking Difficulty Values and Table 7.8: Example Tracking Difficulty Modifiers. The GM may also apply other circumstantial modifiers not listed here.
| Surface | Description | Difficulty Value |
| Very soft ground | Any surface (fresh snow, thick dust, wet mud) that holds deep, clear impressions of footprints. |
0 |
| Soft ground | Any surface soft enough to yield to pressure, but firmer than wet mud or fresh snow, in which a creature leaves frequent but shallow footprints | 5 |
| Firm ground | Most normal outdoor surfaces (such as lawns, fields, woods, and the like) or exceptionally soft or dirty indoor surfaces (thick rugs and very dirty or dusty floors) | 10 |
| Hard ground | Any surface that doesn’t hold footprints at all, such as bare rock or a streambed | 15 |
| Scent | Tracking using the scent ability instead of vision | 5 |
| Condition | Difficulty Modifier |
| Every three creatures in the group being tracked |
-1 |
| Size of creature or creatures being tracked:1 | |
| Fine | +20 |
| Diminutive | +15 |
| Tiny | +10 |
| Small | +5 |
| Medium | +0 |
| Large | -5 |
| Huge | -10 |
| Gargantuan | -15 |
| Colossal | -20 |
| Every 24 hours since the trail was made | +13 |
| Every hour of rain since the trail was made | +1 |
| Fresh snow cover since the trail was made | +10 |
| Poor visibility:2 | |
| Overcast or moonless night | +6 |
| Moonlight | +3 |
| Fog or precipitation | +3 |
| Tracked party hides trail (and moves at half speed) | +5 |
2 Apply only the largest modifier from this category.
3 With scent-based tracking, apply this modifier per hour since the trail was made.