You are skilled at surviving in the wild and at navigating in the wilderness. You also excel at following trails and tracks left by others.

Several modifiers may apply to the Survival check, as given on Table: Survival DC Modifiers.

Common Uses

Avoid Getting Lost/Avoid Natural Hazards

You can use the Survival skill to avoid getting lost or avoid natural hazards and you make a Survival check whenever the situation calls for one.

Retry? To avoid getting lost or avoid natural hazards, you make a Survival check whenever the situation calls for one. Retries to avoid getting lost in a specific situation or to avoid a specific natural hazard are not allowed. For finding tracks, you can retry a failed check after 1 hour (outdoors) or 10 minutes (indoors) of searching.

Follow Tracks

To find tracks or to follow them for 1 mile requires a successful Survival check. You must make another Survival check every time the tracks become difficult to follow. If you are not trained in this skill, you can make untrained checks to find tracks, but you can follow them only if the DC for the task is 10 or lower. Alternatively, you can use the Perception skill to find a footprint or similar sign of a creature's passage using the same DCs, but you can't use Perception to follow tracks, even if someone else has already found them.

You move at half your normal speed while following tracks (or at your normal speed with a –5 penalty on the check, or at up to twice your normal speed with a –20 penalty on the check). The DC depends on the surface and the prevailing conditions, as given on table.

Action A Survival check made to find tracks is at least a full-round action, and it may take even longer.

Retry? For finding tracks, you can retry a failed check after 1 hour (outdoors) or 10 minutes (indoors) of searching.

Tracking Modifiers

• Class A ranger gains a bonus on Survival checks when using this skill to find or follow the tracks of a favored enemy.
• Feats If you have the Self-Sufficient feat, you get a +2 bonus on all Survival checks. If you have 10 or more ranks in Survival, the bonus increases to +4.
• Size and Number of Creatures being Tracked: See Table: Modifiers to Survival Checks when Tracking below.
• Terrain:
• Very Soft Ground: Any surface (fresh snow, thick dust, wet mud) that holds deep, clear impressions of footprints.
• 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.
• 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). The creature might leave some traces (broken branches or tufts of hair), but it leaves only occasional or partial footprints.
• Hard Ground: Any surface that doesn't hold footprints at all, such as bare rock or an indoor floor. Most streambeds fall into this category, since any footprints left behind are obscured or washed away. The creature leaves only traces (scuff marks or displaced pebbles).

¹ For a group of mixed sizes, apply only the modifier for the largest size category.
² Apply only the largest modifier from this category.

Survive in the Wilderness

You can keep yourself and others safe and fed in the wild. See Table: Survival DCs by Task for DCs for various tasks that require Survival checks.

Action Varies. A single Survival check may represent activity over the course of hours or a full day.

Retry? For getting along in the wild or for gaining the Fortitude save bonus noted in Table: Survival DCs by Task, you make a Survival check once every 24 hours. The result of that check applies until the next check is made.

Modifiers

• Training If you are trained in Survival, you can automatically determine where true north lies in relation to yourself.
• Class A ranger gains a bonus on Survival checks when using this skill to find or follow the tracks of a favored enemy.
• Feats If you have the Self-Sufficient feat, you get a +2 bonus on all Survival checks. If you have 10 or more ranks in Survival, the bonus increases to +4.

Survival Unchained

Source PFU

About This Section Optionally, a character who reaches 5, 10, 15, or 20 ranks in a skill unlocks various bonuses and abilities unique to that skill. The unchained rogue uses these rules extensively, but others can gain access to them with a new feat.

In this system, characters unlock additional abilities when they attain 5, 10, 15, and 20 ranks in a skill. The skill unlocks system interfaces with the unchained rogue to make the rogue the true master of skills.

Skill unlocks give characters new abilities and ways to use their skills upon reaching 5, 10, 15, and 20 ranks in a skill. Any character with the Signature Skill feat can earn skill unlocks for a single skill, and they are a prime feature of the revised version of the rogue who uses her rogue's edge ability to gain skill unlocks for several of her most iconic skills. Alternatively, you might make skill unlocks a universal part of the game, but you should be aware they add significant power and flexibility to skills, so giving them for free to all classes would grant power boosts to other highly skilled classes such as the investigator and bard, particularly in comparison to the rogue. Another alternative is to eliminate access to the Signature Skill feat, limiting skill unlocks to rogues and rogues alone.

With sufficient ranks in Survival, you earn the following.