[Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

[johndallman]

Fishing is the Per/E skill of catching fish, with whatever methods and equipment are normal to your culture. Different methods presumably have familiarity penalties, but the only listed modifiers are for equipment, which can be improvised. The only default is Per-4.

Survival is the Per/A skill of living off the land, and exploiting the natural environment in general. To live by Survival, you need to roll each day, but you can look after up to 10 other people. Failure causes 2d-4 damage to each person, rolled separately, which can presumably be zero. You can also use it as a knowledge skill about the environment, as an "eye for country", which is useful with Geology and Prospecting, and for trapping wild animals. The listed modifiers are up to -5 for bad weather and equipment modifiers: note that you need at least Personal Basics (B288) to avoid penalties. Survival defaults to Per-5, another specialisation of Survival-3 or Naturalist for the same planet at -3. Camouflage defaults to Survival-2, presumably for the current environment.

Urban Survival is the Per/A skill of surviving without money or assistance in a town or city. It appeared in 3e Compendium I, as Survival (Urban), but became a separate skill in 4e, presumably since it doesn't have meaningful defaults to natural environments. It likely takes familiarity penalties for different TLs and cultures. The only default is Per-5. Edit: A useful thread about it is here.

The reason Fishing isn't part of Survival, along with trapping, is presumably because the same fishing skill seems to work for several different environments that would be different specialisations of Survival, some of which wouldn't be legal specialisations for land-dwelling creatures anyway. And anyone with enough Perception to be good at Survival can learn Fishing easily anyway.

Survival has an comprehensive set of specialisations for different environments, with separate lists for land-dwelling and aquatic (new at 4e) creatures, and defaults between specialisations. Those lists assume an Earth-like planet. Defaults to the same environment type on other planets of the same basic type are at -4, with no default to different types of planet. The GM is free to create specialisations for unusual environments, such as (Radioactive), which don't need to have defaults. A Kromm opinion on handling environment that could come under two specialisations is here.

Foraging rules, covering Survival and Fishing, are on B427; B430 has the use of HT-based Survival (Arctic) in place of HT for surviving cold, and B434 has corresponding rules for heat. Wild animals have Survival at Per for their native environment.

Survival is a common skill on templates for any kind of "outdoors" character; Fishing is usually confined to professionals, and Urban Survival to dedicated city-dwellers. Action has Urban Survival on a lot of its templates, and has uses for it as a supporting skill to Scrounging and Driving. Banestorm has monks who live largely via Survival, and some interesting modifiers; Abydos has uses for Urban Survival. DF expands on Survival as a knowledge skill in DF16, uses lots of flavours of Survival on various specialised characters, and gives quite a few Fishing or Urban Survival. High-Tech has a lot of survival equipment and details of using it. Low-Tech has equipment and methods for Fishing and Survival, and LTC3 has more, including living as a hunter-gatherer. PU3 and PU7 have examples that include all of these skills. Powers, Enhanced Senses, Thaumatology and Chinese Elemental Powers have abilities that improve Survival rolls. Space has familiarity rules for Urban Survival. Ultra-Tech has even more equipment, and Underground Adventures adds the (Underground) specialisation to Survival.

Plenty of my characters have had Survival, rather fewer Urban Survival, and I don't think any have ever had Fishing. What have you, or your players, done with these skills?