Okay, so this issue came up in our kingmaker game last night. There's nowhere in the RAW that talks about skinning, and we got into an argument about how someone would do it. My friend believes that it's a survival check, with a roll of the dice regardless of whether your trained or not in survival, because you don't have to be trained in survival to use the skill. I have a bit different of a view. I don't believe that you could pick up a knife and skin an animal well at all for the very first time, and if you had experience in skinning animals (i.e. a rank in survival) there would be no need to roll a check. Here are some of the points I made as a counter-argument.
1. No where in survival does it say that skinning can be done. It's just the skill that makes the most sense for the issue.
2. I couldn't randomly skin a creature so well any more than you could randomly stitch me together a t-shirt. Skinning is such a delicate procedure that it has to be taught, or you had to have years of practice in it, it isn't something that you could randomly do the first time you picked up a knife and used it in such a way.
3. With time and practice skinning becomes second nature to a lot of people. So I'd believe that with a rank in survival, there's no need to make a check on skinning an animal.
What do you guys think about it? How would you rule in your games?
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Usually for our games we don't worry about it too much. If the character wants to skin something then it's allowed. If they want to make something out of the skin then it's a craft check as normal. If someone actually had like Profession: Trapper or something like that then we'd probably let them roll on it and assuming they did alright (10-ish) then it'd be done and no one would worry about it.
If there is a ranger at the table it's usually assumed they're the one doing it or at least that's who my characters tend to ask to do it.
Effectively a little role-playing solves it all. Not as if saying your wearing the cloak of that winter wolf you slew is mechanically beneficial so no reason for the rules to get in the way.
We use Survival checks... I couldn't tell you what the DC's are or how they're chosen (I'd guess 10+HD+CR of monster?), but Survival makes the most sense.
Although it could be argued that one who is skilled in Healing would know where and how to cut to skin a creature...
1. No where in survival does it say that skinning can be done. It's just the skill that makes the most sense for the issue.
If you're hunting for food using Survival, you probably can get the skin off a dead animal. Whether the skin is in good enough condition to be used for anything worthwhile, though...
Profession (tanner), Profession (trapper), Craft (Leather) sound better. (I have no idea what you're skinning, or what the goal is, so this might not be useful. Please don't spoil the AP here)
3. With time and practice skinning becomes second nature to a lot of people. So I'd believe that with a rank in survival, there's no need to make a check on skinning an animal.
An easy way to handle this is to set a fairly low DC (say, DC 10 or 12) then let the character take 10. A base 14 +/- StatMod should be able to successfully skin something most of the time.
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What do you guys think about it? How would you rule in your games?
Survival check merely to remove the skin; skinning an animal is a normal part of hunting/living off the wild. It really isn't too tough to remove the skin. You then have a raw skin that will start to rot. Turning the raw skin/fur into something usable (whether skin off or on), is a technical process regarding materials and method. It's also something that can be done with minimal training to a minimum degree of success. Fine leather/furs would be a different story. Craft (leatherworking) to make something out of the hide. Profession (tanner) or (trapper) to make money off of it. All can be used untrained.
Creative Director
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Skinning and poison harvesting are both not in the game on purpose for two reasons:
1) It encourages a type of ghoulish trophy hunting aspect to the game that the designers didn't want to include.
2) It wreaks havoc on the treasure reward system—suddenly you need to account for all of each animal's body parts when you assign it a treasure value. Which really starts to be weird with dragons—if their blood and scales and horns and all that are worth a lot, you end up having to shrink the actual size of their actual hoard to accommodate for game balance. Including a robust harvesting element to the game would have more or less required a complete and total rebuild of the entire economy of the game, which was not something we wanted to do (since we didn't have time, and since we wanted the game to be compatible with 3rd edition D&D).
THAT SAID.
I do allow PCs who want to skin or harvest parts from kills to do so in my game. It's a lot easier to juggle the economic impact of that in a single game, in my experience, than to deal with it in a core rules context.
My general rule for skinning or gathering poison or getting trophies or whatever from a dead creature is to call for the harvester to make a Survival check. The DC is generally 15 + the dead creature's CR. Sometimes I drop the DC to 10 + CR (for mundane harvests of mundane creatures), but I also sometimes increase it to 20 + CR (for exotic stuff).
Profession: Trapper or Profession: Furrier would be able to skin an animal for its pelt, retaining the fur. Craft: Leather or Profession: Leatherworker could do it just for the skin itself. As for doing it untrained, or being able to do it automatically if you are trained, truth is a lot of amateur hunters skin their kills all the time, not with the intent of preserving the hide (though some do) but just to get at the carcass. Someone untrained can (in my opinion) try to skin to either get the hide or retain the fur. And someone who has training will not necessarily automatically succeed (unless he has a high skill and takes 10 of course). Every animal is different, and sometimes getting enough of the pelt off to be useful is difficult or impossible, depending on how it was killed.
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Ok,
I have actually skinned animals, and you are really asking two different questions, although you don't know it.
1) Actually skinning the animal. This is harder than you'd think, if you want to have a usable skin afterwards. If all you want to do is get the skin off, it's easy and anyone can do that. If you want the skin usable afterwards, then you need some skill in it. I'd say a DC 15 to have a usable skin, a DC 10 to just get the skin off.
2) Once you have a usable skin, you have to cure it or it's useless. That's either a Craft (Leathermaking), or Profession (Leathermaking) check, and requires specific knowledge, survival wouldn't do it for you.
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Skinning an animal is definitely a survival check. For all the deer hunters out there would agree. I would set the DC at 10 for medium maybe +2 for every size category larger.
If I were to get really into this, I might think of going with a base DC plus a modifier for size and a modifier for natural armor.
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I agree with MDT on both counts. I knew a girl who went hunting with her boyfriend (neither had ever been hunting before). The boyfriend managed to fell a buck on his first shot. Unfortunately for them, the law in WI at the time was that you have to kill a doe before you're allowed to shoot a buck, meaning they couldn't have the kill cleaned and the meat prepared for them professionally unless they killed a doe (there are places that do that service for you here for a portion of the meat).
They waited until they were both freezing, but never saw another deer. The boyfriend decided to try skinning and cutting up the deer himself in the woods, and found he didn't have the stomach for it after the first few cuts. So his girlfriend did it for him, with no former experience whatsoever. Granted, she wasn't keeping the skin (just stripping the carcass), but they did eat the meat (needing to buy a separate freezer for their apartment to store it all). Neither of them died. Neither of them ever went hunting again, either....
Hearing her story impressed the hell out of me (as I've never gone hunting in my life, either).
My only point is, even a complete amateur is capable of skinning a deer. Making use of the skin is another matter entirely, and a craft check would probably be needed.
Well all of the suggestions above make sense. Sadly, no one agreed with my assessment. ;_; But I'm glad that everyone did post something. The suggestions above were things that I didn't consider. If it were my game, I would probably rule with a DC 10/15 + CR survival check for the act of skinning, and some other DC (probably the same) profession tanner/furrier/trapper or something of the like to keep the fur in as something usable.
Okay, so this issue came up in our kingmaker game last night. There's nowhere in the RAW that talks about skinning, and we got into an argument about how someone would do it. My friend believes that it's a survival check, with a roll of the dice regardless of whether your trained or not in survival, because you don't have to be trained in survival to use the skill.
In our games it is a survival check with a difficult of 15, so most people with an 'outdoorsy' character will almost always take a 10 and make it. Survival coveres most of the outdoor and hunting tasks in the game and skinning a creature is commonly part of that prossess.
We also allow the Profession: Tanner or Profession: Hunter to make the same check.
We allow an attempt untrained. Failure means you ruin the hide your trying to get.
I have been hunting before. Skinning an animal is easy. Field dressing (gutting) is also easy, but quite gross for some.
Easy when doing it first time or after repeated experience?
I never skinned anything myself but I remember my mother who received rabbit or hare from someone else that skinning it before cooking was very hard for her.Taxidermy is another story. Having a fish or deer head mounted is real expensive for a reason.
Yeah. Which reminds me of Brotherhood Of Wolves.
If the players are doing it totally for "flavor" reasons and not trying to get any mechanical reward from it, then I say just let 'em do it. Follow the rule of cool. If it's something cool someone wants to do, and it doesn't harm the game in some way, then roll with it and have a good time.
Either survival, profession(taxidermy), or a heal check of some sort would work for me.
Okay, so this issue came up in our kingmaker game last night. There's nowhere in the RAW that talks about skinning, and we got into an argument about how someone would do it. My friend believes that it's a survival check, with a roll of the dice regardless of whether your trained or not in survival, because you don't have to be trained in survival to use the skill. I have a bit different of a view. I don't believe that you could pick up a knife and skin an animal well at all for the very first time, and if you had experience in skinning animals (i.e. a rank in survival) there would be no need to roll a check. Here are some of the points I made as a counter-argument.
1. No where in survival does it say that skinning can be done. It's just the skill that makes the most sense for the issue.
2. I couldn't randomly skin a creature so well any more than you could randomly stitch me together a t-shirt. Skinning is such a delicate procedure that it has to be taught, or you had to have years of practice in it, it isn't something that you could randomly do the first time you picked up a knife and used it in such a way.
3. With time and practice skinning becomes second nature to a lot of people. So I'd believe that with a rank in survival, there's no need to make a check on skinning an animal.
What do you guys think about it? How would you rule in your games?
I use survival in my game. DC is generally 15. Higher for stranger stuff. Those who aren't trained in survival take a pretty big negative. And I do end up putting a small monetary value onto these things. In most places there's someone who would pay a few gold for most things, but I don't really go crazy with it. If a group downed a dragon, they might be able to sell the horns, or a few scales. But they're not going to be peddling every single dragonscale to make a fortune.
PS: James, ghoulish trophy hunting is already in the game. Just in the form of bragging rights instead of actually taking pieces of dead whatever. It's not a far step from "I killed a dire tiger" to "I killed a dire tiger, his pelt is on the floor over there."
My first instinct was Profession: Tanner, but I think Survival makes plenty of sense too...
On the subject of ghoulish trophies, I think they can add a lot of flavor to certain types of character (Or soup... muauaaahahah.....)
I had one character in my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign who took some sort of trophy off each major enemy (i.e. boss type) that she came across... by the end her trophy bag/necklace was very big, and very gruesome... it was a very interesting character though, and she always took something that made sense for the villain, for instance if someone was a liar she would cut out their tongue.......
good times.
Definitely messes things up if you attach monetary values to the stuff though, obviously, so I made sure to specify it can't be sold, even the dragon's horn etc