A Level 1 wizard is lost in the woods. What type of check should I made to try to figure out the path to a close village?
A Survival check (DC 15) keeps you from getting lost. You can use this skill untrained, so unless you dumped his Wisdom, you should be able to (eventually) find your way out.
My question, however, is what is the Nine Hells is a 1st level wizard doing roaming alone in the woods to begin with?
Master Arminas
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Survival, DC 15.
From the PRD (Linkage to Skill
15 Keep from getting lost or avoid natural hazards, such as quicksand.
This is a default-able skill if they do not have it based on Wisdom bonus.
this would tell you which way was North, If you are truly lost after that, you need something like Knowledge Geography to know the locations of nearby villages, etc.
My question, however, is what is the Nine Hells is a 1st level wizard doing roaming alone in the woods to begin with?
Master Arminas
If you may know: It was a GREAT PARTY!!!!
Besides leveling the Wisdom or the Survival Skill are there any other "normal" ways to improve this check?
First, I would take a look at page 424 of the core rulebook.
Reading it and page 107 right now! Thanks for the tip!
My question, however, is what is the Nine Hells is a 1st level wizard doing roaming alone in the woods to begin with?
Master Arminas
If you may know: It was a GREAT PARTY!!!!
Besides leveling the Wisdom or the Survival Skill are there any other "normal" ways to improve this check?
Masterwork tools for the Survival skill.
Guidance can help and is a spell within a 1st level wizard's capabilities.
- Gauss
Depending how close the village or path is and how well you can see through the trees, you could try sending out message in different directions until you get a response. It's only a cantrip, but it might be worth a try.
The PSRD says about survival DC 15: Gain a +2 bonus on all Fortitude saves against severe weather while moving up to half your overland speed, or gain a +4 bonus if you remain stationary. You may grant the same bonus to one other character for every 1 point by which your Survival check result exceeds 15.
Does it means that I have to do 2 check? 1 to get the bonus and a second one to calculcalate the fortitute save?
Guidance can help and is a spell within a 1st level wizard's capabilities.
- Gauss
Isn't it just for clerics and druids?
Send out your bird familiar to scout?
Can I really do that?
Isn't it just for clerics and druids?Guidance can help and is a spell within a 1st level wizard's capabilities.
- Gauss
Bah, yup. Brain misfire. Blame the heat baking my brain. I will.
- Gauss
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Leave a trail of breadcrums. Eat the birds that come to feed off your bread crumbs. Eventually, you'll come across a house made of candy. Kill the woman inside here. Don't even wait for her to speak or ask you any questions. Just kill her. Ususrp her magic and make this your new home.
Note this plan works for all classes.
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As a real answer. Climb a tree and look for smoke or palls of smog. Mark the direction in some clever wizarding way (like pen and parchemnt) and head in that direction.
Repeat this step every so often and adjust your course accordingly. Eventually you'll either come to a house, village or brush fire.
Skill checks are there to use if you don't want to solve solutions yourself. Although, sometimes they're played to determine what your character knows rather than what you as a player will know. I guess that comes down to game style. We've tried both ways and they're equally fun.
Cheers
Thanks a lot everybody! Great answers as always!
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Survival is the obvious skill to use for finding your way in the woods.
That doesn't mean it's the only way to do it. Climbing trees to look for smoke is one means of finding your way out.
Finding a stream and following it downstream is another. Eventually it will join a larger stream and it is highly unlikely that it will be long before you find some humanoid activity.
Follow migratory birds. Most of them fly to water. Water is where you find food at least, but also where you're likely to find people.
Start a controlled but very smoky fire and wait for the local druid to come kick your ass.
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Find a stream then follow it, water almost always leads to civilization.
Someone forgot their Survivorman/Les Stroud: watercourses, train tracks, snowmobile trails etc aren't ALWAYS a guaranteed line to civilization. If you follow them the wrong way, or the settlement's too far, or any number of other factors, you may die before finding home.
This thread is quite possibly one of the BEST reasons to take an animal familiar instead of a piece of jewelry!
On top of aid another and such on some minor skill checks it can also scout around for you. It's skill bonuses could be invaluable in this situation.
Beyond this if said wizard is TRULY lost cantrips are now your best friend. Resistance plus your Survival skill grant bonuses to fort saves to resist the elements; Spark to start a signal fire (not to mention one of the NUMEROUS other spells that create light effects in your IMMEDIATE vicinity which, if coupled with a mirror polished up with a Prestidigitation spell could be a lifesaver); a properly placed Ghost Sound to echo through your surroundings.
Spark to start a fire, then drench on your firewood, and finally a Breeze to keep those coals smoldering beneath the wet wood - lots of smoke and eventually a stoked fire that you can spread into 3 parts.
Use prestidigitation to mark your path with garishly colored ribbon - the contrast is easier to see against the woodlands.
find an open spot, stand there with a pole for a handfull of minutes and watch where the sun throws the shadow - that can help you pick out your directional bearing. Rub a sliver of iron on some wool, then suspend it in a Scoop of water to find magnetic north.
For food while traveling, look around you, see what other animals are eating. Use detect poison liberally. Stand motionless just inside a stream, until fish get used to you; then use Daze on one of them as it gets close and finally shoot it with a ray of frost (works better at night). Snack often and keep a constant stream of calories going into your body.
For shelter if you don't make it out day one use sticks woven over one another for a shelter. Use your mage hand to push/pull branches and make the work easier. Use the same hand to dump 5lbs at a time of leaves/forest debris around the floor for a bed while you layer similar debris or bark over the top. Finally Spark yourself a fire in a pit just outside and settle into your shelter and while away the hours til dawn napping or mending/cleaning your gear.
If all else fails and you can't find civilization, begin challenging bigger and bigger animals with your spells. They'll either kill you or get you the experience you need to get from 1st to 2nd, and eventually to 3rd level. Now you've got the skills, spells, and baseline hit points to manufacture an ENTIRE KINGDOM in those wilds, if your GM gives you enough time...
So? How can I use my familiar to scout? I didnt find any rules for that!
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Also consider:
Knowledge(local) -- maybe if you are from the area.
Knowledge(Geography) -- more generally useful.
Knowledge(nature) -- not as likely to be helpful on its own but if you know what side of the tree moss always grows on combine with what area you are in (thanks to knowledge(geography) you can at least know what direction you need to travel in.
For scouting with the bird, go read what familiars have at level 1.
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As a real answer. Climb a tree and look for smoke or palls of smog. Mark the direction in some clever wizarding way (like pen and parchemnt) and head in that direction.
Repeat this step every so often and adjust your course accordingly. Eventually you'll either come to a house, village or brush fire.
Skill checks are there to use if you don't want to solve solutions yourself. Although, sometimes they're played to determine what your character knows rather than what you as a player will know. I guess that comes down to game style. We've tried both ways and they're equally fun.
Cheers
That just swaps it from a DC 15 wisdom based check (that the wizard may or may not have skill in) to a DC 15 strength based skill check (which the wizard will most likely not have skill point in). while both are good ideas, the wizard may have an easier time looking at the surrounding trees, moss, animal tracks, position of the sun, etc that survival represents.
RP based ideas are great, the skill rolls are there to help figure out of your idea is either a) possible by the wizard (climb check for the tree), or b) noticed and remembered by the wizard (survival check).
For scouting with the bird, go read what familiars have at level 1.
You mean the CRB page 83? At first level "Because of the link’s limited nature,only general emotions can be shared". So I dont think I can order it to scout base on that!
If you have a raven, you can converse. Otherwise, you could use handle animal. The familiar has an int of 6, so it's got the brains of a 4th grader.
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Send out your bird familiar to scout?Can I really do that?
Raven or Thrush familiars can speak one language of the master's choice, and at level 1, your familiar has Intelligence 6 - enough to recognize a village and tell you which direction to head in. Have it fly above the trees every half hour or so to keep you headed in the right direction and you should get there eventually.
My conjurer has a magpie familiar (using the stats for Raven; note the bonus to Appraise), and I'm extremely satisfied. The main value is as a scout; he rolls his own Perception checks (with a pretty decent bonus, because Perception is a class skill for familiars), so basically I've got a backup Perception buddy. But it gets better: he can fly up, and you can see a LOT farther from high up, which means we have a good chance to spot enemies long before they can spot us.
My question, however, is what is the Nine Hells is a 1st level wizard doing roaming alone in the woods to begin with?
Master Arminas
If you may know: It was a GREAT PARTY!!!!
Besides leveling the Wisdom or the Survival Skill are there any other "normal" ways to improve this check?
Learn to fly or teleport.
You mean the CRB page 83? At first level "Because of the link’s limited nature,only general emotions can be shared". So I dont think I can order it to scout base on that!
For scouting with the bird, go read what familiars have at level 1.
You can get an animal without an intelligence of 6 that doesn't have an empathic link to you to scout normally but you don't think you can do it with a hyper intelligent animal with a link to you?
It's not like you or it has to convey complex logarithms or rocket science -- it just has to fly up look for buildings and lead you that way.
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As a real answer. Climb a tree and look for smoke or palls of smog. Mark the direction in some clever wizarding way (like pen and parchemnt) and head in that direction.
Repeat this step every so often and adjust your course accordingly. Eventually you'll either come to a house, village or brush fire.
Skill checks are there to use if you don't want to solve solutions yourself. Although, sometimes they're played to determine what your character knows rather than what you as a player will know. I guess that comes down to game style. We've tried both ways and they're equally fun.
Cheers
That just swaps it from a DC 15 wisdom based check (that the wizard may or may not have skill in) to a DC 15 strength based skill check (which the wizard will most likely not have skill point in). while both are good ideas, the wizard may have an easier time looking at the surrounding trees, moss, animal tracks, position of the sun, etc that survival represents.
RP based ideas are great, the skill rolls are there to help figure out of your idea is either a) possible by the wizard (climb check for the tree), or b) noticed and remembered by the wizard (survival check).
I found it interesting that climbing a knotted dope was easier than climbing a tree in the rule book. I can climb trees dead easy, most of them being no harder than a ladder given alternate branch growth and such. I find climbing a suspended rope wit knots in much harder.
As for your statement about the dice rolls. True, unless as DM you're happy to let the
Layers come up with a crafty solution themselves.
Also, GM can change the DC as suitable, or give a bonus to the roll based on the plan. I'd say given time, that wizard could find a real easy tree to climb, Dc less than 10 even.
If you wanted to go with stats running everything, just make the super intelligent wizard make an intelligence roll to come up with a genius way of getting home. Hell, he could take twenty since he'd have plenty of time to think it through.
Sometimes it's nice to let the players drive the action rather than the dice. I think I already mentioned that we do this in our games at times.
Sorry for the spelling and grammar. iPad autocorrect makes this whole exercise painful.
If you took any linguistics languages- then it knows 'em too.
While it can't talk back to you it does allow you to talk to it and give it directions- up to its int. (6, in this case).
Not far fetched if it is a flier to tell it to fly up, look for a village or settlement or smoke from a fire and fly back to you. Then all you have to do is tell him to face the direction of the settlement/fire/etc.
The rules are kinda vague on whether or not it understands you absent your taking skill ranks in Linguistics- at least until level 5.
Having a 6 int gives it the potential for language- it doesn't automatically bestow language skills upon it.
-S
AFAIK any creature with sufficient Int can understand languages (that it knows), but not all creatures are capable of speech themselves. Particularly, most animals/familiars lack speech ability.
Which is why I think the talking bird familiars are the best. Oh, I forgot, the Parrot can also talk.
I agree.
The only rules issue being-
if you know say elven cuz yuo have a high Int, but have forsaken the linguistics skill.
Does your mouse familiar understand elven? or even common?
Sure- it has an int of 6. The familiar description however doesn't say it gets your languages. Not that I could find. It just says it gets your relevant skill ranks.
Until 5th level anyway, when the issue is moot. (since it can talk to you in your own little special language regardless).
-S
How about any familiar, and put a point in its linguistics. It won't be able to talk, but it can understand.
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A wizard is never LOST. He is always precisely where he means to be!
sorcerers on the other hand could get lost, they are like baby wizards with training wheels, as said in a different thread by some one else :-)
Communicating with familars: the concensus in this thread and another is that you're dealing with the mind equivalent to an 11 year old human that understands your words but simply cant respond in kind (unless you went talking familiar route). Applied to the OP this means you can ask it as you would an 11 year old (that has ALL the same skills you do plus any baseline powers or whatever that it gets for its animal form) to help you find your way back to civilization.
I live with an 11 year old. The problem isn't communication or understanding; it's one of motivation.
Anyway, once you've secured your familiar's aid there's a truckload of methods it could use to help you. Fliers can spot civilization from a distance; some have the Scent ability and can smell their way to the trail you were following; some have better climb skills than you and can get highter in the trees than you ever could, for a better view of the landscape. Some however, such as the Snapping Turtle, are almost useless for this exercise.
roleplay your way out
improvise
use int checks if you must
Know geog, history if you need to roll a dice
climb a tree, or send your familiar up the tree
perc to find how you go lost in the first place (tracks, discarded spell components et al)
I'd go with Survival check for Direction Sense. TBO, though, you don't have to venture very far into a woodland before climbing tree will only reveal tops of more trees. If you are a mile+ you won't spot anything smaller than a city with tall buildings.
Your Knowledge (Geography) now comes into play, with situational modifiers based on what's around you that isn't a tree. Forests/Jungles are the worst place to get lost, and the easiest to become lost.