Detailed Hunting – an Enhancement to Survival

[Urlord]

According to the description of Pathfinder’s Survival skill with a DC 10 skill check you can “Get along in the wild. Move up to half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10.”

I personally find this an oversimplification. I want more about hunting and it’s not there, so I am making it up.

Hunting involves 3 to 4 activities (1) Locating the game, (2) Stalking the game, (3) Bringing it down and possibly (4) Tracking. For the purposes of these rules, game for hunting is always an animal. What follows are rules for hunting animals:

Time Frame: 3d6x10 minutes

Locating Game – The hunter must state what type of animal they are hunting. It is up to the GM to decide if the animal resides within the search area (approximately 1 square mile). If an animal of that type does not reside in the area, the hunter expends 3 hours and fails to locate an animal of that type or any signs of one. If the animal resides within the area, the DC to locate the animal is its CR+10 (for CRs less than 1, treat as a 0). If the roll fails by 1-4, the time frame has passed and the hunter locates signs of the animal’s presence but not the animal and must continue searching. If the roll fails by 5 or more, not even signs are found.

Stalking the Game – Successful stalking of the animal is the hunter’s survival roll opposed by the animal’s perception roll. If there are multiple stalkers, each stalker rolls and the lowest result is used for everyone. If successful, the hunter gets to a range of 2d10x10 feet. To get closer (half the distance) requires another opposed stalking roll at -2 for the hunter. Each halving of the distance increases the difficulty by an additional -2. If any of the rolls fail, the animal is spooked and gets away.

Bringing down the Game – Successfully stalking an animal allows the hunter to attempt to bring down the animal with a single ranged attack (or melee attack if they can get that close). Roll a survival roll based on the size category of the animal (Tiny or below: DC 5, Small: DC 10, Medium: DC 15, Large: DC 20, and so on…). If the roll succeeds, the animal is brought down with a single shot. If the roll fails by 1-4, the animal takes normal weapon damage. If the normal weapon damage fails to slay the animal, it either flees or attacks (GM’s discretion). If it flees, it may be tracked. If the roll fails by 5+, the attack was unsuccessful.

Tracking a Bleeding Animal – Use the normal survival rules for tracking and grant the hunter a +2 because the animal is wounded and bleeding. If the tracking roll is successful, the animal is found and the hunter is able to kill it. Add 1d6x10 minutes to the total hunting time. If the tracking roll fails by 1-4, add 1 hour to the hunting time and they must make another tracking roll. If the roll fails by 5+ the tracks are lost and the animal got away.

[Mark Hoover]

These are fine rules. Personally I use Survival like this:

If you want to forage, set snares in the morning for small game, fire missile weapons at small game as you pass through an area, scrape river rocks for crustaceans, consume edible insects, etc, Survival as written works fine. These are fine tactics to keep energy up and last in the wild on basic resources; they just don't taste very nice. Still, the name of the skill is Survival, not "Hunting feast".

I think people forget that the Survival skill function of "getting by" in the wilderness starts at one person with DC 10. This is enough food and water for a SINGLE human. A single human doesn't need to bring down a deer to survive; that feeds a large family.

If however you want a serious hunt for game larger than, say, a raccoon, you need to make an event out of it. I'd have tracks found on an initial Survival roll, and then further Survival checks leading the PC(s) to the animal, followed by combat and eventually field dressing the thing. Consider that taking down Medium or larger size game means the PC(s) also have to cook and eat the thing and, if they are practical types they may want to salt or smoke some of the leftovers for future travel.

[WyvernVenom]

I thought about this a bit- not much with hunting, but how much food is needed for an average animal. Here's what I came up with:

There are two types of food: Plant and Meat. Most PC races can eat both, other animals are usually obvious (GM's discretion).

A Fine animal gives 2 points of meat, a Diminutive 4, Tiny 8, Small 16, Medium 32, Large 64, Huge 128, Gargantuan 256, Colossal 512. This amount is variable by GM discretion, but these are a good guideline. With an animal carcass, a DC 15 Survival check is needed to skin and butcher it, otherwise it only yields 3/4 these amounts.

A Small animal needs 1 point of food per day, a Medium 2, and a Large 4. These can be extrapolated, but it's unlikely you need to feed other sizes of creature.

Meat can be preserved for 8 days (not including the day the animal was killed) with a successful DC 15 Survival check. The amount of meat points preserved is 5+the amount by which the check beat 15, and it takes 2 hours to preserve the food, using a decent-sized open fire. Preserved meat weighs 1 pound per 2 points. Plant food can be kept for 4 days and cannot be preserved. Unpreserved meat can be kept for 1 day after the animal was killed.

With Survival checks, the amount by which you exceed 10 is the amount of extra food points gathered. At least 1/4 of this must be plants, 1/4 meat, and the rest can be distributed as needed.

Herbivores in their natural environment can forage enough for their needs, herbivores in a similar environment can find half of what they need, and an herbivore in a foreign environment can't provide for itself.

Also, for your rules, I think they're a bit tough- shouldn't a character be able to say they just search for any animal? It's not like they're going to ignore a deer that happens by just because they're hunting rabbit.