The rules for starvation are, for the most part, straightforward.
But realistically-speaking, when people start to go low on food, they usually start rationing their food to make it last as long as possible.
So... are there any rules for this? It came up in our game last night, and I hadn't really thought about it beforehand, so I couldn't really figure out the best way to handle it. It ended up not being an issue this time, but it might very well come up again later.
No, there are not. As far as Pathfinder is concerned, either you got your daily food or you didn't.
If you want suggestions for houserules to cover it, you could count each day with 1-X% of required food count as X% days completely without food. That is, if you eat 2/3 of the required amount, each 24 hours that goes by counts as 1-2/3 = 1/3 of a day of starvation, so 72 hours counts as a full day and you can go triple that "in growing discomfort" before you start making Con checks.
If you eat 60% of required food for three days (3 * 40% = 1.2 days' worth foodless) and then ration more tightly down to say 30% of required food, after 24 more hours you're 1.2+.7 = 1.9 days' foodless, another 24 gets you to 1.9+.7 = 2.6, another takes you to 3.5 and then you have to start making Con checks (first one when you hit/pass 4.0 days' foodlessness).
I'm pretty sure that sounds like more math work than it actually would be; optimizing it is up to the PCs, not you.
And remember, cannibalism is most efficient if you resort to it early, before the victims have eaten much of your other food! ;-)
Pathfinder doesn't worry about this much since generally the expectation of the game is not that you will have trouble with survival.
With a DC 10 survival check while moving at half speed you can find food in the wilderness, with no adjustment to the DC based on environment. For every 2 points you beat it by you can provide food for another person.
And, since you can take 10 on survival the only way a person can by the rules fail to provide food for themselves is to have a wisdom below 10. And generally speaking, a friend in the party will be able to provide food for that person anyways.
So the rules aren't thought out well or elaborated on much for starvation.
If this is coming up in your campaign you are playing a game that has deviated from the "average" expectations for Pathfinder. Not to say this is a bad thing, just that Pathfinder isn't really the game to play for "survival" types games.
Coming up next GenCon: The D20 version of "Don't Starve".
Haha. Well in this mission, the party was crossing a mountain range to free a captured noble, the landscape was relatively barren and time was of the essence because those slave camps were known to have high mortality. So traveling at half speed was far from ideal. A few sessions prior, they also ran out of food while lost at sea, and the ship wasn't equipped for fishing, it was merely a cargo cog (no trained crew left on the ship). Food came up a few time and likely will again.
Haha. Well in this mission, the party was crossing a mountain range to free a captured noble, the landscape was relatively barren and time was of the essence because those slave camps were known to have high mortality. So traveling at half speed was far from ideal. A few sessions prior, they also ran out of food while lost at sea, and the ship wasn't equipped for fishing, it was merely a cargo cog (no trained crew left on the ship). Food came up a few time and likely will again.
Traveling at half-speed may not be ideal, but if it's the difference between starving and feeding yourself the choice is obvious. The noble may die, but if you starve you will die and then he will die anyways. Besides which, raise dead is a thing. You reclaim the corpse from the slavers and go to your local cleric for a raise dead.
As for the ship....the ship doesn't need to be a fishing ship. There should almost certainly be a fishing pole or two on board. You're talking about feeding yourself out in open water for a few days. You can survive on fish you catch. You might have to worry about scurvy is you spend a month+ on the ship without proper nutrition, but not in a weeks time.
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Maybe something like this:
Determine how many extra "days" they can squeeze out of their remaining rations - the PCs are essentially free to choose this number once the reality of scarcity sets in.
They don't have to make Starvation checks for that additional amount of days. But after that time has elapsed, they begin making the Starvation checks with an added penalty equal to the number of days they extended.
So: X more days, but then -X.
i cant remember what level of spell it is its either level 2 or 3 so a level 3 or 5 cleric can prepare it, its a feast that feeds 1 person per caster level i think should solve any problems
Traveling at half-speed may not be ideal, but if it's the difference between starving and feeding yourself the choice is obvious. The noble may die, but if you starve you will die and then he will die anyways. Besides which, raise dead is a thing. You reclaim the corpse from the slavers and go to your local cleric for a raise dead.
As for the ship....the ship doesn't need to be a fishing ship. There should almost certainly be a fishing pole or two on board. You're talking about feeding yourself out in open water for a few days. You can survive on fish you catch. You might have to worry about scurvy is you spend a month+ on the ship without proper nutrition, but not in a weeks time.
Well you can go 3 day without even risking con checks, and they were about three days from the suspected location of the slave hub. Making it to their destination, and *then* hunting for food, should have theoretically worked to avoid any penalties. But that's kind of part of the question. If they only eat every second or every third day, does it reset every time? Slowing down only now and then hampers a mission when time is critical much less than slowing down every day. This only became an issue after burning their 6 rations' each's worth, though, but on the 7th day they crossed and defeated a large orc patrol and took their food.
Also, raise dead isn't a thing in this campaign. E6, but even that aside, they were still lvl 1 and hired by the noble's brother, but it's really low nobility and they probably couldn't have dished out the cash for it anyways. Equally, being lvl 1 means they don't have access to magical food, which is also hard to get anyways because it's a low-magic setting where magic requires minor artifacts to cast and they've only just found the first one last session. The only non-martial is an alchemist for the time being, too.
For the ship, that was their starting "mission" if you will. The party started out as oar-rowers on slave ships, the first thing on their agenda was to break free from their shackles and mutiny when the slave ship got attacked. The warship escorting the cog (which had just been captured a few days prior with them transferred to it then) left to chase the attacking corsair and then they tried to pilot the ship back to the coast. They were always "close" to a landmass, but they didn't have any idea where they were (didn't want to land at another slaver nation) and they did really poor on the sailing checks. The cog, initially, was staffed with enough competent sailors that finishing would never ever have been necessary, as the routes weren't long enough to burn through all that many rations.
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Well you can go 3 day without even risking con checks, and they were about three days from the suspected location of the slave hub. Making it to their destination, and *then* hunting for food, should have theoretically worked to avoid any penalties.Traveling at half-speed may not be ideal, but if it's the difference between starving and feeding yourself the choice is obvious. The noble may die, but if you starve you will die and then he will die anyways. Besides which, raise dead is a thing. You reclaim the corpse from the slavers and go to your local cleric for a raise dead.
As for the ship....the ship doesn't need to be a fishing ship. There should almost certainly be a fishing pole or two on board. You're talking about feeding yourself out in open water for a few days. You can survive on fish you catch. You might have to worry about scurvy is you spend a month+ on the ship without proper nutrition, but not in a weeks time.
Actually, that's probably the solution to the rationing question as well:
Eat every other day.
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day. So if you eat only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you never go more than three days without food, so you avoid the constitution checks, and you use only three days of rations out of seven.
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Actually, that's probably the solution to the rationing question as well:
Eat every other day.
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day. So if you eat only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you never go more than three days without food, so you avoid the constitution checks, and you use only three days of rations out of seven.
Yea, I added a mention of this in my edit I just did. But... that doesn't sit right to me. Why would anyone eat every day, if it's mechanically the same as eating every 3rd day? But I guess this might be RAW, leaving me to seek more homebrewed solutions.
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Yea, I added a mention of this in my edit I just did. But... that doesn't sit right to me. Why would anyone eat every day, if it's mechanically the same as eating every 3rd day?Actually, that's probably the solution to the rationing question as well:
Eat every other day.
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day. So if you eat only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you never go more than three days without food, so you avoid the constitution checks, and you use only three days of rations out of seven.
Because eating every third day is, per rule, uncomfortable. (And eating itself is generally pleasurable.) Most people, even in the real world, eat more than they actually need when they have an opportunity to do so, and Golarion (or at least the parts documented) is wealthy enough to be closer to the United States or Western Europe than Burundi or Chad.
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ya thats it altho i thought it had feast in the name for some reasoni cant remember what level of spell it is its either level 2 or 3 so a level 3 or 5 cleric can prepare it, its a feast that feeds 1 person per caster level i think should solve any problemsCreate Food and Water?
Heroes' Feast.
"You bring forth a great feast, including a magnificent table, chairs, service, and food and drink."
As a solution to starving on a wilderness march, it's a bit... flashy.
It's a 6th level spell. If you are in a party with a 11+ level Cleric and you are still worried about finding food then something terrible must have happened. Not only that but if the problem is finding enough calories to survive and your solution is to magicly conjure a Michelin-starred restaurant then... congratulations, you are thinking like a proper adventurer. High-level PCs are a bunch of arrogant thugs, this is exactly the sort of overkill they would do.
Well you can go 3 day without even risking con checks, and they were about three days from the suspected location of the slave hub. Making it to their destination, and *then* hunting for food, should have theoretically worked to avoid any penalties.Traveling at half-speed may not be ideal, but if it's the difference between starving and feeding yourself the choice is obvious. The noble may die, but if you starve you will die and then he will die anyways. Besides which, raise dead is a thing. You reclaim the corpse from the slavers and go to your local cleric for a raise dead.
As for the ship....the ship doesn't need to be a fishing ship. There should almost certainly be a fishing pole or two on board. You're talking about feeding yourself out in open water for a few days. You can survive on fish you catch. You might have to worry about scurvy is you spend a month+ on the ship without proper nutrition, but not in a weeks time.
Actually, that's probably the solution to the rationing question as well:
Eat every other day.
A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day. So if you eat only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you never go more than three days without food, so you avoid the constitution checks, and you use only three days of rations out of seven.
I think that explains the "once every three days" time frame for restoring rations in one of my favorite magic items, the Versatile Vest.
Morale seems a very significant issue when you start telling your party there isn't even time to hunt for food on the way, that they're just going to have to force march to the destination while foregoing food.
Even if the reason for getting there quickly is just and noble, said just and noble cause may not be echoed by all your allies.
But there are no mechanical effects tied to "morale" and "discomfort"...
The level 1 cash-starved party (that has no access to any magically created food nor magic item) was sent on an exfiltration mission to save a certain person from an orcish slave camp, well behind enemy lines. They were offered a reward for bringing back his corpse, or a many times greater one for bringing him back alive. The characters knew that many slaves were overworked and had a poor lifespan, the players knew that when they arrived at the destination, the character's life expectancy would be rolled and compared to the time it took them to get there. The players wanted to achieve all objectives perfectly, and IC their cash-starved characters also badly needed that bonus sum to get up on their feet and start getting decent equipment for themselves (the whole party had maybe about 100gp of wealth combined).
Rationing limited food on an urgent quest to far away land is a common trope. Frodo and Bilbo didn't start traveling half speed every day to feed themselves along the road, they did their best to ration their lambdas bread, for example.
Mechanically, I guess there's little incentive to eat more than every third day. But that's not how hunger or rationing works in real life... It seems fairly ridiculous that the only difference between eating normally and eating once every third day is the cost of the food you are ingesting...
But there are no mechanical effects tied to "morale" and "discomfort"...
The level 1 cash-starved party (that has no access to any magically created food nor magic item) was sent on an exfiltration mission to save a certain person from an orcish slave camp, well behind enemy lines. They were offered a reward for bringing back his corpse, or a many times greater one for bringing him back alive. The characters knew that many slaves were overworked and had a poor lifespan, the players knew that when they arrived at the destination, the character's life expectancy would be rolled and compared to the time it took them to get there. The players wanted to achieve all objectives perfectly, and IC their cash-starved characters also badly needed that bonus sum to get up on their feet and start getting decent equipment for themselves (the whole party had maybe about 100gp of wealth combined).
Rationing limited food on an urgent quest to far away land is a common trope. Frodo and Bilbo didn't start traveling half speed every day to feed themselves along the road, they did their best to ration their lambdas bread, for example.
Mechanically, I guess there's little incentive to eat more than every third day. But that's not how hunger or rationing works in real life... It seems fairly ridiculous that the only difference between eating normally and eating once every third day is the cost of the food you are ingesting...
There is also no mechanical benefit to bathing, or to wearing clean clothes, or to brushing your teeth regularly. There is also no such thing as malnutrition, so you could eat polished rice every day for the rest of your life, without suffering any ill effects.
Some aspects simply have to be handled through role-playing.
If getting there as soon as possible is a factor, I will mention that I did hear even sleeping has no mechanical benefit if you don't need to regain spells. So you could just speed up your travels by not sleeping, eating only every third day, and omitting any other basic requirements (such as restroom breaks).
Of course, if this all seems ridiculously difficult for a group of people to endure, that's because it is. If your GM is pushing your party members to such a ridiculous extent that they have to live in conditions worse than the slaves they're trying to free just to complete the mission, then this level of suffering is probably to be expected, but if he's using some method to establish that the slaves are at risk of dying from being overworked (which has no written basis), who's to say he won't hold the party to the same risk?
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Sleep: What penalties happen if a character stays up all night without sleep?
The character is fatigued.
Oh, there was a FAQ. Good to know!
If getting there as soon as possible is a factor, I will mention that I did hear even sleeping has no mechanical benefit if you don't need to regain spells. So you could just speed up your travels by not sleeping, eating only every third day, and omitting any other basic requirements (such as restroom breaks).
Of course, if this all seems ridiculously difficult for a group of people to endure, that's because it is. If your GM is pushing your party members to such a ridiculous extent that they have to live in conditions worse than the slaves they're trying to free just to complete the mission, then this level of suffering is probably to be expected, but if he's using some method to establish that the slaves are at risk of dying from being overworked (which has no written basis), who's to say he won't hold the party to the same risk?
First of all, I'm the GM of the game. Second of all, I wasn't pushing them to opt any strategy in particular: I told them the stakes, I told them the odds, what risks they would take and what strategy they would opt to was fully up to them. They didn't even need to accept the mission, though I expected them to.
A lot of your other points are also untrue. There are penalties for lack of sleep. Walk all day? Risks of fatigue as per the forced march rules. Restroom breaks... maybe not, but I'd find that rather simple to run with con checks or the like. For no mechanics for slaves dying for too much work...? Why wouldn't there be. They can be starved to death. They can be beat to death. Left without water. There are many ways for people to die in slave camps. "Shot while trying to escape" would have probably been it, but I could have thought of other things. Nutrition feels like a key aspect of survival and I'm kind of surprised no splatbook touches the issue. Food scarcity is a common trope. The closest I could find is scurvy... which, actually, might be one way to handle it.
Basically, I wanted to know if there were rules to ration food or malnutrition. It appears there aren't. I'll homebrew something, then.