How does the Forager skill feat interact with the Wandering Chef dedication feat?

[Thalionmel]

Hi,

I'm building a recurring flavour NPC for my setting, which will be a male ratfolk witch with the Wandering Chef Dedication (guess the name). I imagine him wandering through the lands of Golarion together with his lanky human friend, taking what he can get, and then setting up a temporary restaurant and improvising cool new foods from what he has foraged.

Thus, I wanted him to have the Forager skill feat to be able to cook for many people.

Now, in the Wandering Chef dedication feat, it says:
"When using the Subsist downtime activity, you can use Crafting or Cooking Lore in place of Survival, and if you roll a failure, you get a success instead."

The Forager feat says:
"While using Survival to Subsist, if you roll any result worse than a success, you get a success. On a success, you can provide subsistence living for yourself and four additional creatures, and on a critical success, you can take care of twice as many additional creatures. You can choose to support half the number of creatures with a comfortable living. Increase the number of additional creatures you feed on a success to eight if you're an expert in Survival, 16 if you're a master, and 32 if you're legendary."

How does this interact? Since I could use Crafting or Cooking Lore instead of Survival, does that mean I would get the enhanced benefits of being expert, master or legendary by being X in Crafting / Cooking Lore? Or do I still need to push Survival to get that?

Thanks,
Tali

[NorrKnekten]

My reading is that the Wandering Chef Dedication's failure to success is something you get regardless of the skill used.

But does the text within Wandering chef mean you still treat it as a survival check? And if so why does it not say that you use your modifier from Crafting/Cooking lore when doing Survival checks the same way Chiurgeon does with Medicine.

So to me, my personal view is that you don't get any benefits from Forager while using Crafting or Cooking Lore since it specifically calls out while using Survival so you would not gain the benefit. Just as if you were using Society in a town.

That said, What I believe the rules say and how I run them are different things... I personally do not run it this way in my games as I think a wandering chef should be able to feed an entire party without issues but still require them to up their survival if they want to feed more people.

[TheFinish]

The way I see it, they should interact woth each other just fine.

Forager says whenever you'd roll Survival to Subsist (as opposed to Society) you get X effect.

Wandring Chef says whenever you'd use Survival to subsist, you can instead use Crafting or Cooking Lore.

So to me you can get the effects of Forager with Crafting or Cooking Lore. Honestly the effect of this is pretty much a ribbon and unlikely to come up in 99% of all games, so might as well do it.

Though I'm curious, since this is an NPC for your setting why are you asking? Just say it works and move on.

[Castilliano]

It doesn't work because the feat doesn't say when doing that activity, it says when using Survival to do that activity. Except as TheFinish noted, it's an NPC so such particulars don't matter. Nearly all NPCs break PC rules because their role matters more (and one might assume the GM won't create and exploit shenanigans). Plus I'd advise not to let rules rigor interfere with the narrative. Later on, if a player is interested in making a similar PC, invent a feat similar to Forager they can take. Hard to imagine there's any nefarious exploit available there.

[Thalionmel]

Thanks for your opinions!

I tend to build my NPCs adhering to the rules so my PCs just have the security of "the GM doesn't cheat on us", and could build a PC just the same way. And while this specific combination might not be exploitable that much, it's an example of several other occasions feats that might interact with each other (or not) in a similar way.

[Ravingdork]

I agree with TheFinish.

[Tridus]

Castilliano wrote:

It doesn't work because the feat doesn't say when doing that activity, it says when using Survival to do that activity. Except as TheFinish noted, it's an NPC so such particulars don't matter. Nearly all NPCs break PC rules because their role matters more (and one might assume the GM won't create and exploit shenanigans). Plus I'd advise not to let rules rigor interfere with the narrative. Later on, if a player is interested in making a similar PC, invent a feat similar to Forager they can take. Hard to imagine there's any nefarious exploit available there.

This. Forager says specifically "when using Survival to Subsist." You are not using Survival. Therefore it doesn't apply.

In order for it to apply, it would use simpler language such as "When using the Subsist activity" in Forager, which would apply Subsist no matter how you're doing it.

[Ravingdork]

Sounds like an order of operations problem. What is the more specific rule?

Which interpretation is more likely to lead to an outcome that is fun for everyone?

I think they work together just fine. Though Forager does state "While using Survival to Subsist...", I think Wandering Chef clearly changes that with the statement, "When using the Subsist downtime activity, you can use Crafting or Cooking Lore in place of Survival..."

The alternative completely ignores one feat's benefits and seems less likely to be fun for anyone, whereas the other allows everything to work per RAW, is probably going to be more fun, and isn't the slightest bit disruptive to game balance.

I'm not sure why anyone would say "no" to this when there really are no upsides to doing so, and there is at least one perfectly valid interpretation of the rules as written that allows for it.

[Castilliano]

Has anybody said "no" as a table ruling or advice? Or that's what the rules say, and that it's either worthwhile or a non-issue to set aside such a legalistic reading. Except the OP seems to desire that, which seems a shame, and goes against Paizo's own advice on rules.

[TheFinish]

To better explain myself, this is how I see it:

Forager: "While using [Survival] to Subsist..."

Wandering Chef: ""When using the Subsist downtime activity, you can use [Crafting] or [Cooking Lore] in place of [Survival], and if you roll a failure, you get a success instead."

Wandering Chef says [Crafting] = [Cooking lore] = [Survival] when you Subsist. Therefore, we can substitue [Survival] with [Cooking Lore] or [Crafting] in Forager and it still works fine.

I can see what other people are saying, but like Ravingdork says it's an order of operations thing. It's either.

We check Forager before applying Wandering Chef -> It works.
We check Wandering Chef before applying Forager -> It doesn't work.

And since this is such a minor thing, why not go with the one that lets the NPC/player do more stuff.

[Guntermench]

It specifies the skill to be rolled, not just the action.

[NorrKnekten]

Its not related to order of operations at all since you do need to partially resolve Wandering Chef first before you even roll, The issue is that Forager states "When using Survival" with Wandering chef stating that you can use Crafting in the cases where you would be able to use Survival.

Regardless of which one you resolve first, Forager states what skill you need to be using and in my reading "You can use crafting instead of survival" is not the same as using Survival.

Simply because we have text where you are effectively able to use another skill's modifier for another skill in the Alchemist Chirurgeon who says that you can use your modifier for Crafting when rolling Medicine. You arent merely using Crafting instead of Medicine, You use your proficiency and attribute modifier in crafting when determining the modifier for Medicine.

Compare the following.
Subsist is typically a [Survival] or [Society] check.
Wandering Chef turns it into a [Crafting/Cooking Lore] check
Forager applies when you Subsist with a [Survival] check, Is it still a [Survival] check if you use another skill?
vs
Chiurgeon using using Advanced First Aid.
First Aid is a [Medicine] Check
Chiurgeon replaces the Modifier used for the [Medicine] Check, but keeps it a [Medicine] check.
Advanced first aid applies when using [Medicine], Which you are since it still is a [Medicine] check, You only changed the modifier for it.

That is the real question, Is it still considered a survival check when applying Wandering Chef? I don't think so in a strict rules sense because it does not explicitly say you are using Survival in the same way Chiurgeon does. The same issues arise with the Bards Versatile Performance, you cannot use Intimidating Prowess or other bonuses to Intimidation same way you can't use bonuses to Survival in the case of Wandering Chef, Because you are not using these skills.

But this is one of the times where I actually argue for GMs to ignore what I believe the rules say simply because i don't think it makes sense for a Chef of all archetypes to be unable to use this feat, Especially since the chef most likely would use survival either way. But Table Advice and Rules Questions are separate issues.

[Thalionmel]

Usually, I'm very flexible with rules and like to modify etc.

In this instance, it was a question for a specific combo, the answer to which could probably also be applied to other instances of feats substituting skills for each other (for example, to stay in the same general region, the City Scavanger Goblin ancestry feat allowing to subsist on Society, or Acrobatic Performer with several of the Performance skill feats). That's why I asked.

[Tridus]

TheFinish wrote:

To better explain myself, this is how I see it:

Forager: "While using [Survival] to Subsist..."

Wandering Chef: ""When using the Subsist downtime activity, you can use [Crafting] or [Cooking Lore] in place of [Survival], and if you roll a failure, you get a success instead."

Wandering Chef says [Crafting] = [Cooking lore] = [Survival] when you Subsist. Therefore, we can substitue [Survival] with [Cooking Lore] or [Crafting] in Forager and it still works fine.

I can see what other people are saying, but like Ravingdork says it's an order of operations thing. It's either.

We check Forager before applying Wandering Chef -> It works.
We check Wandering Chef before applying Forager -> It doesn't work.

And since this is such a minor thing, why not go with the one that lets the NPC/player do more stuff.

People are dramatically overthinking this to try and come to the conclusion they want to come to.

"When using the Subsist downtime activity, you can use [Crafting] or [Cooking Lore] in place of [Survival]"

aka: "Use X in place of Y."

That's it. You're not using X because you're using Y. There's nothing else to this. Order of operations is completely irrelevant here. You were literally never using Survival if you're using Wandering Chef to do this and you don't get to ignore the substitution just because you want to check it in a certain order like this is a poorly coded algorithm.

Even if you did try to do that, it still doesn't work because as soon as you make the substitution you're no longer using Survival and thus no longer meet the condition Forager states for its effect to take place.

You are using Subsist, but you're not using Survival by the very definition of the thing that lets you roll Cooking Lore.

[Claxon]

By my reading, Forager requires the use of Survival. If you don't use Survival while doing the subsist, it doesn't work. There's no order of operations or anything else here that would change the outcome.

That said, this is an NPC.

I know OP said they like to build NPCs using PC rules....and that's fine I guess but that's exactly what's causing the problem.

It's an NPC. Make it do whatever you want. Especially something like this that isn't a combat ability. The NPC can just do it. How? Doesn't matter unless a PC in that game decides they would be interested in doing the same.

It's a feat you created for the NPC that expands on the wandering chef dedication.