Back to Top
 

Survival Skills

Realm of Strife™ > Secondary Skills > Survival Skills

Survival skills are a school of secondary skills that focus on the character’s ability to navigate and thrive in the wilderness, react to danger, handle emergencies, and adapt to challenging environments. They provide characters with tools and abilities to overcome the challenges faced when venturing beyond the safety of civilization and adapt to unforeseen circumstances. These skills may enhance a character’s ability to avoid dangerous encounters, find sustenance, treat injuries, or gain an advantage in stealthy or tactical situations. They reflect a character’s resourcefulness, instincts, and adaptability in the face of adversity.

Many survival skills also allow characters to passively sustain a self-sufficient lifestyle during down time by living off the land.

Bushcraft


Bushcraft is an essential set of skills for those who live their lives in the wild or spend a great deal of time traveling off the beaten path. This makes it an ideal choice for solo adventurers but also highly valuable when traveling with companions that are unaccustomed to life in the wild. Bushcraft encompasses a variety of skills, from simple techniques to start fires, basic tracking and navigational skills, and even advanced methods of using the natural world to your advantage in any situation.

Requires: relatively high Wisdom or Perception

Extra Sensory Perception


There exist those that are gifted with exceptionally keen senses. Some even say that they are so gifted that they can sense events moments before they actually happen.

Requires: relatively high Perception

First Aid


When on the road or during a long campaign access to a faith healer is not always possible. As such many adventurers and soldiers alike take the time to learn some basic First Aid skills, for treating themselves and their comrades. It is an invaluable tool for classes without healing abilities and comes in handy when comrades are injured. If proper First Aid is used on an injured ally, such as setting broken limbs or cleaning wounds, it can in many cases reduce or prevent the chances of Injuries becoming permanent.

Requires: bandages

Herblore


Herb lore is an ancient tradition that is most prevalent amongst druids; however they are not the only ones that see the benefit in learning nature’s secrets. Among her secrets nature can cure many illnesses, provide exotic components for alchemists, or simply provide a revitalizing meal while on the road. See the Herb Lore page for further details.

Hunter


Almost anyone can find small animals while out in the wilderness, usually simply by chance alone. This is typically resolved by rolling Perception stat test modified by the GM depending on the current conditions and environment. Hunters are much more adept at their craft, allowing them to track and kill beasts of all varieties. This comes in particularly handy when trying to locate more elusive creatures. Hunters are also trained in the proper techniques to skin the creatures that they kill.

By default, characters with the Hunter Secondary Skill are hunters of Beasts. However they may instead specify any Order or Metarace of Creatures from the Codex of Creation (excluding Third Creation) as the target of their hunting skills  (i.e. Dragonkind, Vampires, Fey Creatures, etc…).

Unlike most Secondary Skills, ranking up a hunter skill requires not only additional Secondary Skill points, but also proven experience tracking and hunting the creatures in question. As an example, leveling up is not enough of a justification to become a Rank 5 Dragon Hunter, if you have never actually successfully tracked and killed a Dragon.

Lightning Reflexes


The ability to react quickly in the face of danger can not only save your life but also the lives of your friends. The tide of many battles has been turned by one individual’s ability to think and act fast.

Petty Thievery


Petty Thievery allows a on-stealth class or NPC a limited amount of primary stealth skills that can be used while hiding. Petty Thievery is not intended as a means to grant additional skill points to Stealth Classes and therefore cannot be taken as a secondary skill by ANY Stealth Class. Stealth Skills acquired via Petty Theivery Skills can gain ranks, but will typically never be as powerful as when used by a true Stealth Class, however they can still come in handy in those tight (and locked) situations.

Trapper


While trapping wild animals for food is an essential survival skill, it can also have benefits when applied to other creatures as well. Traps are often employed as a deterrent for would be thieves and can even have combat applications if used in conjunction with setting up an ambush. Having a trappers knowledge also makes it easier for you to detect others traps as well. See Supplementary Rules: Traps for more details.

Requires: Trapper’s tools