Wilderness Lore (Wis)

     You are skilled at surviving in the wild and at navigating in the wilderness.  You also excel at following trails and tracks left by others.

Check: You can use the Wilderness Lore skill to avoid getting lost or avoid natural hazards and you make a Wilderness Lore check whenever the situation calls for one.

SURVIVAL IN THE WILDERNESS

     You can keep yourself and others safe and fed in the wild.

Retry: For getting along in the wild or for gaining the Fortitude save bonus, you make a Survival check once every 24 hours.  The result of that check applies until the next check is made.

Special: You may take a 10 but not a 20 when making Wilderness Lore checks to survive in the wilderness.

• Trained: If you are trained in Wilderness Lore, you can automatically determine where true north lies in relation to yourself when above ground.  Dwarves can use this ability when underground.
  

Time: Varies.  A single Survival check may represent activity over the course of hours or a full day.

FOLLOW TRACKS

     To find tracks or to follow them for 1 mile requires a successful Wilderness Lore check.  You must make another Wilderness Lore check every time the tracks become difficult to follow.  If you are not trained in this skill, you can make untrained checks to find tracks, but you can follow them only if the DC for the task is 10 or lower.  Alternatively, you can use the Perception skill to find a footprint or similar sign of a creature’s passage using the same DCs, but you can’t use Perception to follow tracks, even if someone else has already found them.

     You move at half your normal speed while following tracks (or at your normal speed with a –5 penalty on the check, or at up to twice your normal speed with a –20 penalty on the check).  The DC depends on the surface and the prevailing conditions, as given on table.

• Very Soft Ground: Any surface (fresh snow, thick dust, wet mud) that holds deep, clear impressions of footprints.
• Soft Ground: Any surface soft enough to yield to pressure, but firmer than wet mud or fresh snow, in which a creature leaves frequent but shallow footprints.
• Firm Ground: Most normal outdoor surfaces (such as lawns, fields, woods, and the like) or exceptionally soft or dirty indoor surfaces (thick rugs and very dirty or dusty floors).  The creature might leave some traces (broken branches or tufts of hair), but it leaves only occasional or partial footprints.
• Hard Ground: Any surface that doesn’t hold footprints at all, such as bare rock or an indoor floor.  Most streambeds fall into this category, since any footprints left behind are obscured or washed away.  The creature leaves only traces (scuff marks or displaced pebbles).

Retry: For finding tracks, you can retry a failed check after 1 hour (outdoors) or 10 minutes (indoors) of searching.

Special: You may take a 10 and a 20 when making a Wilderness Lore check to follow tracks.

• Only rangers may follow tracks with a DC of 21 or higher.

Time: A Wilderness Lore check made to find tracks is at least a full-round action, and it may take even longer.

WILDERNESS LORE UNCHAINED

     By taking the Signature Skill feat, you can unchain the following special bonuses:

• 5 Ranks: You reduce all nonlethal damage you take from heat, cold, starvation, or thirst by 1 point for every 5 ranks you possess in Wilderness Lore.
  
• 10 Ranks: You can track creatures that leave no tracks, including flying and swimming creatures and creatures using trackless step or pass without trace, taking a –20 penalty on your Wilderness Lore check.
  
• 15 Ranks: Once per day, you can spend 1 hour and attempt a DC 30 Wilderness Lore check.  Success grants you cold resistance or fire resistance 5 for 24 hours. You can share this with one ally for every 5 by which you exceeded the check.
  
• 20 Ranks: You take only a –10 penalty when tracking creatures that leave no tracks.