Survivalist Tradecrafts

Introduction

This is part four in a series of four posts written to expand on the tradecraft information listed in the rulebook. This is intended to be used as a reference rather than read straight through (though you’re certainly welcome to do that as well); it is meant to be a way to access more detailed information on a craft to both support its use and help players decide what tradecrafts to take next.

For general tradecraft rules, see the post on tradecrafts and advice; for other trade groups, see their respective posts.

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General Survivalist Craft Information

Survivalist Crafts are used vs. the BR of another creature. Trackers track vs. the BR of the creature leaving the tracks; Gatherers gather vs. the BR of plants in the area; Farmers farm vs. the BR of particular crops. BR is a measure of how “difficult” something is – whether it is a dangerous creature or a delicate plant. Particularly for survival crafts, the BR is also sometimes modified by environmental factors: weather, terrain, etc.

Like all crafts, survivalist crafts have a knowledge portion and a practiced portion.

Knowledge Portion: Knowledge relevant to the practice of a craft. For example, a tracker will have some knowledge of weathering patterns because that is part of determining a track’s age. Similarly, a gatherer will have some knowledge about the needs of local plant species because that is part of knowing where to find them.

Practice Portion: Practice is what the craft can be used to do. All survivalist crafts give characters a better chance at surviving, particularly when out in nature: whether it is finding food, making medicine, or not losing their way.

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Individual Tradecrafts

Tracker
Tracker is used for tracking other people and creatures; it can yield information such as what kind of beings passed through an area, how many of them there were, how long ago they passed through; and if the tracker is particularly skilled, sometimes more subtle details such as whether they were injured or wearing armor. Tracking allows you not only to pick up on these traces but also follow them or obscure those trails as desired; it also allows you to navigate and use those traces to avoid creatures in the area and can sometimes be used to avoid encounters or travel more quickly. The knowledge end of tracking includes a great deal of knowledge not just about animal tracks and sign but also terrain, weathering, and behavior.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Track (eg: footprints, scat, disturbed environment); Type of Creature (eg: game animals, PC Species, miskmarmots); Type of Terrain (eg: sandy, forested, riparian). 

Hunter
Hunter is used for harvesting resources from animals. Most often, this means harvesting meat from game animals; and for smaller animals that pose minimal threat, such as ducks or quail, hunter is part of the trapping and capturing process. However, hunter can also be used to harvest parts from larger and more dangerous animals: teeth or claws from wyverns, carapace from mudcrabs, feathers from griffins, and the like. Hunters do not need to drop the creature they are harvesting from, but it is much more likely they will be able to get the part they’re after if they do so. Hunters can only hunt and harvest resources from creatures with a lower BR than their hunter lvls; and can only harvest one part per number of times higher their lvls are than the BR. For example: a lvl 5 hunter could only harvest one part from a hydra head – say, its teeth – but a lvl 16 hunter could also harvest its blood and tongue. The knowledge end of hunter includes knowledge about the anatomy and behavior of creatures.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Creature (eg: mudcrabs, beasts, game birds); Type of Part (eg: claws, meat, hides); Type of Hunting (eg: trapping, fishing, stalking).

Gatherer
Gatherer allows you to identify wild plants and their uses – particularly which plants are good to eat and which are poisonous. It also allows you to locate and harvest these plants as desired. Gatherer does not help in preparing the plants for consumption, per se (that would be either herbalist or cook, respectively), but it can be used to process plants to make them easier to eat if there is anything that needs to be leeched, dried, or otherwise cleaned out of them prior to use – for example, carving out poisonous seeds from an otherwise edible fruit or stripping away excess inedible fluff from the outside of a plant. Gatherers deal not just with which plants are edible but also other uses of plants: which are good to burn, which will make good cordage, and so on.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Plant (eg: fruits, roots, mushrooms); Type of Environment (eg: forest, subterranean, coastal); Time of Year (eg: spring, rainy season, late summer). 

Herbalist
Herbalist is used for making medicine. This includes identifying and harvesting herbs and other substances needed for a particular cure; preparing the herbs appropriately; and applying them or giving the proper application instructions as needed. Herbalist will also help in identifying illnesses – both whether a person or animal is sick, and (if the herbalist is sufficiently high-lvl) what they’re ill with – so that they can make the proper cure. This craft is generally used vs. the BR of the disease rather than the person or creature experiencing it. Herbalist does not help with physical injuries (that would be doctor); only with diseases and other similarly-functioning illnesses.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Medicine (eg: poultice, tincture, salve); Type of Disease or Symptom (eg: rash, pox, parasites); Part of Plant (eg: root, flower, leaf). 

Miner
Miner helps with nearly anything related to the ground itself. This includes identification of various kinds of stone, metal, mineral, and soil type; navigating subterranean environments, both in the sense of avoiding dangerous features and finding your way around; shaping the ground itself, whether for digging a foundation or for harvesting stone and metal; and otherwise identifying features of the ground such as where there is risk of a sinkhole opening up, where there is an underground source of water, or where is likely to be safe from erosion. It does not help with shaping stone into useful products (that would be stonemason), nor does it help with more comprehensive information about the terrain (that would be forester) – but it will help in situations “on the ground”.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Substance (eg: iron, metal, limestone); Type of Terrain (eg: sandy, caves, cliffs); Type of Problem (eg: erosion, landslides, burrowing creatures). 

Farmer
Farmer is used for cultivation of plants. It doesn’t deal with wild plants the way a gatherer would, but instead deals with domesticated plants – whether they are food crops, flowers, textile plants, etc. This includes identifying and maintaining fertile soil, identifying species of plant and tend to their particular needs for sun and water (as well as distinguishing them from weeds), diagnosing and treating a variety of crop diseases or simply environmental problems (too much sun, not enough water, wrong soil, etc), and harvesting the plants and storing seeds for next planting. Higher-level farmers can also breed plants to make new varieties or domesticate wild plants into a cultivatable variant.     Farmer is used versus the BR of a particular crop, with modifiers for climate or field size.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Plant (eg: grains, tomatoes, fruit trees); Environmental Factors (eg: soil, climate, weather); Type of Problem (eg: wilting, mold, insect damage).

Animal Tamer
Animal Tamer is in many ways counterpart to Farmer the way that Hunter is counterpart to Gatherer – animal tamer is primarily used for caring for domesticated livestock the way that farmers care for domesticated crops. The smaller part of animal tamer has to do with caring for animals: knowing what to feed them, how much space they need, what might pose a threat to them, etc. The larger part of animal tamer, however, has to do with behavior – calming down panicked animals, training them to respond to certain signals or to do certain jobs, recognizing why an animal is acting aggressive, etc. Animal Tamer can be used to train a dog to fetch, a horse to be ridden, or help sheep stay calm during shearing. Certain mounts require animal tamer in order to ride them, and certain working animals require animal tamer to handle. Animal Tamer can also be used on wild animals, though with somewhat more limited results and during more temporary interactions.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Animal (eg: quails, goats, silkworms); Type of Behavior (eg: aggression, feeding, illness); Type of Use (eg: training, riding, milking). 

Area Search
Area Search is used for finding things in the immediate area: spare change, neat rocks, lost rings, scraps of message, dropped weapons, you name it. It won’t let you follow others over a long distance (that would be Tracking), but it lets you pick up on clues and details left behind in a small area. Area Search can also be used to hide objects to make them harder for others to find – and to find objects that others have hidden, if your area search level is higher than the person who hid it. In a pinch, area search can also be used to find secret doors, traps, and other concealed mechanisms – although the skills meant for doing each of those respectively will typically be more successful at it.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Object (eg: jewelry, coins, keys); Type of Terrain (eg: dungeon, forest, field); Type of Irregularity (eg: color, texture, shape).

Forester
Forester is general knowledge about wilderness spaces and the land itself. Forester will tell you information such as whether a forest is dry enough to risk a wildfire, how far beyond a river’s banks a flood is likely to flow, whether certain species of plant or animal belong in a given area, the cause of damage to a patch of grassland, etc. Despite the name, it is not limited solely to forests: it covers all wilderness areas (and as such generally will not work in settlements or on cultivated land) regardless of biome type. Forester can be used not only to understand but also to shape the nature of a wilderness: to help establish a certain plant species, pick the right trees to cut down for lumber, establish trails that won’t be easily washed away, prepare an area against the usual natural disasters, and so on. It does not give you information about specific species (that would be Gatherer, Hunter, or Herbalist); it is more about the terrain they live in and any impact they have on it.
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Possible Fluencies Include: Type of Terrain (eg: rivers, rocky soil, disturbed areas); Type of Biome (eg: forests, deserts, mountains); Type of Factor (eg: natural disasters, seasons, resources). 

Additional Survivalist Crafts
These are the nine survivalist crafts that we use regularly throughout the game. There are many more not listed here. Some of them, such as fisher, could be considered sub-crafts of listed trades; others are difficult to obtain and can only be trained when the craft is locally available. The list of other survivalist crafts and sub-crafts that come up in the game from time to time includes but is not limited to: woodcutter, gardener, trapper, and fisher.