Survival Skill

[Vaz]

Nearly any other skill in the game hasnsome purpose.

With the level of optimization elsewhere available, other skills available would give you the ability to feed the 5000, but short of tracking (which can be covered by a Divination spell) and ignoring overland terrain penalties (oh hi, wand of fly/rod of lesser extend).

So what use can you get out of Survival?

[hymer]

Like a lot of skills, it's superceded (at least to some extent) by spells. Nothing new there. And like a lot of skills, there is a level at which any further investment in the skill isn't very worthwhile.
But at low and mid levels, survival is very useful for finding your way and reducing the danger of environmental hazards in addition to what you mention. In a wilderness and/or exploration game, this is very nice to have.
We use a house ruled skill system where survival and knowledge (nature) get lumped into one skill, obviously making the skill a lot more useful.

[Synovia]

Hey, atleast Survival takes several spells to completely supercede.


Open Lock, Jump, and plenty of others can be pretty much completely superceded with a single low level spell.

[CaladanMoonblad]

Survival uses;

Finding shelter in inclement weather (endure elements has a lower and upper bound for temp)
Surviving in the wilderness to find food/water
Not getting lost
Building temporary shelters (leather, branches, etc.)
Gathering supplies from Nature every week (Montage vs. a hundred thousand spot checks)


Survival is actually a sub for other skills; don't want ranks Craft (masonry), Craft (leatherworking), or Craft (pickling)? Use Survival instead to make a shelter, skin a wild animal and tan it, and preserve food with just one skill.

There's some useful threads you should look at here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?319317-Survival) and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=235724) on this very subject.

[nedz]

A lot of it's uses get hand-waved, other than Tracking or Know Direction. But it can have uses if you are stuck in the Jungle or Tundra something. It depends upon the game really.