Complete Guide to the Survival Skill in D&D 5e
D&D 5e is not a survivalist game, and doesn’t work as one without heavy modification. That being said, this skill can still be extremely vital to a party’s success. It is a bit campaign dependent however, so let’s try to determine when will be the right time to put this on your sheet.
Using Survival to Track:
An obvious and easy example of this skill is tracking other creatures. Obviously, there are spells that can provide similar effects, specifically those from the Divination school. However, most of these spells are niche and difficult to use in practice. Being able to replicate the effect of one of those spells just through a skill check is a great benefit, but how often do you find yourself hunting down specific creatures? In games I’ve run and played, I find it comes up less than 5 times per campaign. This isn’t why you’d take this skill, so let’s look at the other applications.
Using Survival to Hunt:
Many tables will use a Survival check to determine the success of a hunting trip. The problem with this lies in hunting for food itself. The two classes most likely to want this skill, Ranger and Druid, have easy access to Goodberry. That spell (among other equally busted things) can feed 10 people for an entire day with one 1st level slot. Other classes can eventually get Create Food and Water if truly necessary. All this to ignore the fact that the vast majority of tables ignore resource management like rations entirely anyway.
Using Survival to Navigate:
This is the only reason you should be taking this skill. If your DM has specified that this campaign will require a lot of open world exploration and delving into unmapped areas, this skill could be a big help. The most concrete example I can point to are the Jungles of Chult in the Tomb of Annihilation module. Navigating that dinosaur infested maze of a jungle requires a Survival check every time you attempt to go from one hex of the map to another. Failing this check could lead you to a hex you didn’t want to go to, or even a combat encounter. The really funny thing is however, that the module basically forces you to hire a guide who makes those Survival checks for you. As an aside, ignore that part of the module entirely, as it makes the campaign much more fun and rewarding. Even in this very specific case where Survival can make or break your whole day, you still only need one party member to be good at it. There is zero reason for more than one person to have this proficiency, even in the best case scenario.
In Summary:
The only reason you should take this skill is if your DM has confirmed that it will be used heavily. Even then, only one person needs this. The other uses of this skill seem to be designed for a different RPG. 5e is a long way from tracking literally everything in the days of 2e.
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
