When deep in the wilderness, player characters may find themselves wondering exactly what a new region holds: the dread beasts, fell monsters, and ancient evils. Once those are known, it is naturally the first instinct of adventurers to follow those creatures to their lair, and put an end to them.
When in a region of the Marches, an adventurer can spend time in the wilds, searching for signs of local creatures, so as to ascertain what dwells in the region.
Over the course of a watch, a character may survey an entire region to determine what sorts of creatures dwell there. At the end of the watch, the character makes an Intelligence (Nature) check: they discover evidence of each creatures based on its Survey DC.
Another character can assist in surveying, provided they are proficient in Nature.
Characters may not survey while traveling, but a watch spent surveying still counts toward overall travel time for the day.
The Survey DC reflects the overall difficulty of finding evidence of a creature in a given region. When a character succeeds to survey, it doesn’t mean that they have specifically found that creature, merely that they have found evidence that the creature lives in that region.
While there may be specific subsets of creatures within a given group, such as a Hobgoblin Captain leading a group of Hobgoblins, the Survey DC reflects the group as a whole, and as such should use the stat block of the most common monster in the group.
The Survey DC for a creature begins at 10, and the Survey Difficulty table provides modifiers and adjustments to each creature’s Survey DC. The DM may adjust these further at their discretion, in the case of rare or unusual protections against being noticed.
| Survey Difficulty | |
| Modifier | DC |
| Default | 10 |
| Creatures with a Climb Speed | +2 |
| Creatures with a Flying Speed | +5 |
| Creatures with a Swimming Speed | +5 |
| Creatures with a bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) | +stealth bonus |
| Creature smaller than medium | +2 per size smaller |
| Creature larger than medium | -2 per size larger |
| Creatures rare or small in number | +5 |
| Creatures common or large in number | -5 |
For example, consider the Howling Hills. The Hills’ inhabitants include wild elk, a band of goblins, a colony of giant spiders, and a pair of wyverns.
The elk Survey DC starts at 10. They have no climb, fly, or swim speed, and thus their DC is unaffected. They have no stealth bonus, nor are they larger or smaller than medium, and thus their DC still unaffected. They are quite common in the Hills, and thus their DC is lowered by 5. In total, the elk Survey DC is 5.
The goblin Survey DC starts at 10. They have no climb, fly, or swim, and thus their DC is unaffected. They have a stealth bonus of +6, and thus their DC increases by 6. They are also small, one size smaller than medium, and thus their DC increases by 2. There is a band of them, which, while more than a handful, is relatively small compared to the overall hills, thus not affecting their DC. In total, the goblin Survey DC is 18.
The giant spider Survey DC starts at 10. They have a climb speed, and thus their DC increases by 2. They have a stealth bonus of +7, and thus their DC increases by 7. They are large, one size larger than medium, and thus their DC decreases by 2. There is a colony of them, making them quite common, thus decreasing their DC by 5. In total, the giant spider Survey DC is 14.
The wyvern Survey DC starts at 10. They have a fly speed, and thus their DC increases by 5. They have no stealth bonus, and thus their DC is unaffected. Wyverns are large, one size larger than medium, and thus their DC decreases by 2. There are a pair of wyverns in the Hills, which is quite low for a whole region, thus their DC increases by 5. In total, the wyvern Survey DC is 18.
If a character were to survey the Howling Hills, they would need at least a 5 to find evidence of elk, a 14 to find evidence of giant spiders, and an 18 to find evidence of both the wyverns and the goblins.
The Purpose of Surveying
Surveying is meant to allow players to examine an area’s inhabitants in some detail, provided they are willing to sink not-insignificant time into doing so. Without surveying, the only methods by which players can discover a region’s inhabitants are by random encounters or by stumbling onto their lairs. This is, of course, fun and valid, but if players are searching for a specific monster—say, a chimera, or a higher vampire—being able to search regions for indications of those monsters is very valuable. It’s important to note that surveying that doesn’t reveal where within a region a creature dwells or how many of those creatures there are, nor does it imply that an adventurer has physically found such a creature. It simply gives the players the list of creatures that dwell within a region whatsoever, provided they rolled above its DC. Surveying is searching for evidence and indicators, not the creatures themselves.
After a region has been surveyed, there may come a time when adventurers would like to hunt down a creature they know dwells in the area, whether to exterminate it, to collect the natural resources its body holds, or perhaps just to talk, for instance.
A character can only successfully hunt a creature that is known to make its home in the region, whether that knowledge was gained from surveying the region or not. Over the course of a watch, a character may attempt to hunt a creature to its lair or other resting spot. At the end of the watch, the character makes a Wisdom (Survival) check against the creatures’ Survey DC. On a success, the character finds the lair, resting place, or home of the hunted creature.
A character may assist another in hunting, provided they are proficient in Survival.
Characters may not hunt while traveling, but the watch spent hunting still counts towards overall travel time for the day.
While hunting normally leads to the central lair of a given group of creatures, such as the goblin’s camp or spider-queen’s nest, in the case of highly widespread creatures, such as elk, it leads to only one such lair. Hunting elk, for example, might lead to one clearing with many sleeping elk, but there will still be other elk in the region. By contrast, hunting down the single pair of wyverns leads to those particular wyverns’ lair, as they are the only in the region.
The carcasses of monsters in the West Marches often contain powerful reagents: the magic-reflecting shell of a great, ancient snail, or the nigh-impenetrable carapace of a tarrasque, for instance. When a character successfully hunts prey, they might choose to harvest these reagents for use in crafting magical items, armor, and weapons.
A single unit of material harvested from a creature can be used in the crafting of a single item.
A character can make an Intelligence (Nature) check to harvest parts from the corpse of a monster. The amount of usable material that can be harvested successfully is based on the creature’s size, as well as the result of the check that the player makes to harvest it. Refer to the Harvestable Parts by Size table to determine the base number of units of material that can be harvested from a single creature. The maximum number of units of harvestable material on a single monster is equal to that number plus 1 for every 5 CR of the creature. For example, the maximum number of harvestable units of material on an ancient black dragon is 9, since it has a base of 5 and its CR is 21.
Then, refer to the Harvest Difficulty table to determine what fraction of the maximum units of harvestable material could be recovered from the creature based on the player’s skill check.
| Harvestable Parts by Size | |
| Modifier | Base Units of Material |
| Tiny | 1 |
| Small | 1 |
| Medium | 2 |
| Large | 3 |
| Huge | 4 |
| Gargantuan | 5 |
| Harvest Difficulty | |
| Percentage of Max Units of Material | DC |
| 0% | 0 |
| 20% | 5 |
| 40% | 10 |
| 60% | 15 |
| 80% | 20 |
| 100% | 25 |
A check doesn’t need to be made to determine the amount of edible material that is harvested from small animals like rabbits or game like elk. It’s assumed that adventurers know how to clean commonplace animals for the purposes of hunting for food.
As DM, you should use your discretion when determining the weight of a unit of material harvested from a creature. A unit of material does not necessarily equate to a single amount of pounds of that material, but rather that unit of material’s utility in terms of crafting. A chunk of a purple worm’s spine could weigh 80 pounds, and the wing of a fairy could weigh practically nothing, but both could represent a single unit of material.