Wilderness Feats For Really Wild West (in Starfinder)

The Really Wild West setting hack for the Starfinder Roleplaying game is likely to have characters spending a lot of time in the wilderness. The following feats are designed to allow characters to be better prepared to explore and adventure far from civilization. Of course, these feats can also be used in a typical Starfinder Rolepalying Game campaign, though players should consider if such a game is going to spend most of its time in spaceships and urban settings.

Adaptive Training
You can adjust your movements, attitude, and awareness to match specific conditions while adventuring.
Prerequisites: Three or more general feats.
Benefit: Select three general feats that you do not have but whose prerequisites you meet. Once per day after a 10-minute rest, you can gain the benefit of one of these feats until you next spend 1 Resolve Point during a 10-minute rest to regain your Stamina Points. Each time you gain a level, you can replace one of these three selected feats with a different feat that you don’t have but meet the prerequisites for.

Ambush Awareness
You are always on your toes and are rarely caught off-guard for long, even when an enemy gets the jump on you.
Benefit: If you are unable to act in the surprise round because you failed a Perception check, you can still act on your initiative count in the surprise round, but only to take the total defense action. Additionally, when rolling initiative you can choose to gain a +4 bonus to your roll, but you must then  take the total defense action on your first turn in that combat.

Animal Call
Your mimicry of animal noises is extraordinary.
Prerequisite: Bluff 1 rank, Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: You may use Survival in place of Bluff to mimic animal calls. When you use Bluff or Survival to mimic animal sounds, creatures with no ranks in Survival cannot attempt Sense Motive checks to identify the sounds as fake. You can use your animal calls for the Diversion and Pass Secret Message tasks of the Bluff skill. Creatures that do not recognize your animal calls as fake cannot attempt to make Sense Motive checks to understand secret messages you send in this manner.

Arctic Adaptation
You are comfortable in the driving snow and glaring ice of frigid climes, and you can survive much longer in such harsh environments than those who are unaccustomed to the cold.
Prerequisite: Beast Hunter (cold), Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: You treat cold environments as though they were one step less severe than they normally are. Additionally, you gain a +2 bonus on Perception checks against creatures that gain a racial bonus on Stealth checks in snowy conditions, and you gain a +4 bonus on saving throws and checks to avoid becoming blinded or dazzled.

Beast Hunter (Combat)
Thanks to your experience hunting in the wilds, you are capable of tracking animals in your most often traveled terrains, and you can easily take down animals larger than yourself.
Prerequisite: Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: Select one of the following terrains: Cold, Desert, Forest, Jungle, Mountains, Plains, Swamp, Urban. You gain a +2 bonus on Survival checks to track animals, humanoids, magical beasts, and monstrous humanoids native to that terrain. Additionally, against animals native to that terrain, you gain a +1 dodge bonus to your AC and a +1 bonus on damage rolls.
Special: You can take this feat multiple times. Each time you select this feat, you can choose an additional favored terrain to gain the listed benefits in.

Desert Dweller
The endless sands and waterless wastes are your home, and neither the heat nor dehydration presents as lethal of a threat to you as it does to other travelers.
Prerequisite: Beast Hunter (desert), Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: You treat hot environments as though they were one step less severe. You need to consume only half the normal amount of water for a creature of your size, and you gain a +4 bonus on Constitution checks to resist the effects of thirst. You also gain a +4 bonus on saving throws and checks to avoid being deceived by illusions (including desert mirages).

Drover
You are comfortable in the wide and endless prairie, savanna, or steppe.
Prerequisite: Beast Hunter (plains), Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: You, your mount, and an a number of allies (and their mounts) equal to your ranks in Survival add +2 hours to how long you can walk or be otherwise active before needing to attempt Constitution checks for a forced march, and you can hustle for 1 extra hour per day during overland travel instead. Youu reduce the penalty for following tracks using Survival while moving at double speed by 5. In plains terrain, you gain a +4 bonus to Survival checks to avoid getting lost, to find food and water, to protect yourself from severe weather, and to predict the weather.

Expert Salvager
You can find useful materials and mystic components off corpses others think of as worthless.
Prerequisite: 1 rank Mysticism or Engineering.
Benefit: If you have 1 or more ranks of Mysticism, when you defeat an aberration, dragon, fey, magical beast, outsider, or undead, and the creature has a treasure entry of “none” and that actually has no treasure, you can attempt to salvage useful components off its corpse. Make a Mysticism check (DC 15 +1.5x the CR of the defeated foe)—you may not take 10 or take 20 on this check and may only attempt it once per creature. If you succeed you recover components with a value equal to 25% of the normal treasure value of the monster which may only be used toward paying the cost of crafting a magical or hybrid item.
If you have 1 or more ranks of Engineering, when you defeat a construct that has a treasure entry of “none” actually has no treasure, or disarm a trap, you can attempt to salvage useful components off its remains. Make an Engineering check (DC 15 +1.5x the CR of the defeated construct or trap)—you may not take 10 or take 20 on this check and may only attempt it once per creature. If you succeed you recover components with a value equal to 25% of the normal treasure value of the threat’s CR which may only be used toward paying the cost of crafting a technological or hybrid item.

Forester
You are a master of woodcraft and forest lore and can move through even the densest of trees with ease and grace.
Prerequisite: Beast hunter (forest), Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: You ignore difficult terrain created by light or heavy undergrowth, and you ignore increased DCs for Acrobatics and Stealth checks in light or heavy undergrowth. In addition, you can use trees to shield yourself from attacks, gaining a +1 cover bonus to your AC whenever you are adjacent to a tree (including while climbing). If you are adjacent to two or more trees simultaneously, you gain a +2 cover bonus to your AC and a +1 bonus on Reflex saving throws.

Improved Beast Hunter (Combat)
You are well trained in stalking and hunting the animals of the wild.
Prerequisites: Beast Hunter, Survival 3 ranks.
Benefit: Your bonus to tracking creatures native to the terrain you have chosen with Beast Hunter increases to +4. Additionally, you gain a +4 bonus on combat maneuver checks against such creatures, and gain a +4 bonus to AC against their attempts to use combat maneuvers against you. Further, you gain a +2 bonus on saving against extraordinary and supernatural abilities native animals, humanoids, magical beasts, and monstrous humanoids.
Special: If you have selected Beast Hunter multiple times, you gain this benefit for all of the terrains you have chosen for those feats.

Jungle Survivalist
Normally pestilential rain forests are a safe haven and home to you.
Prerequisite: Beast Hunter, Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on saving throws against diseases, poisons, and the distraction ability of creatures with the swarm subtype. You also gain a +2 bonus on Acrobatics and Athletics checks when climbing trees and a +2 bonus on Perception checks against creatures that gain a racial bonus on Stealth checks in vegetation.

Thrill of the Hunt (Combat)
The pursuit of prey invigorates you. You revel in tracking down and slaying your quarry.
Prerequisite: Survival 1 rank.
Benefit: Once per day, when you succeed at a Survival check to find or follow a creature’s tracks, you can designate that creature to be your prize for a number of hours equal to 4 + your ranks in Survival. You gain a +2 morale bonus on Survival checks to follow your prize’s tracks and on weapon damage rolls against your prize.
If you find and subsequently render your prize dead or helpless, you regain the ability to use Thrill of the Hunt on the same day.

Patreon!
I have a Patreon, and it’s supporters are how I post things like this. If you want to see more Really Wild West, you can join too!

About Owen K.C. Stephens

Owen K.C. Stephens Owen Kirker Clifford Stephens is a full-time ttRPG Writer, designer, developer, publisher, and consultant. He's the publisher for Rogue Genius Games, and has served as the Starfinder Design Lead for Paizo Publishing, the Freeport and Pathfinder RPG developer for Green Ronin, a developer for Rite Publishing, and the Editor-in-Chief for Evil Genius Games. Owen has written game material for numerous other companies, including Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press, White Wolf, Steve Jackson Games and Upper Deck. He also consults, freelances, and in the off season, sleeps. He has a Pateon which supports his online work. You can find it at https://www.patreon.com/OwenKCStephens

Posted on June 11, 2018, in Game Design, Starfinder Development and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: