The survival skill is a advanced skill, I think you dont roll on advanced skills, If so then how do you determine if you are succseful in what you are doing. The skill lets you fish, make fires, build shelters, if you dont roll then all these are automatic, If my acolyte said "I would like to go fishing" I cant just say "ok, you catch a fish" see what I mean? I need help

The system generally assumes that you roll for stuff only when when the outcome of an action is seriously in question. If that's the case and you don't have the skill, you automatically fail.

However, many advanced skills have very simple uses. If I want to put on a band-aid and don't have Medicae, will I horribly strangle myself with the band-aid? Probably not.

In the case of survival, it's a question of what they're trying to achieve in general. If they just want to survive for a short time (say, a week) in a mild climate in the late spring with not too much hostile flora and faune, they'll probably manage. Describe how they fumble for quite a while with pretty much every task, but have them ultimately succeed.

The skill Survival is needed for harsher conditions - when they're out in the wilderness for a longer time, when they're moving through more extreme climates or try to set foot on a death world.

So when they say "I make a fire", you don't say "Ok, you've got a fire", but "Ok, you go collect some wood in the nearby forest. You then fumble with your lighter until it occurs to you to first set fire to a few smaller twigs. After about an hour, you've got a campfire going - for some reason, it gives off a lot of smoke and you've already had to stomp out a few flames on nearby plants twice. Watching it closely might be a good idea."

RoBro said:

Okay, first off, you do roll on advanced skills. The only difference between an advanced skill and a basic skill is if your not trained in the advanced skill, you just can't do it while if you have a basic skill and are untrained in it, you get to still try it but you only have half your characteristic to succeed.

However, as Cifer pointed out above, a lot of the advanced skills cover actions which, logically, folks not trained in said skill could still do such as cleaning and bandaging a cut with no knowledge of first aid or building a camp fire with no survival skills. While such attempts will never be perfect, pretty, or elegant, they will be functional if not a bit problematic. The real issue come in when the use of the skill really matters.

While someone without any knowledge of first-aid can clean and bandage a cut, they won't do so well when someones intestines are poking out of their abdominal sack and won't know the first thing about the proper way to set and splint a fractured bone. While someone without survival can build a functional fire given enough time and decent weather, they might have difficulty doing such in freezing driving rain. If there's a fish to catch, given a lazy day at the lake, they could eventually catch one, but when they have no pole, they've been without food for three days, and the jungle swamp they're in is trying to eat them, well, then it's a bit more problematic and will require a survival roll. If they are on a weekend retreat in nice 70 degree weather, then pitching a tent would be comically problematic, but they'll succeed eventually. However, trying to find adequate shelter in a hostile environment where poisonous critters will be looking for a way in unless you knew a way to keep them at bay or attempting to shelter your self from a freezing storm that threatens to kill you would require a survival skill role. In other words, advanced skills (and any skill really) only matters when it really matters.