Identify Clean Water (sage ability)

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Identify clean water is an amateur-status sage ability in the study of Forester, which allows the character to ascertain that naturally occurring water is safe to drink, largely though observation, odor, testing a bit of the water against one's tongue and the appearance of the surrounding vista. For convenience sake, the purity of the water can be judged on a purity scale of 1 to 20. A table for the meaning behind each rating is listed below. Most water that is found in nature will come from one of these sources:

  • Clear, flowing water will most likely have a purity rating of 16 to 20. Most dangerous impurities will be in the form of mining run-off or animal disease which is transmitted into the water from defecation.
  • Slow moving water will contain silt and will tend to have a rating anywhere from 5 to 17. The most dangerous impurities are naturally occurring diseases, such as black water fever or cholera, proliferating from detritus or defecation somewhere upstream.
  • Clear ponds are spring-fed water bodies that may contain algae and will have a rating of 12 to 20, depending on the surrounding terrain and vegetation. A mountain tarn with a rock or sand bottom will be purest, while a prairie or forest pond without much silt will be least pure.
  • Clear lakes are defined as water bodies that are fed by rivers; they will have a rating of anywhere from 10 to 18; like clear ponds, this will depend on terrain and vegetation.
  • Stagnant ponds and lakes will have suspended silt, detritus and growing algae, with a rating of 1 to 11. This includes freshwater stagnant marshes.


Purity ratings are as follows:

Purity Rating Water Taste Effects
20 pure, unusually fresh clean; no effect
19 pleasant 1 in 1000 chance of containing gastro-intestinal parasites
18 agreeable 1 in 100 chance of causing a gastro-intestinal disease
17 odd, earthy 1 in 10 chance of causing a gastro-intestinal disease
16 peculiar, metallic 1 in 6 chance of causing a gastro-intestinal disease
14-15 queer, stale 1 in 2 chance of any disease
13 bitter 2 in 3 chance of any disease
11-12 rank 3 in 4 chance of any disease
9-10 mouldy 3 in 4 chance of any disease, +1 severity
7-8 rancid, mouldy 5 in 6 chance of any disease, +2 severity
4-6 hint of decay, mouldy 7 in 8 chance of any disease, +3 severity
1-3 putrid, rotting 9 in 10 chance of being poisonous