Urban Tracking

Urban Tracking:

Source: Cityscape

You can track down the locations of missing persons or wanted individuals within communities.

Benefit: To find the trail of an individual or to follow it for 1 hour requires a Gather Information check. You must make another Gather Information check every hour of the search, as well as each time the trail becomes difficult to follow, such as when it moves to a different area of town.

The DC of the check, and the number of checks required to track down your quarry, depends on the community size and the conditions:

If you fail a Gather Information check, you can retry after 1 hour of questioning. The DM should roll the number of checks required secretly, so that the player doesn't know exactly how long the task will require.

Normal: A character without this feat can use Gather Information to find out information about a particular individual, but each check takes 1d4+1 hours and doesn't allow effective trailing. Special: A character with 5 ranks in Knowledge(local) gains a +2 bonus on the Gather Information check to use this feat.

Community Size DC Checks Required
Thorp, hamlet, or village 5 1d3
Small or large town 10 1d4+1
Small or large city 15 2d4
Metropolis 20 2d4+2
Conditions DC Modifier
Every three creatures in the group being sought -1
Every 24 hours the party has been missing/sought +1
Tracked party "lies low" +5
Tracked party matches community's primary racial demographic +2
Tracked party does not match community's primary racial demographic -2

You can cut the time between Gather Information checks in half (to 30 minutes per check rather than 1 hour), but you take a -5 penalty on the check.