Scent-Aid Or alternate rules for Scent Ability.

[DreamChaser]

Scent SHOULD read: This character can AUTOMATICALLY DETECT anything with a pulse within X feet. Move Silent (COMPLETLY negates), Hide (COMPLELTY NEGATES), Search (if a smell, of anything, is involved, COMPLELTY negates.

You actually answer your own question. Imagine walking around with a super heightened sense of smell. Every little minute change in odor is picked up by your nose. You, as a sentient being, have two options: go stark raving mad or filter out 99.9% of what you smell.

Essentially, this means that Scent is useful in mostly the same situations when Spot or Listen would be:

1) either when there is something very distintive that you might smell without trying (in other words something you can't filter out) equivalent to the Listen check made to hear someone sneaking by you (a "passive check").

2) or when you are actively trying to consciously filter through every single thing you can smell, equivalent to actively looking around, seeing what you can see (an "active" check).

Sight is the dominant sense for humans (and probably cats as well). Even with that consideration, we do not see everything that happens around us. If you are allowing the bugbear to smell everything that happens around him you are giving him extra benefit from his feat.

Imagine the smells that would assault the bugbear in the city: hundreds of people, sewage, garbage, cooking food, animals, etc. The idea that he would "automatically" smell and register a rogue sneaking up on the party is absurd. He MIGHT smell the rogue but the chances of the rogue standing out from the other smells are slim at best. The same would be true of natural creatures in natural settings as well. And how do you even know what smells normal in a dungeon? How many bugbears have encountered an illithid or beholder before?

I think, overall, that this is the reason that it requires actions to really get the sense of anything with Scent. As it is worded, it does imply greater awareness than sight or hearing grants, probably because when it was written it was intended as a monster ability only.

Just my thoughts.

DC

 

[General Barron]

Sight is the dominant sense for humans (and probably cats as well). Even with that consideration, we do not see everything that happens around us. If you are allowing the bugbear to smell everything that happens around him you are giving him extra benefit from his feat.

Hence the reason why a "spot" skill was created. Using the same reasoning, it seems like a no-brainer to simply create a new "smell" skill.

If a human character wants to really benefit from his eyeballs, he has to put ranks into spot. Similarly, if a bugbear character wants to really benefit from his nose, he should have to put ranks into smell.

I see no reason to try and use a bunch of different checks (knowledge skills, wisdom checks, etc), when a single new skill could solve it all. ???

 

[Gez]

IMC, there's a "smell" skill (just like for spot and listen). Gnomes, half-orcs, orcs, gnolls, most animals, etc. have a +2 racial bonus on that skill. Any creature with the Scent feat gain a +8 bonus on smell checks, and can take 10 on those checks (just like a creature with a Swim speed gain a +8 bonus on swim checks, etc).

The DC for sniffing out a creature's position (like what the Scent feat allows) is basically a DC 20 smell check. At greater distance, or when upwind, etc. the DC raises. For especially stinky creatures (such as troglodytes, taer, or elves ) the DC decreases.

Also, the skill offers other uses, such as determining whether some type of creature lives in a closed area ("judging by scent, this is a bear cave").